the pain shredding her vitals.
Driven by unstoppable instinct Lucy pivoted, raised her hand and chopped down on the inner elbow of the arm that captured her. At the same time she jabbed her knee high in his groin. Her hand connected with a force that almost matched the strength in that muscled arm. But her knee struck only solid thigh as he sensed her attack and shifted.
Yet it worked. She was free. She stood facing him, panting from adrenalin and overflowing emotions.
Gimlet eyes stared down at her. Glittering eyes that bored deep into her soul, as if he could strip away the self-protective layers she’d built so painstakingly around herself and discover the woman no one else knew.
Her chest rose and fell as she struggled for air. Her pulse thundered. Her skin sizzled with the effervescence in her bloodstream.
The muzzy giddiness disappeared as she stared back at the face of the man who’d stripped away her last hope and destroyed what was left of her joy at being free.
Far from fainting, she felt painfully alive. It was as if layers of skin had been scored away, exposing nerve endings that throbbed from contact with the very air in this cloistered mansion.
‘Don’t touch me!’
Instead of backing off from her snarling tone he merely narrowed his eyes.
‘You were going to faint.’ The rumble of his voice stirred an echo inside her.
‘I’ve never fainted in my life.’ She shoved aside the knowledge that he was right. Until the shock of his touch she’d been about to topple onto his pristine parquet floor.
‘You needed support.’ His words betrayed no outrage at her attack. It was as if he, like she, was no longer bothered by social niceties. As if he understood the primitive intensity of her feelings.
That disturbed her. She didn’t want him understanding anything about her. She didn’t like the sense that Domenico Volpe had burrowed under her skin and was privy to her innermost demons.
Something shifted in his gaze. There was a subtle difference in those deep-set eyes that now shone silver. Something in the line of his lips. Her eyes lingered there, tracing the shape of a mouth which now, relaxed, seemed designed solely for sensual pleasure.
A gossamer thread of heat spun from her breasts to her pelvis, drawing tight—a heat she’d felt only once before.
Had his expression changed, grown warm? Or had something inside her shifted?
Lucy bit her lip then regretted the movement as his gaze zeroed in on her mouth. Her lips tingled as if he’d reached out and grazed them with a questing finger.
A shiver of luxurious pleasure ripped through her. Fire ignited deep within, so hot it felt as if she were melting. Her pulse slowed to a ponderous beat then revved out of control.
She’d known Domenico Volpe was dangerous. But she hadn’t known the half of it.
She swallowed hard and found her voice, trying to ignore her body’s flagrant response.
‘You can move back now. I can stand.’
He took his time moving. ‘Yet sitting is so much more comfortable, don’t you think?’
He said no more but that one raised eyebrow told her he saw what she’d rather not reveal. That her surge of energy was short-lived. Lucy felt a dragging at her limbs. Her knees were jelly and the thought of confronting him here, now, was almost too much to bear.
Had he guessed her visceral response to his flagrant masculinity? That would be the final straw.
She grabbed the magazine, crushing its pages.
‘Thank you. I will take that seat now.’
He nodded and gestured to a long sofa. Instead she took the black leather swivel chair that looked like something from an exclusive design catalogue, a far cry from the sparse utilitarian furniture she’d grown used to. It was wickedly comfortable and her bones melted as she sank into it. It was massive, built to order, she guessed, for the man who took a seat across from her. Lucy tried to look unfazed by such luxury.
‘You didn’t know about the article?’
Lucy refused to look away from his keen gaze. Confrontation was preferable to running. She’d learned that in a hard school. But looking him in the eye was difficult when her body hummed with the aftermath of what she could only describe as an explosion of sexual awareness.
‘No.’ She glanced down at the trashy gossip mag and repressed a shiver. It was like holding a venomous snake in her palm. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Would you like something? Brandy? A pot of tea?’
Startled by his concern, she turned to find Domenico Volpe looking almost as surprised as she was, as if the offer had slipped out without volition.
It was no comfort to know she must look as bad as she felt for him to offer sustenance.
‘No. Thank you.’ Accepting anything from him went against every instinct.
Already he moved towards the desk. Obviously it didn’t matter what she wanted. ‘I’ll order coffee.’
Lucy’s gaze dropped to the magazine. How could Sylvia have done this? Did she despise Lucy so much?
Silently her heart keened. Sylvia and the kids had been Lucy’s last bright hope of returning to some remnant of her old life. Of having family again. Of belonging.
Quotes from the article floated through her troubled mind. Of her stepmother saying Lucy had ‘always been different’, ‘withdrawn and moody’ but ‘hankering after the bright lights and excitement’. That she put her own needs first rather than those of her family. There was nothing in the article about Sylvia’s resentment of her husband’s almost grown daughter, or the fact that Lucy had spent years as unpaid nurserymaid for Sylvia’s four children by a previous marriage. Or that Sylvia’s idea of bright lights was a Saturday night in Torquay and a takeaway meal.
Nothing about the fact that Lucy had left home only when her dad, in his quiet way, had urged her to experience more of the world rather than put her life on hold to look after the younger children.
She’d experienced the world all right, but not in the way he’d had in mind.
As for the article, taken from a recent interview with Sylvia, it was a lurid exposé that painted Lucy as an uncaring, amoral gold-digger. It backed up every smear and innuendo that had been aired in the courtroom. Worse, it proved even her family had turned against her.
What would her stepsiblings think now they were old enough to read such malicious gossip?
Lucy’s heart withered and she pressed a hand to her throat, trying to repress rising nausea. Sylvia and she had never been close but Lucy had never thought her stepmother would betray her like this. The article’s spitefulness stole her breath.
Until now she’d believed there was someone believing in her. First her father and, after he died, Sylvia.
She felt
