we shared seven years ago certainly didn’t suggest you would find my lovemaking abhorrent— anything but. You were hungry for it, Gabriella. I found that rather interesting, since the following day you married another man.’
‘You forced yourself on me,’ she hissed at him in an undertone, on account of the other diners close by.
‘Forced is perhaps too strong a word to use, but in any case you responded wholeheartedly,’ he said. ‘Not just with those soft full lips of yours, but with your tongue as well. And if I recall even your teeth got into the act at one point. I’m getting hard now, just thinking about it.’
Gabby had never felt so embarrassed in her entire life. Her face felt as if someone had aimed a blowtorch at her. But even more disturbing was the thought of his body stirring with arousal for her—especially with those powerful thighs of his within touching distance of hers.
‘Your recollection has obviously been distorted over time, for I can barely remember it,’ she said with a toss of her head.
His eyes glinted smoulderingly. ‘Then perhaps I should refresh your memory,’ he said. ‘No doubt there will be numerous opportunities to do so once we are living together as man and wife.’
Gabby had to fight to remain calm, but it was almost impossible to control the stuttering of her heart and the flutter of panic deep and low in her belly. ‘When do you plan for this ridiculous farce to commence?’ she asked, with fabricated quiescence.
‘Our marriage will not be a farce,’ he said, with a determined set to his mouth. ‘It will be real in every sense of the word.’
Her eyes widened a fraction before she could counter it. ‘Is that some sort of sick habit of yours? Sleeping with someone you dislike?’
‘You are a very beautiful woman, Gabriella,’ he said. ‘Whether I like you or not is beside the point.’
Gabby wanted to slap that supercilious smile off his face. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes shooting sparks of fury at him. But more disturbing was the way her body was responding to his smoothly delivered sensual promises. She could feel a faint trembling between her thighs, like a tiny pulse, and her breasts felt full and tight, her nipples suddenly sensitive against the black fabric of her dress.
‘I’m prepared to marry you, but that’s as far as it goes,’ she said with a testy look. ‘It’s totally barbaric of you to expect me to agree to a physical relationship with you.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ he asked. ‘Two point four million dollars is a high price for a bride, and I expect to get my money’s worth.’
She sucked in a rasping breath. ‘This is outrageous! It’s akin to prostitution.’
‘You came to me for help, Gabriella, and I gave it to you,’ he said. ‘I was totally up-front about the terms, so there is no point in pretending to be shocked about them now.’
‘But what about the woman you were seeing a month or so ago?’ Gabby asked, recalling a photograph she had seen in the ‘Who’s-Out-and-About?’ section of one of the Sydney papers. An exquisitely beautiful woman gazing up at Vinn adoringly.
He gave her a supercilious smile. ‘So you have been keeping a close eye on my love life, have you, mia piccola?’
She glowered at him darkly. ‘I have absolutely no interest in who you see. But if we are to suffer a short-term marriage, the very least you could do is keep your affairs out of the press.’
‘I don’t recall saying our marriage was going to be a short-term one,’ he said with an inscrutable smile. ‘Far from it.’
Gabby felt her heart give a kick-like movement against the wall of her chest. ‘W-what?’ she gasped.
‘I have always held the opinion that marriage should be for life,’ he said. ‘I guess you could say it stems from my background. My mother was abandoned by the man she loved while she had a baby on the way. She had no security, no husband to provide for her, and as a result she went on to live a hard life of drudgery— cleaning other people’s houses to keep food on the table and clothes on our backs. I swore from an early age that when it came time for me to settle down I would do so with permanence in mind.’
‘But you don’t even like me!’ she blurted in shock. ‘How could you possibly contemplate tying yourself to me for the rest of your life?’
‘Haven’t you got any mirrors at your house any more, mia splendida ragazza?’ he asked, with another smouldering look. ‘I do not have to like you to lust over you. And isn’t that what every wife wants? A husband with an unquenchable desire for her and her alone?’
Gabby swallowed back her panic, but even so she felt as if she was choking on a thick uneven lump of it. ‘You’re winding me up. I know you are. This is your idea of a sick joke. And let me tell you, I am not finding it the least bit amusing.’
‘I am not joking, Gabriella,’ he said. ‘Love is generally an overrated emotion—or at least I have found it to be so. People fall in and out of love all the time. But some of the most successful marriages I know are those built on compatibility in bed—and, believe you me, you don’t need to be in love with someone to have an earth-shattering orgasm with them.’
Gabby felt her face explode with colour, and was never more grateful for the reappearance of the waiter to take their meal orders.
Hearing Vinn speak of…that word…that experience… made her go hot all over. She had never experienced pleasure with her late husband. The one time Tristan had taken it upon himself to assert “his manly duty”, as he had euphemistically called it, he had left her not cold, but burning with pain and shame.
Once the waiter had left, Gabby drained the rest of her cocktail, beyond caring that it had made her head spin. No amount of alcohol could affect her more than Vinn had already done, she decided. Her body was tingling all over with sensation, and her mind was running off at wayward tangents, imagining what it would feel like to be crushed by the solid weight of his body, his sensual mouth locked on hers, one of his strong, hair-roughened thighs nudging hers apart to—
She jerked away from her thoughts, annoyed that she had allowed his potent brand of sensuality to get under her guard. What on earth was she thinking? He was the enemy. She knew exactly what he was doing and why. He was only marrying her to get back at her for how she had treated him in the past. He knew it would be torture for her to be tied to him. Why else would he insist on it? Never had she regretted her immature behaviour more than this moment. Why, oh why, had she been so shallow and cruel?
Gabby’s older brother Blair had often pulled her up for her attitude towards Vinn, but in a way his relationship with Vinn had been a huge part of the problem. She had felt jealous that her adored older brother clearly preferred the company of the cleaner’s son to hers. Gabby had resented the way Blair spent hours helping Vinn with his studies when he could have been spending time with her, the way he’d used to do before Vinn had arrived with his mother.
When Gabby had accidentally stumbled upon the realisation that Vinn suffered from dyslexia she had cruelly taunted him with it, mocking him for not being able to read the most basic of texts. But for some reason, just as he had when she had led him on so despicably that hot summer afternoon when she was sixteen, Vinn had never spoken to her brother or her parents about her behaviour. He had taken it on the chin, removing himself
