“The famous famiglia Orsini. How could I have forgotten?”
She gasped as his hold on her tightened. In the few months they’d been together, they had never discussed his family, his father’s underworld connections. She’d have known about it, of course. That the Orsini brothers were sons of Cesare Orsini was favorite gossip-column fodder.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Dammit, you’re hurting me!”
She was twisting against his hand, trying to get free, but each jerk of her body only brought her more closely against him.
It was agony.
Exquisite agony.
The soft brush of her breasts against the hardness of his chest. The whisper of her belly against his. The feel of her thighs rubbing lightly over his. Just the sight of her, all that sun-streaked hair tumbling around her face, that lush mouth, the eyes deep enough for a man to get lost in.
Memories swept through him.
The feel of her, moving beneath him.
The scent of her, when he brought her to climax.
The taste of her mouth, her skin, her clitoris.
Desire, wild, hot and dangerous, took fire. It thickened his blood, ignited nerve endings, brought him to full, rampant arousal. Maybe she was right. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Go back a couple of generations, to the land of his ancestors, a woman would not have dared make a fool of an Orsini as this woman had done this morning.
On a low growl, Dante clasped Gabriella’s shoulders, lifted her to him and claimed her mouth.
She fought. It didn’t matter. Kissing her, subduing her, taking her was everything.
This morning she had told him what she wanted. Now, it was his turn to tell her what he wanted.
Her. Her, in his bed, again. For as long as he chose to keep her there. He’d never wanted another man’s leavings but this—this was different.
He would wipe Ferrantes’s possession away. Replace it with his own demands. His own pleasure. Her pleasure, too, because that would happen, she would soften under his touch as she had earlier today, she would moan against his lips, run her hands up his chest, press herself to him, yes, as she was doing now, moving her hips against his, making those sexy little whimpers that could raise the temperature a hundred degrees.
He groaned her name. Slid his hands under her bulky shirt. Cupped her breasts and groaned again at the feel of them in his hands, all warm, sweet silky flesh straining against her bra, filling his palms, the nipples lifting to the caressing sweep of his thumbs.
“Gabriella,” he said, his voice urgent, and she wound her arms around his neck, sucked his tongue into the heat of her mouth…
Merda! What in hell was he doing?
Cursing, he pushed her from him. She stumbled back, shoulders hitting the wall, eyes flying open and fixing on his. She looked shocked, on the verge of tears, but he wasn’t fooled. He was letting her do it all over again, blinding him to reality, using sex to turn his body on and his brain off as if she were a sorceress and he a fool she could enchant.
But he wasn’t.
“Nice,” he said, as if he’d been in control all the time. “Very nice. We’re going to get along just fine.”
“Get out,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Come on, sweetheart. Don’t take it so hard. And, what the hell, it’ll be easier with me than it was with Ferrantes, we both know that.”
She swung at him again but he was ready this time. He caught her hand, dragged her against him.
“You said—you said you would give my home to me. No strings, you said.”
“That was before I knew you’d already made a deal with good old Andre.”
She spat a word at him and he laughed. Turned out, some obscenities sounded pretty much the same whether they were said in the Sicilian of his youth or the Portuguese of hers.
“You think this is amusing?”
Dante lowered his head until his eyes were almost even with hers.
“What I think,” he said in a cold whisper, “is that you get to have a choice.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’ll sell the place to Ferrantes in the blink of an eye.”
“He wouldn’t pay five million dollars.”
“My accountant keeps telling me I can use a couple more nonperforming assets.”
Her mouth trembled. Her eyes filled. It was hard not to feel sorry for her. Hard—but not impossible.
“I hate you, Dante Orsini!”
“I guess the question is, who do you hate more? Me or Ferrantes? Of course, you can always turn us both down. Pack up, move out—”
A thin cry drifted into the room. Gabriella stiffened, jerked back in his arms.
“What’s that?”
“A…a fox,” she said quickly.
She was lying. He could see it in her face. The cry came again. Dante narrowed his eyes.
“A fox in the house?”
“A monkey, then,” Gabriella said, rushing the words together. “Sometimes they get into the attic.”
The hell it was. You didn’t have to grow up in the country to know whatever was making that sound was not a monkey or a fox. Dante thrust her aside and started for the stairs. She ran in front of him and held out her hands.
“Get out of my way,” he growled.
“Dante. Please. Just leave. I’ll pack tonight. I’ll be out by morning. I promise—”
He lifted her as if she were a feather, set her aside, took the stairs two at a time, following what were now steady sobs down a long hall, through an open door, into a softly lit room…
And saw a crib, a blue blanket, a blue teddy bear…
And a baby, kicking its arms and legs and sobbing its heart out.
Dante stopped on a dime. Gabriella rushed past him and lifted the child into her arms. Say something, Dante thought furiously…but no words would come. He didn’t seem capable of anything besides looking at her and at the baby.
“Meu querido,” she crooned, “dearest one, don’t cry!”
The baby’s cries changed to sad little hiccups; Gabriella held the small body against
