their wits against that awesome brain!
‘It was a satisfactory outcome.’
‘Satisfactory for you? Or for your opponent?’ She didn’t need to ask. She just couldn’t seem to contain the desire to bait him at every given opportunity. And that way lay disaster if she had any intention of hanging on to her job, she reminded herself sharply.
The freshness of the shower gel that still clung to his body invaded her nostrils as he came over to the table where she was sitting and picked up a sheet of paper, examining the various sketches that she had been making.
‘I would have thought experience would have taught you, Riva. I always play to win.’
She sucked in an audible breath. ‘No matter who gets hurt?’ She couldn’t look at him as she said it. She couldn’t seem to breathe either, too aware of his scent, the sound of his voice, his disconcerting nearness, and, as he returned her sketches to the table, of the dark lean strength of his hands.
‘No one gets hurt as long as they know their limits,’ he assured her, ‘and don’t indulge in games which are totally out of their league. But if you’re referring to that little game you were playing with me in the past—which I’m sure you are—don’t try and pretend to me that I hurt you, Riva. Oh, perhaps a little physically—but then you didn’t exactly prepare me for your … innocence.’ His voice derided. As well it might, she realised bitterly. A virgin she might have been, but he hadn’t seen her sacrifice and everything that had led up to it as anything other than part of a calculated plan. ‘If you had, I would never have let things get so out of hand.’
‘What would you have done?’ Her tone was wounded, hurt, shrill. ‘Locked me in a room and used an interrogation lamp on me instead? Well, if it’s any consolation to your macho pride and your failing judgement about me, I would never have gone to bed with you if I’d known I’d be sleeping with a snake!’
‘What did you expect? That I’d be taken in as easily as Marcello? The fact is it is something that we both have to live with. But just for the record … I don’t recall that much sleeping was done.’
Wings of bright colour suffused her pale cheeks, and she felt decidedly sticky under her silky top.
Pushing herself disconcertedly to her feet, she crossed the room to put some distance between them, and started making more than a show of measuring the floor area. The red glow of the laser tape measure cut through the space like his brutality had once cut into her young, unsuspecting pride.
‘As far as I’m concerned, Damiano, you were just an unfortunate episode in my life.’
‘And how many more … fortunate episodes have there been, Riva?’
‘That’s none of your damn business!’
‘Or should I amend that to profitable?’
‘How dare you? You make me sound like …’
‘Like what? ‘
Features contorted with disgust, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. What was he saying? Who did he think he was?
‘As you said to me … What was the expression again …? If the cap fits …’
‘And as you said to me—’ she was striding purposefully back across the room ‘—it doesn’t!’
He was perched on the edge of the table as she came around the other side, putting the safe shield of her chair between them. She made a show of picking up papers, tidying them up and putting them down again. She wanted to sit down, get on with her work. She wished he would move.
‘All right. So it’s an episode we both want to forget. We both had an agenda. You lost. That’s life. But, regardless of our individual motives, I don’t think that either of us can deny that it was a very pleasurable experience.’
A small strangled sound escaped Riva, and the eyes she fixed on his were wide with disbelief. ‘You’re not for real! If you think I enjoyed it, then your ego’s even bigger than I imagined it was. If you want the truth, the whole experience just made me sick!’
She wanted her stapler, which was on the other side of the table. She had to go around him to retrieve it and did so, giving him a significantly wide berth.
‘I’m not a tyrant, cara, but if you’re determined to treat me like one then we are not going to have a very satisfactory working relationship. And that’s something I think we’d better put an end to right now.’
For a brief heart-sinking moment she thought that he was going to call it a day. Report back to the studio that she wasn’t up to the job and get someone else to come in and work on his precious brief. Bitter experience, though, should have warned her about underestimating Damiano D’Amico: men like him didn’t need anyone else to do their dirty work for them.
Perched, as he still was, on the edge of the table, when she made to move past him he reached out and in one fluid movement caught her by the wrist.
Her senses leaping, she felt the little blue vein beneath his thumb start to thrum with the blood that was pumping through her, and with sinking dismay knew that he could feel it too.
‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she murmured, the way her breath shivered through her from this devastating contact with him giving the lie to her trembling statement.
He smiled without warmth. ‘Good.’ His eyes were glittering like midnight pools in moonlight, so mesmerising that as he pulled her towards him she felt like a heap of pulsing jelly and could only clutch at the fabric of his other sleeve to stave off the feeling of tumbling down and down into their dangerous depths.
In a voice that was shaking as much as she was, she challenged, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
His lips moved in a parody of a smile. ‘I always believe in putting my theories into practice,’ he said, his long ebony lashes coming down as those disturbing eyes dropped to the fullness of her trembling mouth, and before she could find her voice to demand what those theories were his face went out of focus and that mocking mouth was suddenly claiming hers.
He was still leaning against the table and, caught between his legs, she felt her senses start to reel from the warmth of his powerful thighs, from the movement of muscle beneath the quality cloth of his jacket, and from the hard insistence of his deepening kiss.
She had to stop this! Some smothered sense of reason tried to warn her that all he was doing was trying to humiliate her, make her pay for what she had just said to him, trying to cut her down to size.
As his arms tightened around her, though, her body paid no heed to the warning, letting her down as every galvanised cell leaped in recognition of his masculinity.
Her mouth widening beneath his, she gave a defeated little sound, the hands that had come up to grasp his shoulders now moving of their own volition to plunder the dark, damp hair at the nape of his neck.
Pulled closer against his hard, lean length, Riva gasped from the magnitude of her crazy response to him, sensations multiplying like locusts at the irrational thrill of this man’s lips and hands that had once turned her into a woman with their skill and their expertise, this man who had been her first lover—and her last!
Rigid
