emotionally, to beg and to plead with him to stop.
She would not do it.
She would not bend or break, she would not cry, she would not beg.
She raised her chin and locked gazes with him. Bluegrey warred with black-brown for a pulsing moment. ‘All right, then,’ she said with a devil-may-care lift of one shoulder as she loosened the catch on her watch. She slipped it off her wrist and placed it beside the earrings and rings.
She straightened and, giving him a challenging look, slipped off her shoes, kicking them to one side before she reached for the zipper at the back of her skirt. She told herself she had stood undressed in front of hundreds of people before while she had been modelling. This would be no different; besides, he had seen it all before. Her body was no secret to him. He knew every curve and contour and every secret place.
The tension in the air was palpable.
Ava slid the zipper down, the metallic sound thunderous in the crackling silence. The fabric slipped to the floor and she stepped out of its circle, her fingers going to the hem of her pull-on top.
Marc’s eyes followed her like a night-vision searchlight. She felt the heat of it scorch her flesh as her top joined her skirt on the floor. She stood before him in a black, French, lace push-up bra and knickers, her chin high, her right hip tilted in a model-like pose. ‘I bought these myself,’ she said with a defiant look.
His lips flickered, his dark eyes gleaming. ‘Prove it.’
Ava clenched her teeth, fighting to keep her cool. He wanted her to fall apart, she had to remember that. He wanted her pride any way he could get it. ‘I don’t have the receipt any more, so I am afraid you will have to take my word for it,’ she said, pushing up her chin to disguise its wobble.
‘Your word?’ His top lip lifted in a mocking curl. ‘Since when should I take as gospel the word of a gold-digger?’
‘I am not a gold-digger,’ she said with quiet but steely dignity.
The timer on his watch beeped, informing her the minute was up.
Ava felt her stomach slip as Marc’s gaze hit hers. ‘Well?’ he said.
She had never felt so naked and exposed in her life and yet she was still wearing more than most people wore on the French Riviera beaches she could see from the villa windows.
‘How much are you going to pay me?’ she asked, knowing it would be exactly the question a gold-digger would ask, but she was beyond caring. Serena was more important than her pride at this point. What her sister had suffered recently was far worse than anything Marc Castellano could do to her.
He named a sum that lifted her brows. ‘Th-that much?’ she asked in a croak.
He gave her an imperious smile, the black holes of his pupils flaring with passionate promise. ‘I am going to make you earn every penny of it, Ava. I don’t suppose you have forgotten how good we were together, hmm?’
Ava felt her cheeks flame with colour. She remembered everything: every touch, every kiss, every incendiary caress and every earth-shattering orgasm that had left her quaking in his arms time and time again. ‘You want some sort of medal for being able to perform an act that humans, even the most base of animals, have been doing for centuries?’ she asked with a cutting look.
He suddenly snagged one of her wrists and pulled her up against him, his chest to her pounding chest and his strong, immovable thighs to her weak, trembling ones. ‘Don’t push me too far, Ava,’ he said in a low growl. ‘I am this close,’ he held up his index finger and thumb a pinch distance apart, ‘to walking out of here and leaving you to face your sugar daddy’s creditors.’
Again Ava desperately wanted to call his bluff. She would have if it hadn’t been for Serena. A vision of her shattered sister, holding the ultrasound picture of the baby she had lost, was the only thing that stopped her. ‘All right,’ she said on an expelled breath. ‘I’ll do it.’
Marc’s hold loosened, but he didn’t release her. Instead his thumb found her thundering pulse, stroking over it in a rhythmic motion that was as powerful as a drug. ‘I will release a Press statement for tomorrow’s papers,’ he said into the silence. ‘We will begin living together as of now.’
Ava looked up at him in wide-eyed trepidation. ‘So…so soon?’
His eyes went to her mouth before returning to hers. ‘I have waited five years to have you where I want you,’ he said.
She gave him an embittered look. ‘Where might that be?’ she asked. ‘In the palm of your hand, begging for mercy?’
He traced a long finger over each of the upper curves of her breasts before dipping into the valley of her cleavage, the nerves beneath her skin going off like miniature explosives. ‘I think you know exactly where I want you,’ he said in a tone that was rough and deep and sensually, sinfully dangerous.
Ava felt her body quiver at the thought of him plunging into her, claiming her as his.
Not in love.
Not in mutual attraction.
But in lustful, hate-filled revenge.…
Chapter Two
IN SPITE of the warmth of the room Ava felt her skin rise in goose pimples. She rubbed at her upper arms, trying so hard to hold her ground. Her head was aching with tension, her mind trying to stay clear and focused while the earth seemed to be shifting beneath her feet. The air was fizzing with Marc’s hatred, high-voltage waves of it zapping at her, making her skin pepper all the more.
‘Are you cold?’ Marc asked.
She kept her mouth rigid with anger. ‘What is that to you?’
He held her glare for a pulsing moment. ‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked.
‘No, and if you think I am going to dine with you dressed like this you can think again,’ she said with a lift of her chin.
He smiled as his gaze raked over her again. ‘Delightful as that sounds, no—I will not take you out in public like that. As of this evening your body is for my eyes and my eyes only.’
Ava found it hard to stand still for the rage that was rumbling through her like seismic activity preceding a massive earthquake. ‘You know there are probably street workers who come much cheaper than me,’ she said, goaded beyond caution.
‘Yes, but I want you,’ he said with a devilish gleam in his black-as-night gaze. ‘We have unfinished business, do we not?’
Ava glared at him. ‘Any business we had ended five years ago. I thought I had made that perfectly clear.’
His top lip lifted in disgust. ‘Oh, yes, by moving out of the apartment I had set up for you without even telling me to my face. I came home to find the place empty apart from a note.’
Ava felt a twinge of guilt about not meeting him face-to-face back then, but she knew if she had he would have persuaded her to stay with him. A note had seemed safer, she’d had more control, the sort of control she had lost the moment
