care. She kissed him back with just as much passion, nipping at him with her teeth in between stroking him with her tongue. He tasted just as she remembered him: minty and fresh and devastatingly, irresistibly male.
He tore his mouth from hers to suckle on her breast, his tongue swirling around her areola and over her nipple until her back arched in pleasure. She knew it would take very little to send her up into the stratosphere. She could feel the tremors at her core, the tension building and building, until she was close to begging him to satisfy that delicious, torturous ache.
He brought his mouth back to hers—a slower kiss this time. He took his time exploring her mouth, his tongue teasing hers rather than subduing it. She melted like honey in a hothouse. Her arms went around his neck. Her hands delved into the thick denseness of his hair. Her throbbing pelvis was flush against the hardness of his.
He raised his mouth from hers, his breathing heavy, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded and smouldering with desire. ‘Tell me you want me,’ he commanded.
Natalie was jolted out of his sensual spell with a resurgence of her pride. ‘I don’t want you,’ she lied.
He gave a deep and very masculine-sounding mocking laugh. ‘I could prove that for the lie that it is just by slipping my hand between your legs.’
She tried to back away but he held her fast. ‘Get your hands off me,’ she said through gritted teeth.
He slowly slid his hands down the length of her arms, his fingers encircling her wrists like handcuffs. ‘You will come to me, cara, just like you did in the past,’ he said. ‘I know you too well.’
She held his gaze defiantly. ‘You don’t know me at all,’ she said. ‘You might know your way around my body, but you know nothing of my heart.’
‘That’s because you won’t let anyone in, will you?’ he said. ‘You push everyone away when they get too close. Your father told me how difficult you are.’
Natalie’s mouth dropped open in outrage. ‘You discussed me with my father?’
His hands fell away from her wrists, his expression masked. ‘We had a couple of conversations, yes,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘I asked for your hand in marriage.’
She gave a derisive laugh. ‘That was rather draconian of you, wasn’t it? And also hypocritical—because you wouldn’t have let the little matter of my father’s permission stand in the way of what you wanted, now, would you?’
‘I thought it was the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘I would’ve liked to meet him face to face but he was abroad on business.’
Natalie could just imagine the ‘business’ her father was working on. His latest project was five-foot-ten with bottle-blonde hair and breasts you could serve a dinner party off.
‘I’m sure he didn’t hesitate in handing me over to your care,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t offer to pay you for the privilege.’
His gaze remained steady on hers, dark and penetrating but giving nothing away. ‘We also discussed Lachlan’s situation.’
‘I take it he didn’t offer to postpone his business in order to be by Lachlan’s side and sort things out?’
‘I told him to stay away,’ he said. ‘Sometimes parents can get in the way when it comes to situations like this. Your father has done all he can for your brother. It’s time to step back and let others take charge.’
‘Which you just couldn’t wait to do, because it gave you the perfect foothold to force me back into your life,’ she said, shooting him a resentful glare.
Those piercing brown eyes refused to let hers go. ‘You came to me, Natalie, not the other way around.’
A thought slipped into her mind like the thin curl of smoke beneath a door. ‘My father was the one who contacted you, wasn’t he?’ she said, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘I only came to you because my mother begged me to. I would never have come to you otherwise. He put her up to it.’
‘Your father expressed his concern for you when we spoke,’ he said. ‘It seems it’s not only your brother with an attitude problem.’
Natalie stalked to the other side of the bedroom, her arms around her body so tightly she felt her ribs creak in protest. Her anger was boiling like a cauldron inside her. She wanted to explode. She wanted to hit out at him, at the world, at the cruel injustice of life. The thought of Angelo discussing her with her father was repugnant to her. She hated thinking of how that conversation would have played out.
Her father would have painted her as a wilful and defiant child with no self-discipline. He would have laid it on thickly, relaying anecdote after anecdote about how she had disobeyed him and made life difficult for him almost from the day she had been born. He would not have told of how he had wanted a son first, and how she had ruined his plans by being born a girl. He would not have told of his part in provoking her, goading her into black moods and tempers until he finally broke her spirit. He would not have told of how his philosophy of parenting was ‘might is right’, how tyranny took precedence over tolerance, ridicule and shame over support and guidance. He would not have told of how he had used harsh physical discipline when gentle corrective words would have achieved a much better outcome.
No, he would have portrayed himself as a long-suffering devoted father who was at his wits’ end over his wayward offspring.
He would not have mentioned Liam.
Liam’s death was a topic no one mentioned. It was as if he had never existed. None of his toys or clothes were at the family mansion. Her father had forced her mother to remove them as soon as Lachlan had been born. The photos of Liam’s infancy and toddlerhood were in an album in a cupboard that was securely locked and never opened. Natalie’s only photo of her baby brother was the one she had found in the days after his funeral, when everyone had been distraught and distracted. She had kept it hidden until she had bought her house in Edinburgh.
But for all her father’s efforts to erase the tragedy of Liam’s short life his ghost still haunted them all. Every time Natalie visited her parents—which was rare these days—she felt his presence. She saw his face in Lachlan’s. She heard him in her sleep. Every year she had night terrors as the anniversary of his death came close.
With an enormous effort she garnered her self-control, and once she was sure she had her emotions securely locked and bolted down she slowly turned and faced Angelo. ‘I’m sure you found that conversation very enlightening,’ she said.
His expression was hard to read. ‘Your father cares for you very deeply,’ he said. ‘Like all parents, he and your mother only want the best for you.’
Natalie kept her mouth straight, even though she longed to curl her lip. ‘My father obviously thinks you’re the best for me,’ she said. ‘And as for my mother—well, she wouldn’t dream of contradicting him. So it’s happy families all round, isn’t it?’
He studied her for a heartbeat, his eyes holding hers in a searching, probing manner. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he said. ‘My parents will have gone to a great deal of trouble over dinner. Please honour them by dressing and behaving appropriately.’
