The Italian's Pregnant Prisoner. Maisey Yates

was burned into his memory in a way no one else could be. Because losing his head over Charlotte had nearly cost him everything. Had been a turning point in his life. He could not walk away from it, not really. He bore the mark of it.

      Not just his vision, but the ugly scars on his body from where he had fallen off the balcony.

      From where he had been pushed.

      “My...my father is dead,” she said, the words rushed. “I’ve come to London to sort out some of his business.”

      He laughed, the sound cold and hard even to his own ears. “Silly girl. Did you think for one moment that I would be unaware of your father’s death? I nearly gave my staff a holiday. In celebration.”

      He slid his hand down her throat, holding it gently, feeling the flutter of her pulse beneath his thumb.

      “I was under no illusion you would have given them a holiday so that you could wallow in your grief,” she said, her breathing quick and shallow, betraying her fear when her tone of voice did not.

      “I opened my best bottle of champagne that night.”

      She shifted, and he had a feeling she was looking directly at him now. Looking him full in the face, when before she had not been. “So did I. Do not think you have a monopoly on despising that man.”

      “Probably the last remaining thing we have in common, cara mia.” She stiffened beneath his touch.

      “It would not surprise me.”

      Her pulse was racing beneath his thumb, and he knew that his own heart was pounding just as hard. He was angry with her. So angry. He wanted to destroy her. Destroy her in the way he had been destroyed by the loss of her. By her betrayal.

      But he also wanted her. That protection he had extended to her, the virginity he had preserved, simply so that she could throw it away to another man, so that she could marry another, galled him.

      It had been his by rights. And out of some misguided sense of chivalry that he no longer possessed he had not laid claim to it.

      “Is your husband here?” he asked.

      She hesitated. “No.”

      “I believe you and I have unfinished business.” He changed the way he held her, yet again moving his thumb up to her mouth, to trace her plush lips. “Do you not agree?”

      He heard a faint sniff, and he imagined her tossing her head back, her expression haughty. He had seen her do it many times before. Years ago. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Charming. But I think you do.” He moved his fingertips to the edge of her mouth, then back down the side of her neck, coming to rest on her pulse. “This feels just as I remember it. I make your blood run faster. This makes me wonder if I still make you wet.”

      She gasped, and he waited for a slap across the face that didn’t come.

      “I’m frightened,” she said, her voice breathy.

      “I don’t believe that. A woman who would dare set foot in London, into a place where you had to know I would be, so soon after her father’s death... Well, I don’t believe she’s afraid of anything. No. I do not believe this is fear, Charlotte.”

      “What you believe or don’t believe doesn’t automatically become truth.”

      He chuckled. “See, that simply isn’t true. I’m richer than your father ever was. People do my bidding, not because they fear me but because of what I can do for them. What I wish often becomes truth easily enough.”

      Five years. Five years since he had touched a woman. Longer since he’d had sex with one. There had been no one else from the moment he’d met her. And he’d held back out of deference to her innocence.

      Now it had been five years since he had touched her.

      “I can make you want me,” he said.

      And he hated that, for the first time in years, he doubted himself. Because as certain as he was of a great many things, he could not be certain that she would want a scarred, blind man in her bed.

      “What exactly are you proposing?” she asked, her words cool.

      “I’ll make it very clear. I don’t care what you’ve been doing for the past five years. I don’t care that you married Stefan. I don’t care what you do tomorrow, for that matter. I care about tonight. Tonight, I want to make sure we finish what is between us. Tonight. I want you in my bed.”

      He jerked back when trembling fingers touched his lower lip. The shock of it immobilized him. It had been so long since he had been touched. So he stood, absolutely still as she traced his lower lip, his upper lip, mimicking what he had just done for her. She traced his jaw, and then moved her fingers featherlight down the side of his neck, where they came to rest on his pulse.

      “Unless you’re afraid of me,” she said, “then it appears I still have the same effect on you that I once did.”

      He held her chin, keeping her still. “That may be. But one thing has changed. I do not love you, Charlotte. Quite the opposite. If I take you to my bed, you will be giving yourself to a man who hates you. Though, I wonder if that matters? Because it certainly doesn’t matter to me. I find that I want you regardless.”

      “One night?” And this time, a slight tremble worked its way into her words.

      “Just one,” he responded.

      She let out a long, slow breath that echoed in the corridor around them. “Okay. One night.”