him. Men feared his anger, his power, his opposition. Women, however, loved his power, his arrogance, his strength. Why didn’t she? He remembered her in the sunlight outside that church: serene and beautiful and gentle. He filed that soothing image away again. She had a core of steel, he acknowledged grimly.
Only when Gwenna stalked out of the car and into a porticoed entrance did she appreciate that she was not where she had expected to be. She rounded on Angelo. ‘Whose house is this? Where have you brought me?’
‘My place.’ Angelo dismissed the hovering staff with a practised inclination of his handsome dark head and ensured that the front door was locked behind him. ‘You’re honoured. My house is a very private space.’
Refusing to be impressed by that claim or intimidated by the soaring ceiling and marble pillars, Gwenna flung her head back. ‘You’re wasting your breath. You’re a total bastard and you have no standards. I refuse to have anything more to do with you!’
‘And where were your standards tonight?’ Angelo derided, strolling forward, which had the immediate effect of making her back away. ‘You set up a meeting with the guy you love behind my back!’
The colour drained from Gwenna’s face leaving her eyes looking a more vivid blue than ever against her pallor. How had he guessed? How on earth had he worked that out?
‘When you agreed to be with me you never mentioned him,’ Angelo continued in attack mode. ‘How truthful was that?’
‘I didn’t think you’d be interested—’
‘Che idea! No, that’s the sort of information every man wants up front and you know it.’ Glittering dark eyes slashed over her with punitive force and she quailed. ‘And when you went sneaking off to see him tonight—’
‘I did not sneak!’ Anger surged to Gwenna’s aid again.
‘Yes, you did. It was much more than an innocent night out with a friend. How fair and decent was your behaviour?’
‘According to some newspaper, you were out on the town with three other women last night, so what’s your problem? You can’t expect me to be truthful and decent when you’re out cavorting with a bunch of tarts!’ Gwenna shot back at him full volume.
‘You’re getting hysterical—’
‘No, I’m giving you the truth you said you wanted and I don’t think you like it much!’
‘Our agreement doesn’t give you the right to question my every move or make new rules,’ Angelo delivered with icy conviction.
‘That’s okay. I don’t care.’ Gwenna walked past him, a tight, hard knot in her tummy, her eyes hot and gritty with stinging tears. ‘I’m not staying here one minute longer, though. No agreement is capable of forcing me to share a bed with a guy who sleeps around—’
‘Dio mio…I don’t sleep around!’
‘There’s no point you arguing with me. My mother may have chosen to accept a relationship of that sort—’
‘Accidenti—do you dare to compare me to your father?’ Angelo thundered in raw disbelief.
‘All I’m saying is that I won’t let any man make a fool of me like that. It’s me and only me, or you can’t have me at all and not all the money in the world is going to change that,’ Gwenna swore shakily, her slender back ramrod-straight. But she was doubly mortified by his palpable distaste for her father. ‘So, open that door and let me out.’
Angelo swore in vicious frustrated Italian.
‘You virtually kidnapped me. I didn’t agree to come here,’ she reminded him steadfastly, only the nervous clenching and unclenching of her slim hands by her sides betraying the level of her agitation. ‘Keeping me here against my will is just not on, Angelo.’
Lean, powerful face rigid, Angelo studied her with seething intensity. The silence pounded and stretched. And then he dragged in a slow deep breath and said grittily, ‘Nothing happened last night.’
Gwenna studied him fixedly. A flood of relief washed over her and left her dizzy and more hopelessly confused than ever. It was not only her pride and sense of decency that had been offended by his apparent faithlessness, she registered in dismay. She had been downright tormented by the idea that he might have been with someone else. She had been jealous, hurt and furious.
Lean, angular features taut, Angelo set his perfect white teeth together. ‘I didn’t touch them…the models…they were company. That’s all.’
‘Did the company stay clothed?’
‘Sì,’ Angelo ground out as if he were being tortured, and that was very much how he felt. Why wasn’t he throwing her out of his house and his life? But the closer she got to the door, the more urgent became his desire to haul her back from it. It was lust, total overpowering lust, and one taste of her had set up one very powerful craving. He loathed the very suspicion that he was no longer one hundred per cent in control, but need was overriding principle.
Gwenna realised that her legs were quaking beneath her. Slowly she turned back to face him fully. ‘Okay…do you think you can do faithful now?’ she asked with sincerity. ‘There’s no point me hanging around if you can’t.’
Angelo dug potent fists of naked outrage and aggression into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. He could not believe what she was doing to him. What did it take to satisfy her? She was as persistent as water dripping on stone. Plain questions left no room for prevarication. He felt like a wild bear being chained up and forced to learn demeaning tricks. ‘Per meraviglia—’
‘Just yes or no will do,’ she whispered in helpful interruption.
Stubborn jaw line set at a most forbidding slant, Angelo was set on categorical resistance when he first rested his hard gaze on her. He did not respond to demands. He guarded his freedom. But with her honey-blonde curls tangled by his fingers and her pink pouting mouth slightly puffy from the imprint of his, she made a picture capable of enticing him over a cliff edge. She looked impossibly sexy. Later he did not recall the moment when he decided to surrender. ‘Sì…yes.’ He closed the distance between them in two graceful strides and closed his hands over hers. ‘You’ll stay?’
Unprepared for the immediacy of that demand, Gwenna blinked and mumbled, ‘But—’
‘But nothing, bellezza mia. I’ve agreed. I’ve given you what you want.’
With that resolute reminder, Angelo angled her head back and drew her close before she could think up any further refinements. He let his provocative mouth glide down the extended length of her neck. A sensation like hot wires tightening sent a frisson of delicious heat darting through her pelvis and she shivered and moaned. He pushed open a door into a dimly lit room and pressed her back against the wall. The heavy pressure of his lean, hard, muscular body against hers sparked a tantalising tingle of delicious warmth and awareness in her erogenous zones. In the midst of an exchange of hot, driving kisses, she found herself pushing back against him, maddeningly conscious of the engorged sensitivity of her breasts and the hollow ache stirring between her thighs. She squirmed against him, her fingers roving over his broad shoulders, delving into his black hair and finally forcing a path between their bodies to rip at the buttons of his shirt.
With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, Angelo lifted his head and let his hand close over the pouting curve of her breasts, teasing at the prominent peaks. The barrier set up by her clothes impelled a low moan of frustration from her. She wanted to touch him so badly she could hardly bear it and splayed her fingers across his hard, flat stomach, revelling in the feel of his warm bare skin.
‘Don’t do that,’ Angelo groaned, pushing away her hand and lifting her into abrasive connection with his fierce erection. He crushed her full, soft lips below his and plundered the damp interior of her mouth with an explicit sensual force that left her trembling.
‘Angelo—’
‘Later…all