The Innocent's One-Night Surrender. Кейт Хьюит

kinds of coercion.’ She looked away, a flush staining her cheeks, her teeth sinking provocatively into her full lower lip. Realisation dawned and bloomed inside him, making him smile. She wasn’t afraid of him forcing her. She was afraid she wouldn’t need to be forced.

      ‘Coercion?’ he asked softly. ‘Or seduction?’

      She drew a shuddering breath, lifting her chin and tossing her hair back, forcing herself to meet his knowing gaze. Because he did know—he knew that she wanted him, just as he wanted her. Why she was fighting the attraction, however, remained a mystery. Was she holding out for more? ‘What else do you offer?’ she asked. ‘Besides protection?’

      ‘Pleasure.’ He watched her eyes flare, but to her credit she held his gaze. ‘Of that you can be certain.’

      ‘You are appallingly arrogant.’

      ‘Merely sure.’

      She shook her head slowly. ‘And how long would this...arrangement between us last?’

      ‘As long as I want it to.’ He felt the first flickers of triumph, mingled with a strange and unsettling disappointment. After all her maidenly outrage, Laurel was acting exactly as he’d expected her to, needed her to...and he found he didn’t quite like it.

      ‘And how long would that be, do you think?’ she asked. Her eyes flashed and her lips trembled, fury and fear mingled together. ‘Judging from what I’ve read in the tabloids, your mistresses don’t last more than a week. And we are talking about me becoming your mistress, aren’t we? That’s the position I’m being interviewed for, isn’t it?’

      ‘Call it what you like.’ He’d had straightforward discussions with previous mistresses, but for some reason they hadn’t felt quite like this: so cold and mercenary. Although, mercenary was exactly how he’d always wanted to be, especially when it came to women. Any softer emotion, never mind actual love, was for fools. Fools like his father, who had been both fleeced and heartbroken by grasping women like Laurel’s mother and the wife before her. As for his own mother...

      ‘So for how long?’ she asked, a catch in her voice. ‘Roughly?’

      Cristiano’s eyes narrowed. ‘For as long as it takes for Bavasso to be satisfied that you’re off-limits.’ And as long as he still wanted her.

      ‘It’s my safety you’re thinking of, is it?’

      Now he was getting seriously irritated. ‘Among other things.’

      ‘How kind of you,’ she drawled, and he could not mistake her sarcasm. He watched her walk across the room, the sash of his robe trailing the ground, her long, wavy hair cascading over her shoulders. She looked like a young, hesitant queen and, in spite of everything, or perhaps because of it, for a moment he admired her.

      ‘Your safety is important to me,’ he said, ‘whether you believe it or not.’

      ‘Why should it be? I doubt you even thought of me once in the last ten years.’

      ‘Then you thought wrong.’

      She stilled at his tone, which was quieter and more sincere than he’d meant it to be. ‘Any thoughts you’ve had of me can’t have been good ones,’ she said, her tone as quiet as his, and equally sincere. ‘Can they?’

      ‘Some were...interesting.’

      ‘Interesting?’ She turned around to face him. ‘I thought you might despise me, Cristiano.’

      ‘Despise is a strong word.’

      ‘Your father despises my mother.’

      ‘I am not my father and you are not your mother.’

      ‘No.’ She drew a quick breath. ‘But you’ve judged me just as you’ve judged her. Tarred us both with the same brush.’

      ‘And I have had obvious reason to do so. Are you telling me differently?’

      She looked away. ‘You wouldn’t listen.’

      Cristiano could not imagine any scenario that could excuse or explain her behaviour with Bavasso on the casino floor. ‘I’d listen,’ he said mildly, ‘but whether I believed you or not is another matter. In any case, why do you care what I think of you? Emotions have no place here, bella. This is about something else entirely. Something basic and very, very pleasurable.’ He started walking towards her slowly, and she stilled, trapped, mesmerised by his lazy yet purposeful words. Perhaps now it was time to show her just how pleasurable it all could be.

      ‘You paint such an appealing picture,’ Laurel said huskily. She didn’t move. ‘No emotions, no concern for feelings, just sex. For maybe a week.’

      ‘Sounds perfect to me.’ He kept walking until he was standing right in front of her. She hadn’t budged, and he knew he had her. ‘Stop playing your games,’ he whispered as he reached for the sash of her robe—his robe—and tugged her towards him. She came, reluctantly, perhaps, but her pointless act of protest was already being revealed as the masquerade he’d known it was. Her hips nudged his and heat flared bright and white-hot inside him. He sucked in a hard breath and tugged again at the sash. Her eyes widened as she felt the evidence of his arousal.

      He touched her chin with one fingertip, tilting her face to his. ‘This can really be very simple.’

      ‘To you.’

      ‘And to you. Why not?’ He stroked her cheek and she closed her eyes. A shudder went through her. ‘See how you respond to me?’ he murmured. ‘And I haven’t even kissed you yet.’ He stroked her cheek again, enjoying the silky feel of her skin, the tremor that went through her whole body. ‘We are going to be very, very good together, bella. I feel it. I know it.’

      She let out a shuddering gasp and then opened her eyes, wrenching herself away from him as if she had to break steel bonds to be free. Her eyes shot blue-green sparks at him as she clutched the gaping robe together with one hand.

      ‘What I know, Cristiano, is that you’re an arrogant, manipulative bastard and I have no intention of making any sort of deal with you, now or ever. So why don’t you practise your so-called charms on some other woman who wants them?’ With another gasp that sounded halfway to a sob, she turned from the room and ran down the hall, slamming the bedroom door behind him and then turning the lock with an audible click.