‘You were warned,’ he muttered, and crushed his mouth down onto hers in a brutal kiss aimed at subduing all hint of defiance left in her.
Yet within the punishment was a dark, duplicitous intimacy that dragged pleasurably at her senses and took some fighting against to stop her from sinking greedily into the kiss.
She groaned instead, pretending he had hurt her.
‘You asked for it,’ he muttered as he drew away.
‘I got it, didn’t I?’ she muttered in return, pulling shakily out of his arms.
‘What surprises me,’ he struck back cruelly, his hand shooting out to capture her wrist then holding onto it so they could both feel the way the blood was breaking speed records as it thundered through her veins, ‘is how you were affected by it. Could it be that you’re just a little in need of a man, Sara? Has the princess been locked up in her tower too long, and did last night’s little—taster remind her of what she once craved?’
‘Can you be so sure the tower has been locked?’ she retaliated, refusing point-blank to let him diminish her as he used to so easily.
His eyes glinted. ‘You’re damned right I can,’ he gritted. ‘I’ve told you before: what’s mine I keep. And I’ve kept you under surveillance enough to be sure no man has been near you.’
‘Except for my gaoler,’ she threw back at him deridingly. ‘In the end even you—hate yourself though you do for it—couldn’t keep your hands off me.’
‘I have the legal right,’ he declared. ‘If not the moral one.’
‘And the princess in the tower had the cunning to let down her hair for her secret lover to climb,’ she hit back, reminding him of the old fairytale.
His eyes narrowed. She held her breath, aware that she was prodding a very temperamental animal here yet, strangely, unable to stop herself—finding it exhilarating almost.
Then, deflatingly, he dropped her wrist and relaxed. ‘You have changed,’ he observed. ‘You would not have dared speak to me like this three years ago.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed, subsiding angrily into the far corner of the seat. ‘I’ve changed. Grown up. Grown tough. What did you expect me to do, Nicolas?’ She flashed him a bitter look. ‘Remain the same gullible fool I was when I first met you? The one who thought you loved me above all others and would stand by me whatever was thrown at me?’
‘You were the one who took a lover to your bed,’ he reminded her. ‘Not I!’
‘And you were the one who threw me to the hungry wolves then dared to be disgusted with me when I cried to you for help!’
He threw her a contemptuous look, the disgust as clear in his eyes now as it had been three years ago. ‘I notice you don’t deny the charge of adultery,’ he jeered.
‘What’s the use,’ she asked, ‘when you refuse to believe me?’
‘Believe what?’ he derided. ‘Your lies?’
‘I never lied to you,’ she asserted.
‘Denying that swine’s presence in your room was no lie, was it?’
‘I never denied he was there,’ she insisted. ‘Only my acceptance of his presence.’
‘I fail to see the difference.’
‘And I refuse to discuss this with you now,’ she countered coldly. ‘Besides the fact that it comes three years too late, I find I no longer care what you think. My daughter is all that matters to me now, and she is all I want to think about.’
‘My father did not steal your child, Sara,’ he said grimly. ‘He recovered her. Or, at least, he coordinated the whole thing so his people could. She is at this moment sleeping safely under his protection. And soon, very soon,’ he warned gratingly, ‘I shall make you eat every filthy, lying word you’ve spoken about him. Understand?’
She understood. Another vendetta. Another reason to punish her for being foolish enough to mess with his close-knit clan.
Nicolas could believe what he liked about his father but just the simple knowledge that her daughter was in Sicily with Alfredo told her just who had arranged for her to be there.
What worried Sara now was his reason for doing so.
The Santino private jet landed at midday at Catania airport then taxied over to the far side of the runway. Away from the terminal. Away from the people.
That was the power of the Santino name. They were met by a Customs official. Nicolas dealt with him, tiredness pulling at the lean contours of his face now, even though he had slept away the whole flight.
And despite the hostility still thrumming between them Sara experienced a sharp pang of pity. Forty-eight hours ago he had been in New York. Since then he had crossed the Atlantic, dealt with a very stressful crisis then flown another few thousand miles to get here.
‘Let’s go,’ he instructed her, placing a hand at the base of her spine to urge her to precede him off the aircraft.
His touch sent a spray of tingling awareness skittering across the surface of her skin. She had discarded her jacket on entering the plane, and knew from past experience that the weather in Sicily would not require her to put it back on. But she wished she had now, wished she’d decided to roast in the jacket rather than suffer the sensation of his hand so close to her skin.
And it wasn’t revulsion she was experiencing, not any more. In the few fraught hours she had been back in his company, her senses had been reintroduced to their lord and master! And, good grief, they were clamouring with excitement!
It was a lowering truth. And one she didn’t live easily with. Could Nicolas have been right when he’d accused her of being starved of a man’s touch?
She hoped not. She hoped this was only a brief reaction to the stress she had been living under. Because it was a pride-levelling concept to find herself still so violently physically attracted to the man who had hurt her so badly.
It was a perfect Sicilian day, the air hot and dry, the sun burning down from a perfect porcelain-blue sky.
A car was waiting—a white limousine shimmering in the sunlight. Nicolas saw her into it then sat beside her. They took off almost immediately, making for a pair of high, wire-fencing gates which were drawn open by two uniformed members of staff as they approached.
Neither Sara nor Nicolas spoke. Both were tense. Sara was readying herself for the moment when she would see her daughter again, impatient but oddly nervous with it. And there was Nicolas. She frowned as she stared out at the bright, shimmering coastline they were following. She didn’t know how he was going to react to his first meeting with the child he saw as the living evidence of his wife’s betrayal.
She saw the house the moment they rounded a bend in the twisting road. It stood on its own halfway up an acutely sloped bay. And her heart gave an odd pull of recognition as her gaze drifted over beautiful, white-painted, flower-strewn walls built on several terraced levels to hug the lush hillside all the way down to the tiny, silver-skirted beach.
Then suddenly it was gone as the car cut inland, not far but enough to take them through a tunnel of leaf-weighted trees towards the rear of the house. It was the only access unless you came by sea. A beautiful place, very private, idyllic. A high, whitewashed stone wall stood impenetrable behind the gnarled trunks of old fig trees, two royal-blue-painted solid wood doors cutting a splash of colour into it where it rose to curve over them in an arch twisted with bougainvillea heavy with paper-like vivid pink blooms.
The car stopped, gave a single blast of its horn. A small square porthole cut into the blue opened then closed again. The blue-painted doors swung open on well-oiled hinges. The car began moving slowly through them into a huge cobbled courtyard alive with