‘I am prepared to pay double time for out-of-hours work,’ he put in with suave smoothness.
She glared at him, affronted. ‘You think you can afford me, Alessandro?’
His cynical smile cut through her like a scalpel. ‘You can name your price, Scarlett. I will pay it to have you in my arms again. And, yes, I can afford you.’ The dark gaze raked her mercilessly. ‘Easily.’
She folded her arms across her body, more to stop one of them slapping that arrogant look off his face. She couldn’t believe his audacity, to think he could buy her like the whore he thought she was. ‘I want to go home,’ she said with a petulant toss of her head. ‘Now.’
‘You will go home when I say you can go home.’
She sent him a glowering look. ‘You can’t hold me here against my will.’
He stepped towards her, backing her against the wall as he stroked his hands down the length of her bare arms, his touch like silk sliding over a warm, smooth surface. ‘But it will not be against your will, will it, cara?’ he asked. ‘I can see the longing in your eyes. You would be on that floor flat on your back by now, if your pride had not got in the way.’
Scarlett wanted to deny it, but knew he would never believe her, not when she had allowed him to touch her so intimately just moments earlier.
She mentally cringed in shame. How could she have allowed herself to succumb to his lethal charm in such a degrading way? It confirmed all his misguided opinions of her as a shallow, money-hungry tart who would open her legs for the highest bidder.
‘At least I have some measure of pride,’ she tossed back after a tense pause.
His hazel gaze pinned hers. ‘How much do you want to be my lover again?’
She flattened her spine against the wall. ‘I told you, Alessandro, you can’t afford me.’
His eyes hardened with chips of cold-green purpose. ‘How much, Scarlett? How much to have you in my bed again for the time I am in Sydney?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SCARLETT eyeballed him with gritty determination. ‘It may have escaped your notice, but I don’t have a “for sale” sign stamped on my forehead.’
His mouth tipped up at one corner. ‘Like a lot of women I know, Scarlett, you have a price. But what you are doing by these delaying tactics is trying to drive up the price a little further, is it not?’
She sent him a caustic glare. ‘I am not going to be used by you, not for any price.’
‘It is a very clever manoeuvre,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And well known in the circles I move in.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t care for the circles you move in,’ she said primly. ‘Your model friend is a case in point. She’s looking for prestige and notoriety by hanging off your arm. I would have thought by now you would have been able to pick it up a mile off. She’s after money and nothing else.’
‘Velika has nothing to do with the arrangement we have made between ourselves,’ he said.
Scarlett felt like stamping her foot. ‘There is no arrangement between us!’ she insisted.
He lifted one dark brow meaningfully. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Scarlett?’
She swallowed convulsively as she saw the flecks of brown in his eyes darken, her stomach turning over itself as he tilted her chin up with the point of one finger. ‘You signed a contract, Scarlett, remember?’ he said, his eyes locking on hers. ‘Your business will fall over if you have to pay your way out of your contract with me.’
She ran the tip of her tongue over the dryness of her lips, her heart beginning to pick up its pace alarmingly. ‘Are you…?’ She cleared her throat when her voice dried up and began again. ‘B-blackmailing me into your bed?’
His smile was slanted at a devastatingly sexy angle. ‘Blackmail is rather a distasteful term, is it not? I was hoping you would agree to resume our affair without having to resort to using such underhand tactics,’ he said. ‘After all, you have made it very clear you are still attracted to me.’
‘That’s totally irrelevant!’ she argued. ‘Physical attraction to someone doesn’t give automatic licence to have an affair with them. There’s such a thing as self-control, you know.’
He ran his hands down her arms to encircle her wrists again, his long, strong fingers like twin bracelets of velvet-covered steel. ‘I do not feel any self-control when I am around you, cara,’ he said as his eyes held hers in the magnetic force-field of his gaze. ‘I never did, and I sometimes wonder if I ever will.’
Scarlett could feel the slow melt of her bones under his touch, her belly doing tiny, jerky somersaults as each of his thumbs began stroking the sensitive undersides of her wrists. Desire pulsed hot and thickly through her bloodstream, her skin tingling in response to his drugging caresses. Her legs were weakening beneath her, and she felt the involuntary loosening of her spine as one of his hands went to the lower curve of her back and brought her up against his hardness.
‘Kiss me, Scarlett,’ he commanded softly. ‘Kiss me the way you used to do, with your whole body and soul.’
Scarlett’s gaze dropped to his mouth and her belly did another sudden flip-turn. ‘I-I don’t think—’
His hand at her back pressed her even closer. ‘What are you frightened of, tesore mio?’ he asked.
She moistened her lips with a tentative movement of her tongue, in case it accidentally brushed his mouth hovering so close to hers. ‘I-I’m not frightened,’ she said, even though fear had already thickened her throat so she could barely swallow.
His lips nibbled at the side of her mouth, so close to the tingling fullness of her bottom lip she felt her legs begin to tremble, his warm breath dancing over her face and mouth tantalisingly. She felt the brush of his tongue against her cheek, and then along the seam of her mouth, the sensual movement making all hope of resisting him impossible.
She gave a little whimper and opened her mouth under the next sweep of his tongue, taking him inside to her moist warmth, mating with him in a dancing duel that mimicked what their bodies had done so well together in the past. Passion flared like a bush fire, the hot, licking flames sending Scarlett’s heart-rate soaring as his pelvis ground against hers, his hardness against her velvet softness making every scrap of sense she possessed move even further out of reach of reason and rationality. She clung to him, her mouth on fire beneath the passionate onslaught of his, her teeth nipping at him as he nipped at her, her tongue flicking as his thrust, her body turning to liquid as his grew rock-hard and insistent.
His hands went back to her breasts, pushing aside her scooped neckline to gain access, his mouth a hot brand as he sucked on each engorged nipple in turn. Scarlett was vaguely aware of crying out in pleasure, partially aware too of digging her fingers into the thick hair of his scalp as she arched her spine to have more of his heat against her.
‘You are just as passionate as you were before,’ Alessandro said against her neck, his tone husky with desire. ‘Perhaps even more so.’
Scarlett pulled away from him with an effort, her conscience an unbearable burden. She couldn’t do this. Not while he thought she was only coming to him in exchange for money. It sullied everything they had shared in the past. It tainted everything she had given of herself. She had adored him; she had worshipped him in every way imaginable. To be reduced to a mere plaything was anathema to her.
‘What is wrong, cara?’ Alessandro asked.
She moistened her dry lips. ‘Please take me home,’ she said, tears shining in her eyes. ‘Please…’
Alessandro