The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride

‘Shut up!’ she gasped out shrilly. ‘How dare you speak to me like this? Get out of here, Luis—get out!’

He did the opposite, pushing those muscled shoulders away from the door and striding forward so purposefully that Cristina found herself pressing back hard against the sink. It was like being trapped in a cage with a lean, dark green-eyed predator. She had never felt so afraid.

‘No,’ she breathed as a set of long fingers closed over a bare shoulder.

The other set lifted to curl around her nape. As she arched her back in an effort to put space between them he stepped in close. The solid bar of his hips made contact with her stomach. She quivered. He smiled—then stopped smiling. His eyes glittered, his lips parted, then he tugged her head forward and captured her mouth.

The predator—the predator—the hungry predator. She was devoured without mercy, lips prised apart and her mouth invaded by the kind of kiss that locked every muscle tight with shock. Her mouth filled with the taste of him, sensitive tissue untouched for too long pulsing with pleasure and crying out for more. He explored her teeth, the excruciatingly sensitive roof of her mouth, her fiercely retracted tongue.

Long fingers stroked across the satin skin of her shoulder, then slid to her back, to begin a slow gliding down the length of her spine. She was quivering all over by the time he heaved her tight up against him. The heady scent of him, the sensual knowledge of his touch, the unholy eroticism of his kiss wiped away six years without having to try hard, and as her arms lifted up and around his neck she marked her surrender to him with a pained little moan.

After that they were kissing like sex-starved wild things, hotly, deeply. It was mad. Moving against each other, heaving and panting, gripping and clawing—or she was. Anything—anything—to keep this from stopping. The heels of her shoes were screeching against marble, her fingers clutching at his silk dark head. Her skirt had rucked up round her hips, aided by the seeking slide of his hand, and he was touching with the intimate familiarity of a passionate lover—her thighs, the tight curve of her bottom—pressing her legs that bit wider to accept the taut, probing thrust of his manhood, straining against the zip of his trousers, while she tasted him, clung to him, moved and invited him.

It was desire gone rocketing out of control. She was hot, yet shivering, appalled with herself, yet desperate for more.

‘Now?’ he posed softly. ‘You want it right here and now, viuva de Ordoniz?’

The widow Ordoniz. It was an icy douche that brought her gasping back down to earth.

Opening her eyes, she found he was standing there studying her through eyes that were cynical and cold. Oh, he was aroused. She could feel the power and strength of that arousal pushing against her. But the man himself was in complete control.

Unlike her.

His hand still claimed the heated dampness of her arousal. Shame had her push it away, only to release a revealing shudder at its removal. He found it so easy to let go and take a step back that she wanted to die where she stood.

‘Who do you think you are to treat me this way?’ she choked out, desperately tugging at the hem of her dress.

‘The bit of rough you are clearly still partial to,’ he answered, watching her go pale as his cutting reference hit home. Then he turned away. ‘Now, pull yourself together.’ It was hard and cold. ‘We need to talk and we don’t have much time.’

He glanced at his watch as he said that, not a crease on him, not a hair out of place. While she was a sizzling, quivering wreck he was a man so completely contained that tears of self-disgust stung at the backs of her eyes.

‘We have nothing to talk about.’ She just wanted him to get out of here.

‘Oh, we do,’ he turned to insist. ‘You are in deep trouble, Cristina, not least because I am back in town. But we will deal with that some other time. I have a proposition to put to you.’

‘I want nothing to do with you.’

‘But you will by the end of this evening,’ he assured her with cool confidence. ‘And stop looking at me as if I’m some kind of snake because you find that you’re still hot for me. It’s in your favour that you do feel like that, or I would be leaving you to the hungry wolves out there.’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘Yes, you do. And sticking that defiant chin up to me and firing contempt from those eyes won’t cut it,’ he sliced at her deridingly. ‘You always were a skilled little liar—and you do know what I am talking about now, I see…’

His eyes raked her face as it paled with understanding.

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘You made a big mistake six years ago when you tossed me aside with your lies and then trotted off to marry an old man with one foot already in his grave. You should have listened more closely to me when I told you how much I was worth. Even my unworthy half-English blood has a sweet taste to it when it comes wrapped in billions, amante. Now look at you,’ he mocked. ‘A pariah in your so-precious Portuguese society. And look at me, the half Englishman, holding the only chance you will have to save your Marques pride.’

‘You are not the only rich financier here tonight,’ Cristina hit back, wanting to sink weakly back down on the toilet seat and keeping herself upright only with the help of that Marques pride he’d just tried to crucify.

Beautiful, Anton thought. Sensational—exciting. Even while she stands there still trying to kill me with her eyes. And, yes, I’m up for it, he reaffirmed angrily. Whatever the lying sob story that was fed to Enrique Ramirez about our relationship six years ago, I am willing to fulfil his conditions and marry the Ordoniz widow. I’ll fill her up with my seed and I will make reparation to myself, by never telling her how that seed is as Portuguese as her own.

Revenge, he decided, will taste sweet.

‘By all means spend the rest of the evening taking your begging bowl round the present company,’ he invited. ‘You never know—you might get lucky and snag some other old man willing to bail you out in exchange for the use of that perfect body of yours. But if the bowl remains empty, then call this number…’ Taking a business card out of his pocket, Anton handed it to her. ‘It has my private line via the hotel switchboard,’ he explained as she stared down at the card embossed with the logo of a top hotel in Rio. ‘And remember, querida, when you do use that number, to ask for Anton Scott-Lee—not Luis.’

With that cutting stab at the other intimacy they had shared, he turned and walked to the door, unbolted it and walked out, leaving Cristina staring numbly after him as the door slid quietly back into its housing.

Silence clattered down. She began shaking all over, shock overlaying the skin-burning residue of his touch, holding her still as she listened to the sound of his deep voice as he began speaking to someone in the foyer, advising them to find another bathroom because this one was broken.