Forgiven but Not Forgotten?

Siena whirled around indignantly even as heat suffused every particle of her skin, but words got lodged in her throat. She would be the worst kind of hypocrite if she were to lambast him.

She could see that Andreas was livid, with dark colour slashing his cheeks. Before she could stop him he was snaking a hand around her neck and pulling her towards him. She had to go with it or fall off balance completely.

He ground out with disgust, ‘I don’t pay women for sex. I never have and I never will. It’s heinous and disgusting and demoralising. Especially when you want it as much as I do…’

And with that his mouth was on hers and he was obliterating any sense of reality—again. Siena’s thoughts were lost in a blaze of heat. Her hands were on Andreas’s chest and he’d gathered her closer by curling his arm around her back, arching her into him, where she could feel the burgeoning evidence of his arousal against her belly.

His mouth was forcing hers open, and once that happened she didn’t have a chance. His tongue found and tangled with hers, stroking along it, demanding a response. Siena mewled deep in her throat, almost pitifully. Andreas was possessing her with sensual mastery and, far from being disgusted, she found that her arms itched to climb higher, to curl around Andreas’s neck, and her tongue was dancing just as hotly as his.

His hand left her waist and travelled up along her ribs. Siena was aware of an intense spiking of anticipation in her blood as her breasts seemed to swell in response, nipples peaking painfully, waiting for his touch.

But Andreas didn’t cup her breast as she was suddenly longing for him to do. He stopped just short and pulled his head back. She opened her eyes with an effort, to see his, hot and molten, searing her alive, damning her for her audacity and stubborn denial of their attraction. Her breath was coming in rapid bursts and a million and one things were vying for supremacy in her brain, all of them urging her to pull away—fast. But she couldn’t move.

Roughly he said, with disgust lacing his voice again, ‘Much as I hate to admit it, I think that perhaps you might just be worth paying an astronomical amount of money to bed.’

He was the one to pull away, leaving Siena feeling adrift and wobbly.

He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her, his mouth taut with condemnation. ‘You’ve learnt your lessons well, DePiero…in the beds of however many countless lovers you’ve entertained. Were they the ones to teach you that intoxicating mix of innocence and artless sensuality designed to inflame a man?’

Siena looked at Andreas, stunned at his words. He had no idea. He couldn’t tell her gauche responses were all too real. And she vowed then that he never would know—however she had to do it.

She fought to find some veneer of composure and said, as cynically as she could, considering she was shaking inwardly like a leaf, ‘What else did you expect? A disgraced virgin heiress? This is the twenty-first century—surely you know better than most that virgins are as mythical as the knight on a white horse you just spoke of?’

Andreas stalked away from her, tension emanating from his body in waves. In that moment he hated her, and he hated himself, because he knew he didn?

??t have the strength to just walk away and leave her here. To show her nothing but disdain. If he did he knew she would torment him in dreams for ever. He’d spent five years haunted by her. He had to have her—had to have this closure once and for all. And he despised himself for his weakness.

He looked at Siena and to his chagrin all of his previous thoughts were blasted to smithereens and rendered to dust. Her hair was tousled from his hands, her cheeks were rosy and her lips full and pouting, pink from his kisses. Her chest still rose and fell with uneven breaths and those glorious blue eyes flashed defiantly.

Andreas had the very strong urge to take her right here in this scummy flat—to turn that expression of defiance into something much more acquiescent. And he would if he thought that once would be enough. But he knew with a preternatural prickling of awareness that it wouldn’t be enough. He hardened his resolve. She would not reduce him to such baseness.

Siena was slowly regaining control of herself. His words rang in her head: ‘I don’t pay women for sex. I never have and I never will. It’s heinous and disgusting and demoralizing.’ The pity of it was she agreed with every word he’d said, and had to admit to respecting him for it.

She finally dragged her almost stupefied gaze from his and walked on very shaky legs back to the door, about to open it—because surely he would be leaving now, for good? Once again Siena didn’t like the hollow feeling that thought brought with it.

Before she could open the door, Andreas said ominously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Siena looked at him, the breath catching in her throat for a moment. ‘But you just said you wouldn’t pay…’

Andreas’s face was like stone, his eyes so dark they looked navy. ‘Yes, I did, and I meant it.’

Siena struggled to understand. ‘So, what…?’

Andreas crossed his arms. ‘There are other means of payment that aren’t so…’ his lip curled ‘…obvious.’

Something very betraying kicked in Siena’s gut at the thought that he wasn’t leaving her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Gifts…’ He smiled cynically. ‘After all, how many women and men have benefited from the largesse of their lovers for aeons? You can do what you like with them when our relationship is over, and if that means converting them into the money you want so badly then you’re welcome to do it.’

Suspicious now, and feeling supremely naive because she’d never been in this situation before, she said, ‘Gifts…what kind of gifts?’

Andreas’s jaw tightened. ‘The expensive kind. Jewels. Like the ones you were wearing that night.’

Siena flushed to recall the priceless diamond earrings and necklace her father had presented her with on the evening of that exclusive debutante ball in Paris. They’d belonged to her mother, but had been seized by the authorities along with everything else she had owned.

Siena found herself feeling almost a sense of sick relief that he wouldn’t just be handing her a sum of money. The thought of receiving jewellery made what she’d just asked for a little more palatable, despite the fresh shame heaped on top of old shame. Siena comforted herself with the thought that Andreas must have presented plenty of his lovers with tokens of his affection.

‘Fine,’ she said shakily, barely believing she was agreeing to this. ‘I’ll accept gifts in lieu of payment.’