Taming the Notorious Sicilian

She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘What consequences? We used protection.’

‘I’m not talking about babies—I’m talking about what you’ve done to me!’ If he’d been a lion he would have roared those last few words, of that she had no doubt. Francesco’s fury was a sight to behold, making him appear taller and broader than ever, filling the living room.

She should be terrified. And there was no denying the panic gnawing furiously at the lining of her stomach, but it wasn’t fear of him...

No, it was the fear of something far worse.

And this fear put her even further on the defensive.

Shoving her mug on the floor, she jumped to her feet. The calmness she had been wearing as a facade evaporated, leaving her jumbled, terrified emotions raw and exposed. ‘I haven’t done anything to you!’

‘You’ve changed me. I don’t know how the hell you did it—maybe you’re some kind of witch—but whatever you did, it’s real. I let a drug dealer escape without a beating last night, had my men turn him over to the police.’

‘And that’s a bad thing?’

‘It’s not how I work. That’s never been how I work. Drugs killed my mother. Drug dealers are the scum of the earth and deserve everything they get.’ Abruptly he stopped talking and took a long breath in. ‘You gave me the best night of my life and I know as well as you do that you enjoyed every minute of it, too. You can deny it until you’re blue in the face but we both know what we shared was special. You forced that night on me. It was what you wanted, and it’s me that’s paying the price for it.’

‘You knew it was only for one night.’

‘A one-night stand is never that good. Never. Not even close. But now you’re treating me as if I’m a plague carrier, and I want to know why.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I just don’t want to see you again.’

‘Will you stop lying?’

‘I can’t have sex with you again. I just can’t. You’ve screwed with my brain enough as it is.’

‘I’ve screwed with your brain?’ His tone was incredulous. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?’

‘Oh, yes, let’s bring it all back to you,’ she spat. ‘The poor little gangster struggling to deal with his newly found conscience while I...’

Hannah took a deep breath, trying desperately to rein all her emotions back in and under her control. ‘After my accident, you filled my mind. You were all I could think about. When I met you it only got worse. I came to you partly because I thought doing something about it would fix it. I thought we would have sex and that would be it—my life would return to normal, I’d be able to go back to concentrating on my job without any outside influences...’

‘Didn’t it work out exactly as you envisaged?’ he asked, his tone mocking.

‘No, it did not! I thought it would. But you’re still there, filling my head, and I want you gone. My patients deserve all my focus. Every scrap of it. I want to experience more of life, but not to their detriment. This is all too much and I can’t handle it.’

‘I warned you of the consequences,’ he said roughly. ‘I told you a one-night stand wasn’t for a woman like you.’

Something inside Hannah pinged. Taking three paces towards him, she pushed at his chest. ‘You are a hypocrite,’ she shouted. ‘How many women have you used for sex? Double figures? Treble? How many lives have you ruined?’

‘None. All the women before you knew it would only ever be sex. It meant nothing.’

‘Ha! Exactly.’ She shoved him again, hard enough to knock him off balance and onto the sofa. ‘The minute the tables are turned, your fragile ego can’t deal with it...’

She never got to finish her sentence for Francesco grabbed hold of her waist and yanked her onto the sofa with him, pinning her down before she could get a coherent thought in her head.

‘You know as well as I do that what we shared meant something,’ he said harshly, his hot breath tickling her skin. ‘And contrary to your low opinion of my sex life, I am not some kind of male tart. Until last weekend I’d been celibate for ten months.’

She wanted to kick out, scream at him to get off her, but all the words died on her tongue when his mouth came crashing down on hers, a hard, furious kiss that her aching heart and body responded to like a moth to a flame.