Claimed for the Italian's Revenge

For a moment she lost all awareness of her surroundings and she didn’t feel Marco pulling away from her. The next thing she knew, he was lying over her, pressing in between her parted legs, positioning himself to thrust deep into her body.

She was still floating halfway between the heavens and earth and her muscles felt weak and shaky, but she reached up to grip his shoulders and lifted her legs to wrap them around his hips.

Then, with one perfect movement, he drove himself into her.

‘Oh, Marco!’

A renewed burst of pleasure took hold of her and she cried out his name. She didn’t know that it was possible to go any higher than she already had, but with every powerful thrust he was carrying her upwards, beyond anything she had ever even dreamed of.

A torrent of molten pleasure surged through her helpless body, making her tremble and moan. She clung to him, every inch of her vibrating with the red-hot energy that was pulsing within her.

Overwhelming sensations spiralled out from where their bodies were joined, and the feelings were building—growing stronger and stronger. Like a force of nature, Marco possessed her body, taking her to a place so wonderful that nothing but pleasure existed. He was thrusting faster and faster, harder and harder into her.

Suddenly Claudia cried out and dug her fingers into his back. Her inner muscles contracted, clenching tightly around him, drawing him deeper still. And her world exploded into a rainbow of glittering stars.

Then, a moment later, Marco gave a ferocious shout as he reached his climax.

It was only a couple of minutes later when Marco lifted himself away from Claudia. He got dressed without speaking and then turned his back on her to look out of the window.

The estate stretched out below him, towards the jagged peaks of the Alps. Earlier, when they’d arrived, everything had looked the same. But now the long winter shadows and the burnished light of the approaching sunset made it hard for him to recognise anything. In his memory he had always seen the property in the hazy brightness of high summer, with the grapes ripening on the vine and his sister riding her pony.

But whether the view he saw today matched his memory didn’t matter—he’d worked for this for so long, and now it was nearly in his grasp.

He found himself looking down at the fountain courtyard—she same place he’d seen in Claudia’s photographs in Wales. He’d been looking at that photo of Hector, thinking about taking back what rightfully belonged to him. Then he had turned and seen Claudia weeping.

An unexpected jolt of emotion spiked through him as he remembered how sad and vulnerable she had looked. He could still see her face—her wide golden brown eyes glistening with tears and her full sensual lips quivering as she’d tried not to cry, tried not to let him see how upset she was.

Then she had told him Hector was dying, and she had clung to him and wept, letting all her feelings out. He’d responded automatically to her distress, which had seemed so genuine, so deeply heartfelt. For a moment he’d felt himself softening towards her, until he’d remembered everything she had done. Weeping for her father did not cancel out the way she had preyed on his innocent sister. Or the way she’d played him—setting him up, getting him out of the country so that Vasile could get his hands on Bianca.

Anger suddenly surged through him. Claudia deserved whatever she got. And he hadn’t finished with her yet.

He heard quiet noises as she started to get up coming from the desk behind him. He was surprised. Her orgasm had been so intense that he hadn’t expected her to be moving so soon.

‘Oh!’

The sound of her gasp made him spin round immediately.

She was sitting on the edge of the desk in a state of instantly arousing disarray. Naked to the waist, a gloriously untidy curtain of coppery hair hung past her shoulders, partially hiding her breasts in a way that made him itch to slip his hands beneath its silky weight and cup her soft flesh. Her skirt was rucked up over her hips, showing her long slender legs right past the lacy tops of her stockings. And, amazingly, she was still wearing those sexy high-heeled shoes.

He dragged his eyes away from her body and looked at her face. The second he made eye contact she spoke.

‘I hate you!’ she spat out.

‘How refreshingly honest,’ Marco drawled, despite the unexpectedly painful way her words stabbed into him. ‘To be able to speak the plain truth will be a relief. It was growing tedious thinking up new ways to flatter you. At least now we both know where we stand.’

She stared up at him, her flashing eyes showing nothing but anger as she slid off the edge of the desk and stood facing him.

‘Come here and look at what’s happened!’ she demanded, pointing to the top of the desk where several ugly gouges scarred the leather and wood. ‘You knew that would happen. You made me leave my stilettos on deliberately.’

Marco looked down at the gouges dispassionately. It had never occurred to him that that would be a possible outcome of leaving her shoes on.

‘Believe me, damaging the desk was the last thing on my mind,’ he said, remembering the erotic sight of her lying there half naked, bare breasts heaving, ready for the taking.

‘It was another part of your revenge,’ she accused him. ‘Deliberately defacing my father’s property.’

‘Your family took over the house fully furnished,’ he grated. ‘That was my father’s desk before it was your father’s. And, trust me, deflowering his daughter was far more satisfying than vandalising his furniture.’

A wave of heightened colour washed across her skin, but she stood her ground, continuing to glare up at him.