Her breath escaped with a tiny gasp and her heart thudded like that of a wild bird in a cage. She wanted his mouth so badly she burned, every sense pitched to an unbearable high as he toyed expertly with the sensitive fullness he had discovered. Her eyes slid shut, her long throat arching as she bent back her head instinctively.
Angelo set her back from him and fired the engine of the car. Her lashes swept up on glazed green eyes, her whole body throbbing with an intensity that was pure pain.
A blunt forefinger raked down the slender length of her thigh. ‘I know,’ Angelo breathed thickly.
Kelda looked out of the side window, fighting for composure. She saw two elderly women, dressed in black, crossing the empty square towards the tiny church. But they didn’t seem real. The only reality she could currently register was the seething sexual vibrations in the atmosphere.
And she couldn’t handle the silence that lay between them. Deliberately she rested her head back on the restraint and pretended to doze. The second the Porsche raked to a halt in the courtyard, she leapt out of it. She couldn’t get away from him quickly enough.
‘Kelda.’
Involuntarily, she found herself glancing back. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘Fine.’ Angelo held her strained scrutiny with unnerving ease and tenacity. He was in control. The raw masculine power of him sprang out at her. Angelo, a predator and a sensualist combined. She had let her guard down over lunch and it had not only been the wine. Angelo had drawn her out with subtle skill and she had fallen for it, talking her foolish head off about her father. A man, who had been little more than an unskilled labourer on an oil site, a man in whom Angelo could not have the slightest genuine interest, though he had admirably concealed the fact, she conceded bitterly.
He strolled over to her. ‘The gardens are rather wild—’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘But beautiful in an informal style,’ he completed.
She abandoned hope of shaking him off.
‘You’re like a fox waiting for the hounds to come in for the kill,’ Angelo remarked silkily as they descended the terrace steps, passing beds blazing with a mixture of perennials and wild flowers.
It wasn’t a bad comparison, but that he should openly make it outraged her pride. She snatched in air headily weighted with the scent of flowers and moved on in the direction of a rioting shrubbery.
‘You invite only weak, inadequate men to your bed,’ Angelo drawled. ‘That way you stay in control, and that’s very important to you, Kelda. Isn’t it?’
‘I find you incredibly offensive!’ she flared incredulously.
‘If you haven’t had much loyalty from your lovers, you can only blame yourself.’ Angelo dealt her furious hectically flushed face a chillingly amused glance. ‘Inadequate men boast and tell whoppers in news-print—’
‘Or sore losers!’ Kelda threw back, still walking at top speed, but the ground was descending steeply now and she was forced to slow down.
‘If it’s not too rude a question,’ Angelo murmured smoothly, ‘how many of them were losers?’
She whirled round and just exploded. Lifting her hand, she slapped him so hard across one hard cheekbone that her whole arm went numb, and then the pain came. She had hurt her wrist and she bent over, pressing it into her stomach, sucking in oxygen in a strangled gasp.
‘I could say it served you right.’ Angelo reached out for her arm and cradled her wrist between surprisingly gentle hands. His fingers explored her fine bones. She didn’t look at him, she stared fixedly at the grass until it blurred. ‘You’ve wrenched it, that’s all. Relax, cara...I’m not about to hit you back but I should warn you that I have a very hot temper. I lose it rarely but, when I do, sensible individuals dive for the nearest shelter.’
He released her hand. Her throat was closing over. Tears were threatening. Her emotions were storming about in all directions. ‘You can dump the Mr Nice Guy routine!’ she advised unsteadily. ‘I hate you, Angelo. I have always hated you. That’s what makes your ambition to seduce me into your bed so laughable!’
‘I could have screwed you in the Porsche with an audience of shocked pensioners, and all without one word of seduction,’ Angelo delivered with brutal candour.
Kelda jerked and flinched as though he had punched her in the stomach. She forced her head up, was literally nailed to the spot by the fierce anger flaming in his golden eyes. ‘No...’ she whispered in feverish, desperate denial.
‘And what does seduce mean?’ Angelo wasn’t finished with her yet. ‘To deceive? I have been totally honest with you. To corrupt? The days of your innocence are long gone. Once I would have put a wedding-ring on your finger before I touched you. I would have treated you with honour and respect—’
‘Stop it!’ She fled into the orchard of peach and cherry trees, frantic to escape that mercilessly cruel tongue.
She didn’t get very far before a powerful hand closed over one slim shoulder and yanked her back. He spun her round with frightening strength. ‘Look at me!’ he demanded with inborn arrogance, glittering dark eyes scanning her pale, distraught face. ‘Your freedom is gone, and not only now, cara. It’s gone for as long as I want you. I will keep you and I will clothe you and you will not make a single move that you haven’t cleared with me first. You are mine and you had better start adjusting to that idea fast. I am not the most patient of men.’
Shaking all over, Kelda sucked in great gulps of oxygen. She was devastated by what he had said. Every lancing syllable rang with savage confidence. ‘You can’t take my freedom a-away—’
‘But I already have,’ he reminded her. ‘And this is only the beginning.’
‘You can do nothing to m-me,’ she persisted, fighting sheer cold threat to the last bastion of her strength. ‘Talk’s cheap!’