The Heat Of Passion

predator the next ‘

‘A lot like you, then,' she muttered hi a 'forewarned is forearmed' tone.

'At least what you see is what you get with me.'

But what did she see? she questioned, flipping her vulnerable eyes away out of his probing reach. So kind to her father, so unrelentingly cruel to her. He had waited until they were airborne before he told her what he had in store for her. But he couldn't make her love him. Liking and respect and sharing were the prelude to loving. 'Everything neat and tidy, nothing unpredictable ...' Her teeth gritted. She wanted to tear his honey-smooth drawl out of her head, no matter how much it hurt!

How could he have thought that she might sell the revelation that his father was dying to the highest bidder? She shuddered with revulsion. Of course, she had been hurt. Nobody could easily accept such a charge. So, he didn't trust her as far as he could throw her... but what had made him like that? She remembered him saying that knowledge was a weapon in a woman's hands and that had come straight from the gut! Clearly at some stage Carlo had got badly burned by a member of her sex and the memory rankled, kept him on his guard, made him cynical and suspicious... so, who's playing the therapy game now, Jess?

Why was she allowing him to wind her up like this? What did any of this matter to her? All that lay between her and Carlo was sex. A demeaning passion on her side, lust on his. Though maybe lust was too strong a word. Evidently, Carlo was more powered by a desire for revenge than by his sex drive. Sex was simply the channel through which he planned to trap her. Did he really think he could make her fall in love with him?

Dear heaven, all that intellectual wheeling and dealing seemed to fail him when it came to human emotions, and to actually have the supreme self-assurance to forewarn her of his expectations...! Jessica smothered a laugh and then her nostrils flared with renewed distaste.

'You stink of perfume, Carlo. I think you should have a shower.' The suggestion simply leapt right off her tongue and it was hard to say which of them was most taken aback by it.

'ScusiV Carlo lapsed into Italian, surveying her with cool enquiry.

Jessica wrinkled her nose. 'It's tacky, like lipstick on your collar.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'The lady left her signature, caro,' she dropped with dulcet sweetness. 'Her perfume. It's all over you.’

Carlo's eyes splintered into hers, alight with disturbing mockery. A slumbrous smile of staggering charisma glued her gaze to him. 'What a wonderful private eye you would make... I can see you sheltering from the rain in a doorway, watching out for the evidence of some poor bastard cheating on his wife! Unhappily for you, Jessica I am not a married man——'

'I haven't the slightest desire to know what you were doing last night!' she vented in disgust.

'It can't have been last night,’ Carlo drawled. 'I had a shower this morning.'

Jessica flew upright, infuriated by his mockery. 'Do you really think I gave a damn when or with whom?'

Carlo stretched out with positive indolence, his eyes

a mere glimmer of light below the luxuriant veil of his

ridiculously long lashes. 'One of my PAs from the New

York office. Five foot ten inches tall, Titian hair... my

/> besetting sin,’ he confided softly, reflectively, his elo

quent mouth taking on a sensual slant. 'She was as wild

and hot as I was. I got laid in my coffee break ‘

Frozen by appalled disbelief that he could actually be confessing to such behaviour, Jessica was welded to the spot. Her vocal cords were strangled.

'And at lunchtime. She was insatiable,' Carlo savoured. 'Sadly the lift on the way up to my suite was occupied... that's always been one of my fantasies, but unless I close off and empty some building it looks like going unfulfilled. I'm not into audience participation. Still, we made the best of the floor, the bed, the bath, the walls, the kitchen table... and then she called up a friend and that is really when the fun got started.. .you're lucky I made the flight...'

Functioning on automatic pilot, Jessica backed away. She felt butchered. He might as well have been wielding a knife without giving her an anaesthetic. She was in agony and scared of throwing up in front of him.

'You don't want to hear about the truly perverted things we did?' Carlo raised an ebony brow in apparent surprise and then sighed. 'Good, I'm afraid my imagination is fast running out of fuel. Here.. .catch!'

A gift-wrapped box landed at her feet but she barely saw it before she was forced to whirl into the washroom and lose her lunch in the most humiliating fashion possible. She heard Carlo mutter a startled imprecation in her wake and wished she had had time to close the door. Just about the last thing she expected from him was help. But Carlo took over, pressing a cold cloth to her perspiring brow and offering her a glass of water to

rinse out her mouth. Then he swept up her still shivering and weak body, kicked open a door and laid her down on a bed.

Her eyes skidded over him, haunted, bruised.