The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride

Having shot his final past-avenging dart into her useless little heart, Anton watched, totally riveted—because it actually was like witnessing a murder take place. She seemed to die right there in front of his eyes.

‘Too much to ask?’ he prompted.

She didn’t answer.

‘Still protecting your gorgeous figure at all costs?’

She still made no response.

Something vicious tightened inside him. ‘Or perhaps you still cannot face the prospect of my half-English blood mixing with your blood?’

She breathed then—blinked. One of those very slow lowerings of fine-veined eyelids over terrible blank eyes. As they lifted again so did Cristina, rising out of the chair like a zombie. Then she just turned and walked towards the door, leaving Anton sitting there, stunned and so damn angry that she could do this to him—again!

He threw himself to his feet. ‘I see that we have found your ceiling price,’ he fed harshly after her. ‘But know this, Cristina. The deal remains in place only until you reach that door!’

She stopped walking, trembling from hair root to toe tip.

‘I hate you, Luis,’ she whispered painfully.

‘I am so gutted by that, querida,’ he drawled in return. ‘Do you go or do you stay?’

She spun on him then, her beautiful face blanched of its warm golden colour, dark eyes shot through with a kind of agony that had him folding his arms across the sudden tightness trying to band his chest.

‘Stay for what?’ she cried out shrilly. ‘So that you can take more revenge for that precious ego that I bruised so badly once?’

‘Did you bruise it? I don’t remember.’

‘I battered it!’ she spat at him. ‘I crushed it in my fist and flung it to the ground! You want more of the same from me, querido? You want to feel the same rejection again?’

‘Reject me, then. Use the door,’ he invited. ‘You never know—if you spread your net wide enough you might catch another withered old man willing to buy his way into that sensational body of yours.’

She flew at him then. It did not surprise him. He’d been goading her towards it since she’d first walked through the door. The tied hair, the grim suit—as a disguise they were useless where he was concerned. With every flash of her eyes and every smart-mouthed comment he’d seen the real Cristina lurking there. Now she was out, and he was going to make sure that she stayed out.

He fielded her arrival without having to do very much other than catch her as she arrived at his chest, wrap his arms around her and lift her clean off the ground. Their faces came level—hers whitened by stark fury, his as un-giving as rock. She hit out at him with her fists. He laughed—once—harshly, then treated her angry mouth to a totally carnal flat-tongued lick.

All hell broke loose with that one action. She quivered from wetted lips to slender thighs. A whimper broke from her—a sobbing, cursing protest. He did it again, only this time he took the lick inwards and turned it into a full-blown deep and devouring assault. Her angry protest vibrated through both of them. As he levered himself away from the table and started walking her fingers clawed into his hair.

Did those fingers attempt to pull his mouth away from her mouth? Not this woman. She held him down, held him right there, where she was greedy for him. He knew her. He knew what made her explode sexually—and what made her his!

When he reached the door that would give them access to his private suite, he flattened her against it with his body, so he could use his hand to seek out the handle. As the door swung open, with the weight of their bodies as impetus, he had to use his hands against the heavy wood to cushion the moment when it hit the wall behind and they followed it. Her feet found solid ground again, but she didn’t let go of him. So they remained there, pressed against the door, kissing like hungry maniacs for long lost minutes. Time in which he managed to rid her of her jacket. The skirt was too big. He had only to release the zip for it to fall in a heavy whisper to the floor.

Did she let go then? Did she come to her senses? Did she even know this wasn’t six years ago? Not this hot, greedy, sexually hungry woman who pushed his jacket from his shoulders with impatient fingers and sent it dropping to the floor with her own clothes.

Her hair came next, pins flying as he loosened that glorious mass of twisting ebony and let it tumble over his fingers. She was working free the buttons on his waistcoat when he lifted her up again. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, took his bottom lip between her teeth and bit.

It hurt. She had meant it to. When he winced out a curse she did it again. When he attempted to pull his head back she imprisoned it in her hands, then she was the one to instigate the next mouth and tongue-devouring kiss.

She was wild for him. He loved it. Exhilaration ran through him as he made the move to the bedroom by pure instinct. She clung. He pulsed. She moved against him. His hands gripped her bottom and she felt like satin, warm, too slender, too delicate to be real. He dropped her on the bed, then came down with her, the heat of need pounding through his body and scoring streaks across his hard taut cheeks.

His mouth ached, his jaw, his warring tongue. He broke the kiss to look down at her and watched as she gasped and panted for air.

‘Are you staying or going?’ he demanded in a voice as cold as an English winter. The stark contrast between his physical self and his mental self was so acute that she stared at him for a full ten seconds before reality finally sank in.

‘You want your pound of flesh!’

‘I want more than that,’ he responded. ‘I want your thankless little soul gift-wrapped and handed to me with a rock-solid guarantee that this time it belongs to me!’

Cristina looked into the hard, cold, face of this man she loved so much and had hurt so much, and wished there was a tiny molecule of hope for them.