LITMIR.BIZ

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the situation the way she’d controlled it this morning, she was in for a hell of a surprise.

      She took a deep breath that lifted her breasts. They seemed larger than in the past. Fuller. But then, he hadn’t seen her breasts in a very long time.

      Too long, he thought, and a surge of hot lust rolled deep in his belly.

      Lust? For a woman with no makeup on her face? A woman wearing a loose cotton top over baggy jeans? Hell, she looked beautiful anyway, though he had never seen her dressed like this before. She’d always worn chic designer clothes when they were together. Her own clothes, though he’d often tried to buy things for her.

      “I prefer to pay for my own things,” she’d always said with a polite smile. She’d used that same line when he tried to buy her any but the simplest of gifts.

      She didn’t need convincing anymore, he thought coldly. She hadn’t blinked an eye at his dropping five million bucks on her this morning.

      “Whatever we did in New York is over, senhor.”

      “Such formality, sweetheart. After all we’ve been to each other?”

      “The past,” she said stiffly, ignoring his remark, “has no bearing on this matter.”

      “But it does,” he said softly. “After all, I bought this house today.”

      She nodded, folded her arms over her breasts. “Yes. And…and it was a very kind thing for you to—”

      “Based on the way you looked at your boyfriend, I have to assume you were glad I did.”

      “Sim. I was. But Ferrantes is not—”

      “Your lover.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you want to call him.”

      He watched the tip of her tongue peep out, watched it sweep across her lips and hated himself for the way it made him feel, hated her for doing it. It was deliberate; everything she’d done from the second she’d set eyes on him this morning had been deliberate.

      “Must have been hell, a woman as fastidious as you, sleeping with a man like—”

      She slapped him. Her hand moved so fast he never really saw the blow coming. The best he could do was jerk back, grab her wrist, twist it behind her as he tugged her toward him.

      “What’s the matter, baby? Does the truth hurt?”

      “Get out,” she hissed. “Get out of my house!”

      “This isn’t your house. Not anymore.”

      Tears filled her eyes. Angry tears, phony tears. One of the two. He knew damned well they couldn’t be any other kind.

      “I bought it. Just as you assumed I would.”

      She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Assumed?” A choked laugh burst from her throat. “I didn’t even know you were in Brazil! Come to think of it, why are you in my country?”

      “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I didn’t come looking for you.”

      She knew that. Still, hearing it hurt. It was time to hurt him back.

      “I came on business. Family business.”

      “Ah, yes,” she said, tossing her head. “The famous famiglia Orsini. How could I have forgotten?”

      She gasped as his hold on her tightened. In the few months they’d been together, they had never discussed his family, his father’s underworld connections. She’d have known about it, of course. That the Orsini brothers were sons of Cesare Orsini was favorite gossip-column fodder.

      “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “Only that perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Dammit, you’re hurting me!”

      She was twisting against his hand, trying to get free, but each jerk of her body only brought her more closely against him.

      It was agony.

      Exquisite agony.

      The soft brush of her breasts against the hardness of his chest. The whisper of her belly against his. The feel of her thighs rubbing lightly over his. Just the sight of her, all that sun-streaked hair tumbling around her face, that lush mouth, the eyes deep enough for a man to get lost in.

      Memories swept through him.

      The feel of her, moving beneath him.

      The scent of her, when he brought her to climax.

      The taste of her mouth, her skin, her clitoris.

      Desire, wild, hot and dangerous, took fire. It thickened his blood, ignited nerve endings, brought him to full, rampant arousal. Maybe she was right. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Go back a couple of generations, to the land of his ancestors, a woman would not have dared make a fool of an Orsini as this woman had done this morning.

      On a low growl, Dante clasped Gabriella’s shoulders, lifted her to him and claimed her mouth.

      She fought. It didn’t matter. Kissing her, subduing her, taking her was everything.

      This morning she had told him what she wanted. Now, it was his turn to tell her what he wanted.

      Her. Her, in his bed, again. For as long as he chose to keep her there. He’d never wanted another man’s leavings but this—this was different.

      He would wipe Ferrantes’s possession away. Replace it with his own demands. His own pleasure. Her pleasure, too, because that would happen, she would soften under his touch as she had earlier today, she would moan against his lips, run her hands up his chest, press herself to him, yes, as she was doing now, moving her hips against his, making those sexy little whimpers that could raise the temperature a hundred degrees.

      He groaned her name. Slid his hands under her bulky shirt. Cupped her breasts and groaned again at the feel of them in his hands, all warm, sweet silky flesh straining against her bra, filling his palms, the nipples lifting to the caressing sweep of his thumbs.

      “Gabriella,” he said, his voice urgent, and she wound her arms around his neck, sucked his tongue into the heat of her mouth…

      Merda! What in hell was he doing?

      Cursing, he pushed her from him. She stumbled back, shoulders hitting the wall, eyes flying open and fixing on his. She looked shocked, on the verge of tears, but he wasn’t fooled. He was letting her do it all over again, blinding him to reality, using sex to turn his body on and his brain off as if she were a sorceress and he a fool she could enchant.

      But he wasn’t.

      “Nice,” he said, as if he’d been in control all the time. “Very nice. We’re going to get along just fine.”

      “Get out,” she said, her voice trembling.

      “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t take it so hard. And, what the hell, it’ll be easier with me than it was with Ferrantes, we both know that.”

      She swung at him again but he was ready this time. He caught her hand, dragged her against him.

      “You said—you said you would give my home to me. No strings, you said.”

      “That was before I knew you’d already made a deal with good old Andre.”

      She spat a word at him and he laughed. Turned out, some obscenities sounded pretty much the same whether they were said in the Sicilian of his youth or the Portuguese of hers.

      “You think this is amusing?”

      Dante lowered his head until his eyes were almost even with hers.

      “What I think,” he said in a cold whisper, “is that you get to have a choice.”

      “What is that supposed to mean?”

      “It

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