LITMIR.BIZ

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their father had shacked up with a tart,’ he said, watching as her cheeks bloomed with colour.

      ‘Is this to be part of the deal between us?’ she asked with a defiant spark in her grey-blue eyes. ‘For you to insult me at every available opportunity?’

      He ignored her comment to say, ‘You will no longer be using Cole’s name. It is in the legal document I gave you. You are to revert to your maiden name even though you are anything but a maiden.’

      She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off curtly. ‘Go and get dressed. I have made a booking at a restaurant for dinner.’

      Her eyes rounded. ‘You were that sure I would agree to this preposterous plan?’

      ‘But of course, ma belle,’ he said with a mocking smile. He patted where his wallet was inside his suit jacket pocket. ‘After all, money is the thing you most desire, is it not?’

      Her eyes were like twin tornadoes, darkening with fury. ‘Doesn’t it make a difference to know I don’t want it for myself?’ she bit out through tight lips.

      He gave a couldn’t-care-less shrug. ‘It is of no importance to me what or who you want it for. I understand the thickness of family blood even though I do not have a sibling. As it stands, I am happy to pay you to entertain me, but only until such time as I feel it is time to call it quits.’

      The look she gave him would have sliced through steel. ‘You mean when you’ve ground my pride into the dust.’

      Marc moved his lips from side to side, reining in his temper. She had some nerve to lament the damage to her pride, considering what she had done to his. ‘I have already told you to go and get dressed,’ he said. ‘I would advise you to do so and now, otherwise I may very well change my mind and take you dressed as you are.’

      She turned with a swish of her shoulder-length blonde hair and padded up the sweeping staircase, the action of her endless legs and neat bottom making the blood surge to his groin.

      He shoved his hands deep in his trouser pockets to stop himself from reaching for her as he so often had done in the past. He’d had lovers since, but no one made his blood heat the way Ava McGuire’s did. All she had to do was look at him from those smoky grey-blue eyes of hers and he was rock-hard. He sucked in a harsh breath, fighting against the flood of memories, but it was impossible to mentally sandbag against such powerful sensual recollections. For five years they had tortured him, making him ache with the need to feel her again, to have her in his arms, to hold her and have his fill of her.

      He ran a hand through the thickness of his hair as he paced the floor again. He would get her out of his system this time once and for all. Whatever it took, he would do it.

      He had to in order to move on with his life. This was his last chance and he was going to make the most of every single minute.

      Ava dressed in a slim-fitting black cocktail dress from her short-lived modelling days and, slipping her feet into heels, picked up a small evening bag.

      She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, grimacing at the state of her hair. She put her bag down and quickly ran a brush through her tresses so they fell about her shoulders in casual waves. Apart from a dusting of mineral make-up and a quick dab of lip gloss she left the rest of her face alone. It wouldn’t matter what she did to herself—she was never going to be good enough for Marc Castellano, she thought with aching sadness. He enjoyed the company of beautiful women all over the world, women who willingly grasped at the chance to hang off his arm or slip between the sheets of his bed. Ava’s stomach hollowed in anguish at the thought of how many had been there since she had been his mistress. The thought of him touching others the way he had touched her made her feel as if her heart was being wrenched in two. She had tried over the years not to think of it; every time she saw a Press photo of him with yet another glamorous woman on his arm she had quickly turned the page, suppressing the wave of longing until it finally subsided.

      When she came down the stairs, Marc was speaking to a man who was dressed in a removals company uniform, the first of some items already placed in the foyer in cardboard boxes.

      Ava’s stomach clenched at the thought of how quickly things had changed. Marc had wasted no time in taking possession of the villa; how soon would he insist on the other more intimate terms of the deal? In the past she had shared his bed with love, or at least on her part. But how could she possibly share it with the hatred that bubbled like volcanic mud between them now?

      Marc dismissed the man and turned as she came down the last of the stairs, his dark gaze running over her in hot-blooded appraisal. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘But then you have always had the amazing ability to look glamorous in whatever you are wearing—’ his eyes glinted as he added ‘—or not wearing.’

      Ava hoisted her chin at a haughty height. ‘In case you are wondering, this dress is mine.’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I recognise it from our first meeting.’

      She tried to hide her reaction to his statement, but it was almost impossible to control the flip and flop and flutter of her pulse. That he remembered such a minor detail made her wonder if he had cared more for her back then than he had let on at the time. He had always seemed so aloof and non-committal when it came to his feelings. She on the other hand had been effusive with stating hers, which had made her feel gauche and immature. She wished she had been a little more sophisticated back then. If only she had been able to look upon their affair as a casual fling she might not have had her hopes crushed so badly. But from the moment their eyes had met across a crowded bar she had felt something fall into place deep inside her. No one else had had that effect on her and after all this time she had come to the conclusion no one else ever would.

      Ava followed him out of the villa to a waiting car outside. The driver held the door open for her and waited while she took her seat, with Marc joining her, his long, strong thighs brushing against hers.

      He took one of her hands in his, holding her lightly, but with an undercurrent of strength that silently warned her not to try and pull away.

      Ava thought of all the times they had dined together in the past. The romantic candlelit dinners where she had gazed into his eyes, his fingers lazily stroking hers, making her heart thud in anticipation of returning to the apartment to make love into the early hours of the morning.

      She wondered if he was thinking of those times now. It was so hard to tell what was going on behind the hard mask of his face. He was just as heart-stoppingly gorgeous as before. The faint shadow of regrowth on his jaw made her fingers itch to touch him, to feel that sexy stubble under the soft pads of her fingertips. Her body trembled at the memory of how it had felt to feel his unshaven skin against her inner thighs as he pleasured her with his lips and tongue.

      She crossed her legs, trying to quell the pulse of her body, but with him sitting so close it was like trying to stop ice melting under the flare of a blowtorch.

      Marc lifted her hand to his mouth, the point of his tongue dipping between the sensitive web between her index and thumb. It was the merest touch, a hot, moist hint of what was to come. Ava shivered and closed her eyes tightly, calling upon every bit of willpower she possessed not to turn in her seat and place her mouth greedily against his.

      He kept her hand in his, idly toying with her fingers, outlining the smoothly manicured shape of her nails. Ava was intensely aware of her forearm resting on his muscular thigh, her hand so close to the hot, hard heat of him she ached to explore him, to see if he was responding to her as she was to him. Her eyes glanced sideways, her heart nearly stopping when she saw the tenting of his trousers. She gulped and quickly looked out of the opposite window, but she heard his low deep chuckle, and felt his fingers tighten as they brought hers to his growing erection.

      Her heart thumped as she felt his turgid length, her inner muscles contracting and the dew of desire anointing her in spite of every effort to curb her response to him.

      ‘I can see—or rather, I can feel you haven’t lost your touch, cara,’ he said, keeping her hand against

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