Ruthless Revenge: Passionate Possession: A Virgin for Vasquez / A Marriage Fit for a Sinner / Mistress of His Revenge

Heart racing, she looked down and gave proper house room in her head to all those barely discernible signals she had felt emanating from him over the past few weeks.

For starters, there had been that kiss.

She’d felt the way his mouth had explored hers, hungry and greedy and wanting more.

And then, working in the same space, she’d lodged somewhere in the back of her head those accidental brushes when he had leant over her, caging her in in front of her computer so that he could explain some detail on the screen.

She’d committed to memory the way she had occasionally surprised his lazy dark eyes resting on her just a fraction longer than necessary.

And sometimes...didn’t he stand just a little too close? Close enough for her to feel the heat from his body? To smell his clean, masculine scent?

Didn’t all of that add up to something?

She didn’t know whether he was even aware of the dangerous current running between them just beneath the surface. If he was, then it was obvious that he had no intention of doing anything about it.

And then, one day, he would no longer be around.

Right now, he was making sure that his investment paid off. He had sunk money into a bailout, and he wasn’t going to see that money flushed down the drain, so he was taking an active part in progressing the company.

But soon enough the company would be on firmer ground and he would be able to retreat and hand over the running of it to other people, herself included.

He would resume his hectic life running his own empire.

And she, likewise, would return to Yorkshire to take up full-time residence in the family home, which she would be able to renovate at least enough to make it a viable selling proposition.

They would part company.

And she would be left with this strange, empty feeling for the rest of her life.

She felt guilty enough about the way they had broken up. On top of that, he would remain the benchmark against which no other man would ever stand a chance of competing for ever.

She should have slept with him.

She knew that now. She should have slept with him instead of holding on to all those girlish fantasies about saving herself for when that time came and she knew that they would be a permanent item, for when she was convinced that their relationship was made to stand the test of time.

If she’d slept with him, he would never have achieved the impossible status of being the only guy capable of turning her on. If she’d slept with him, she might not feel so guilty about the way everything had crashed and burned.

Was it selfish now to think that, if she righted that oversight, she might be free to get on with her life? Things were being sorted financially but what was the good of that if, emotionally, she remained in some kind of dreadful, self-inflicted limbo?

She wasn’t the selfish sort. She had never thought of herself as the kind of pushy, independent type who took what she wanted from a man to satisfy her own needs.

The opposite!

But she knew, with a certain amount of desperation, that if she didn’t take what she wanted now she would create all sorts of problems for herself down the line.

She wondered whether she could talk to her mother about it and immediately dismissed that thought because, as far as Evelyn Griffin-Watt was concerned, Javier was a youthful blip who had been cut out of her life a long time ago, leaving no nasty scars behind.

Besides, her mother was leading an uncomplicated and contented life in Cornwall; was it really fair to bring back unpleasant memories by resurrecting a long, involved conversation about the past?

‘Okay.’

‘Come again?’

‘I’ll do it.’

Javier smiled slowly. In truth, the whole modelling idea had sprung to mind only the day before, and he had anticipated defeat, but here she was...agreeing after a pretty half-hearted battle. At least, half-hearted for her.

‘Brilliant decision!’

‘I was railroaded into it.’

‘Strong word. I prefer persuaded. Now, I have a few ideas...’

* * *

Sophie peeped through a crack in the curtains and looked down into the courtyard which had been tarted up for the day into a vision of genteel respectability.

The shoot had been arranged in the space of a week, during which time Sophie had spoken to various media types and also to various stylists. She imagined that they were being paid a phenomenal amount for the day because they had all bent over backwards to pay attention to what she had said.

Which hadn’t been very much because she had no idea what questions to ask other than the obvious one: How long is it all going to take?

Javier hadn’t been at any of those meetings, choosing instead to delegate to one of the people in his PR department, but that hadn’t bothered Sophie.

In a way, she’d been glad, because she had a plan and the element of surprise was a big part of the plan.

Except, the day had now arrived and the courtyard was buzzing with cameramen, the make-up crew, the director, producer and all the other people whose roles were, quite frankly, bewildering. And where was Javier? Nowhere to be seen.

It was today or it was not at all.

She dropped the curtain and turned to the full-length mirror which the stylist had installed in the bedroom because the small one on the dressing table ‘just won’t do, darling!’

The brief which she had agreed on with Javier would have her standing next to a gleaming articulated lorry bearing the company logo, in dungarees, a checked shirt and a jaunty cowboy hat on her head.

Sophie had decided to take it up a notch and the reflection staring back at her had dumped the dungarees in favour of a pair of shorts with a frayed hem. The checked shirt remained the same, but it was tied under her breasts so that her flat stomach was exposed, and there was no jaunty cowboy hat on her head. Instead, she had slung it on her back so that her hair was wild and loose.

Javier had vaguely aimed for something wholesome and appealing, a throwback to the good old days of home-baked bread and jam, which was some of the cargo transported in the lorries. He’d suggested that it would be a nice contrast to the new face of the business, which was streamlined and fully up to spec on the technological front, which it hadn’t been before. Something along the lines of the home-baked bread getting from A to B before it had time to cool from the oven and Sophie’s image was going to sell the absolute truth of that.

She had taken it up a notch from wholesome to wholesome and sexy.

It had been her brainwave when she had sat there, numbly recognising that she would never, ever get over him if she didn’t sleep with him, if she didn’t seduce him into bed. He’d been in her head for years and she couldn’t think of another way to make sure that he was knocked off the position he occupied there.

She’d never seduced anyone in her life before. Just thinking about doing something like that was terrifying, but when it came to her emotions, she had to be proactive. As proactive as she had been dealing with the mess she’d been left to clear up in the company.

She wasn’t a simpering teenager any more, seeing the future through rose-tinted specs and believing in happy-ever-after endings.

She was an adult, jaded by experience, who would be left nursing regret for the rest of her life if she didn’t give this a shot. And so what if she failed? What if he looked at her get-up and burst out laughing? So, she might have a moment’s humiliation, but that would be worth the lifetime she would have had thinking about an opportunity that had passed her by, an opportunity to claim what she knew could have been hers all those years ago.

The time had come to take a chance.

Except, it didn’t look as though the wretched man was going to show up!

Her nerves were shot, her pulses were racing and she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime the previous day because of the shot nerves and the racing pulses...

She was a mess and it was all going to be for nothing because Javier had obviously had his brainwave and then allowed his minions to realise it while he stepped back from the scene of the action.

She slunk down to the courtyard with a white bathrobe over her screamingly uncomfortable outfit and was immediately appropriated by a host of people whose only function seemed to be to get her ready for the shoot.

She allowed herself to be manoeuvred while disappointment cascaded through her in waves.

No Javier. No big seduction. It had taken absolutely everything out of her. And there was no way she was going to do this again. She wasn’t going to set herself the task of staging seductive scenes in the hope of igniting something that probably wasn’t there for him anyway, whatever stupid signals she thought she’d read!

A mirror was brought for her to inspect herself. Sophie barely glanced at the fully made-up face staring back at her. After the tension of the past couple of days, and the nervous excitement of earlier this morning as she had got dressed, she now felt like a balloon that had been deflated before it had made it to the party.

She was aware of orders being shouted and poses she was being instructed to adopt.

No one had questioned the slight change in outfit. She was Javier’s personal pet project and no one dared question her for fear that she would report unfavourably back to their boss.

She was supposed to turn up in denim and a checked top with a cowboy hat and they knew what the direction of the shoot should be. The outfit was daring, though, and the poses were therefore slightly more daring than perhaps originally choreographed.

She had her back to the camera team, one hand resting lightly on the shining lorry, looking over her shoulder with a smile, when she heard his roar from behind her.

She’d given up on Javier coming.

But before she’d clocked his absence, she had somehow imagined him standing amongst the crew, goggle-eyed as he looked at her, wanting her as much as she wanted him and knowing that he had to have her. She’d pictured him waiting impatiently until the crew had packed up and gone and then...

Her wanton thoughts had not formulated much beyond that point. There would be a lot of ground to cover before the scene shifted from impatient seduction to the satisfied aftermath.

‘What the hell is going on here?’

Sophie stumbled back against the lorry and the entire assembled crew stared at Javier in growing confusion, aware that they had done something wrong but not quite sure what.

Javier strode forward through them like a charging bull, face as black as thunder.

‘You!’ He pointed to the director of the shoot, who jumped to attention and began stammering out his consternation, puzzled as to what the problem was. The shoot was going very well. Indeed, if Javier wanted, he could see what was already in the bag. It was going to do the job and sell the business like hot cakes straight from the oven. Sophie was a brilliant model. No temper tantrums and no diva pouting. She was perfect for the job and the fact that she was part-owner of the company was going to be a nice touch. They’d make sure they got that in in the backdrop...

Javier held up one cold, imperious hand. ‘This was not what I wanted!’ he snapped. He looked across to Sophie with a scowl and she folded her arms defensively.

‘They have no idea what you’re going on about, Javier,’ she said sweetly, strolling towards him although she was quaking inside, unable to tear her eyes away from his strident masculinity. He dominated the space around him, a towering, forbidding figure who clearly inspired awe, fear and respect in equal measure.

It was an incredible turn-on to think that this was the guy who had once teased her, told her that she made him weak, the guy whose eyes had flared with desire whenever they had rested on her.

The guy she wanted so much that it hurt.

The guy she was prepared to risk humiliation for.

‘Consider this shoot over for the day.’ He directed the command at the director but his eyes were focused on Sophie as she moved to stand right in front of him.

He cursed the overseas phone call that had held him up and then the traffic on the motorways and B-roads that wound their way to her family home. If he’d arrived when he had originally planned, he would have...

Made sure that she didn’t step one delicate foot out of the house dressed in next to nothing.

He was shocked by his sudden regression to a Neanderthal, which was the very opposite of the cool composure he prided himself on having.

Hands thrust deep into his pockets, he continued to stare at her with ferocious intent while the entire assembled crew hurriedly began packing their equipment and disappearing fast.

Sophie heard the gravelly chaos of reversing cars and SUVs but she was locked into a little bubble in which the only two people who existed were herself and Javier.

‘That wasn’t the outfit we agreed on.’ His voice was a low, driven snarl and she tilted her chin at a mutinous angle.

‘Checked shirt...tick. Denim...tick. Stupid cowboy hat...tick. Trainers...tick...’

‘You know what I mean,’ Javier gritted, unable to take his eyes off her.

‘Do I?’ She hadn’t realised how chilly it was and she hugged herself.

‘You’re cold,’ he said gruffly, removing his jacket and settling it around her shoulders. For a second, she just wanted to close her eyes and breathe in the scent from it.

And this was what it was all about. This hunger that had never gone away, but which had to go away, because if it didn’t it would eat away at her for ever. And there was only one way of it just going away and leaving her alone.

‘Tell me,’ she pressed huskily. ‘Why are you so furious? It wasn’t fair of you to send all those poor people packing. They were only doing their job.’

‘That’s not the way I see it,’ Javier growled. The jacket, way too big, drowned her and it was really weird the way that just made her look even sexier. He shifted in an attempt to ease the discomfort of his erection. Was she wearing a bra? He didn’t think so and that made him angry all over again.

‘How do you see it?’

‘The brief was for you to look wholesome!’ He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head. This was the first time he had ventured to her family home but he hadn’t noticed a single brick. His entire focus was on her. She consumed him. ‘The attractive girl next door! Not a sex siren out to snag a man! How the hell is that supposed to sell the company?’

‘I thought that sex sold everything?’

‘Is that why you did it? Was that your concept of positive input? Dressing up in next to nothing and draping yourself over that lorry like a hooker posing in a motorbike shot?’

‘How dare you?’ But she flushed and cringed and knew that there was some justification for that horrible slur. She barely stopped to think that in summer there were many, many girls her age who went out dressed like this and thought nothing of it. She just knew that it wasn’t her.

‘The entire crew,’ he delineated coldly, ‘must have had a field day ogling you. Or maybe that was what you had in mind. Is that it? Has living in London kick-started an urge to push the limits? Have you realised how much tamer your life up here was?’

‘I didn’t do this so that any of the crew could ogle me.’ She fought to maintain his cool, disapproving stare and took a deep breath. ‘I did this so that...’ Her voice faltered. Her hands were clammy and she licked her lips as the tension stretched and stretched between them.

‘So that...?’ Javier prompted softly.

‘So that you could ogle me...’

CHAPTER SEVEN

THIS WAS WHAT he had been waiting for, the slow burn until the conflagration, because he knew that it would be a conflagration. She oozed sex appeal without even realising it. And she had come to him. He hadn’t been mistaken about those invisible signals his antennae had been picking up and he marvelled that he had ever doubted himself.

Of course, he would have to make it clear to her that this wasn’t some kind of romance, that whatever they did would be a purely physical animal act. They’d had their window for romance once and she’d put paid to that. Romance was definitely off the cards now.

He smiled slowly, his beautiful, sensuous mouth curving as he lazily ran his eyes over her flushed face, taking in everything from the slight tremor of her hands to the nervous tic in her neck, a beating pulse that was advertising what she wanted as loud and as clear as if it had been written in neon lettering over her head.

Him.

She wanted him.

The wheel had turned full circle, and having walked away from him, she was now walking back.

That tasted good and it would taste even better when he laid down his conditions.

‘Is that so?’ he breathed huskily, his erection threatening to hamper movement.

Sophie didn’t say anything in response to that. She read the satisfaction in his gleaming eyes and a primal lust that was so powerful that it easily swept aside any nagging doubt that she might be embarking on the wrong course of action.

He caught the lapels of his jacket and drew her a few inches towards him. ‘There were less complicated ways of getting my attention, Soph...’ he murmured. ‘A simple I want you would have done the trick.’

The fact that he made no attempt to kiss her or touch her acted as an unbearably powerful aphrodisiac. Her heart was beating so fast that it felt as though it was going to explode and she was melting everywhere. She licked her lips and Javier followed that tiny movement with such intense concentration that it made her blood heat up even further.

‘That would have been...too much,’ she breathed. ‘It was tough enough...’ She gestured down to her lack of outfit and Javier half-smiled, remembering how shy she had once been, despite the fact that she had the face and figure that could turn heads from a mile away.

‘Getting into your skimpy little get-up? Let’s go inside. It’s getting breezier out here.’ He kept his distance but the electricity crackled between them. He wasn’t touching her and he hardly dared because one touch and he would have to have her at once, fast and hard, up against a wall.

He didn’t want that. He wanted slow and leisurely. He wanted to explore every inch of the woman who had escaped him. Only then would he be able to walk away satisfied.

Walking towards the house, he really noticed the signs of disrepair which he had failed to see when he had arrived earlier. He paused and looked critically at the façade and Sophie followed the leisurely and critical inspection, marvelling at the damage that had been done over a handful of years.

She longed to reach out and touch him. She longed to link her fingers through his in the same careless gesture of ownership to which she had once been privy. She reminded herself that times had changed since then. This was something quite, quite different.

‘You’re right,’ Javier said drily, stepping back as she pushed open the front door. ‘The place is falling down.’

‘I know.’ Sophie looked around her, seeing it through his eyes. He was now used to the best that money could buy. The apartment loaned to her was pristine, like something from the centre pages of a house magazine. This house, on the other hand...

They were in a cavernous hall. Javier could see that this would have been an enormous and elegant country estate once upon a time but the paint was peeling, the once ornate ceiling was cracked and he was sure that further exploration would reveal a lot more problems.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gravely and Sophie looked at him, startled.

‘What for?’

‘You told me that penury was harder for you than it ever had been for me and you were probably right. I knew no better and things could only go up. You knew better and the journey down must have been swift and painful. But...’ he tilted his head to one side and looked at her ‘...you coped.’

‘I didn’t have a choice, did I?’ She suddenly felt shy. Should they be heading up to the bedroom? What was the etiquette for two people who had decided that they are going to sleep together? Not in the ‘clutching one another while stumbling up the stairs’ kind of way, but in the manner of a business transaction. At least that was what it felt like—two people putting an end to their unfinished business.

They wanted each other but neither of them liked it.

‘Show me the rest of the place.’

‘Why?’ She was genuinely puzzled.

‘I used to wonder what it was like. You talked about your home a lot when we were...going out. At the time, it had sounded like a slice of paradise, especially compared to where I had grown up.’

‘And I bet you’re thinking, how the mighty have fallen...’ She laughed self-consciously because all of a sudden she was walking on quicksand. This was the man she had fallen in love with—a man who was interested, warm, curious, empathetic... For a minute, the cynical, mocking stranger was gone and she was floundering.

‘No. I’m not,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m thinking that it must have taken a lot of courage not to have cracked under the strain.’

Sophie blushed and began showing him through the various rooms on the ground floor of the house. There were a lot of them and most of them were now closed with the heating off so that money could be saved. When she and Oliver had realised the necessity of putting the house on the market, they had made an effort to do a patch-up job here and there, but not even those dabs of paint in some of the rooms could conceal the disintegrating façade.

The more she talked, the more aware she was of him there by her side, taking it all in. If this was his idea of foreplay, it couldn’t have been more effective, because she was on fire.

Talking...who would have thought that it could have changed the atmosphere between them so thoroughly?

Her nipples were tight and tingling and the ache between her thighs made her want to moan out loud. She could feel him, could feel herself warming to him, and she had to fight the seductive urge to start mingling the past with the present, confusing the powerful, ruthless man he had become with the man she had once known.

When they were through with the ground floor, she gazed up the sweeping staircase before turning to him and clearing her throat.

‘The bedrooms are upstairs.’ She wanted to sound controlled and adult, a woman in charge of a situation she had engendered. Instead, she heard the nervous falsetto of her voice and inwardly cringed.

Javier lounged against the door frame, hoping that it wouldn’t collapse under his weight from dry rot or termites. He folded his arms and looked at her as she fidgeted for a few seconds before meeting his gaze.

‘Why are you so nervous?’ he enquired, reaching out to adjust the collar of the jacket which she was still clutching around her, and then allowing his hands to remain there, resting lightly on her. ‘It’s not as though you haven’t felt the touch of my lips on yours before...’

Sophie inhaled sharply.

She had got this far and now realised that she hadn’t actually worked out what happened next. Yes, on the physical level, terrifying and exciting though that was, her body would simply just take over. She knew it would. She remembered what it had felt like to be touched by him, the way he had made her whole body ignite in a burst of red-hot flame.

How much more glorious would it feel to actually make love with him...?

She was nervous, yes, thrillingly so at the prospect of making love with him. But there were other things...things that needed to be discussed...and now that the time had come she wondered whether she would be able to open up to him.

‘I’m...I’m not nervous about...about...’

‘Going to bed with me? Being touched all over by me? Your breasts and nipples with my tongue? Your belly...?’ He loved the fluttering of her eyes as she listened, the way her tongue darted out to moisten her lips and the way she was breathing just a little faster; tiny, jerky breaths that were an unbelievable turn-on because they showed him what she was feeling. He doubted that she could even put into words what she was feeling because...