The Price of Scandal Read online

  ‘That must have hurt.’

  It had, and it was also very cold, but Neve was not about to admit it to the figure who was sitting on one of the bottom treads of the polished staircase in the adjoining room, his position offering him an excellent view of her furtive actions.

  She held onto her sweater like a lifeline as she clutched it to her heaving chest and glared at him.

  Her glittering electric-blue eyes reminded him of a Siamese cat an ex girlfriend had carried around in a designer bag, until the animal had scratched her.

  Neve’s nails were neat and short and she wore no jewellery.

  His ex had kept the jewelled collar she had made the poor animal wear, but got rid of the animal after the incident. It had scratched him too, displaying feline ingratitude when, saving it from the fate his girlfriend had in mind, Severo had gifted it to the cat-loving daughter of his secretary.

  Neve found the contemplative smile that tugged at the corners of his sensual mouth unsettling. ‘What are you smiling at?’ she demanded spikily.

  The image of a jewelled collar, sapphires to match her eyes set against her fair skin in his head, Severo produced one of his inimitable shrugs. ‘I’m a naturally smiley sort of guy.’

  Neve snorted at this patent untruth and continued to view him with wary suspicion.

  Just how long had he been there watching her anyhow?

  She wasn’t aware she had voiced the question out loud until he leaned forward and, resting his elbows on his knees, propped his chin on one hand and drawled, ‘Long enough.’

  Neve did not want to know if ‘long enough’ meant he had seen her breathing in the fragrance of his clothes like some demented bloodhound.

  ‘I got lonely.’ The mockery he had intended to inject into the statement failed to materialise as he was gripped by an urgent and compelling desire to hold, to touch, to taste.

  A need that seemed to override every atom of common sense he possessed.

  Neve, who was utterly oblivious to the strained edge in his cryptic response, lifted her chin, frowning as she struggled to stay focused and not allow herself to be fatally distracted by the aura of masculinity he projected.

  She failed miserably. Just looking at him filled her with an inarticulate longing so intense that her bones ached with it.

  Severo swallowed and, breathing through flared nostrils, exhaled slowly before asking quietly, ‘Are you going to tell me what is wrong now?’

  She shrugged and, frustrated, he swore audibly in his native tongue as he moved to join her. ‘I don’t enjoy scenes, Neve.’

  ‘And you think I do?’ Over the past few months she had had a gut full of scenes; Hannah took delight in humiliating her, frequently venting her anger in public.

  She was struggling to her feet when big hands closed around her waist and hauled her upright.

  For the space of several seconds she was suspended two feet off the ground as if she weighed no more than a rag doll. While she was dangling in mid-air her eyes locked with his dark compelling stare.

  She did not have time to either enjoy or reject the rush in her blood or the prickle under her skin before she was placed on her own feet. Earthbound at least physically, her head was still spinning, but then she had never had a head for heights or, as it turned out, tall, impossibly sexy Italians with dark fallen-angel faces. The faint buzzing in her head got louder as her glance slid to the sternly sensual outline of his mouth.

  A dreamy expression filtered into her sapphire eyes as a dragging sensation low in her pelvis made her breath quicken. The thought popped fully formed into her head before she could stop it—with a mouth like that he had to be an excellent kisser.

  Deeply ashamed that she could think such a thought when Hannah was out there hurt, or worse, she lowered her lashes in a protective sweep, feeling the heat climb up her neck until her cheeks burned with shame.

  He gave a sigh and, studying her down-bent head, felt a sudden strong inclination to thread his fingers into that fiery mass and pull back her head to expose the lovely line of her smooth white throat.

  She presented him her rigid back before bending to pick up the clothes from the drier.

  Peachy was the most applicable word, he decided, studying the outline of her firm little bottom against the softly draped cloth. The knowledge she wore very little underneath drove him crazy.

  She bent forward a little more and the fabric slid higher, revealing more of her slim, creamy smooth thighs. The pounding in his temples stepped up another notch as Severo watched the mental image of his fingers gliding across her soft warm belly, making his eyes darken to midnight black.

  Having now reclaimed all her clothes, his lying on the floor in a crumpled heap, Neve turned with them bundled in her arms. She shot a look of anger up at him through her damp lashes.

  Their glances connected and Neve, painfully conscious of things tightening and shifting deep inside her, swallowed.

  ‘If it was your child out there you wouldn’t say don’t think about her.’

  He frowned, not understanding her reference. ‘I have no child.’

  This was not a situation that Severo saw a need to alter any time soon. Call him old-fashioned but to his mind a man needed a wife to have a child, and to commit yourself to someone for the rest of your life was more than a leap in the dark; it was, to his way of thinking, a form of insanity!

  He was not saying there were no happy marriages, but marriage was, when you viewed it logically, a lottery. The problem was that the participants rarely viewed it logically when they entered into it with all sorts of unreasonable and irrational expectations.

  His dark features swam, blurred by tears, as Neve lifted her gaze to his face. ‘I know you were trying to help.’

  The anger that had drawn the skin taut across his strong-boned features faded at the husky admission.

  ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m angry…actually,’ she corrected with a shudder of distaste, ‘I’m disgusted with me.’

  His brows lifted at her choice of words. ‘I doubt very much that you have done anything so very disgusting, cara.’

  Neve shook her head, too ashamed to look at him as she pleaded, ‘Don’t be nice to me!’ She swallowed and added in a small voice, ‘I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘I will not be nice to you,’ Severo agreed, contemplating her down-bent head with narrowed eyes as he added coolly, ‘But I will shake you if you don’t stop all this hair-shirt nonsense.’

  This brought her head up with a jerk. It was not a threat of retribution she saw in his dark eyes, but something that approached tenderness.

  ‘You’re being nice!’ she accused.

  Severo’s jaw tightened as he struggled to contain his growing frustration. ‘I could be a lot nicer if you allowed me.’

  Too caught up in her orgy of self-recrimination Neve, barely registering his throaty comment, cut across him.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. I made that big song and dance about finding Hannah, and then I forgot her.’

  ‘Cut yourself some slack. You’re exhausted.’

  Neve shook her head. ‘I forgot her because I can’t stop…’ She swallowed and lifted her tragically swimming blue eyes to his. ‘I was thinking about you,’ she revealed.

  After a moment’s shock—this was the last thing he had expected to hear her say—Severo felt a surge of savage satisfaction.

  Neve shook her head, dropped her head into her hands and let out a self-recriminatory growl of disgust. ‘And I don’t even like you.’

  His dark, thickly lashed eyes glittered. ‘Liking is not necessary for what we are feeling, cara.’

  Neve’s head slowly lifted. She sniffed and searched his face warily. What she saw there made her heart skip several beats. ‘We?’

  ‘Per amor di Dio, you are not going to tell me that you do not know I badly want to get you into bed?’

  The sexual buzz in the air hummed as their glances connected, blue on smouldering sloe black.

  ‘
I was…I’m not, I don’t do one-night stands.’ Just looking at him made her bones ache with desire. ‘I shouldn’t even be thinking about it, not with Hannah out—’

  He touched a silencing finger to her lips. ‘Thinking about sex does not mean you have stopped caring, or that you have become some selfish monster.’

  Neve envied his confidence on this subject.

  ‘Thinking about sex,’ he confided huskily, ‘is as natural as having sex.’ But not nearly as satisfying.

  Neve did not feel qualified to offer an opinion on a subject on which she was totally ignorant.

  ‘But I—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You do?’ she said, staring up into his face. He really was the most incredible-looking man, she thought, her gaze sliding over the carved planes and angles, fascinated by the length of his eyelashes, the razor-edged perfection of his cheekbones.

  A man like this wants me?

  ‘You still feel married, but the fact is you are not. How long ago…six months, did you say?’

  Neve, who had never felt married, nodded.

  She wondered what he would say if she told him she had felt trapped.

  Trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience.

  ‘And during that time there have been no men?’

  Indignant colour rushed to her face. ‘Of course not!’ She was about to add ‘no men full stop ever’ when he spoke.

  ‘I too have had no sex for a similar period.’

  ‘You!’

  He accepted her amazement with a shrug of his magnificent shoulders. ‘It is not usual,’ he admitted. ‘And celibacy suits me no more than it does you. But there were reasons, which I will not bore you with,’ he added, giving just enough information to arouse her curiosity.

  ‘We have appetites, we find ourselves here alone, isolated—it is hardly surprising that we have been drawn to each other.’

  ‘You’re drawn to me?’

  ‘I want sex with you.’ A nerve clenched beside his jaw as he added starkly, ‘Badly.’

  Did that mean he wanted bad sex or he wanted sex badly? The sound of his gravelly voice pitched low, almost a whisper, made the downy hairs on her skin stand on end, or was that the stroking movement of his thumb on her cheek?

  ‘This is wrong,’ she whispered, struggling with the last dregs of her strength to drag herself clear of the sensual vortex she felt herself being sucked into. ‘Hannah is out there somewhere and I can’t just—’

  ‘How will this hurt Hannah?’

  ‘It won’t, but—’

  He pressed a finger to her mouth. ‘No buts. You do know you have the most incredible eyes.’ His big body was curved over her in an almost possessive manner, so close that she could feel the heat from his lean body, smell the soap he must have used earlier and, overlying that citrusy tang, the male musky scent of his body.

  Neve knew her knees were shaking but she felt strangely disconnected from her body; she couldn’t tear her gaze free of the hypnotic stare of his heavy lidded eyes.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen if you don’t want it to, cara.’

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. Hannah was her responsibility. James had asked her to look after his daughter and after all the things he had done for her it was not such a big ask. She had promised James she’d look after her and she had failed.

  Severo felt her stiffen and swore softly under his breath. ‘Stop thinking.’

  ‘I c…can’t.’

  ‘Then think about my mouth,’ he said, still looking at her eyes.

  ‘Your mouth?’ she echoed, her wide eyes automatically zeroing in on the sculpted sensual curve. They refused to move on. She just carried on staring. There was a distant buzzing in her head and the sound of someone breathing hard.

  Is that me?

  ‘I’ve thought,’ she croaked, still staring. ‘And, all right, you have a pretty amazing mouth, though I’m sure you’ve heard that before.’

  ‘I like your mouth too.’

  His deep voice had a tactile quality. A little of the cry locked in her throat escaped as a small mewling sound; she felt the beads of sweat break out across her skin as he bent his head closer.

  She wanted to move but none of her muscles responded to the desperate commands being issued a secret part of her didn’t want them to.

  Her eyes stayed wide and she didn’t move an inch as he fitted his mouth to her own.

  His lips were cool and firm, the pressure light.

  The contact only lasted a moment before he broke it, lifting his face but staying close enough for her to see the gold tips on his eyelashes and the fine lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.

  Breathing hard, each breath a conscious effort, Neve just carried on staring at him. Everything seemed to have slowed—the thud of her heart, the hissing sound of her breath—as she struggled to drag air into her lungs.

  ‘Think of my lips.’

  His voice, dark and textured like bitter chocolate, seemed to come from a long way off.

  His head dipped. ‘My tongue,’ he rasped, beginning to trace the trembling outline of her full upper lip, leaving a tingling damp trail and his taste.

  Neve’s hands tightened into fists as a whimper was dragged from somewhere deep inside her.

  ‘Nothing else exists,’ he whispered in the same insidiously seductive whisper. ‘Just taste and texture, heat and moisture.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ she moaned as his teeth tugged gently at the curve of her lower lip. His breath was warm on her face. She struggled to gather her scattered wits. ‘I think—’

  He pressed a finger to her lips and shook his head. ‘No, do not think, just feel, taste and enjoy. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it—all you need is practice.’

  Staring into his dark eyes and feeling dizzy, she swallowed. ‘This is silly.’ Surreal, silly and probably dangerous; she felt as if she might have a heart attack at any moment. The pounding in her chest was deafening and she could hardly breathe.

  She shuddered as he kissed the corner of her mouth, then he moved along the curve nipping and tasting, tracing it with his tongue.

  She stood there, her eyes half closed, her lashes brushing against the feverish flush along the crest of her cheekbones, feeling the warm currents of sensation sliding through her body growing until the warmth tipped over into a flash fire that made her heat; she was burning up!

  It was dark, delicious torture.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘DON’T stop,’ Neve gasped against his mouth and was rewarded with a hard kiss.

  Supporting her head with his hand, Severo applied the sweet crushing pressure that made bright lights explode behind Neve’s closed eyelids.

  She felt him pull away, but she could still hear him breathing hard; it was difficult to separate the sound from the pounding rush of blood in her ears.

  She shuddered and forced her heavy eyelids open, fighting the enervating weakness that made every movement an effort.

  ‘Well, that was nice while it lasted, but you can’t kiss me all night.’ The glitter of his smoky eyes made her head spin; she shivered as he ran a finger down her cheek and slurred her name.

  Appearing to like the sound of it, he said it again, rolling it over his tongue, making it sound like a caress. There was a fascinated expression on his face as he smoothed back the bright hair from her brow.

  ‘Dio mio,’ he rasped, ‘you have no idea what I can do, cara.’

  Neve shivered, believing implicitly the unspoken promise in his arrogant claim.

  ‘Am I going to find out?’ she whispered, amazed at her own recklessness. A sense of freedom she had never experienced before surged through Neve’s veins. He was right—this wasn’t hurting anyone.

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘Do you do everything else as well as you kiss?’

  He laughed, throwing back his head and revealing the strong brown column of his throat. ‘I haven’t kissed you yet. I’ve not even tasted you.’ But he was
going to and the anticipation of sliding his tongue into that soft sweet heat sent a hard shudder through his body.

  She gazed at his dark face with an expression of rapt fascination—how could any man be that utterly gorgeous? How could any man make her bones ache with need?

  Maybe it was just this one?

  Her heart was thudding so loud that she could hardly hear herself as she whispered, ‘What was that if it wasn’t a kiss?’

  He smiled against her mouth, rubbing the side of his nose against hers as he tugged at her full pink under lip with his teeth. ‘Foreplay.’

  A gush of molten anticipation slid through Neve’s body as his dark head dipped. Her lips parted; the submissive symbolism of the gesture drew a deep feral groan from Severo.

  ‘Dio, but you taste so good…’

  Neve did not understand the rest of his husky words as he slid seamlessly into his native tongue, but the repetitive stabbing incursion of his tongue as he explored the warm recesses of her mouth needed no translation.

  She kissed him back with a blind desperation that was beyond anything she had imagined. Incapable of resisting and not wanting to, she gave into the primal heat coursing through her blood and met his tongue with her own.

  Then, when it wasn’t enough, with a driven moan she grabbed his head, sliding her fingers into the thick lush pelt of his hair.

  He responded, kissing her with bruising pressure that arched her spine backwards. The heat flared white-hot between them as they kissed, not gently, but with a mutual desperation that left no room for conscious thought.

  When they finally broke apart they were both gasping for air.

  If he let her go Neve was sure she would slide to the floor. ‘Don’t let me go. I don’t think I can stand up.’

  He gave a smile that made her heart flip, trailed a kiss with slow, sensuous deliberation down the curve of her graceful neck and promised, ‘I’m not going to let you go. Just hold on tight.’

  Their eyes clashed luminous blue on hot black and she nodded, wanting him so badly that she couldn’t articulate the need that flowed through her and made her throat ache with emotion.