Bargaining with the Billionaire: The Blackmail Bargain / The Billion-Dollar Bride / How To Marry a Billionaire

A knock on the door startled her. Breath locking in her throat, she froze.

Curt’s voice was coldly forceful. ‘If you don’t open the door, Peta, I’ll break it down.’

‘Come in, then,’ she said, infuriated when her voice quivered in the middle of the defiant challenge.

He’d changed into a T-shirt that showed off his broad shoulders and muscled torso. To her astonishment, he carried a tray. ‘Food,’ he said. ‘Eat it.’

‘Or you’ll force-feed me?’

‘Something like that,’ he agreed.

She could imagine him doing just that. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said dully.

‘Possibly not, but you’re upset, and going to bed on an empty stomach won’t get you a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’re going out on a friend’s yacht so you’ll need to be alert.’

She bit her lip, but her stomach betrayed her, reacting to the delectable scent of food with a beseeching rumble. ‘I’ll eat it when you’ve gone.’

‘I don’t trust you,’ he told her.

She stared at him, met implacable blue-grey eyes, and knew she was beaten. With a ramrod spine, and shoulders held so stiffly they ached, she walked across to the small table in the window where he’d set the tray down.

Clearly it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d hold out. Well, how could she?

Peta lifted the cover from the plate and stared at a dish of scrambled eggs, smooth and creamy and delicate. ‘Did you get your poor housekeeper to do this specially for me?’

‘No.’ He sounded amused. ‘I cooked them.’

‘Pull the other leg,’ she said without thinking.

He grinned and leaned against the wall. ‘I can cook three things,’ he said calmly. ‘Scrambled eggs is one of them.’

The eggs were as delicious as they looked. After the first mouthful had gone down she asked, ‘What are the others?’

‘Steak and chips, and Thai red curry,’ he told her.

She swallowed another mouthful. ‘Why those three in particular?’

‘Because I like them.’

Well, yes, of course. Oddly enough the turmoil in her stomach had eased with the arrival of food. Anna’s reference to her as a peasant popped into her head; she grimaced.

‘Did I get a piece of eggshell in there?’ Curt asked.

‘No,’ she said shortly, glad to be reminded of his perfidy. It astonished her how the simple act of scrambling eggs for her had mellowed her attitude. Clearly she was a pushover.

She said, ‘I assume my main function on the yacht is to hang on your arm and gaze adoringly at you?’

‘My ego doesn’t need stoking quite that badly,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Besides, I don’t want to ruin my reputation for finding both brains and beauty in my lovers.’

Peta had got to her feet and was putting the cover onto the plate. His words startled her into looking up. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said sharply, because of course she didn’t believe him. ‘I’m intelligent enough, I suppose, but I’m not beautiful.’

Curt walked across the room towards her. ‘The first time I saw you I thought you were the most stunning woman I’d seen for years.’

Hands clenched on either side of the tray, she stared at him. His voice had been unemotional, but as he got closer she realised that his eyes were lit by a blue flame. An answering flame burst into life inside her.

She swallowed to ease her dry throat and croaked, ‘I don’t believe that for a moment. I was covered in mud.’

‘And exceedingly disdainful,’ he agreed, removing the tray from her hands and putting it back onto the table. ‘I had to stop myself from kissing that sneer from your lovely mouth.’

‘You were as arrogant as you could possibly be.’

‘As far as I knew, you were my brother-in-law’s lover,’ he pointed out, and kissed her, his hands tangling in the sleek weight of hair at the nape of her neck.

Shivers of erotic delight leapt from nerve end to nerve end. She’d gone rigid, but his mouth melted her resistance so that she sagged into his arms, lifting her face in mute, open invitation, everything banished from her mind but the sheer physical excitement of his touch.

Rapturously she yielded to the fierce demand of his mouth, the iron power of his arms, the hard support of his body as he cradled her against him—to her own craving, a longing infinitely more complex than simple, straightforward lust.

Something different about the quality of the kiss should have alerted her to danger, but she was so lost in pleasure she didn’t notice until it was too late to react.

‘Sweet and fiery and potent,’ he said against her lips, his voice raw and deep.

Heat scored her skin, but she met his hooded gaze unflinchingly, the golden fire that smouldered in the depths of her eyes matching the blue intensity of his.

Raw need beat up inside her, wild and reckless, and for the first time in her life Peta understood how the lightning strike of passion could shatter everything—all common sense, all the strictures that kept you safe. With Curt she didn’t want to be safe—she wanted to follow this white-hot primeval hunger to wherever it took her.

Curt touched his lips to the corner of her mouth in a kiss as soft as it was sensuous, then gently bit the side of her throat.

Peta’s heart filled her body with erotic drumming.

When she gasped his name he said, ‘You’ve got such a lazy, throaty voice, a summer voice, and then you look at me and I see storms and a desperation that almost matches mine.’

His words seemed to come from far away, and she thrilled to the authentic note of need in them, stark and carnal and consuming.

Hunger beat up through her, so ferocious she could taste it in her mouth, feel it stabbing through every cell in her body.

‘I know,’ she said, and something in her snapped.

Or perhaps it slotted into place and she knew her mind for the first time in her life. Even if this was wrong—if Curt was lying to her—she wanted him. For once she was going to emerge from the safe blandness of the life she’d constructed so carefully, and follow her questing heart wherever it led her.

So when his hand slid beneath her robe, she reciprocated with fingers splayed across his shirt. But she could only clench her hand on the thin material because her whole body tensed unbearably while he stroked gently, knowledgeably towards the tightly beaded centre of her breast.

‘Are you sure?’ His voice was guttural.

‘Absolutely.’

Curt forced himself to examine her face, trying not to swear because her tentative caress had shredded his control. She’d said the single word like a vow, her eyes blazing, her head held high and her mouth—oh, God, her mouth—firm, for all its lush promise.

He had to fight down the reckless urge to grab her, fling her on the bed and sink into her, lose himself in her sweet fire. Clenching his jaw against stark desire, he let his hand fall. ‘I can stop now; soon I won’t be able to.’