The Gold Collection: Bedded By A Billionaire: Santiago's Command / The Thorn in His Side / Stranded, Seduced...Pregnant

Her eyes widened—so he didn’t know.

He saw her reaction and gave a thin smile. ‘Another language you speak fluently … money.’

It occurred to Lucy as she sucked in a breath that she had played her part a bit too well—he was looking at her with a level of loathing that she struggled to be objective about.

‘And did it work?’ she wondered, hiding the stab of irrational hurt that threatened to make her well up behind her amused smile. The opinion of a self-righteous jerk, she reminded herself, was no reason to feel bad. In fact the time to worry was when a man like him started approving of you.

‘No, there is no extra money on the table—there is no money.’

She pursed her lips into a pout and took what she hoped came across as a fearless step towards him. Thrusting one hip out, she planted her hands on her thighs and fixed him with a smile that deepened as she heard the distinct sound of his teeth grinding.

‘Pity … still, sometimes the satisfaction of a job well done is reward in itself.’

‘I have no idea if some bad experience turned you poisonous or if you were just born that way because, to be frank, the nature-nurture argument does not interest me.’

Inside seething, Lucy adopted an air of amused interest, watching the muscles along his strong jawline ripple.

‘And I can take anything you can throw at me.’ Brave words, or should that be reckless? Lucy just hoped they would not come back to bite her.

‘We’ll see, shall we …?’

Sheer stubbornness made her retain eye contact. It saved running the risk of not being able to look away. His black stare had a disturbingly hypnotic quality.

Her pounding heart drowned out the lonely cry of a hunting owl overhead. The atmosphere was suddenly thicker than the thick emerald-green moss that grew along the riverbank, the moss her heels had sunk into as she’d walked to the bridge … Lucy felt as though she were sinking now. She swallowed past the constriction in her throat and, doing her best to look amused, met his black stare. He probably got some sadistic kick from seeing people squirm. No, she thought, there was no ‘probably’ about it.

She was aware that anything she said now might be construed as a challenge … and he was obviously a man who could not resist any opportunity to prove himself superior. He was pathetic, she told herself, though actually pathetic was about the most inappropriate term imaginable to describe the man standing there. He oozed a raw masculinity. There was something raw and elemental about him that made her traitorous heart skip a beat and her mouth dry and her knees weak.

A lot of other things were going on that she didn’t even want to think about right now. Deep breaths, Lucy … deep breaths.

He held her eyes with a steady stare and watched the colour in her face fluctuate. Her skin fascinated him, so creamy he wanted to feel it to see if it felt as soft and satiny as it looked. He wanted to feel her naked underneath him. He had wanted it from the moment he had set eyes on her and, damn her, she had known it.

His chest swelled. He had never wanted a woman this much in his life, so badly that he could taste it. He wanted to taste her so badly that … He embraced his anger just to stay in control.

Lucy sucked in a deep, wrathful breath and blurted, ‘You are one manipulative—’

He moved so fast that it seemed that one moment he was standing several feet away, the next he was beside her with his finger poised a whisper away from her parted lips. She felt the pressure building inside and felt totally helpless to do anything about it.

‘Think very carefully before you continue, Lucy. I am not my brother and I am not in the habit of turning the other cheek.’

‘You mean you haven’t mastered meek—imagine my amazement,’ she drawled, slapping his hand away and taking a shaky step back.

Her heart was beating so hard it felt it might explode from her chest; the simple act of drawing air into her lungs required conscious effort … The musky scent of his warm skin lingered tantalisingly in her quivering nostrils.

He laughed. The sound was not unattractive; actually nothing was unattractive about him but his personality.

‘Whereas you have.’

She gritted her teeth in response to the silky sarcasm of his retort and wrapped her arms around herself.

His brow furrowed as he watched her shiver. ‘You’re cold.’

He faked solicitude well, but Lucy recognised this new tactic for what it was—an attempt to soften her up. She knew that she was not the sort of woman who brought out the protective instincts in the opposite sex. She was not small or delicate and she did not consider this a bad thing. She had never envied the fragile little creatures that made men feel macho and strong.

‘Look on the bright side—I might get pneumonia and die. Problem solved.’

A spasm of impatience tightened the hard contours of his jaw. ‘Do not be stupid.’ But she wasn’t, anything but; the evening had proved that he had underestimated Miss Lucy Fitzgerald.

For ‘stupid’ Lucy translated ‘anyone who didn’t act as though his every word was engraved in stone’. She watched as he began to shrug off his jacket. The shirt he wore underneath was white with a subtle silver stripe and in the moonlight it was possible to see the lean shape of his body beneath it as he held out the jacket towards her.

She lowered her gaze but not before her insides had dissolved.

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

His face was in darkness now, but bands of moonlight fell across his body. ‘You find old-fashioned courtesy amusing.’ His hand smoothed the contrasting silk lining of the jacket he had shrugged off.

‘In the light of the fact you’ve spent the entire evening being as rude as hell to me … yes, actually, I do!’

Lucy planted her hands on her hips, her breasts under the red silk heaving as she glared up at him. ‘You know something—I feel sorry for you!’

‘Is that a fact?’ he drawled, sounding bored. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope you are not going to tell me why I am an object of pity in your eyes?’

‘Because people like you—’

‘People like me?’

‘Sorry, I forgot, there are no people like you—you’re special,’ she drawled, sketching speech marks in the air. Her mocking smile faded as she added in a voice that shook with contempt, ‘But actually you’re not. Living in a castle and having pots of money makes you lucky—not special.’

‘And you were born on the wrong side of the tracks forced to live off your wits? I don’t think so,’ he drawled.

Lucy blinked, but recovered quickly. ‘I don’t live in a castle.’

‘And the Fitzgeralds are paupers, I suppose?’

Her blue gaze grew frosty. ‘Leave my family out of this,’ she warned fiercely.

This display of protectiveness struck him as ironic. ‘Like you did? Did it ever occur to you to consider how your actions would affect them? How do you think they feel when they see you use your body and beauty as a weapon?’

Lucy laughed, finding the accusation particularly ironic when she was standing here struggling to control her breathing. If only!

‘What can I say? I’m a shallow and superficial person.’

‘You’re …’ He lunged without warning and grabbed her by the waist, the other hand went to the nape of her neck, his fingers pushing into her hair as he pulled her into him.

Panic made her struggle but then his mouth was on hers and her resistance melted, she melted; the arm banded around her narrow waist took her weight as she went limp.

He sank his teeth into the plump fullness of her lower lip, sighing as she moaned. The heat of his body penetrated the silk of her dress … nothing she was feeling was like anything she had experienced before.

‘I really want to taste you.’