‘You could be lying…’ he drawled, his eyes narrowing in suspicion at her carefully controlled voice.
‘You expected me to preserve the evidence?’ she mocked with crude sarcasm.
He didn’t like to hear it from her. The sudden black flash of disapproval in his eyes told her that he didn’t like it. ‘Don’t talk like that,’ he said grimly. ‘It degrades you.’
She swung round. ‘And you think it isn’t degrading to have my word questioned as you just did?’ she threw back.
His mouth closed tight, his face with it. ‘So you want to leave,’ he said quietly after a moment.
She nodded. Mute. Determined.
He let out a short sigh. ‘We have something good going for us here, Angelica, if you could try to show me a little trust.’
Trust. There was that word again—trust.
‘And what is there to trust exactly?’ she derided. ‘When none of this has been real?’
‘It’s been real enough!’ he countered. ‘This is real!’ Stepping forward, he reached out to grab hold of her hand and tugged it out in front of them both so that the band of gold on her finger glinted in the sunlight. ‘We made solemn vows to each other and signed a legal document to make it real!’
‘I’m not talking legally, I’m talking personally!’ Angrily she snatched back the hand, clenching her fingers over the ring that was to her only a sham, like the vows they shared and the document they’d signed. ‘You—me—actually meaning those vows we said to each other! That wasn’t real!’ Her tight mouth quivered. ‘Yet we both had the gall to behave as if they were.’
‘We like making love to each other,’ he pointed out.
She sighed, but didn’t deny it. He was right, after all—they did like making love. Revelled in each other, in fact. Drowned in each other.
‘We like being with each other. We like talking together and laughing together—or even fighting together as we are doing now!’
‘I’m not the one fighting here!’ she denied vehemently. ‘All I’m trying to do is get packed to go home! I hate all this fighting we do,’ she added as a muttered aside.
To her utter annoyance he laughed! ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘You love it. It excites you. Just the same as it excites me to fight with you.’
‘Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?’ she gasped in choking indignation.
‘I am not joking,’ he denied. ‘I tell you—’ His hands slapped a brazen gesture on the top of his thighs. ‘No joke,’ he claimed, drawing her angry eyes downwards.
And dark heat rumbled into her face when she saw what was happening to him. ‘You’re disgusting,’ she snapped, looking angrily away.
‘I am a man,’ he replied, as if that made everything acceptable.
‘And an arrogant one.’
‘I do not deny it.’ He shrugged. ‘But then,’ he added silkily, ‘I am not the one denying anything here.’
‘Why don’t you go to hell?’ she flashed, for want of a better answer to that.
‘What—again?’
Her insides jumped, blue eyes flickering warily upwards to catch the way that those sleek black brows of his had arched in a gesture of mocking knowledge. So he too had seen that last sexual battle they’d fought as a visit to hell, she realised with a sudden flutter of alarm as he began to walk towards her.
‘How nice of you to offer,’ he went on silkily. ‘Thank you, I think I will…’
And she began backing. ‘Don’t you come near me!’ she choked, her heart pumping dangerously fast, hands held out in front of her as if to ward off the devil.
He reached the hands; they flattened against his rocksolid chest. Eyes narrowed and glinting bright green with intention, he herded her backwards like a piece of cattle until her back made thudding contact with the wall. And still he kept on coming, until her braced arms buckled beneath the strain and his body was making full and dangerous contact with her own. In all her life she had never felt so intimidated—or so exhilarated!
‘No!’ she gasped out breathlessly. ‘Please, César! Don’t!’
Too late, his dark head was already lowering, his mouth hot as it made contact with hers. She could feel his heart pumping beneath her spread palms, could feel the warmth of his body, the powerful muscles, felt his tongue run in a moist, sensual slide across her tightly clamped lips.