He closed the gap between them and Freya felt the sudden urge to start clawing at walls again to get away. She backed, one set of tense fingers making contact with cold metal, the other set clinging to his business case as if for dear life.
‘This, then,’ he said and lowered his mouth onto hers.
She should not have let it happen but it did. She hated him, so why did she let him kiss her like this? And he did kiss her, long and slow and so deep her head was swimming even before he leant his hips into hers. She felt the ridge of his arousal and her breathing feathered. His hand came to stroke the hand she had flattened to the lift wall.
It was such a sensuously tantalising gesture that deliberately mimicked an earlier one. He was playing games—sex games—using one of those Enrico Ranieri seduction techniques that could fell a woman without her really understanding how. Then he was moving against her rhythmically with that stroking hand. Luxurious desire just drowned her, heat pooling where he moved against her sending her legs weak.
Another demonstration of his power, she thought hazily. But it just wasn’t fair that he could make her feel like this. It wasn’t fair that every single inch of her was languorous and thick with need.
When Enrico drew away she couldn’t move a muscle. If the lift wall hadn’t been there she’d have fallen down. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was still parted, lips full and moist and pulsing—wanting more.
Bella, he thought. Irresistible. He did not know whether to be pleased by the evidence of how responsive she was to him, or be more convinced that she could not control herself around any man.
He hit the lift button to set it moving, then with grim silent precision tugged the elastic bands from her hair. The surprise sting to her scalp brought her eyes flickering open at the same moment as her hair tumbled down.
Eyes like dark green oceans stared up at him. ‘There,’ he said coolly. ‘Now you look like the woman of Enrico Ranieri, all tousled and love-drugged and eager for me.’
It was the same as the slap of a hand across her cheek. In fact he could not have come up with a better way to pay her back for her earlier slapping of him. He could not have rendered her less able to react because her insides were still churning with pleasure, even if her brain was now functioning again.
He bent to pick up the box as the lift stopped again. Glancing down, Freya was stunned to discover that her fingers still curled around the handle of his business case.
Trained, she thought bleakly. Trained in so many ways three years ago to meet this man’s needs that she’d stepped right back into her old role without knowing she was doing it.
The lift doors slid open on the ground-floor foyer. It was no longer lunch-time or a break-time, so the expanse of white marble was not as busy as it had been the last time she’d been here.
Still, there were enough people there to witness her exit from the building with Enrico’s arm resting possessively along her slender back and his hand intimately curving the indentation of her waist.
Thoroughly kissed, dishevelled and now supported by a man who could not have made a better job of creating the impression he desired.
Freya kept her head down and refused to look at anyone. ‘I…’
‘Hate me, I know,’ he finished for her. ‘But say thanks to the fates for allowing you to wear those unflattering flat shoes today. If you had been wearing stilettos I would be carrying you out of here, you are so weak with desire for this man you hate.’
A black Mercedes saloon was parked at the kerb-side. Enrico opened the rear door for her to precede him inside. Like a fully trained fool she went, moving across the seat so that he could get in beside her, simply assuming that they were to wait in the car until Fredo arrived with her son.
However, the car moved off almost as soon as Enrico had closed the door.
‘But—w-what about Nicky…?’
‘He will travel with Fredo,’ Enrico answered.
‘But you can’t do that!’ Freya straightened jerkily on the seat. ‘How dare you do that?’
She was already twisting around to stare out of the rear window to look for the reassuring sight of another car keeping pace with them.
There wasn’t one—not one of Enrico’s kind, anyway.
It came to her then, the full, battering force of what was actually going on!
‘You’ve stolen my son.’ She turned hot, accusing eyes on Enrico. ‘You’ve stolen him!’
He frowned. ‘Don’t be—’
‘Stop the car,’ she shook out, making a lurching dive for the passenger door, panic erupting like a spewing volcano as her hand closed over the lock. ‘Stop this car so I can get out!’
On a thick curse Enrico was forced to stretch his long body out across the gap between them so he could clamp his hand over her hand to stop her from doing something crazy like diving out of a moving car.
‘I have not stolen him!’ he rasped out. ‘Why would I want to steal my own son?’