Compared to Phebe Pyralis—yes, a cold little voice inside her said.
Her tormented dark eyes fixed on the array of bags and boxes still lying where she’d dropped them by the chair. Her stomach began cramping again when she caught herself listing what was inside them—her carefully chosen bridal outfit aimed at romance because that reflected exactly how she had felt. A pretty dress for Bella aimed to fulfil her daughter’s fairy-tale expectations. An outfit she’d hoped was going to pass Anthony’s critical ideas about what a five-year-old boy would wear to a wedding.
A wedding.
On a clutch of raw hurt she swung her back to Sandro and closed her eyes as they began to sting.
‘Cassie…’
She shook her head to silence him. ‘I want you to leave now,’ she whispered. ‘The twins will be home soon. I would prefer it if you weren’t here when they arrive.’
Silence met that, a long, taut, pulsating silence that forced her eyes open and made her turn to look at him. His dark head was back, his squared chin jutted, the whole repertoire of his handsome arrogance etched in gold marble on his face. His eyes were burning. His mouth drawn flat. There wasn’t a bone in his magnificent body that wasn’t stretched and locked. The sheer physical power in his pulsing tension made the room seem to darken and shrink.
‘You’re chucking me out,’ he breathed through his tightly clenched teeth.
‘Wh-what did you expect me to do,’ Cassie countered, ‘just shrug it all off and carry on as we were?’
The way he seemed to vibrate where he stood made her wonder if that was exactly what he expected of her. ‘You believe you can wrench my children from my arms and walk away with them!’
‘M-my children too.’ Wrench from his arms…? ‘And I don’t recall saying I would do that!’
‘It’s what you’re thinking!’ he charged angrily. ‘You want to punish me! You want to dismiss me from your life!’
‘Isn’t that what you did to me six years ago?’
As if she’d struck him right below the belt, Sandro reeled on his heels and swung away from her. As she stood there, watching him bunch and flex his impressive shoulder muscles, Cassie wished that she had! She wished he would drop into one of his blackouts so she could just…step over him and walk out!
‘Just go, Sandro.’ She spun away again. ‘I can’t cope with any more from you right now.’
Her hand jerked up to cover her mouth again. She was a mess. Her insides were a mess, trembling and fluttering, her limbs were shaking, her heart grabbing only the occasional thick beat.
Behind her another thick, brooding silence began to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere. In front of her she watched as the first spots of rain hit the window. The skies had darkened while they’d been fighting, bringing a two-week Indian summer to an abrupt ending. Now the twins will get wet, was the one hazy thought to enter her head.
A sound of sudden movement behind her made her tense sharply and turn. Sandro was closing the gap between them, and she did not like the look on his face as he did. Acting on pure impulse, Cassie made a dive for cover behind the sofa because something in him had changed—his mood had changed.
Electric sensation fizzed up through her blood. ‘Don’t you dare come near me!’ she choked out.
As if the sofa was going to stop him, she mocked her mode of defence when all he did was grab hold of it and shift it out of his path, forcing her backwards until her shoulders hit the wall behind.
‘Wh-wh-what do you think you’re doing?’ Her clenched hands jerked up to push at his chest when he just kept on coming, making her slender arms bend until her fists were crushed between her breasts and his rock-solid chest. She’d never known him behave so physically threateningly, never seen that strange, burning look in his eyes. She wondered if she should be scared, but she wasn’t scared, she was—
‘I am about to check if you can cope with any more from me,’ he teethed out, then speared his long fingers into her hair and used them to tilt back her head.
Her tear-spiked eyelashes trembled and her breathing feathered as the full, unfair, determined beauty of him swam close. ‘I don’t want—’
The rest was lost—stolen from her by the marauding pressure of his mouth and the pillaging invasion of his tongue. Her defences tumbled like poorly constructed blocks. Her clenched fingers straightened out then clutched at his shirt. Her limbs turned to liquid. Her wretched, traitorous body filled with desire. He explored her mouth with a sensual expertise that won her hungry response. It just wasn’t fair, she thought helplessly as his grimly determined seduction spilled over into mindless passion and she gave herself up to it.
When he finally eased the agony of it and lifted his head to look into her dazed, glazed eyes, his soft and taunting, ‘You can cope, cara. You can cope with a hell of a lot more from me,’ made her cringe in shame.
Releasing his grip on her, he turned away and strode back across the room. ‘I will see you at our wedding venue tomorrow at eleven-thirty.’ He even calmly straightened the sofa as he went. ‘Don’t be late.’
‘I won’t be there.’ Cassie’s arms were back like bands around her shaking body.
‘You will be there,’ he countered. ‘You cannot afford not to turn up.’
Catching her breath, she stared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He’d reached the door by now. A tall, dark, lethal example of male arrogance steeped in unshakable self-confidence. Making the half-turn he required to look at her, ice-shot, inkblack eyes fixed on her pale face, his whole cool attitude and taut, elegant stature declaring that he was firmly back in control here, armed and ready to take on the fight.