He stopped. Turned.
Three hundred pairs of eyes watched with unabashed interest as Eva paused several feet from him.
Behind her, her father and sister stood on the steps, wearing similar expressions of dread. Zaccheo wanted them to stew for a while longer, but he found his attention drawn to the woman striding towards him. Her face reflected more defiance than dread. It also held pride and not a small measure of bruised disdain. Zaccheo vowed in that moment to make her regret that latter look, make her take back every single moment she’d thought herself above him.
Swallowing, he looked down at her body.
She held the flimsy wrap around her like armour. As if that would protect her from him. With one ruthless tug, he pulled it away. It fluttered to the ground, revealing her luscious, heart-stopping figure to his gaze. Unable to stem the frantic need crashing through him, he stepped forward and speared his fingers into the wild tumble of her hair.
Another step and she was in his arms.
Where she belonged.
* * *
The small pocket of air Eva had been able to retain in her lungs during her desperate flight after Zaccheo evaporated when he yanked her against him. Her body went from shivering in the crisp January air to furnace-hot within seconds. The fingers in her hair tightened, his other arm sliding around her waist.
Eva wanted to remain unaffected, slam her hands against his chest and remove herself from that dangerous wall of masculinity. But she couldn’t move. So she fought with her words.
‘You may think you’ve won, that you own me, but you don’t,’ she snapped. ‘You never will!’
His eyes gleamed. ‘Such fire. Such determination. You’ve changed, cara mia, I’ll give you that. And yet here you are, barely one minute after I walked out of your father’s study. Mere hours after you promised yourself to another man, here you are, Eva Pennington, ready to promise yourself to me. Ready to become whatever I want you to be.’
Her snigger made his eyes narrow, but she didn’t care. ‘Keep telling yourself that. I look forward to your shock when I prove you wrong.’
That deadly smile she’d first seen in her father’s study reappeared, curling fear through her. It reeked with far too much gratification to kill that unshakeable sensation that she was standing on the edge of a precipice, and that, should she fall, there would be no saving her.
She realised the reason for the smile when he lifted her now bare fingers to his eye level. ‘You’ve proved me right already.’
‘Are you completely sure about that?’ The question was a bold but empty taunt.
The lack of fuss with which Harry had taken back his ring a few minutes ago had been a relief.
She might not have an immediate solution to her family’s problems, but Eva was glad she no longer had to pretend she was half of a sham couple.
Zaccheo brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed her ring finger, stunning her back to reality. Flashes erupted as his actions were recorded, no doubt to be streamed across the fastest mediums available.
Recalling the conversation she’d just had with her father, she tried to pull away. ‘This pound-of-flesh taking isn’t going to last very long, so I suggest you enjoy it while it lasts. I intend to return to my life before midnight—’
Her words dried up when his face closed in a mask of icy fury, and his hands sealed her body even closer to his.
‘Your first lesson is to stop speaking to me as if I’m the hired help. Refraining from doing so will put me in a much calmer frame of mind to deal with you than otherwise,’ he said with unmistakeable warning.
Eva doubted that anyone had dared to speak to Zaccheo Giordano in the way he referred, but she wasn’t about to debate that point with him with three hundred pairs of eyes watching. She was struggling enough to keep upright what with all the turbulent sensations firing through her at his touch. ‘Why, Zaccheo, you sound as if you’ve a great many lessons you intend to dole out...’ She tried to sound bored, but her voice emerged a little too breathless for her liking.
‘Patience, cara mia. You’ll be instructed as and when necessary.’ His gaze dropped to her mouth and her breath lodged in her sternum. ‘For now, I wish the talking to cease.’
He closed the final inch between them and slanted his mouth over hers. The world tilted and shook beneath her feet. Expertly sensual and demanding, he kissed her as if he owned her mouth, as if he owned her whole body. In all her adult years, Eva had never imagined the brush of a beard would infuse her with such spine-tingling sensations. Yet she shivered with fiery delight as Zaccheo’s silky facial hair caressed the corners of her mouth.