Uncovering the Silveri Secret - By Melanie Milburne Page 0,26

you. You were always ignoring me as if I was just a silly little spoilt brat who was always getting in the way. I wanted to teach you a lesson.'

'You wanted me to notice you,' he said. 'Well, here's the thing, princess - I noticed you. I noticed everything about you. I just didn't follow you around with my tongue hanging out like all of your pimply suitors.'

Her eyes came back to his, the colour still heightened in her cheeks. 'Can we just forget this ever happened?' she asked.

Edoardo let the silence be his answer.

She swallowed a couple of times, an agitated look in her eyes. 'It meant nothing,' she said. 'It was probably just hormones or something. It happens to women as well as men, you know.'

'Lust.'

She gave him an irritated frown. 'Do you have to be so...blunt?'

'No point dressing it up in fancy euphemisms,' he said. 'You've got the hots for me. I'm gagging for you. The thing is, what are we going to do about it?'

'Nothing,' she said, folding her arms even tighter across her chest. 'We're going to do nothing, because it's wrong.'

He gave her a wicked smile. 'I won't tell anyone if you don't.'

She flung herself away. 'I'm going to bed. Goodnight.'

He waited until she was almost out of the door before he spoke. 'If you can't sleep, you know where to find me. I'll be happy to be of service.'

She gave him an arctic blast with her gaze by way of answer and then disappeared.

Bella was still shaking with reaction when she got to her bedroom. She closed the door and wished there was a lock on it. Not for Edoardo, but for herself. She didn't trust herself not to wander down the long corridor to where his bedroom was and take him up on his offer to "service" her.

She groaned in self-recrimination. How could she have been so stupid to get so close to him again? He had danger written all over him; it was like a tattoo on his body only she could see.

His touch had set her flesh alight. She had not been able to control her reaction to him. It had taken over her common sense, her principles and morals.

She had wanted him.

She still wanted him.

The pulse of her blood was still reverberating through her body like a tiny bell struck by a sledgehammer. She could still feel where his long, thick finger had been. If she squeezed her thighs together, she could recreate the delicious sensation of him touching her so boldly, so possessively. And that was just his finger! What if he were to...?

No.

She slammed the brakes on her traitorous imaginings. She could not, would not, go there. He was off-limits for a host of reasons.

He was her enemy.

He only wanted her to prove a point.

She was a trophy he wanted to collect just like a big-game hunter. He would hang her up on his wall of sexual conquests. He would mock her as soon as he had finished with her.

He didn't have a heart. He was not capable of feeling anything for her other than lust.

Bella wrenched herself out of her clothes, tossing them to the floor as she stomped to the en suite. But showering did nothing to quell the aching, pulsing need of her flesh. If anything, it made it worse. She was hyper-aware of her body, of all its nerves and sensations and needs. It was as if her skin had turned itself inside out.

She wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her bedroom, but it was impossible to even think of sleeping. She looked at the bed, and her brain immediately conjured up an image of Edoardo lying there waiting for her. He was so tall he would have taken up most of the mattress. In his arms downstairs she had felt tiny and dainty, feminine and all hot, sensual woman.

She imagined him naked on her bed, his muscled body lean, cut, carved and aroused.

She let out a stiff curse, veered away from the bed and looked out of the window. The moon was high in the sky, casting a silvery glow over the rolling fields. She rested her forehead against the glass of the window and closed her eyes and groaned.

She heard a sound of a door opening and closing downstairs and opened her eyes. She watched as Edoardo took Fergus outside for his last comfort stop. He waited near the parterre garden, his tall figure so still and silent