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He felt a kick in his stomach Her mouth simply made hi his own mouth down…

‘You like?’

It was Olivia’s deliberately arch, openly teasing voice that brought him back But only nised,from her face to drink in the rest of her She was as slender from the front as the back—not scrawny Dio, how could he have thought her scrawny? She was like a , pliant and graceful The simple, superbly cut line of her shift delineated each breast, not full, but high and softly rounded…

He could not take his eyes off her

And she was staring back at hi with that same expression of stunned disbelief as his He wondered why Then he stopped wondering and went back to working his eyes down her slender body, right down her gazelle-like legs and then back up to her face again

Absently he felt a slight kiss brush against his cheek, heard a soft, ‘Ciao, Rafaello—enjoy…’ as Olivia slipped past him, but he paid no attention

‘Magda?’ His voice husked, as if it were not working quite properly

She bit her lip, and with that faesture he suddenly accepted that this really, truly was the poor dab of a creature he’d so arrogantly made use of for his own self-obsessed ends and treated with total indifference as a god-sent tool, ideal for his single purpose—to confound his father

Emotions warred within him Some familiar, some completely new Up to now, the best emotion he’d been able to come up with for her had been pity—a sort of careless, almost contemptuous pity for so unlovely and wretched a uilt that he’d exposed her to the vituperation of his father, his lashing out at her, forcing a knowledge upon her that had been vicious in its cruelty

He had never meant her to realise why he had chosen her Never meant her to have that cruel truth thrown at her

The twist in his guts caain

You thought that you could just pay her, and she’d put up and shut up

Well, he knew better now His father had held ahis own litany of condemnation echoed by his father had made him realise, horribly, for the first time, just how callous he had been