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don't stop' She was at fever pitch, her entire being concentrated on a razor edge of unbearable need She could feel him, hot and hard and ready, and she couldn't wait, was terrified he ht e she thought she ht die from frustration

He took her like an invading army, ruthless in conquest The sheer power of his first thrust forced a cry of pain from her dry lips but pain became intolerable pleasure within seconds Her hips writhed beneath his as he drove into her in long shuddering strokes, his skin slippery with perspiration against hers She moved to the heated rhythm he set, abandoned and driven by the most intense excitement of all, and then suddenly everywith the ecstasy of fulfil out from the very centre of her body to drain her roan of raw satisfaction Vito subsided on her, spent and satiated Instinctively she wrapped her arms round him and almost instantly drifted off to sleep

When she surfaced, it was like waking up to a living hell Lights were on, harsh and glaring, and the first things she sahen she opened her eyes were the photographs on the cabinet by the bed Carina, s from a silver frame And Carina in Vito's arms, punch-drunk with happiness in one of those inforht have been taken on a honeymoon Ashley's stoone down too fast in a lift She turned away and aze Al a broad shoulder into the jacket of a navy pinstripe suit He looked heartbreakingly handso, he wasn't showing it, and that ability of his to shut everything out tortured her at a moment when she felt sick with self-hatred and hu fiercely against her mind's determination to replay the last few hours It would happen soon enough: the self-examination, the questions that had no welcome answers But not now, the little voice in her head pleaded, not now… in front of him

'I think I should leave' There was no emotion whatsoever in the announcement, except that soet away She pressed her cheek into the pillow 'Can I leave too?' she whispered, and it sounded as if she was begging, and for the first time in her life she really didn't care

'It was inevitable that this would happen' 'You made it happen,' she condemned 'We made it happen,' he countered harshly 'I didn't plan it I intended to wait until after the wedding'

A near-hysterical laugh escaped her and she bit down so hard on her tongue that it bled She never had been able to cope with Vito when he froze, and he wasn't about to let her go Vito's ancestors had been loan sharks since the Middle Ages Soely in his upbringing Vito would take what he wanted froardless of the cost He would pick her apart as he had done over dinner and then fall like a vulture on the pitiful remnants that remained He had done it twice already and the poisonous taste of defeat was s her into pieces

'You should run a little account book, stae every time I-'

'Don't!' he raked at her with sudden rawness 'It wasn't planned!'

'No?' She cast hi herself to face a head-on collision 'Over dinner you smash me up Then you trail me to the opera Then you trail me out of the opera Then you offer me brandy and a little bit of sympathy and then you… and then you… you-'

'Do you think I'ht? Do you think I'm proud that I can't keep le cat about to spring, he flung the de ferocity

'Why don't you throw some money on the bed?' Ashley whispered strickenly 'Isn't that what you do hores?'

'You are not a whore!'

'You said I was,' she persisted stubbornly

Vito flung up both hands in a gesture of raging frustration 'Dio, I was jealous, so jealous that I wouldn't listen to reason I accept now that you ith Tim today and that that stupid bruise wasn't what I assumed it was, but at the time I believed you'd been with another man!'

'And now that reason has returned I've been upgraded, have I? Well, I've got news for you,' she bit out shakily 'I feel like a whore How you feel has got nothing to do with how I feel'

He swore, long and low in his own language, both hands clenched into fists He swung round in a graceful arc and surveyed her with sudden piercing intuition 'You think that if you o I won't,' he said succinctly 'Next e are getting e that fact'

'I think the punishment exceeds the crime'

For an instant he lingered by the door, brilliant dark eyes appraising her incredibly beautiful face His expressive h the view disturbed him… 'But whose is the punishment and whose was the crime?' he breathed tautly

She sluli them, she yanked open the cabinet drawer and dropped them inside Nohy had she done that? She didn't want to think about why Was she jealous? Four years ago she had been so jealous – she had burnt on a rack of her own ain

And now here she was back in Vito's bed once more, involved in a relationship of such tortuous complexity and bitterness that she could hardly cope with her own turmoil Somehoas no consolation to know that Vito's incredibly disciplined intellect was very evidently suffering froenerous as she felt towards him, she really didn't think that he had Vito didn't like messy situations Vito didn't like to lose control

And Ashley didn't like to lose control either Passion had surged in beneath her shaky defences and had betrayed her as never before With Vito, it had always been like that, but in the past it had been a weakness made bearable by love Only she didn't love hiht herself not to love him Month after month, day in, day out, she had reminded herself of his betrayal until bitterness becath and hatred her armour But what had happened to the bitterness and the hatred when she needed them most? Had she been able to withstand that passion and reht now! Vito was far too male to feel any desire to force his attentions on an unwilling woether in self-disgust She had ached for the heated caress of his hands and the hot invasion of his body It had been as if everyin his office, had been building up into exactly this climax In the aftermath she felt sick, mortified by her own abandonment She had wanted him… oh, yes, she had wanted him every bit as much as he appeared to want her, and consequences be damned And as that? She hated him, didn't she? She hated hi to her now

But it didn't seem to make any difference once he touched her She had been upset, she reht her at the worst possible moment and somehow… somehow, she reasoned lamely, all those painful emotions had exploded into passion A passion she had been unable to experience with anyone else She thought of the dates she had forced herself to accept when she had so desperately wanted to feel so so that she could reassure herself that she was still in the land of the living In fact just last year she had le parent with a little girl at the nursery And she had really liked Josh and he had more than liked her, but when it ca hi had flatly refused to turn into love or even desire And then Vito had coht-well, tonight she had gone off the deep end She had thought of nothing, not even consequences And it had been years since she was on the Pill, that low-dosage Pill that had been insufficient to p

revent her pregnancy Just suppose she was like her nant just looking into a pram? No, it wouldn't happen, she couldn't believe it could happen to her a second time, but she didn't intend to take the risk Tomorrow she would see a doctor and ask for a prescription for a contraceptive Pill That would frustrate Vito's plans for the future, and it wasn't as if he could ever find out why she was failing to beconant She would be very discreet

'I just don't think it's fair to spring this onto do with the to do with me!' Ashley vented her nervous tension in a staccato burst

'Don't be ridiculous,' Vito parried with grating i back and forth all the way through an endless traffic ja' Her nails dug into the soft palm of one clenched hand She didn't want to be served up like a particularly nasty surprise to Elena di Cavalieri, who probably hadn't gone to bed dry-eyed for a single night since her son had shattered her with the bombshell of his marital plans And she most certainly didn't want another cheque pressed into her supposedly hot and grasping little hand

'This party was my mother's idea Why should you be hostile to the fact that she wants to welcome you into the family and introduce you to so such a large party at such short notice was no easy matter'

So as she taking the trouble? Ashley thought of that tiny, stunningly lovely woh as old boots She still cringed when she thought of their lastcut to ribbons by deep sincerity tear-filled eyes and the inexplicable sensation that she was somehow unclean