Castellano's Mistress of Revenge. Melanie Milburne
destroying him. How could she have not seen it? It had been a masterful set-up and she had stepped up to the noose without suspecting a thing until it was too late. How could she tell him how blind she had been? He would think she was trying to wriggle out of what she had done by playing the innocent victim. ‘It wouldn’t matter what I said. You’re never going to believe me, are you?’ she said.
His jaw ticked. ‘I am not going to let you make a fool of me again,’ he said. ‘This time around I will have my eyes trained on you at all times and in all places.’
Ava stiffened. ‘What does that mean? Are you’re going to have me followed?’
His expression was inscrutable. ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Let’s say I am taking the necessary steps to keep what is mine exclusively mine this time around.’
She glared at him. ‘Women are not possessions you can own, Marc, or at least not in this century.’
He gave a lift of one shoulder as if he couldn’t care less what she thought. ‘If you are not going to eat then you can watch me, as I am starving,’ he said, signalling for the waiter.
‘No doubt all the machinations you’ve been engineering have worked up quite some appetite,’ she put in spitefully.
His eyes glinted as he laid the menu to one side. ‘Not just for food, ma belle,’ he said. ‘I have other appetites that require satiation, but I am prepared to delay gratification, for a little while at least.’
Ava narrowed her eyes in wariness. ‘What do you mean by that?’
He gave her an enigmatic slant of his lips that was almost a smile. ‘You think I am such an animal that I would insist on you sleeping with me from day one?’
She pursed her mouth, thinking about it for a moment. ‘You’re paying me a lot of money,’ she said at last. ‘I am not sure why you would want to wait on your return on it unless you have a specific agenda in mind.’
‘I have no agenda other than the one I stated earlier,’ he said. ‘I want you to be my temporary mistress. It’s as simple as that.’
The waiter approached, which meant Ava had no chance to respond. She gave the man her simple order, while her mind shuffled through various scenarios.
Marc was a proud and bitter man who wanted revenge for the way she had supposedly betrayed him. He had gone to extraordinary lengths to get her back into his life, but it seemed he was not going to rush her into his bed.
Why?
She chewed at her lip as she heard him interact with the waiter, her eyes watching his mouth, the way it moved with each word he articulated. His lips were beautifully sculptured, the lower one fuller than the top one, hinting at the sensuality she had already experienced. Her mouth tingled at the memory of the pressure of his, the way his tongue had played with hers, teasing it, taming it and mating with it until she had melted in his arms.
Marc looked across the table and met her eyes, a hot spurt of lust shooting through his groin as he saw the way her small white teeth were playing with her soft lips. She released her lower lip and the blood flowed back into it, making him want to crush his mouth to hers to taste her beguiling sweetness. Her grey-blue gaze wavered for a moment under the scrutiny of his, her guilt no doubt making her lower it in shame.
His gut twisted with knots of tension as he thought of the photographs in the Press of her wedding to Cole. She had been a beautiful bride; he had never seen a more stunning one, which had somehow made it so much worse. He fisted his hands beneath the table, not trusting himself to hold his wine glass without breaking it. Hardly a day went past when those images didn’t taunt him with her perfidy. What a fool he had been to trust her the way he had. He had thought she was playing a game when she left him. He had bided his time, waiting for her to come crawling back to him, begging him to take her back as his mistress. But instead she had humiliated him in the most devastating way possible.
But he was five years older now, five years wiser and five years more successful and powerful. This time things would be different. Ava McGuire had humiliated him before, but this time around he was going to have her right where he wanted her.
Not with his ring on her finger, not even in the palm of his hand, but in his bed for as long as he wanted her.
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