Page 49 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

‘All right, then. Let’s get down to basics: stay until you get bored with screwing me.’

‘Or you get bored with screwing me,’ she returned, struggling to match his flippancy, and refusing to be fazed by the crudity.

The reality was she was shamefully aroused. She shifted her weight casually from one foot to the other, but it did nothing to relieve the ache between her legs.

A voice in her head was telling her that the time was fast approaching when she would not be able to disguise her emerging feelings. She took a deep breath. She just had to stay in control and enjoy every moment, savour them to think back on when she left.

‘I think we have some time to go before that happens,’ he said drily. ‘Sex with you is the best sex I have ever experienced. I love it that you can blush after what we did last night. You have nothing to compare last night with, but let me tell you I have. And we’re great in bed together. Or,’ he added, with a wicked devil-on-steroids grin, ‘just about anywhere. We could actually do it in all the rooms in the building. Have you been in the attics? It’s a rabbit warren. But I draw a line at the cellars—they’re creepy,’ he admitted, his eyes dancing.

‘Theo!’ she gasped, thinking of all the rooms in the palazzo and getting hot and bothered.

‘Grace...’ he mocked. ‘You’re going to say yes—we both know it. You want me now, don’t you?’ he purred. ‘You like it when I talk dirty...’

She said yes.

Luca Ferrara was one of Theo’s oldest friends and also a bestselling author. Theo, it seemed, had introduced him to his wife, the American actress Sophia Halton.

The photogenic pair were so famous that they were known by a joint name:Luphia.

Tonight was to be a small ‘intimate’ gathering of a hundred or so of their ‘closest’ friends—their inner circle—to celebrate the actress’s birthday. Sophia, who really did have everything, had requested donations to her favourite worthy cause rather than gifts.

The security was to be very tight. But although there would be no press or cameras allowed inside, the couple were allowing selected press to take photos of their guests arriving and leaving.

Mobile phones would be left at the door.

A big announcement was rumoured, and speculation had reached fever pitch that it would be the news of an imminent birth. It was no secret that the couple had been trying for a baby for years, and had been through several rounds of IVF with no good news at the end. So maybe Sophia didn’t have it all?

Grace was one of the few people who knew the truth.

The announcementwasabout a baby—or rather two—and they were eighteen months old, twins, one born with a learning disability. The adoption had gone through the previous month, and the couple wanted to announce how happy they were with their new family.

All the pleasure Grace had felt when Theo had shared the secret with her had vanished when he had returned later that day specifically to remind her that the information was confidential, and his friends were relying on discretion from the few in the know.

As if he thought she was about to blab on social media!

She had swallowed the hurt, held her tongue, and despised herself for the careful restraint she displayed as she told him she understood. Which was true. She understood that Theo didn’t really trust her, and this wasn’t the first time the issue had shown itself in other ways over the past month.

Not big things, but they had a cumulative effect.

There’d been occasions when he had closed his laptop to prevent her seeing the screen when she walked into room, and she’d pretended not to notice. He could vanish for twenty-four hours without any explanation, and it never seemed to occur to him that she might want to know where he was—or maybe it did, and his not telling her was his way of saying that she didn’t have the right to know.

She might be seeing things that weren’t there, but if he didn’t communicate what else could she do? It made it incredibly difficult to develop a really intimate connection—but maybe that was the point. He didn’t want intimacy outside the bedroom, and she—

Grace had stopped fighting the knowledge that she had fallen in love with him and had decided to simply live in the moment and deal with the inevitable pain when it arrived.

Tonight, the future did not lie heavy on her mind. Tonight it was occupied with big things, like whether to wear her hair up or down...

The decision was delayed when her mobile phone rang.

Glancing at the caller ID, she answered.

Her sister Hope got straight to the point. ‘Is it true that you have been invited to the Luphia birthday bash?’

The jealous indignation in her sister’s voice brought home to Grace just what a big deal it was, and sent her stomach muscles nervously fluttering all over again.

‘Hardly abash...it’s just a meal. Salvatore left their charity a sizeable bequest in his will. I think it’s a sort of thank-you,’ Grace said, attempting to downplay the entire event, and mostly her part in it.

Her sister allowed herself to be mollified, and spent the next five minutes lecturing her sister on what to wear and how to behave at such an event.

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