Claimed by the Sicilian Tycoon Read Online Free PDF Page A

pants and running her nails along it. A moment later and
he’d run his fingers along her arousal and then they’d…
    Lyra
inhaled shakily. She couldn’t afford to think along those lines yet, because it wasn’t game, set, and match already.
She’d moved her first pawn was all, and he’d moved two. There was a long way to
go before she brought her queen into play.
    Keep your head in the game!
    “Dinner,
I think,” she said after a moment, reaching out, and picking up her little
clutch purse. It didn’t escape her notice that her hands were a mite shaky.
“I’m hungry.”
    “And
by dinner do you mean the two of us?” he asked.
    She
smiled, her heart thudding. Stay cool. Make
him work . “I don’t know, Andros. I planned to get something to eat, but if
you’re asking if you can come along then by all means.”
    He
reached out, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. They were warm, strong, and
the contact made her feel ever so slightly off balance. She looked up and met
his gaze. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth a hard line. He wasn’t happy, she
realized in a flash. The fact that she knew who he was, that she’d done
something to the register, that she was playing him, and making him play with
her…he did not like it.
    But
then she’d factored that into her behavior. Andros Casstellini was a man who
controlled everything around him. In order to put him in the position she
wanted, she had to tilt him off
balance. It was the only way this plan of hers was going to work.
      “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice
low and harsh.
    She
looked him square in the eye, not giving an inch. “You know exactly what.”
    Silence
held between them for a moment, and Lyra felt her chest tighten. Would he take
the bait? Had she pushed and played enough? Finally he spoke, and when he did
the tightness eased, replaced instead by a tingling excitement.
    “We’ll
go to Junction Twenty ,” he said. “It
is not far from here. Get your coat.”
     

 
    Chapter Four
     
    Andros
couldn’t remember the last time he’d let a woman pick him up. Not since he was
very young, surely. He’d learned early that he liked to be in control of his
relationships, to be the one making the decisions and pushing the buttons, but
tonight? He scowled as he settled into his seat. Tonight he had let himself get picked up, because what
else could this be? There was no doubt in his mind exactly what the lady in red
was after.
    “I’ve
never been here before.”
    He
looked across the table to where Lyra was making herself comfortable. She’d
placed her small bag on the table, twitched her napkin a little, and was now
smiling up at him. She’d smiled in the car too, sat next to him as they were
driven to the restaurant, a secret little smile playing around her lips the
entire time.
    He’d
wanted to question her immediately. To ask her what the hell she was up to,
only there was no need, was there? He knew, she knew, and it almost had a
surreal feel to it. So he’d sat, just looking at her, the tension in the car
rising every second. She’d carried on smiling, like she wasn’t as aware of it
as him, like it wasn’t wrapping its tendrils around them both.
    A
few moments later and they had arrived. Cool air had flooded them both,
clearing the tension a little, giving him a moment to think.
    It
had not helped at all.  
    “It’s
very pretty,” she added. “Very intimate.”
    Intimate . Andros
shifted in his seat. The way her mouth formed the word, the sound of it leaving
those lips…
    He
shifted some more, his heart beating a little faster than it had been. She was
so fucking beautiful. He was almost a little baffled by it, and that worried
him. He’d had many beautiful women over the years, and yet none came close to
her.
    He
looked carefully at her face, trying to work out what it was in particular that
had him throwing caution to the winds—ditching meetings to have dinner with
her, ignoring the fact, for the moment at