Sins of the Past Read Online Free PDF

instead? Well, if it’s any consolation to your macho pride and your failing judgement about me, I would never have gone to bed with you if I’d known I’d be sleeping with a snake!’
    ‘What did you expect? That I’d be taken in as easily as Marcello? The fact is it is something that we both have to live with. But just for the record … I don’t recall that much sleeping was done.’
    Wings of bright colour suffused her pale cheeks, and she felt decidedly sticky under her silky top.
    Pushing herself disconcertedly to her feet, she crossed the room to put some distance between them, and started making more than a show of measuring the floor area. The red glow of the laser tape measure cut through the space like his brutality had once cut into her young, unsuspecting pride.
    ‘As far as I’m concerned, Damiano, you were just an unfortunate episode in my life.’
    ‘And how many more … fortunate episodes have there been, Riva?’
    ‘That’s none of your damn business!’
    ‘Or should I amend that to profitable?’
    ‘How dare you? You make me sound like …’
    ‘Like what? ‘
    Features contorted with disgust, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. What was he saying? Who did he think he was?
    ‘As you said to me … What was the expression again …? If the cap fits …’
    ‘And as
you
said to me—’ she was striding purposefully back across the room ‘—it doesn’t!’
    He was perched on the edge of the table as she came around the other side, putting the safe shield of her chair between them. She made a show of picking up papers, tidying them up and putting them down again. She wanted to sit down, get on with her work. She wished he would move.
    ‘All right. So it’s an episode we both want to forget. We both had an agenda. You lost. That’s life. But, regardless of our individual motives, I don’t think that either of us can deny that it was a very pleasurable experience.’
    A small strangled sound escaped Riva, and the eyes she fixed on his were wide with disbelief. ‘You’re not for real! If you think I enjoyed it, then your ego’s even bigger than I imagined it was. If you want the truth, the whole experience just made me sick!’
    She wanted her stapler, which was on the other side of the table. She had to go around him to retrieve it and did so, giving him a significantly wide berth.
    ‘I’m not a tyrant,
cara,
but if you’re determined to treat me like one then we are not going to have a very satisfactory working relationship. And that’s something I think we’d better put an end to right now.’
    For a brief heart-sinking moment she thought that he was going to call it a day. Report back to the studio that she wasn’t up to the job and get someone else to come in and work on his precious brief. Bitter experience, though, should have warned her about underestimating Damiano D’Amico: men like him didn’t need anyone else to do their dirty work for them.
    Perched, as he still was, on the edge of the table, when she made to move past him he reached out and in one fluid movement caught her by the wrist.
    Her senses leaping, she felt the little blue vein beneath his thumb start to thrum with the blood that was pumping through her, and with sinking dismay knew that he could feel it too.
    ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she murmured, the way her breath shivered through her from this devastating contact with him giving the lie to her trembling statement.
    He smiled without warmth. ‘Good.’ His eyes were glittering like midnight pools in moonlight, so mesmerising that as he pulled her towards him she felt like a heap of pulsing jelly and could only clutch at the fabric of his other sleeve to stave off the feeling of tumbling down and down into their dangerous depths.
    In a voice that was shaking as much as she was, she challenged, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
    His lips moved in a parody of a smile. ‘I always believe in putting my theories into practice,’ he said, his