Sins of the Past Read Online Free PDF Page B

long ebony lashes coming down as those disturbing eyes dropped to the fullness of her trembling mouth, and before she could find her voice to demand what those theories were his face went out of focus and that mocking mouth was suddenly claiming hers.
    He was still leaning against the table and, caught between his legs, she felt her senses start to reel from the warmth of his powerful thighs, from the movement of muscle beneath the quality cloth of his jacket, and from the hard insistence of his deepening kiss.
    She had to stop this! Some smothered sense of reason tried to warn her that all he was doing was trying to humiliate her, make her pay for what she had just said to him, trying to cut her down to size.
    As his arms tightened around her, though, her body paid no heed to the warning, letting her down as every galvanised cell leaped in recognition of his masculinity.
    Her mouth widening beneath his, she gave a defeated little sound, the hands that had come up to grasp his shoulders nowmoving of their own volition to plunder the dark, damp hair at the nape of his neck.
    Pulled closer against his hard, lean length, Riva gasped from the magnitude of her crazy response to him, sensations multiplying like locusts at the irrational thrill of this man’s lips and hands that had once turned her into a woman with their skill and their expertise, this man who had been her first lover—and her last!
    Rigid with a sexual tension she couldn’t believe she was feeling, she heard a small voice inside her surface, to remind her of just how and why he had scarred her for any other man with his mind-blowing seduction before the cruel and devastating realisation that he had only been using her.
    With a bitter little sob she wrenched herself away from him, and through gritted teeth managed to grind out, ‘You conceited oaf!’
    Though he had allowed her some merciful space, his hands were still gripping her shoulders. ‘Deny it all you like,’ he said, his strong features flushed, his breathing laboured. ‘But we both know that your body is in conflict with that scheming little brain of yours, don’t we? I might have exposed you and your mother for what you were, but there’s much more to your venomous feeling for me than that, isn’t there, Riva? You don’t like me,
cara,
because of how I made you feel, because I reduced you to a whimpering mass of sensuality just begging me to take her, which didn’t quite fit in with your plans to bring
me
to my knees and have me as putty in your greedy little hands.’
    Which was what he had to keep reminding himself of, Damiano thought savagely, thrusting her away from him because—
mamma mia!
—it had only taken one kiss to convince him of how much he still wanted her. Even now the ache in his loins was so acute that it hurt.
    ‘Believe that if you want to,’ Riva retorted in a small, shaky voice, all the fight gone out of her after the shocking wayshe had responded to him—a man she hated, and with just cause!
    Trembling from her response, and unsteadied by the way he had so brutally released her, she clutched at the table behind her, breathing deeply to try and regain some composure, staring at the broad span of his impeccably clad back.
    It was no good reminding him of how his interference in her mother’s affairs had indirectly caused the woman’s death. She didn’t even dare to goad him with that now.
    He was angry—really angry—but there was something else, Riva realised. Something that had made him swing away from her, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. As though he were weary of the constant battle he was fighting with her. Or was it some sort of battle with himself?
    Pulling herself up to her full height, which didn’t seem to make a scrap of difference against his dominating six feet plus, surprisingly she found herself saying, ‘If you’ve finished humiliating me, I’ve mapped out a few ideas on the computer that you might like to see.’
    He was