Desire, wild, hot and dangerous, took fire. It thickened his blood, ignited nerve endings, brought him to full, rampant arousal. Maybe she was right. Maybe the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
Go back a couple of generations, to the land of his ancestors, a woman would not have dared make a fool of an Orsini as this woman had done this morning.
On a low growl, Dante clasped Gabriella's shoulders, lifted her to him and claimed her mouth.
She fought. It didn't matter. Kissing her, subduing her, taking her was everything.
This morning she had told him what she wanted. Now, it was his turn to tell her what he wanted.
Her. Her, in his bed, again. For as long as he chose to keep her there. He'd never wanted another man's leavings but this-this was different.
He would wipe Ferrantes's possession away. Replace it with his own demands. His own pleasure. Her pleasure, too, because that would happen, she would soften under his touch as she had earlier today, she would moan against his lips, run her hands up his chest, press herself to him, yes, as she was doing now, moving her hips against his, making those sexy little whimpers that could raise the temperature a hundred degrees.
He groaned her name. Slid his hands under her bulky shirt. Cupped her breasts and groaned again at the feel of them in his hands, all warm, sweet silky flesh straining against her bra, filling his palms, the nipples lifting to the caressing sweep of his thumbs.
"Gabriella," he said, his voice urgent, and she wound her arms around his neck, sucked his tongue into the heat of her mouth …
Merda! What in hell was he doing?
Cursing, he pushed her from him. She stumbled back, shoulders hitting the wall, eyes flying open and fixing on his. She looked shocked, on the verge of tears, but he wasn't fooled. He was letting her do it all over again, blinding him to reality, using sex to turn his body on and his brain off as if she were a sorceress and he a fool she could enchant.
But he wasn't.
"Nice," he said, as if he'd been in control all the time. "Very nice. We're going to get along just fine."
"Get out," she said, her voice trembling.
"Come on, sweetheart. Don't take it so hard. And, what the hell, it'll be easier with me than it was with Ferrantes, we both know that."
She swung at him again but he was ready this time. He caught her hand, dragged her against him.
"You said-you said you would give my home to me. No strings, you said."
"That was before I knew you'd already made a deal with good old Andre."
She spat a word at him and he laughed. Turned out, some obscenities sounded pretty much the same whether they were said in the Sicilian of his youth or the Portuguese of hers.
"You think this is amusing?"
Dante lowered his head until his eyes were almost even with hers.
"What I think," he said in a cold whisper, "is that you get to have a choice."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means I'll sell the place to Ferrantes in the blink of an eye."
"He wouldn't pay five million dollars."
"My accountant keeps telling me I can use a couple more nonperforming assets."
Her mouth trembled. Her eyes filled. It was hard not to feel sorry for her. Hard-but not impossible.
"I hate you, Dante Orsini!"
"I guess the question is, who do you hate more? Me or Ferrantes? Of course, you can always turn us both down. Pack up, move out-"
A thin cry drifted into the room. Gabriella stiffened, jerked back in his arms.
"What's that?"
"A … a fox," she said quickly.
She was lying. He could see it in her face. The cry came again. Dante narrowed his eyes.
"A fox in the house?"
"A monkey, then," Gabriella said, rushing the words together. "Sometimes they get into the attic."
The hell it was. You didn't have to grow up in the country to know whatever was making that sound was not a monkey or a fox. Dante thrust her aside and started for the stairs. She ran in front of him and held out her hands.
"Get out of my way," he growled.
"Dante. Please. Just leave. I'll pack tonight. I'll be out by morning. I promise-"
He lifted her as if she were a feather, set her aside, took the stairs two at a time, following what were now steady sobs down a long hall, through an open door, into a softly lit room …
And saw a crib, a blue blanket, a blue teddy bear …
And a baby, kicking its arms and legs and sobbing its heart out.
Dante stopped on a dime. Gabriella rushed past him and lifted the child into her arms. Say something, Dante thought furiously … but no words would come. He didn't seem capable of anything besides looking at her and at the baby.
"Meu querido," she crooned, "dearest one, don't cry!"
The baby's cries changed to sad little hiccups; Gabriella held the small body against her so that the baby's face was against her shoulder. A pair of eyes-pale-blue eyes fringed by long, dark lashes-peered at Dante.
The room filled with silence. After a very long time, Dante cleared his throat.
"Yours?" It was not a brilliant comment but it was all he could think of saying.
Gabriella looked at him. He could read nothing in her face.
"I said, is the child-"
"I heard your question." Her eyes were bright with what he could only assume was defiance.
"Yes. The child is mine."
He felt as if someone had dropped a weight onto his heart.
"Yours," he said thickly. "And Ferrantes's."
Gabriella made a choked sound, neither a laugh or a sob, then lowered her face to the baby's.
Dante stared at her. At the child. He knew he should say something … or maybe he should just smash his fist through the wall.
He did neither. If life lesson number one was that what was over was over, number two was the importance of maintaining self-control.
Dante turned and walked out.
CHAPTER FIVE
HE DROVE like a man possessed by demons, a hot fist of rage twisting in his belly.
That Gabriella should have slept with a pig like Ferrantes, that she'd carried his child in her womb …
Dante slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.
"Come on," he muttered, "come on, dammit!" Couldn't this freaking car go any faster? He couldn't wait to get back to the hotel, toss his stuff in his suitcase and get the hell out of Brazil.
He had to phone his old man eventually, but what would he tell him? That he'd gotten it all wrong, there was no dissolute Viera son inheriting the ranch …
Only a dissolute daughter.
A woman who'd warmed his bed every night for, what, a few weeks? Okay. For three months.
He'd taken her the first night they'd gone out, in an explosion of mutual passion like nothing he'd ever known before, taken her night after night, and the intensity of that passion had never diminished, not even when it had begun a subtle change to something he hadn't been able to define except to know that it made him uncomfortable.
Was that the reason he'd ended their affair?
Not that it mattered. There were more important things to consider.
Like what in hell he was going to do with a ranch.
He'd bought it for a woman who'd never existed, a woman who'd walked away from him and never looked back, who'd gone from his arms to another's without missing a beat, and who gave a damn? God knew, he hadn't been celibate these past months. There'd been a parade of women in and out of his life. So what if there'd been a parade of men in and out of hers?
What mattered now was that he was stuck with five million bucks' worth of absolutely nothing.
He'd been scammed, and scammed good-and now he was the unfortunate owner of a place he didn't want, all his until he could unload it.
Note to self, Dante thought grimly. Phone de Souza. Instruct him to sell the fazenda and never mind the price. Forget how much money he'd lose on the deal. Just find a buyer, he'd say. Any buyer and, yeah, that included Ferrantes. In fact, selling the ranch to Ferrantes was a great idea.
Until he'd shown up, Gabriella had been more than willing to pay the price Ferrantes demanded.
She could damned well go on paying it now.
He wasn't the Sir Galahad type. Sir Stupid, was more like it, a Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Well, that was over. Yeah, definitely, let Ferrantes buy the damned ranch. It was what Gabriella deserved, the perfect payback. Let her spend the next hundred years in the pig's bed. It didn't matter to him. She was just someone he'd been with for a while.
Nothing special. Just like seeing her with another man's kid was nothing special …
A kid with a solemn expression and pale-blue eyes.
Dante cursed and pulled onto the shoulder of the road, put the engine in neutral and sat gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white.