Captive in His Castle(18)

Her breath caught in her throat as he trapped her gaze, and she felt his warm breath feather across her lips. Kiss me, she willed him. She wanted him to so badly that she trembled, and her disappointment when he drew his head back from her felt like a knife through her heart.

His eyes darkened, and he gave a ragged laugh as he moved his chair back around the table. ‘Sexual frustration is hell, isn’t it, mia bella? You are driving me insane.’

Thankfully the waiter returned with the wine list and Jess did not have to reply.

The food served at Trattoria Marisa had been excellent as always, Drago mused later as he sipped his coffee. He had declined dessert but Jess had opted for an exotic concoction of chocolate ice-cream and whipped cream, which she had eaten with undisguised enjoyment. Had she any idea how much he was turned on by seeing the tip of her pink tongue lick the last morsel of cream from her spoon? he wondered with wry self-derision.

‘Explain how you were set up to be accused of fraud,’ he said abruptly.

Jess stiffened and gave him a rueful glance. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll believe me.’

‘Try me.’

She sighed. ‘In a way I suppose it started with Daniel dying. He was the closest thing I had to a brother and I missed him terribly. I had to leave the children’s home when I was sixteen. My social worker helped me find a bedsit and I got a job as a waitress in a café.’

She watched a gondola glide along the canal, her expression unknowingly wistful.

‘I was lonely and grieving for Daniel. The highlight of my day was when a handsome businessman would come in to the café for his regular coffee. He would chat to me and ask me how I was, and he sounded as though he really cared. His name was Sebastian Loxley. He told me he had just set up an internet company selling tickets for pop concerts and festivals, and he needed someone to work in the office. I couldn’t believe it when he offered me the job. I was such a naïve fool,’ Jess said bitterly. ‘Seb must have found it so amusing to seduce me. I fell desperately in love with him, and when he invited me out to dinner on my seventeenth birthday and then took me back to his flat—well, let’s just say he didn’t have to try very hard to get me into his bed.’

‘Santa Madre! You were a child,’ Drago said harshly.

She shrugged. ‘Not in legal terms. Unfortunately the law does little to protect vulnerable young adults. At my new job I faithfully followed the instructions I was given by Seb. Every time I took a credit card payment I made a separate record of the card details, including the security code, and passed the information on to Seb’s accountant because apparently it was needed for tax purposes. I didn’t question what I was doing.’

She blushed with embarrassment.

‘I was bullied at school, so I didn’t go very often, and I left without any qualifications. I didn’t understand about credit cards, and I had no idea that Marcus, the so-called accountant, ran an illegal business cloning cards, or that he paid Seb for the information I was passing to him. Eventually the police discovered the cloning scam, but Marcus must have had a tip-off and he disappeared abroad before they could arrest him. The trail led back to Seb’s company and to me.’

Drago swore beneath his breath. ‘Go on,’ he encouraged when Jess hesitated.

‘I was stunned when Seb told the police he was unaware of what I had been doing. I thought he would explain that he had instructed me to pass on the card details, but instead he put all the blame on me. The police believed him and decided that I had been working with Marcus. I was arrested. At the trial, Seb gave evidence against me.’ Her voice shook. ‘I thought he loved me. He’d even said we’d get married one day. But it was all lies. He didn’t care about me. He didn’t even want…’

‘He didn’t want what?’ Drago prompted. He felt a curious pain in his gut when he saw the misery in her eyes. The feisty Jess he had come to know looked crushed. The idea that she had been preyed on by an unscrupulous crook when she had been so young filled him with rage, and a longing to smash his fist into Sebastian Loxley’s face.

Jess shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said dully. Seb’s scathing response when she had told him she was pregnant with his baby was too painful to talk about. She glanced at Drago, searching for some sign that he believed her story, but his hard features were unreadable.

‘What happened after the court case?’

‘I felt I had hit rock-bottom,’ she said huskily. ‘I had no job, nowhere to live, and no self-respect. I met my social worker from the children’s home, and she arranged for me to stay with a couple who’d had experience fostering troubled teenagers.’ A soft smile lit her face. ‘Ted and Margaret were wonderful people. It’s no exaggeration to say that they changed my life. For the first time ever I felt part of a family. Ted ran a decorating business and he took me on as an apprentice. I discovered a natural talent for woodwork, and I went to college and trained in carpentry before Ted took me on as a business partner. The T and J in the company name stands for Ted and Jess.’

Jess broke off as a waiter came up to the table to offer them more coffee. The interruption gave Drago the opportunity to mull over everything she had told him. He did not even question whether he believed her story. The emotion in her voice when she had spoken of how she had been so cruelly betrayed by the man she had loved had been too raw to be an act. But the question of whether or not he trusted her still remained. Until his cousin’s memory returned there was no possibility of discovering if Jess knew what had happened to Angelo’s missing inheritance fund, Drago acknowledged frustratedly.

As they were about to leave the restaurant a gondola drew up alongside the terrace. Like most Venetians, Drago was unimpressed by a mode of transport used almost exclusively by tourists, but after catching the hopeful look in Jess’s eyes he called to the gondolier to assist her into the boat.

Dusk was falling, and the sun was a fiery orb sinking below the horizon, streaking the sky with gold and pink and casting golden shadows on the elegant buildings which lined the canal.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ Jess breathed.

It was also incredibly romantic, sitting beside Drago in the gondola, but it was doubtful he thought so, she acknowledged ruefully. He had given no indication that he believed she had unwittingly been involved in the fraud scam when she had worked for Seb. She wondered why she cared about his opinion of her. She wasn’t dishonest, and when Angelo regained his memory he would explain what he had done with his inheritance fund and Drago would realise he had misjudged her. But what if Angelo never recovered from his amnesia? she thought anxiously. The truth about his missing money might never be uncovered and Drago would always think the worst of her.

He could not force her to stay in Venice for ever, she reminded herself. But in order to return to England she would first have to organise a new passport, and to do that she needed her bank card, which was also in her rucksack at the bottom of the canal. Everything seemed complicated, and sleeping with Drago last night had confused the situation even more. She must have been mad. It was no excuse that her common sense had been obliterated by the firestorm of passion that had ignited between her and Drago. No excuse at all…

She darted him a glance, and her heart missed a beat when her eyes met his brooding gaze. The evening air was cool, and he frowned when he saw her shiver.

‘Here—take this,’ he said as he slipped off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

‘Thank you.’ Was that breathy, seductive whisper really her voice?

The silk lining of the jacket retained the warmth of his body and felt sensuous against her bare arms. She wished it was his arms around her rather than the jacket, and recalled with shocking clarity how wonderful his naked body had felt when he had pulled her beneath him and made love to her. Desperate to banish her traitorous thoughts, she closed her eyes. But images remained of Drago’s bronzed chest, overlaid with the whorls of dark hair that had scraped the sensitive tips of her breasts when he had lowered himself onto her.

‘I still want you, too,’ his deep, gravelly voice whispered in her ear, and his breath feathered her cheek. Her lashes flew open and, startled, she caught her breath when she saw the hunger in his eyes that glittered like polished jet.

‘I don’t…’

‘Yes, cara, you do.’ He captured her denial with his lips and banished it with a kiss that was fiercely passionate yet held an underlying gentleness that was unexpected and utterly beguiling.

Jess lost her battle with herself. The pleasure of having Drago’s mouth move over hers was impossible to resist, and when he traced his tongue over the tight line of her clamped lips she gave a little moan and parted them so that the kiss became intensely erotic.

Lost in the magic he was creating, Jess stared at him helplessly when at last he lifted his head. ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t know what the hell is going on either,’ he told her roughly. ‘This was not meant to happen.’