Pete sighed. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘I don’t have one. I?
??m just not interested,’ Ava told him baldly.
‘Are you gay?’ Pete demanded abruptly. ‘I mean, all that time in prison, I suppose you didn’t have much choice …’
Ava lost colour and stiffened. ‘Who told you I was in prison?’
‘Was it meant to be hush-hush? Everybody knows.’
‘It’s not something I talk about,’ Ava retorted curtly, trying not to react to the news that her past was an open secret amongst her co-workers, some of whom had proved quite reluctant to speak to her. The bite of humiliation, the pain of being the oddity and distrusted while people speculated about her crime, cut deep.
‘Who told you?’ another, harsher male voice enquired from the doorway. ‘That was supposed to be confidential information.’
Ava levelled her stunned gaze on Vito. He must have used the stairs because she hadn’t heard the lift. He stood at the door, his gorgeous eyes a brilliant scorching gold, his lean strong face hard as granite as he awaited Pete Langford’s response. Having heard that last crack about Ava being gay, Vito was taut with outrage and simmering fury. He did not understand why he was so furious to find Ava with another man until it occurred to him that after her prison sentence she was probably a sitting duck for such an approach and that as her employer it surely behoved him to ensure that nobody took advantage of her vulnerability. Not that at that precise moment Ava actually looked vulnerable, he conceded abstractedly. Her eyes were sparkling with angry resentment and her slim but undeniably curvy figure was beautifully sculpted in the black pencil skirt and tight-fitting red shirt she wore. Without any warning, another image was superimposed over her: Ava, amazingly elfin cute in a lace corset top, short black leather skirt and clunky boots. Startled, he blinked, but the damage had been done and he was left willing back a surge of arousal.
Pete Langford had turned shaken eyes onto his employer. ‘I don’t remember who first mentioned Ava’s background,’ he mumbled evasively, his former attitude of relaxation evaporating fast below Vito’s intimidating stare. ‘Look, I’d better get back upstairs.’
‘What a good idea,’ Vito pronounced deadpan, his big powerful body taut with silent menace.
As the lift doors closed on Pete’s hurried departure Ava frowned uncertainly. ‘What was that all about?’
‘How long have you been working down here?’ Vito demanded, ignoring the question.
‘Since I finished the Christmas list that day I was in your office,’ Ava admitted.
‘You’ve been working down here a full week? Every day, all day?’
In silence, Ava nodded, entrapped by the aura of vibrant energy he emanated. Her gaze locked to his face, scanning the sinful cheekbones, the bold nose and sensual mouth. Suddenly she didn’t blame herself any more for having a crush on him at the age of sixteen. After all, he turned female heads wherever he went.
‘It must feel like you’re back in a cell!’ Vito ground out grimly, scanning the bare comfortless lines of the big room with angry dissatisfaction.
‘It’s work and I’m grateful to have a job,’ Ava countered quietly. ‘And if you think this place reminds me of prison, you have no concept of what prison life is like.’
‘Putting you down here was not my idea,’ Vito informed her grimly.
‘I didn’t think it was. You’re not petty but you did want me out from under your feet and I am literally fulfilling that function here,’ she pointed out, dimples appearing as she shot him an irreverent grin.
And that grin lit up her heart-shaped face like the dawn light. She was beautiful. Why had he never realised that before? The fine-boned fragility of her features allied with that transparent complexion and the contrast of that fiery hair was stunning. He didn’t like red hair, he reminded himself, at least he had never had a redhead in his bed. Not that he wanted her there either, he told himself fiercely, fighting the heat and tension at his groin to the last ditch of denial. He didn’t want her, he had never wanted her, he had just kissed her once because she gave him no other choice. Or was that the excuse she had labelled it? He studied that ripe pink mouth, bare as it was of lipstick, and remembered the taste of her, heady, sweet and unbearably sexy …
Ava’s bright blue eyes had widened and darkened. The sparks in the atmosphere were whirling round her faster and faster. It was like standing in the eye of a storm. She moved forward, unconsciously reacting to a sexual tension she could not withstand. Her clothes felt shrink-wrapped to her skin and she was insanely conscious of the swell of her breasts and the tingling tightness of her nipples while the heat between her thighs made her press those offending limbs tightly together.
In the humming silence, Vito stared back. It was all right to look now, he reminded himself sardonically. She was no longer jailbait. The thought cut a chain somewhere inside him, slicing him free of the past. He coiled a hand round her wrist and pulled her into his arms, dark golden eyes volatile, ferocious energy leaping through him in a wild surge of lust.
His other hand lifted slowly and his forefinger traced the fullness of her lower lip, his touch light as a butterfly’s wings. Ava almost bit his finger in frustration, her breath escaping her in an audible gasp. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, she willed him. Her craving was so great at that moment that there was no room for any other thought. He lowered his handsome dark head and drove her lips apart with a passionate kiss, driven by all the hunger pent up in his powerful body. And it was just what she wanted, what thrilled her most, desire leaping through her slight body like a blinding light as his tongue delved into the sensitive interior of her mouth and the world spun in ever faster circles round her. Her knees wobbled and she kissed him back with the same passion, her tongue twinning with his, her breasts crushed to the wall of his hard muscular torso, all awareness centred on sensation and satisfaction. He eased her back from him, long fingers skating up over her taut ribcage to close round one breast, teasing the prominent peak with an expertise that drew a moan from her throat. He set her back from him, took a slow step away, smouldering eyes locked to her like precision lasers.
‘This is not the place, belleza mia.’
Ava snatched in a gigantic gulp of oxygen to regain control of her treacherous body and the searing disappointment of his withdrawal. But she knew it had cost him, had felt him hard and ready and awesomely male against her, and the awareness soothed her tumultuous emotions as nothing else could have done. This time she was not the only one in the grip of that savage wanting.
‘I will have you moved from the basement immediately,’ Vito told her flatly, not a bit of expression in his deep drawl, his shrewd gaze veiled and closed to her.
‘That’s not necessary,’ Ava declared.
‘It is. I hope I deal fairly with all my employees and isolating you in the basement with only boring repetitive work to carry out is not acceptable.’
A little devil danced in her eyes. ‘Do you kiss them as well?’