Seduced by Innocence by Lucy Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

to choose this dress and the thought sent heat scurrying through her body, making her breathless. Never before had she known this unnerving sensation of having her will destroyed. She was a strong-minded woman, but all she wanted now was to look as he desired, and be what he wanted.
    Slut! Slut!
    “No,” she breathed. “I won’t listen to you. It doesn’t make me a slut to feel this way. It makes me—his. But I’ve only known him a day. How can I be such a fool?”
    She walked the length of the mirrored wall again, torn by indecision.
    Maurizio, waiting outside with apparent calm, allowed Zena to press coffee on him, drinking it without tasting it. His thoughts were in that room, with Terri. Mentally he walked the floor with her, watching every sinuous movement of the dress against her hips and thighs, contrasting them with the nunlike face above. To torment a man by cloaking herself in feigned ingenuousness—Elena’s daughter would have been born knowing how to do that. What was she waiting for now? Some sign that she could lead him on, perhaps? If so, she would be disappointed.
    But as the minutes ticked away and she didn’t appear, his nerves tautened to breaking point. “Perhaps you should go and have another word with her,” he said to the manageress.
    She shrugged. “Oh, no. That’s the way to lose a sale. When a woman is undecided, the more time alone she has, the better.”
    “In that case, I’ll have some more coffee.” He set his cup down with a slight clatter.
    * * *
    Terri came to a reluctant decision. She felt like a coward because her nerve had failed her, but Madge’s influence had proved too strong. She pushed her hair up high on her head in the manner the dress demanded and took one last longing look at what she might have been.
    “Yes.”
    She opened her eyes wide at the soft violence of that word. Maurizio had entered silently and stood looking at her in the mirror. “Yes,” he repeated. “Like that.”
    She turned, letting her soft blond hair fall. “I can’t,” she protested. “It’s not me. I only wish it were.”
    In a moment he was beside her, turning her to face the mirror again. “That’s because it is you and in your heart you know it,” he insisted. His strong, brown hands swept her hair back up, leaving her neck bare, and suddenly she was overwhelmingly conscious of how close his lips were to that bare skin. “Look,” he said, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “Look and see the truth of yourself.” He caught up a tendril from her neck and she shivered as his fingertips brushed her. “Why do you deny it?” he whispered.
    She sighed, overpoweringly tempted. “If only...”
    “If onlys are for little girls. A woman takes what she wants. You want this gown because it tells you the truth about yourself, and also because I want you to wear it.”
    Overwhelmed though she was, one calm, ironic corner of Terri’s mind resented this assumption and enabled her to say with a touch of annoyance, “Do I really want only what you want, Maurizio? Aren’t you taking a lot for granted?”
    “A lot, yes. Too much? Only you can answer that. Blame yourself for what you’re doing to me.” The words poured out of him in something like desperation. He was closer to losing control than he’d ever been in his life. She’d shown him the vision before threatening to snatch it away, and now he was on the rack.
    And he’d blundered. He knew that was so when he saw the sudden aloofness in her eyes. She was watching him and calculating, and he’d revealed too much. He strove to get command of himself, to remember that she was a part of his plan, but it was no good. The warm, sweet scent of her filled his nostrils, making his senses riot. Her pale skin was silk under his fingers, while the dress suggested and concealed everything he wanted to know. Unable to stop himself, he drew her back against him and dropped his head so that his lips rested on her long neck. He felt the tremor