Free Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) by Chantelle Shaw Page A

several seconds as she registered his words and absorbed their meaning. She stiffened as he trailed his eyes over her in a frank appraisal, as if he was mentally stripping her naked, she thought furiously. Even worse was her treacherous body’s reaction to the sensual promise in Cruz’s gaze. Her breasts ached with a delicious heaviness and every nerve-ending on her skin tingled.
    I want you . No doubt he had said those words to the countless attractive blondes he was reputed to have had affairs with. The tabloids were full of stories about the hotshot Brazilian diamond tycoon’s playboy lifestyle, and she would just be another notch on his bedpost, Sabrina realised bitterly. But she would be an expensive notch because Cruz was offering to pay her to sleep with him as if she was a hooker he had picked up off the streets. His suggestion was deeply insulting and she hated him for it, but she despised her body even more for responding to his smouldering sensuality.
    Her heart ached as she remembered a much younger Cruz with smiling eyes, who had taken her virginity so tenderly and whispered soft words in Portuguese while he’d made love to her with sweet passion. She had loved him so much, but by offering to buy her sexual favours he had given her the ultimate proof that she had never meant anything to him.
    Years of practice at disguising her feelings meant that her expression revealed nothing of her thoughts. ‘Am I to understand that you are offering to pay me a million pounds to have sex with you?’ she said coldly. ‘Did you really think that I would prostitute myself? Let me make something absolutely clear. I would never demean myself by sharing your bed, however much money you offered me. You have become a wealthy man, but you need to learn that there are some things your money can’t buy.’
    * * *
    Ice replaced the fire in Cruz’s blood as he met Sabrina’s disdainful grey gaze, and he struggled to control his anger. Once more, he recalled Lord Porchester’s party.
    ‘Delgado’s a self-made millionaire...you can always pick out the nouveau riche by their lack of breeding.’
    He jerked his thoughts back to the present. For a few moments Sabrina’s disdain had made him feel unworthy and ashamed of his poor background. Deus , he should not feel ashamed because he hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He owed his fortune partly to luck at discovering top-grade diamonds in the Montes Claros mine, but for years before that he had slogged his guts out to provide for his mother and sisters.
    His jaw hardened. How dared Sabrina, who had only ever known a life of privilege and luxury, tell him in her cultured accent that she would not demean herself to have sex with him? In fact she had jumped to the wrong conclusion when she had accused him of offering to pay her for sex. What he had been going to suggest was that she would allow him to move into Eversleigh Hall so that he could search for the map of the diamond mine and in return he would pay for the cost of the repairs to the annexe and the ongoing expenses of maintaining the estate.
    It was true he had hoped that if he and Sabrina lived under the same roof they might rekindle their affair. He desired her more than any other woman, and he knew she wanted him. God knew he had enough experience of women to be able to recognise the telltale signs of attraction. He had been prepared to woo Sabrina. He’d been looking forward to an enjoyable chase before she finally and inevitably succumbed to the chemistry that existed between them.
    But she had scraped his pride raw and now the rules of the game had changed. She might look at him as if he were something unpleasant on the sole of her shoe, but he would have her in his bed and he would make her beg for him to possess her and give her more pleasure than she had ever known with any other man, Cruz vowed to himself.
    * * *
    She had to get out of Cruz’s apartment immediately, Sabrina decided, before her