Read Online A Scandal in the Headlines by Caitlin Crews - Free Book Online Page A

compulsion to play the rescuer, the hero, for his endlessly needy family members, none of whom ever quite appreciated it. No useless longing for a woman who neither deserved it nor wanted it.
    No wondering what it was in him that was so twisted, so ruined and corrupt and despicable, that the bride he’d carefully arranged and contracted abandoned him at the altar and the beautiful stranger he’d fallen for so disastrously at a glance wanted nothing more than to use him for her own ends.
    He wanted to be numb
.
    But if he couldn’t be numb, he decided then, staring down at her luxuriating in all of that sunlight, he might as well explore that darkness inside of him that he’d fought his whole life.
    Elena wanted to play her games with him. Dangerous games, because she thought she was dealing with another brutish thug like her fiancé. Maybe he should give her what she wanted. Maybe he should bring out the whole of his arsenal in return.
    Maybe it was finally time to be who he was: a Corretti, callous and selfish, destined for nothing but depravity from the moment of his birth.
    Just like all the rest of them. Just like the father he’d always despised.
    “I want to be inside you,” Alessandro said casually. He was standing at the windows, his back to her. “Now.”
    Elena froze in her seat. She set her fork down carefully.
    She’d grown used to these long, fraught meals they shared each night, prodding each other for weaknesses. She’d come to enjoy the strange exhilaration she got from matching wits with him, so different from meals with Niccolo—who had done the talking while she’d sat there adoringly, grateful for her good luck.
    She’d grown used to the dark looks he sent her way whenever he saw her, cold condemnation and a banked fury, a far cry from the flat coldness she’d once seen in Niccolo’s eyes, moments before he’d showed her who he really was. She’d told herself she was used to this by now. To Alessandro himself. To all this forced exposureto the man who had chased her through dreams for six long months.
    “I gave in to that urge once already,” she murmured. “And look what’s happened.”
    She hadn’t thought to worry about sex.
    She hadn’t imagined it would be an issue, after that first day. He’d looked at her as if he’d rather die than touch her again, and she’d told herself she was glad of it.
    Of course she was.
    “I might be pregnant,” she reminded him now, though she tried to think of it as little as possible. It was too much to take in. She kept that faintly amused note in her voice. “And we are trapped here, strangers who think the worst of each other. I’ll pass on a reprise, thank you.”
    “This table will do well enough,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, turning so she could see his starkly sensual expression. And that passion in his dark green eyes. Elena’s heart gave a hard kick to her ribs, and she felt much too warm, suddenly. “All you need to do is bend over.”
    The image exploded through her, too vivid, too real. It didn’t take much effort at all to imagine him behind her, deep inside her—
    “You’ve obviously had too much to drink,” she said. She pressed her napkin to her mouth, more to checkthat she wasn’t trembling than to wipe anything away. She had to stay calm, focused. She had to remember why she was here, why she was doing this.
    “Does it make you feel better to think so?” He smiled, and the heat of it catapulted her back to that night in Rome. That dance. The way he’d looked at her, smiled at her, as if she was precious to him. “I haven’t. But I want you either way.”
    She forced a cool smile, and tried to force the past from her head. “You can’t have me.”
    “Why not?” He looked amused, his face carved in those fiercely sensual, powerfully masculine lines, his dark eyes gleaming. Elena fought to restrain her shivery reaction, to ignore that melting, pulling sensation low in her belly. “You’ve