Blackmailed For Her Baby (Bought For Her Baby Series Book 4)

by Elizabeth Power

‘Is it all right if I take a shower?’

  He leaned back against the sofa, regarding her for a moment. She looked spent, he noted. She also looked as though she had been crying her heart out.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  How could any man make those three words sound like a prelude to some exquisite pleasure? she wondered with a little shiver, resenting how it made her feel, uncomfortably conscious of how wrecked she looked while he appeared merely dynamically dishevelled, his black hair falling forward, that relentless dark growth beginning to appear around his angular jaw.

  ‘Libby.’ His deep voice stalled her as she made to turn back towards the stairs. He was sitting there now with his arm stretched out across the back of the sofa, studying her with a dark absorption, one long leg drawn up across his knee. ‘Are you all right?’

  His stark masculinity made her throat ache; caused an excruciating knot of tension in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Sure.’ A slender shoulder lifted slightly as she said it. Apart from that she couldn’t seem to move. Her awareness of him seemed to have intensified into something almost painfully acute so that it was with a little too much irony that she got past her lips, ‘Can’t complain. After all, you did promise me some fun.’

  Romano made to speak before he realised he would have been addressing her retreating figure. Exasperated, he let his head drop back heavily against the sofa, his thick lashes sweeping down over his eyes.

  Was she still blaming him for what had happened when he had taken her to that café? Thinking that he had planned that meeting? Wanted that infernal revelation by Teodoro?

  Mamma mia! He dragged a hand wearily across his closed eyelids. He hadn’t wanted this to happen. Hadn’t wanted her ever to know.

  Oh, he knew that at some stage she was probably going to, he thought, but until a few hours ago he had really believed she’d deserved Luca’s infidelity; had managed to convince himself that she wouldn’t care one way or the other; that she had never cared.

  He thought about all she had told him today and about how his parents had treated her. He knew that his father had been a tyrant, and that all but the bravest had had difficulty in standing up to him. But Sophia…

  He remembered what Libby had told him about the letters and cards she had sent Giorgio and how they had been returned to her. How could his mother have allowed it? he fathomed, unable to understand it, and yet he knew why. He just couldn’t believe that the past could have driven her to treat another woman so callously as to not only rob her of her own baby, but also then deny her any part in his life. And what was worse Libby had thought that he had been involved! And now, just when the issues between them looked like being resolved, Teodoro had had to drop that bombshell…

  He swore, more viciously this time, punching a cushion in his frustration. He had to get his mind on something else!

  But how could he, he reasoned, when every look, every smile, her soft, sexy voice—in fact, the very essence of her—called to something in him that went far deeper than just the sexual? It always had—although that too was charged with something infinitely hotter and more potent than anything he had ever known.

  Well, just as he’d thought a moment ago…

  He gave a mental grimace as he got up and felt his trousers straining across the hard area of his pelvis. He had to get his mind on something else!

  To that end, he switched off his laptop and went through into the kitchen.

  At least he could see to it that she didn’t starve herself!

  Under the cooling spray of the shower, Libby felt her numbing lethargy starting to subside. She felt better for her nap too, since the bitter storm of her emotions seemed to have blown itself out between falling asleep and waking up again, so that strangely now all that remained was a very sharp shaft of hurt pride, with a wearying degree of acceptance and aching regret.

  The flaws had been there in her marriage, but she had never wanted to acknowledge them. Luca’s lack of real enthusiasm over their coming baby. The constant excuses he’d made about always having to work—and though she hadn’t wanted to accept it until now—the lies. He’d spent so much time wanting to go to parties when they could have been enjoying themselves together, or entertaining friends at the castle, when she’d just got back from nursing her dad, pregnant and shattered, having not seen him for weeks.

  She’d excused his behaviour as the result of being brought up in a different social circle. Thought that she was the one at fault for not always wanting to join in. She should have guessed, though, she thought, berating herself with hindsight, that the far too easy-going, free-spirited young man she had married would be quite capable of being unfaithful to her without turning a hair. Perhaps she had, she decided now—deep down—and all her efforts at making her marriage work had in fact been for her unborn baby’s sake, and perhaps a little because her in-laws had been so determined that it wouldn’t.

  And that included Romano.

  Suddenly, as she let the powerful jets rinse the perfumed lather from her body, her thoughts turned disturbingly to the man who was waiting for her downstairs.

  He wouldn’t ignore and neglect a woman the way his brother had ignored and neglected her. The woman who caught Romano’s interest would have his whole, undivided attention, she decided with a sensually inspired little shudder, unable to dismiss from her mind how sensational he had looked when she’d come across him down there earlier, but particularly the way he had looked at her. His concern for her had seemed to touch something elemental deep down inside of her, but it was the way those dark eyes had seemed to lock on to hers that had made the space between them pulse with a powerful electricity. It was the same intangible connection she had felt with him all those years ago when he’d come to see her in the hospital after she’d had Giorgio.

  She’d known only subliminally what it was she wanted from him then, but she acknowledged it with total cognizance now.

  She ached for his respect!

  Did this Magdelena have it? Did she have his tenderness as well as his passion?

  Insidiously, as she remembered the way he had kissed her and the feel of those tanned, slightly callused hands moving over her body, that familiar tension began stealing through her blood.

  Hastily she threw off the shower-switch, realising where her thoughts were taking her. How could she be thinking about that at a time like this?

  It was just the trauma of the day, she decided, putting unacceptable and confusing messages in her head. Yet as she slid her hands over her wet body to swipe off the surplus water, her fingers stilled against her swollen breasts. Her nipples were rock-hard, the rosy buds engorged and sensitive to the touch. Her mind ran riot as her hands closed over them, the dark, dynamic face behind her closed eyes sending messages that were anything but confusing to her contracting pelvis.

  I don’t want this! I don’t want him! she told herself with unconvincing vehemence and stepped out of the shower—to come face to face with Romano, who had just walked in.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WITH ONE ARM still raised to the cubicle door, Libby couldn’t move. Her mouth was parted in shock, her bright hair—still swept up—curling damply from the steam, the pale gold of her body gleaming wetly.

  ‘I knocked,’ Romano said. ‘I remembered that you would need a towel.’

  Indicating the fluffy green bath sheet over his arm, Romano felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He had thought she would still be in the shower. Hadn’t expected to have his senses assailed by the soft perfection of her body and he could feel his own responding to it in a way she couldn’t fail to notice.

  ‘What?’ Libby frowned and sent a distracted glance towards the unoccupied towel rail, her heart beating crazily in her chest. ‘Right.’ Was that her voice sounding so breathless, when she should have just taken it, uttered a casual and unconcerned ‘thanks’?

  Instead she just stood there, her eyes drawn to the deep, all-seeing darkness of his, wondering why she couldn’t stop herself
from absorbing every detail of his big, hard body, from the bronzed V of corded flesh beneath the open neck of his shirt, down over the rise of his chest and the taut perimeter of his lean waist to the tell-tale protrusion lying against his tight abdomen.

  ‘Is it so wrong to want you?’ he asked hoarsely, aware of where her eyes had strayed.

  Her free arm came up across her breastbone, felt the reckless hammering of her heart against it. Her breathed, ‘Yes,’ was barely audible.

  ‘Si?’ Head inclined, his lips moved in a wry smile, but Libby recognised a kind of bleak hunger in his eyes.

  ‘You don’t like me,’ she reminded him, dry-mouthed. ‘That makes it next to immoral.’

  He moved towards her with the quiet stealth of a predator, his eyes summing everything up. The dilation of her pupils and the flush across her cheekbones; the quickened rising of her breasts with the betraying message in their prominent tips. ‘You don’t like me…’ His voice was husky as he touched her cheek, the brush of his thumb across her lower lip sending electrifying sensations down through her body. ‘And yet you still want me.’

  Libby’s tongue seemed to be sticking to the roof of her mouth. How could she deny it? she thought. He was mature and worldly and would know and understand a woman’s body the way those first dauntless explorers had known and understood how to chart and tame and conquer. Through sheer skill and experience.

  Her lashes came down over her eyes in an attempt to hide the truth, but he tilted her chin with his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at him.

  His eyes were dark and dense and penetrating, pulling her down into their fathomless depths.

  ‘It would seem, carissima,’ he murmured as he dipped his head, ‘that we are both depraved.’

  And if depravity was to want him like nothing she had ever wanted in her life, then she was guilty of it! she thought as his mouth came down over hers, hard, insistent and demanding.

  With a small, enraptured groan she leaned into his warm strength, throwing to abandon her last shred of reason as she felt the rasp of his jaw against her cheek, gloried in the full, exciting length of his masculinity and in the graze of his clothes against her wet nakedness.

  The towel was still draped over the arm that lay across her back and he tugged it free with his other hand, the friction of the cloth over her bare buttock making her shiver with sensation before he let it fall and brought his hand down to press her lower body into the hard, thrilling evidence of his arousal.

  ‘Romano…’

  He trapped her small murmur in the cleft of his mouth. Hers was unbelievably soft, he recognised, from where she had been crying. He ached as he thought about its moist warmth moving unconditionally over his burning skin, and felt the throbbing of his lower body as it hardened in almost excruciating response.

  She had just found out that her husband was a bastard and he was taking full advantage of the fact. Somewhere inside him a voice he didn’t want to listen to was urging him to give her more time.

  ‘Cara…’ It took all of his will-power to lift his head and say, ‘Tell me to stop. Tell me to stop now and we won’t do this.’

  She uttered a small moan, her eyelids flickering open. She couldn’t have told him to stop if the world had been counting on her, she thought, wondering why he was suddenly having reservations.

  He laughed softly then at her hurt bewilderment, seeing beyond it to the desire that burned in her emerald irises, his hands shaping her face, her throat, the slender slopes of her shoulders.

  ‘I know,’ he whispered heavily. ‘I could not have done so either,’ and with that he reached up and pulled the confining pins from her hair, bringing it tumbling down over her shoulders.

  ‘Ablaze,’ he whispered heavily, playing on the pun of her name, his hands moving over the flaming silk, his eyes dragging down to where it tapered just above her full high breasts and to the slightly darker triangle at the apex of her thighs that hid the molten heat that was building in intensity between them. ‘On fire only for me.’

  Her legs seemed to go weak as he pulled her against him, excitement a breathless wanting as his hands moulded her to every powerful bone and muscle of his hard masculinity.

  She offered him a tremulous smile as he straightened up to look at her. Would she live up to his expectations? she wondered nervously. Meet the demands of his daunting expertise?

  ‘I’m making you all wet,’ she murmured somewhat shyly as her gaze ran over his heavily aroused body and she noticed what she was doing to his impeccable clothes.

  He smiled, unconcerned, and said in that sultrily accented voice, ‘Then I shall have to lick you dry.’

  Suddenly those strong hands that had slid down to cup her buttocks were raising her up off the floor, so that all she could do was bring her legs up and wrap them around him as he carried her through into the cool, serene luxury of the bedroom.

  The fabric covering his hard hips was a delicious sensuality against her spread thighs while her head swam with all the possibilities of what he intended to do. And with them her inhibitions fell away and as he sat her down on the virginal white coverlet, pushing her back against it with a gentle nudge, she thought, This is really happening. I’m making love with Romano. With Romano. And knew that somewhere, in the darkest recess of her mind, she had always wondered what it would be like.

  She thought he would come down to her, but he didn’t at first.

  Dropping to his knees, he took one of her slender feet in his long, warm hand and lightly grazed the outer edge of the delicate structure with his teeth.

  The whole experience was so erotic that Libby gave a small cry of surprise.

  ‘Did you not know you had sensitive feet?’ His voice was low, soft, caressing. ‘Or did you not realise I would want to taste all of you, carissima?’

  Her breath coming shallowly, Libby couldn’t answer, her whole body tensing in screaming anticipation as his tongue began a long, slow slide along the silken inner length of her leg.

  ‘Romano…’

  He raised himself up, following the path of his lips, his dark hair as it lightly brushed her other leg, unbearably sensual on her sensitised flesh.

  Breath held, fingers twisting in the bedspread, she lay there rigid, every pulsing cell anticipating the ultimate intimacy of his mouth. But he must have thought it too soon because he didn’t touch her most secret place, keeping the tension building with all the benefit of his amazing expertise, using not just his mouth, but also his hands and his voice too now, in a slow, masterly awakening of all her senses.

  He said he wanted to taste all of her, and he was doing just that! she realised headily, and through a haze of torturous rapture guessed that very few men would take the time to pleasure a woman in such a way—as though it was the only thing on earth that mattered.

  When his lips found the nub of one aching breast she jerked convulsively against him, thinking she might die from the exquisite torture of his suckling mouth. Suddenly, though, she wanted more and, like a brilliant actor with a well-rehearsed cue, Romano moved his hand to cover the swell of her other begging breast, sending quivers of need down to the very heart of her femininity.

  He had played this role many dozens of times, she acknowledged with a little painful reminder, but for her it was a first, because not once during her short marriage had she ever been made to feel quite like this—and certainly not since. She had never felt as though she had been made so completely for one man. Knew she never would with anyone else ever again. And hot on the heels of that admission came the burning and intimidating knowledge that made her fingers clench around the strong dark strands of masculine hair they were revelling in, made her bite her lip to stop herself from crying it out.

  I love you!

  When had it happened? she wondered, hardly able to think. Today? Yesterday? That instant when she had collided with him in the trailer? Or was it before that—long ago—that her subconscious had recognised its soul mate? Recognised it and rejected i
t, while her heart had been faithful and borne all the anguish and unhappiness in her dedicated devotion to his brother.

  She loved Romano and somehow the knowledge had set her free so that when he moved across her, kissing her temple, her cheek, her mouth, the wildly pulsing hollow at the base of her throat, she gave a small utterance of joy and ran her hands down his finely clad arms, tugging at his shirt.

  ‘I want to feel you,’ she whispered, made brave by her love.

  He gave a small chuckle deep in his throat. ‘And so you shall, mia cara,’ he breathed, drawing away.

  Feverishly, Libby watched as he slipped the buttons of his shirt, shrugged it off, tossed it aside. His chest was wide and deep and bronzed, his arms and shoulders, usually made sleek by well-tailored clothes, like velvet over contoured steel.

  Drawing herself up to study him unashamedly, wondering what that dark hair feathering his chest and limbs would feel like against her skin, she brought her tongue across her top lip in unwitting provocation, her eyes moving to those long hands as they dealt with the fastening of his waistband.

  A sharp gasp escaped her when she saw him naked.

  ‘What’s wrong, carissima?’ His lips curved in mild teasing. ‘Afraid I’ll hurt you?’

  She shook her head, unable to speak, wings of colour spreading along her cheekbones, though she couldn’t drag her eyes away from him.

  ‘No.’ Kneeling up on the bed as he came back to her, she moved her hands with a delightful urgency over the crisp hair of his chest and the satiny texture of his powerful shoulders, down over the curving steel of his biceps, her splayed fingers coming to rest over the flat, dark masculine nipples. ‘You’re just so beautiful,’ she breathed.

  His mouth tilted in wry appreciation as he gently caught her chin so that he could study her. Her magnificent hair. Those expressive green eyes, seductive and yet overlaid with innocence. The soft perfection of her passion-flushed features.

  ‘No woman’s ever called me beautiful before.’