by Julia James
Her face was tight, her voice barely controlled.
‘This was all I came for, Vito.’ She held up the certificate.
Her voice was taut, barely controlled.
He strolled into the room. He looked relaxed, but Rachel could see that tension was racking through him.
She saw too, her eyes sucked to him, the smooth perfection of his torso, every ab and pec lovingly moulded, the superb masculine grace of his shoulders, his lean, narrow hips, his long muscled legs…
She dragged her eyes away, but there was nowhere safe to look. Nowhere. His face, cheekbones stark, eyes like dark, glinting pools, were just as dangerous to her.
He approached the bed, talking again.
‘Are you telling me that my stud services are not up to your demanding standard? You seemed happy enough with them last night.’
He rested his dark eyes on her face. She felt the breath freeze in her lungs, her heart slow to a halt.
‘You loved it last night,’ he said softly, and a wave of nausea went through her. ‘You couldn’t get enough of it! You were begging for it!’ He walked towards her, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Gagging for it.’ He tossed the towel aside and came towards her, purpose in every stride, a light in her eyes that made her stomach churn. ‘And you’ll love it again—you’ll be begging me for it. Pleading. You’ll be gagging for it again…’
He stopped in front of her, his hand coming up to reach for her.
She jerked away.
‘You bastard!’ Her voice was a whisper, a hoarse exhalation from her lungs. ‘You vile, disgusting bastard! How dare you say such things to me? How dare you?’
Something flared in his eyes. His mouth was like a whip.
‘That show of virtuous outrage didn’t wash seven years ago, cara mia—and it doesn’t wash now! So spare me the histrionics this time around. There’s no need for them. This time around you’ve got my ring on your finger—the ring you’ve wanted ever since you schemed with your precious mother all those years ago! Setting you up as bait to catch me with! Little Miss Innocent—straight out of the schoolroom! But ready to open your legs for a chance to catch yourself a rich husband!’
The blood drained from Rachel’s face.
‘What…what do you mean…setting me up…?’
Vito’s eyes narrowed contemptuously.
‘Don’t take me for a fool! You set me up, didn’t you? Sweet eighteen and never been kissed! Pretty as a picture and just as untouched! And as corrupt and scheming as your mother! Your doting, oh-so-protective mother, who just happened to arrive back with my father that morning, just in oh-so-convenient time to find her darling virginal daughter deflowered by her protector’s son! And she really thought, didn’t she—and you too!—that my father would actually expect me to marry you because of it? Because I’d taken your virginity. The virginity so carefully guarded and then offered up in the hope of such fantastic financial gain! Marriage to a Farneste! What the mother could not achieve, the daughter would achieve for her…’
Faintness pulled at Rachel, swirling around her like a thickening mist.
‘And now you’ve done it, haven’t you? Achieved your goal! Got yourself a Farneste for a husband! Your virginity might not have been currency enough, but the Farneste emeralds did the trick, didn’t they? No wonder your mother decided to sacrifice them in such a noble cause! Her daughter’s marriage to me! Second time lucky… Only this time around you thought you’d short-change me, didn’t you? Sex didn’t work to trap me seven years ago, so this time you pulled it from the menu! I wasn’t even going to get your body to enjoy this time around, was I? That cheap, vindictive little denial was going to be your revenge, wasn’t it? Your revenge for my refusal to marry you in the past. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’
There was a flame in his eyes. A dark, burning flame.
‘You were going to hold out on me. Taunt me with that beautiful body of yours and then cheat me of it! Well, cara mia, you miscalculated with that ambitious little brain of yours! You underestimated your own carnal appetite. You want me every time I touch you! You go up in flames for me! So don’t lie to me! Don’t try to tell me you don’t want me! What did it take last night to get you into my bed? One touch, one kiss—and you were there! You couldn’t get enough of me! You wanted me last night and you want me now!’
He shifted his weight to his other leg.
‘Now, I’m off to take a shower, and then we’ll have breakfast. Don’t even think of trying to run—because, as I told you last night, I don’t want any accusations thrown at me that I’ve entered into a fraudulent marriage. We are going to spend our honeymoon here, cara mia—our delightful, romantic honeymoon. You, my lovely bride, can have all you want of me! And I am going to enjoy the one thing I know you’re good for!’
He turned and walked into the en suite bathroom, shutting the door behind him with a hollow thud.
Rachel swayed. Her legs were like cottonwool.
How could he have turned the truth on its head like that? Twisted his infamy of seven years ago so that he was the one who looked hard-done-by? The injured party, victim of a plot to trap him into marriage.
She felt winded, punched by what he had thrown at her. He had turned everything that he had done to her—knowingly, deliberately, calculatedly and remorselessly—upside down and inside out. Making her out to be the scheming, manipulative villain of the piece!
‘You bastard,’ she whispered, her lips hardly moving. ‘You total, total bastard, to try and put the blame on me!’
Rage started to curl through her, filling up her lungs so that she could hardly breathe, misting in front of her vision. She shut her eyes and felt the rage trembling through her.
Between her legs she felt the dull, throbbing ache that had been there since she’d surfaced from her tormented sleep.
She’d felt that pain once before, and though it had been sharper then it had been nothing to the agony that had followed afterwards. The agony of knowing that Vito Farneste, who had murmured sweet nothings to her, smiled at her and laughed with her, who had taken her to heaven in his arms, who had bestowed his fabulous, beautiful body upon her and made a woman of her, had only been conducting a deliberate exercise in wounding the woman he hated.
That agony of her heart had been far, far worse than any pain from the physical parting with her virginity.
She opened her eyes, looking through the lens of seven long, long years.
I never got rid of the agony, she thought. Never. It’s still there, deep inside. Festering, poisoning my life…
What did I think? she wondered. That Vito might some day feel bad about what he did to me? An eighteen-year-old schoolgirl who didn’t know one end of a sophisticated Latin playboy from the other? Who was so naïve she thought that she’d found a fairytale romance to remember all her life?
Her mouth tightened into a twisted grimace. Oh, no, Vito never felt bad about me! Not for a second, an instant! Why should he? He simply twisted the truth into what suited him! Making her out to be the one to blame! That got him off with a shiny clear conscience…
The rage misted again in front of her eyes, and with a sudden jerking movement she hauled herself forward. Adrenalin was pounding through her. Rage and anger and fury and a burning compulsion that, whatever Vito Farneste might dare to throw at her head, she was not going to let him get away with it!
Her heels smacked on the wooden floor as she stalked across the room, yanking open the bathroom door.
The red mist of rage was still in front of her. Seven long years’ worth of rage.
He was preparing to shave—razor on the vanity, hand reaching forward for his can of shaving gel. A white towel snaked around his hips, making his tanned Mediterranean skin look dark as bronze. The perfect musculature of his back, broad shoulders tapering to lean hips, was outlined in absolute detail. Each honed muscle and sinew and bone a paean to the human male form. He made her breath catch.
For a second she just stared, then—worse�
�realised that he had paused, slowly lowering his hand, and that his eyes were meeting hers in the reflection of the mirror.
And something was missing from them.
Something that had been there ever since he had nonchalantly got out of bed in the Rome apartment and informed her mother that her precious daughter had been ‘gagging for it…’
It was not there now. Now, as her eyes met his, in the reflection of the mirror.
Time hung in the air.
And suddenly, devastatingly, Rachel realised that the last time she had gazed into Vito Farneste’s eyes like this had been when he was cradling her in his arms, her body still trembling from the heavenly, miraculous journey into womanhood he’d just taken her on, smiling down at her, gently smoothing her hair back from her head while she gazed up adoringly at him.
‘Mia bella ragazza…my beautiful girl—my beautiful girl…’
She heard the words. Heard them through seven long years. Their soft, accented murmuring, their tender cadence. She felt the kisses he’d dropped on her forehead, and then on each eyelid, and then on her lips.
She’d been in heaven.
And now, for a second, that moment seemed to be here again—her eyes holding his, drawn to him, held by him.
For an instant something seemed to dissolve within her. Some hard, ugly knot. Some malign, invasive canker that had been with her so long it had become part of her.
Something she could never be free of.
That had taken over her life.
But in that second, that instant, for the first time in those long years, she could feel it begin to dissipate…
Then Vito turned to face her, and the moment was gone.
His eyes rested on her again, but this time they glinted with malice.
Beautiful and deadly. Like the fallen angel that he was.
That he had always been, whatever sweet words he’d once murmured to her.
Now she was seeing the truth of him. It had always been there, but she’d been too blind to see it.
‘Come to share my shower? Well, you’ll have to wait a few minutes while I finish shaving. Another time, of course, we can try it unshaven. What is that term Englishwomen like to use? Ah, yes, rough trade—that’s it. Is that what you like, cara mia? Rough trade? You must tell me—tell me everything you like your lovers to do to you. I wouldn’t want my stud services to be inferior to theirs! But don’t worry—I’m sure I can be as…inventive…as they, and give you a really memorable honeymoon.’
The glitter in his eyes made her feel sick. Yet as he leant back against the edge of the basin, razor forgotten, towel pulled taut across those lean, powerful hips and thighs, all but outlining the swell of his manhood, she felt her stomach hollow out.
Felt her gaze dragged down to feast on the body displayed for her so indolently, yet so powerfully.
Above the level of the towel each flat, taut abdominal band glistened, smoothing up over his solar plexus to fan into the subtle contours of pectoral muscles that flared out to sculpt a torso that would have graced a Renaissance statue dedicated to human perfection.
Last night I touched that body, caressed it, covered it with my kisses, took him into me, melded my body to his, wanted him so much, so much…
Through her veins the treacherous, traitorous weakness started to flow—a yearning, a terrible wanting that shook her with its power.
A power to make her want the man who stood there—whatever he did, whatever he said to her.
A power that shamed her.
Like a douche of cold, icy water she forced herself to drag her eyes upwards, away from his body, making herself see instead not the sculpted line of his mouth, or the heart-stopping planes of his face, nor even the dark, long-lashed beauty of his eyes, but only the expression in them.
That dark, veiled glitter.
He spoke again, in a drawl that seemed to scrape her nerves like fingernails on a board.
‘Well, what is it to be, cara mia, this bright Caribbean morning? A vigorous, shall we say, uplifting session in the shower? Or something a little more languorous in the spa bath?’
His eyes were like daggers, each one drawing blood.
Her blood.
The breath raked in her throat as she spoke. Her voice was thin. As thin as the blade of a knife.
‘I’m going now—going back to England. And I don’t give a stuff about whether that makes our marriage illegal or not. Because I’ve got from it all I ever wanted—this marriage certificate! But I won’t leave this place until I’ve told you something. You’ve twisted what happened in Rome seven years ago—twisted it out of all recognition! And maybe in that vicious, warped mind of yours you actually believe your version! But it wasn’t like that—and you know it! You know it! I never planned anything. Nothing! Nothing of what you’ve thrown at me!’
The glitter in his eyes had gone.
So had the pose of indolent sexuality.
It was a pose—even now! He didn’t mean—feel—a word of what he’d just proposed! It was just to shame you…humiliate you. Just like last night was to shame you, humiliate you…mock you with your own pathetic weakness to him…
She forced the shaming, humiliating knowledge away from her. What did it matter now? She was going to leave—walk out and never, ever see Vito Farneste again. He would never mock her, shame her, humiliate her again, nor sicken her with his corrupting sexuality…
But before she went she would throw at him every last ounce of her scorn, her disgust—her anger—at what he had done to her when she was eighteen!
She drew another raking breath, to speak again, but he spoke first. Hurling the words at her.
‘Never planned anything?’ Black anger flashed in his eyes. ‘You dare to stand there and tell me you never planned the entire thing? You lied to me from the very start. You knew who I was! Por Dio, I was introduced to you at that party by name, and you never even blinked! But you hid your own identity from me very carefully, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Never mentioning that you knew who I was! Lying to me with a false name! Rachel Vaile!’
She stared.
‘That’s…that’s my name. It always has been.’
His mouth thinned.
‘You’re illegitimate! Your surname is the same as your mother’s! Your unmarried mother’s!’
Her face set. ‘She gave me my father’s surname. It was all she could do—she couldn’t put him down as my father. He wouldn’t agree to it. He just laughed in her face when she told him she was pregnant. He gave her nothing—not a ring, nor maintenance, nothing. So she gave me his name deliberately. It’s on our marriage certificate, in case you hadn’t noticed…’
He brushed her gritted explanation aside without consideration.
‘But you still didn’t think to mention who your mother was, did you? Not for two whole weeks! When we spent every day, every day with each other! You never once thought to mention who your mother was! The mother whom you carefully primed to turn up so conveniently that morning, to catch her darling daughter in bed with her protector’s son! Hoping my father would crack his outraged paternal whip and make me marry you!’
Cold accusation raked at her, his eyes condemning her.
Condemning her as a scheming, manipulating little bitch, trying to trap him into marriage…plotting with her mother—another scheming, manipulating bitch…
She wanted to rage at him, to shout her anger. She heard her voice rising.
‘It wasn’t like that! It was you—you doing the manipulating! You knew who I was all along! You deliberately seduced me! Just to get at my mother! And you threw the same vile words at me then as you’ve just thrown at me now! I hated you then and I hate you now—and, God help me, I’ll hate you till the day I die for what you did to me!’
His eyes darkened.
‘Tell me something.’
His voice was almost conversational. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
‘If you hated what you say I did to you seven years
ago, why were you so eager to come back for more after you bolted from Rome when your scheme to get me to marry you failed? You knew by then I wasn’t going to marry you—yet you plagued me for the next three months! Turning up at my London office whenever you found out I was in the UK. Trying to get me to speak to you on the phone wherever I was! Eager to get more of what I’d given you a taste for! So…’ he looked at her with his blank, cold look ‘…how does that fit in with your version of events as Little Miss Innocent?’
His voice was flat.
Rachel opened her mouth. Then, as realisation dawned, she closed it again. She felt again—as if it were yesterday, not seven years ago—the desperation she had felt when she had abased herself to try and get in touch with him, accepting every rebuff, steeling herself time after time to contact Farneste Industriale, desperate to speak to Vito.
How can I tell him why I was so desperate? I can’t! I just can’t!
And suddenly, in a black, drowning wave, she realised it was hopeless—hopeless to try and attack him, defend herself. He would justify himself at every stage.
Well, what did she care? She had no more need of Vito. He could rot in hell now for all she cared! She had, as she had just thrown at him, got what she’d come for.
And more—much more besides. Another lesson from a master deceiver. Dear God, let this be the last! The very last.
She turned away. She could take no more. Defeat hunched her, crushed her.
Vito Farneste had been a curse on her life ever since she had first set eyes on him. He was like a fever in her blood—unhealthy. Corrupting.
She had spent years trying to get the infection out of her bloodstream—perhaps now, after this ugly debacle, she might finally succeed in wrenching him out of her system.
Slowly she walked towards the door to the corridor.
‘Rachel!’
His voice cut through the deadness in her.
‘Go to hell, Vito,’ she answered thickly, and left the room.
But it was no good telling him to go to hell. She wouldn’t get rid of him that way.
Hell was where she was…
