by Lynne Graham
'I want you unbearably,' he confided. 'I want you so much that when I take you it will be like dying and being reborn.'
She moaned, her head thrown back as his hands cupped her breasts in a fierce possession. He rolled over and, catching her clenched fingers, drew them down to his taut, flat stomach, pressing them against the button on his waistband. 'I want everything the way it was,' he admitted raggedly. 'I want to wake up at dawn with you making love to me.'
'No,' she whispered breathlessly, vivid sexual imagery from memories she had buried deep living again inside her mind. But her body was already betraying her. The need to touch him as intimately as he touched her was a torment of desire fighting the last remnants of her control. Theirs had never been a one-sided loving. Dimly it occurred to her that in bed they had been true partners, neither one of them giving or taking more than the other.
He claimed her parted lips in a glancingly sweet caress that was a torment to senses already roused to a frightening pitch of excitement. In an unashamed admission of need, he pushed her hand against the hard bulge of his manhood, constrained by the unyielding denim, and the hunger that surged up inside her was uncontrolled. 'This… this I will have,' he breathed unsteadily, 'though you deny me all else.'
He was trembling, the sheen of sweat on his smooth golden skin testifying to the extremity of his arousal, and she knew then with a wild flash of satisfaction that he was no more in control than she was. But that wasn't what made her move closer and send her lips whispering over the flat male nipple she discovered amid the black, silky whorls of hair clouding his broad chest. That wasn't what made her skate teasing fingers across his unbelievably taut abdomen and feel him jerk and groan beneath her caresses. No, what drove her was the all-encompassing knowledge that in this he was hers, absolutely and completely hers in a way that he would never be any other woman's, and that was in that moment as powerful and seductive as the strength of her own desire.
With every inhibition released, she became a creature of alluring abandon, glorying in her own freedom. When the seducer became the seduced, the lines that had once divided them blurred until there was nothing between them but a mutually exclusive passion that burned out of control throughout what remained of the daylight hours.
It was as though they had never been apart, but even in the past their loving had never been so passionate or intense. When he finally settled between her thighs, she reached up to cup his damp cheekbones and claimed a tempestuous kiss as her right; those lines had faded altogether. As lost as she in the grip of that voracious desire, he shuddered and groaned deep in his throat in response and then he entered her wildly, deeply, and proceeded to make love to her with a thoroughness that exceeded her most colourful fantasies.
When it was over, she lay with her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat still racing against her, gloriously at ease and at peace in the imprisoning circle of his arms. It was like dying and being reborn, she thought weakly, and afterwards it was like waking up in paradise, so intense was the release from her own body. For the first time she felt really close to him, so close that the first fingerings of alarm entered paradise and she tensed.
Vito tightened his hold on her instantly, smoothing a caressing and confident hand over her small head as if he were soothing a restive child. His touch felt tender, gentle, and was extraordinarily comforting. She remembered that, in all her life, the only time she had ever felt safe was in his arms.
'Maybe at the end of the year I might consider tempting your kid brother with another Ferrari.'
The illusion of paradise shattered into shards that pierced her flesh in all the most tender places. Like a madwoman, she found herself wanting to weep and shriek and tear at her hair in a painful ecstasy of despair. She couldn't go back. She couldn't go forward either. The past would always intervene. Vito had the forgiving qualities of a Cesare Borgia. And he would stand by the last letter of that unholy agreement.
CHAPTER NINE
'IF YOU were a feline, you'd purr like a motor, mia cara.' Planting a teasing kiss to her brow, Vito straightened from the bed. Fully dressed and emanating waves of disgusting energy, he smiled down at her. 'I suppose you won't consider stirring yourself and having breakfast with me for a change?'
'No.' Her answer was muffled by the sheet and she was holding herself still as a statue, too well aware that the moment she attempted to sit up would also be the moment when she was most likely to throw up.
He chuckled and strolled across the room with all the lean, lazy grace of a hunting animal, replete after a good meal. 'I'll see you later.'
The last time she hadn't been this sick. The doctor at the hospital had said that her lack of sickness might well have been a sign that her pregnancy was unstable. The assurance had been small comfort four years ago, and at that rate this dreadful nausea she was presently suffering ought to be an indication of the most stable pregnancy of all time!
Priya appeared with a dry biscuit and a cup of aromatic herb tea. It was very hard to eat lying flat but Ashley did her best. The older woman muttered worriedly about her needing to see a doctor and Ashley ignored the advice. This morning scene had become routine ever since Priya found her being violently ill in the bathroom, and with a little bit of quick thinking Ashley had turned her into a partner in collusion to conceal her condition from everyone else in the household. She had lost a baby before, she had forced herself to confide. This time she didn't want to raise Vito's hopes unnecessarily, she had said. Priya had understood such a motive. In her culture men were to be protected at all times from upsetting experiences. That was a woman's duty.
Oh, yes, no doubt at all, she was pregnant. She required neither test nor examination to confirm the fact. Already her breasts were swelling and incredibly sensitive, and if she hadn't been convinced that it was far too soon for her waist to start expanding she would have sworn her skirts were getting uncomfortably tight. Maybe she would blow up like a balloon by the third month, she reflected miserably. For how long could she hope to keep her secret?
Vito shared her bed every night. Vito made love to her every night. For that matter, Vito made love to her in the afternoons as well. In fact, this was just about the only time of day when he kept his hands off her. And she liked it that way, in fact she loved his constant hunger for her, revelled in this one hold she had over him, basic though it was.
Overflowing with self-pity, she blinked back tears and sniffed. She ought to be ashamed of herself. She should have told him a month ago that she might be pregnant, and then in all likelihood he would have left her alone. If she had any pride at all she would have long since grabbed at the first excuse she had to keep him at a distance. The trouble was… well, the trouble was that she might be living in a fool's paradise but she was so happy. She had never been this happy before, and she managed that feat entirely by blocking out the fact that this was not a normal marriage. She took each day as it came.
But tomorrow they were returning to London. The honeymoon would be over and all she had to look forward to was a miscarriage and the certainty that once that happened Vito would see the writing on the wall and let her go. Unless she could manage to hide that from him as well. Maybe it would happen when he was abroad… or maybe it wouldn't happen at all. She rested her palm protectively against her stomach. She wanted the baby so much that it hurt and no way could she have both Vito and the baby. She would have to go away and have it somewhere where not even all the Cavalieri wealth and influence could contrive to find her. Somewhere like the moon or Mars, she thought crazily.
Just before lunch she came downstairs, breathtakingly beautiful in an emerald dress as green as her eyes, an inner glow blazing from her lovely face so powerfully that Vito faltered in the conversation he was having on the phone. He caught her hand, planted a kiss in the centre of her palm and returned his attention with visible difficulty to the phone.
'It must be the air here,' he murmured, dark eyes almost dazedly pinned to her radiance. 'You
get more gorgeous with every passing day.'
'You're just susceptible.' She looked like a cat contemplating a large, rich bowl of cream as she studied him, possessiveness surging through her veins in a heady surge. She couldn't take her eyes off him, either. There was a powerful electrical charge in the atmosphere. It lit her up like a high voltage shot of energy.
'Madre di Dio, you're going to kill me,' he whispered, mesmerised by her sensual smile. She bit into a luscious grape, headily conscious of the effect she was having on him. So, on his side it was only the best sex he'd ever had… so what? She loved him. She was willing to settle for second best, willing to live for today at the expense of bitter regret tomorrow. If this was the only happiness she was fated to have in her life, she was ready to grab it with two greedy hands.
'I want my lunch,' she said.
'And it's our last day,' he reminded her with obvious reluctance. 'You said you would like to see the elephants again.'
The elephant orphanage at Pinawella had entranced her the previous week. He had remembered. The perfect companion and lover, entertaining, thoughtful and intelligent enough to be a constant challenge. Yet this same male had abandoned her, thought the very worst of her, married another woman, whom he still never mentioned though Ashley had given him several encouraging openings to do so. Sometimes, like now, these two opposing views of Vito's character tortured her, and yet she was afraid to get too close to the past lest it divide them again.
'I could always look at the photos I took instead.' 'And perhaps we could stay out of bed long enough to talk,' Vito tacked on tautly. 'I have things I need to say to you.'
He looked serious, and these days the minute he got serious she got nervous. Her appetite for lunch all but vanished. She pushed her food round the plate.
'Why is talking so threatening to you?'
'We fight.'
'We don't need to fight,' he drawled levelly.
'You make me feel like a child waiting outside the headmaster's study.'
'I don't want to make you feel like that, but we do have to learn to practise greater honesty with each other.'
'Why bother?' she demanded brittly. 'I'll be gone in another few months… won't I?'
He tensed. Dense ebony lashes briefly fanned down to meet his hard cheekbones. 'Yes, of course, but surely that does not negate the point of establishing better communication now?'
Equally tense, she snapped shakily, 'You're never satisfied, are you? You want to scour the fine print for a flaw to dwell on. I try to give you what you want and it's still not enough! I know it's only an illusion, what we have right now, but-'
'Is it?' Grim dark eyes rested on her.
She reddened. 'Of course it is.' Proudly she thrust up her chin, fearful that he was already suspicious of her motives and determined to conserve her own pride. 'I'm just giving you good value for your money!' she told him. He went white beneath his dark tan. Desperately she wanted to reclaim the lie but it was too late. He rose from the table with a searing look of distaste that she was certain would live with her to her dying day. 'When I need a whore, I'll go to one, but you certainly deserve a bonus for your enthusiasm!' With a derisive hand he tossed a tiny soft leather bag on the table in front of her. 'For services rendered above and beyond the call of duty.'
He vaulted into the four-wheel-drive in front of the house and raked down the driveway out of sight. Trembling, she opened the bag. A flawless cornflower-blue sapphire set into a ring tumbled out on to her palm. The stone was quite exquisite; she knew that it was a gem of the highest quality, worth thousands and thousands of pounds, and the knowledge made her feel worse. It was a personal gift, unlike the engagement and wedding-rings demanded merely for the sake of appearances. She burst into floods of tears.
It was after nine when he returned. She was waiting for him in the drawing-room. When he appeared in the doorway, she shot to her feet. 'I didn't mean it. I'm sorry!' She hadn't intended to sound quite that pleading, but one glance at his dark, unsmiling profile was sufficient to panic her. What they had, she cherished. She could not face losing it.
'Forget it,' he advised chillingly. 'You get what you pay for. And since I did pay for you, I can hardly object to your candour.'
'Where have you been all day?'
'You actually sound like a real wife.'
Vito, I love you, please don't do this to me. She almost said those words out loud. She wasn't prepared for it to end yet. She wasn't ready. Maybe she would never be ready, she registered fearfully, if the second he walked out of the door in a temper she turned to a jelly. That was the extent of his power in the cruellest and most refined form, and she was in torment. He poured himself a drink, offered her one, and when she uttered a negative said flatly, 'Why don't you go to bed? We're leaving early in the morning.'
'I didn't mean what I said.'
'Relax, your little brother was off the hook weeks ago.'
'That isn't why I'm trying to reason with you.'
'No? Well, there's only one other option, isn't there? The threat of a night without a sexual orgy thrown in appals you? Tell me,' he demanded raggedly, belatedly making her suspect that he was not enjoying his first drink of the evening, 'from the depths of your endless experience of my sex, am I really so good that you're prepared to crawl and beg?'
Every scrap of colour fled her face, leaving her bone white. 'I…I don't really know. I've never had anyone else,' she whispered strickenly, shattered by his cruelty.
'The odds aren't in your favour, cara. Four years ago, I saw you in that bastard's arms in the street. Saw with my own eyes,' he stressed savagely. 'If I'd got out of my car, I'd have murdered you!'
'F-four years ago?' she stammered. 'You saw me with Steve… in the street?'
'Do you need to see it in writing?' he derided. 'B-but that means you must have-'
'Come back after you said no to the proposal?' he incised with icy bite. 'I did. I was a real sucker for punishment in those days. No more.'
She was trembling all over. 'But you couldn't have seen anything happen between Steve and me!'
'You were in his arms and you were bedding down in his flat.' '
And abruptly it came to her when he must have seen her. The day she had discovered she was pregnant. She had started to cry in the students' union bar and Steve had flushed her out at speed. On the way back to his flat, she had told him what was wrong and he had put his arms around her. 'For goodness' sake, all he did was hug me… try to comfort me because I was so upset about the baby and you!'
'In that order, I notice. The horror of the baby, then me.'
Something snapped inside Ashley. That crack was the last straw in the state she was in. She stalked across the room and clutched him by the lapels of his Armani jacket. All of a sudden, she was a raging fever of emotion.
'That was the day I found out that I was pregnant and I was climbing the wall!' she lashed out. 'And you dare to tell me that you were sitting somewhere close by in a car, letting him do what you should have been there to do? Instead you were spying on me, dreaming up filthy suspicions on non-existent evidence? How dare you tell me that now? How dare you? You should be too ashamed to admit that you came that close and wimped out last minute!'
Her vehemence clearly astounded him. 'I didn't wimp out!' he raked back between gritted teeth.
'Oh, didn't you?' Although he was a foot taller, Ashley glowered wrathfully up at him as though she was the one with all the physical advantages and not he. She had such a fierce hold on his jacket that he would have had to break her fingers to shake her off. 'You wimped out, all right. You didn't love me enough, Vito. You didn't trust me enough. You put your rotten stinking pride first!'
'That's a-'
'And then, to crown it all, you went and married another woman when you still belonged to me! Do you think that I am ever going to forget or forgive that? You owe me, Vito… you owe me for every morning you wake up without a knife stuck between your ribs!'
Still in a te
mpest of unrestrained emotion, she jerked her hands away from him. Her frustration and her pain were so great that she literally didn't trust herself not actually to strike him now that she finally knew what had kept him from her four years ago. A silly, trivial misinterpretation of events, an almost laughable misunderstanding that had none the less blown her life and her hope of happiness right out of the water. But Vito had still been cool-headed enough to carry out a damage limitation exercise on his own life-that was what hurt her so much. In her imagination she could think of a lot of things that Vito might reasonably have done or felt then, but not one of them covered barely catching his breath and turning round immediately to ask another woman to marry him!
'I didn't love her.' The confession was reluctant, low-pitched as if only the silence dredged it from him.
And at last her bitterness was vindicated but most ironically it didn't make her feel any better. He had loved her but he had still married Carina. He just hadn't loved her enough, and that knowledge couldn't even begin to cauterise her wounds. Another revivifying surge of fury came to her rescue. She had suffered so much for so little.
'Want to talk some more, Vito? Want to continue establishing better communication?' she demanded tremulously. 'You didn't love her but you married her-'
'You didn't want me,' he reminded her harshly. 'Oh, you fool!' Ashley gave a stark laugh of rampant disbelief. 'Don't you know when a woman loves you? I said no to marriage and six children before I was twenty-five… I did not say no to you!'
Vito looked dazed. That aspect of that final hostile confrontation had evidently never occurred to him. 'Dio,' he said thickly.
