for male possession, but for the right to take her own
pleasure in whatever way she wished? And why
should he stop her? Why should he not let her take
her pleasure where she wished and in whatever way
she wished?
He looked down at her, to where he could see outlined
by her strappy top the stiff thrust of her nipples,
and his male instincts surged in feral need. He cupped
her face and took her mouth with his own, driving
into it with the slow rhythmic thrust of his tongue as
he tugged down her top with his free hand until her
breasts spilled over the fabric, creamily fleshed, with
warm brown nipples already swollen hard with desire.
Jodie didn’t even hear herself moan with hot
delight at the feel of Lorenzo’s naked flesh against
her own. She was lost in her own arousal. His silky
dark body hair sensitised her already eager nipples
while the stroke of his tongue in the hollow behind
her ear brought her arching compulsively into him,
into him and against him, grinding her hips against
his body in a frenzy of eager longing.
Jodie could see their twinned images in the bedroom
mirrors, and she watched passion-bound as
Lorenzo cupped her breast and readied the dark peak
of her nipple for the downward descent of his head
and the deliberately erotic caress of his tongue.
This time as she arched her body up to his, willingly
sacrificing it to her growing pleasure, Jodie did
hear herself cry out in female longing. But the sound
of her own desire only increased the fevered beat of
her blood as it surged through her veins, heating her
belly and spreading through it an ache that weakened
her muscles and softened her flesh into warm, wet
compliance.
When Lorenzo picked her up bodily, she wrapped
her arms around him and gasped in pleasure to feel
him suckling on the taut peak of her nipple whilst he
tugged off the rest of her clothes.
By the time he placed her on the bed they were
both naked, and he was leaning over her whilst he
trailed slow kisses over her openly eager body. Jodie
could see how the thick strength of his erection rose
stiffly toward his belly, and she yearned to reach out
and touch it.
The sensation of Lorenzo circling her navel with
his tongue-tip as his hand stroked slowly up the inside
of her thigh was melting away whatever desire she
might have had to conjure up some kind of resistance.
Her rapt gaze was fixed unashamedly and avidly on
his erection.
Lorenzo lifted his head to watch her as she reached
out half hesitantly and took him in her hand, her eyes
widening as she absorbed the texture and heat. A soft
slow burn of excited colour warmed her skin when
she registered the pulse that flooded his darkly engorged
thickness. She stroked him with fervent female
appreciation and approval, and Lorenzo closed
his eyes and exhaled, unable to withstand his body"s
longing to enjoy her wondering exploration.
How powerful it made her feel to touch Lorenzo
like this, and how eternally female, in a way that
somehow connected her with the whole of her sex
from the dawn of time. It was woman who aroused
this maleness in a man, woman who controlled and
commanded it, drawing from it her own pleasure as
well as allowing man to take his. Her fingers explored
and stroked, and her lips parted and her breath caught
on a small whisper of soft wanton pleasure as she felt
the response Lorenzo couldn’t quite control. He felt
so rigid, and yet at the same time so malleable. Silky
desire flushed her, tempted her to bend her head
and…
"No!"
The harshness of Lorenzo’s refusal sent a shock
through her. Confusion and disappointment darkened
her gaze as it met his, and then returned to cling to
his now openly pulsing stiffness.
If he let her place her lips against him now, he
wouldn’t be able to control himself, Lorenzo knew.
She had already aroused him well beyond his own
personal safety limit. If he let her caress him so intimately,
he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from
taking her.
"Why not?" Jodie protested.
"We can’t have full sex," he answered her curtly.
With her own arousal an unsatisfied ache that physically
hurt, Jodie persisted doggedly, "Why not?"
"I Don’t have any condoms, and there’s no way I
intend to fall into the trap of fathering a child I Don’t
want and which ultimately I would have to pay for,"
he told her harshly.
"wouldn’t it have been better to have thought of
that earlier?" Jodie asked him pointedly as she moved
away from him and got off the bed, retrieving her
clothes and redressing with clumsy haste.
No way was she going to let him guess how much
his rejection of her reminded her of John’s, or how
much it and he had hurt her. And she certainly didn’t
want him to know how shamingly and how very, very
much she was aching deep inside herself for what he
was not going to give her.
How foolish she had been to think that she was in
control of his desire. In this relationship she wasn’t
in control of anything, she decided bitterly, as she
almost ran for the door, desperate for the sanctuary
of her own bedroom.
CHAPTER TEN
JODIE tensed as she heard the sound she had been
lying awake waiting for. The now familiar click of
Lorenzo’s bedroom door being opened very quietly,
and then closed again equally secretively.
In two days" time they would be getting married,
but on no less than four occasions now Jodie had been
aware of Lorenzo leaving his bedroom late at night
and not returning to it for at least an hour. And
Caterina was still living at the Castillo, in Lorenzo’s
late grandmother’s rooms. If Caterina had made good
her threat to get Lorenzo back into her bed, then
surely she had a right to know about it? Even though
she was only going to be a temporary wife.
Getting out of bed, Jodie pulled on her robe and
slipped her feet into a pair of soft-soled shoes. She
was determined to confront Lorenzo with her suspicions.
Being a business arrangement wife was one
thing, but being the unwanted wife of a man who had
a mistress was very definitely another. And the kind
of humiliating situation she had no intention of allowing
Lorenzo to put her in.
She hurried along the landing to the top of the
stairs, and as she looked anxiously down them she
saw Lorenzo’s shadow moving swiftly along the hallway
below. Determinedly she hurried after him, wondering
why he had not simply used the upper corridor
that led to Caterina’s apartments.
Several narrow passageways led off the hallway
which linked t
he old part of the Castillo to this newer
wing, which had been added in the seventeenth century.
Which passage had Lorenzo taken? There was
a light burning on the stairs that led down to a lower
level. Exhaling nervously, Jodie turned down them.
The stairs were directly under Caterina’s apartment,
so perhaps—
She gave a small shocked scream as suddenly, out
of the shadows, a hand curled round her wrist.
"What the hell do you think You’re doing?"
"Lorenzo!"
He must have realised that she was following him
and waited to trap her.
"I wanted to know where you were going. This is
the fourth time I’ve heard you leave your room late
at night," she told him boldly, lifting her chin.
"You were spying on me?"
The narrow-eyed look he was giving her was making
her feel acutely uncomfortable, but she wasn’t
going to let him see that.
"If I’m going to marry you then I have a right to
know if You’re having sex with Caterina."
"What?"
"I won’t marry you if you are," Jodie told him
fiercely. "And I mean that."
"You mean You’re snooping around following me
because you thought you were going to find me in
Caterina’s bed?"
Put that way, he made it sound as though her behaviour
was verging on the bunny-boiling, Jodie realised
guiltily. How could she tell him that his rejection
of her, so closely mirroring John’s lack of sexual interest
in her, had not only heightened her own insecurities
but had also led to her wondering if, like
John, Lorenzo was actually finding sexual satisfaction
with someone else?
"You can’t deny that you and she have been lovers,"
she told him stubbornly.
"Have been, yes," he agreed tersely. "But that was
nearly twenty years ago, when I was a boy."
"She says you still want her."
"She may choose to think that, but it is most certainly
not true," Lorenzo told her firmly. His fingers
were still clamped round her wrist, and suddenly he
cursed beneath his breath, saying grimly, "You want
to know where I go? Very well, then — come with
me."
He was walking so fast along the narrow, tunnellike
corridor in front of them that Jodie almost had to
run to keep up with him. She could smell damp, and
see it too on the vaulted curve of the ancient stone
walls. She gave a small shiver, and then a shocked
gasp as they reached a heavy oak door and Lorenzo
told her emotionlessly, "The corridor beyond here was
once know as the via eternal, because it led to the
Castillo’s dungeons and torture chambers."
"The torture chambers?" Jodie could hear the horrified
revulsion in her own voice.
Lorenzo gave a dismissive shrug as he unlocked
and then opened the heavy oak door. "They were considered
a necessary part of warfare."
"In medieval times, perhaps," Jodie acknowledged.
"But—"
"No, not merely in medieval times," Lorenzo interrupted,
his voice and his expression both so savagely
forbidding that she shivered.
Beyond the door lay a large cavernous room with
a low, vaulted ceiling. Wine racks leaned emptily
against one wall, whilst moisture dripped onto the
floor from the ceiling.
"It’s all right," Lorenzo told her following her anxious
upward glance. "The ceiling is quite safe, and the
coldness of the air, although unpleasant, does have
certain merits."
"More torture for the prisoners?" Jodie suggested
sharply.
"My grandmother’s first husband was imprisoned
down here for a time."
The unexpectedness of Lorenzo’s low-voiced comment
sent a shock through her.
"He was against Mussolini and made the mistake
of saying so; for that he was imprisoned and tortured
in his own home. My grandmother never really got
over it. Oh, she remarried after his death, but her heart
wasn’t really in it. She often told me herself that,
given a free choice, she would have preferred to retire
to the contemplative life of a convent — but she had
promised him that she would provide his house with
an heir. Her marriage to my own grandfather was arranged
by her first husband as he lay dying from the
damage inflicted on his body by his torturers. They
stole many works of art from the Castillo — and emptied
the wine racks," he added grimly, nodding in the
direction of the empty racks. "But there was one treasure
they were not able to take."
Jodie looked round the bleak, cold underground
room in bewilderment.
"Down here?"
Lorenzo shook his head. "No. Come with me."
He led her over to a small door that opened onto
another set of stairs. "These lead up to the main salon
of what used to be the state apartments."
"Caterina’s rooms?" Jodie questioned him uncertainly.
"She sleeps in what was my grandmother’s room,
which forms part of the state apartments, yes — which
is why I use these stairs to reach the salon instead of
the main corridor stairs."
They had reached the top of the stairs and another
door.
"Through here, in the main salon, concealed by the
fabric which my grandmother’s first husband had specially
applied to the walls, is a series of wall paintings
by a pupil of Leonardo. Although, according to my
grandmother, family legend insists that the Master
himself had a hand in their execution."
As he spoke he was ushering her into a large elegant
room, its walls hung with green silk fabric. The
room was shabby and slightly neglected, with dust
motes hanging in the air along with the faint smell of
roses.
"The Duce was afraid that Mussolini’s men would
lay claim to the Castillo because of the paintings, and
so he had them covered up. It was his dream that one
day they would be fully restored. Our family is a large
one, and there are some members of it who feel that
the Castillo should be sold and the proceeds shared.
My grandmother wanted to leave the Castillo to me
because she knew I would fulfil on her behalf the
promise she made to her dying first husband."
"So why did she make it condition of her will that
you must marry?"
"That was through Caterina’s interference. My
grandmother was a gentle person who thought only
good of others. Caterina seized her chance after Gino
died and managed to convince Nonna that we were
star-crossed lovers and I wanted to marry her. She is
what one might term an adventuress, to whom marriage
to my cousin Gino gave social standing. She
had hoped to raise herself even higher by trapping me
into marriage with her. Money and social position are
all that matter to her."
Jodie frow
ned. Her instincts were telling her that
what he was saying was the truth, and that Caterina
had lied to her.
"Caterina knows how important the Castillo is to
me," Lorenzo continued. "Gino had told her of my
promise to our grandmother, and she thought she
could use that to force my hand. Fortunately for me,
my grandmother’s notary managed to conceal from
Caterina the fact that he had omitted her name from
the final signed copy of the will, so that it read merely
that I had to marry, instead of stating that I had to
marry Caterina. And, as if the situation weren’t complicated
enough already, she has been encouraging
some Russian syndicate to believe that the Castillo
will be available to buy. They wish to convert it into
a luxury hotel."
"But why do you come here at night?"
"Because I cannot do so during the day, when
Caterina is here, and because I have a need to commune
with the past, to assure the man who gave his
life to preserve it that I will do my best to fulfil his
dream." He gave a small shrug. "At the same time, I
have dreams of my own. I would like to see the
Castillo turned into a rehabilitation centre for the
young victims of war — a place where they can recover
physically and emotionally. I want it to be a
centre for young artists and artisans, gifted craftspeople
who will work on the restoration that is needed
and train their young apprentices to follow in their
footsteps. I want to banish from the Castillo, and from
the lives of young victims of war, at least some of
the shadows and dark places, and to fill them instead
with light and the pleasure of living. The meetings I
have been having in Florence are connected with my
plans for the Castillo. As soon as we are married, and
the Castillo is legally mine, my first and most important
duty is to put in hand the restoration of the paintings."
Jodie had to blink fiercely to disperse her foolish
tears, her earlier antagonistic suspicions of him swept
away by a sudden surge of admiration.
"It sounds wonderful — a truly noble enterprise," she
told him huskily, looking up at him, her admiration
warming her eyes.
Lorenzo looked back at her and Jodie caught her
breath as he took a step towards her, quickly disentangling
her gaze from his whilst her heart raced and
thudded.
"Caterina does not think so. She would far rather
THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE Page 13
