Claimed for the Italian's Revenge

by Natalie Rivers

  ‘Claudia!’ He shouted her name, but the wind swept his voice away and she did not turn towards him.

  Running as fast as he safely could, it didn’t take long to reach her. Then, as he splashed through knee-deep water foaming on the platform of rock that surrounded her vantage point, he knew he’d only just been in time. The water was continuing to rise with each new wave that crashed towards the beach.

  He called her name again and this time she heard it. He saw her jolt back to her senses and she whipped round to look at him.

  ‘Marco!’ She stared at him in shock, then almost at once an expression of anger descended over her face. ‘What are you doing here? Did you follow me?’

  ‘Come on!’ Marco shouted above the sound of the crashing waves and held out his hand to her.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere with you!’ she exclaimed furiously. ‘How dare you follow me here—you had no right!’

  ‘There’s no time to mess about—look around you!’ Marco barked, stepping closer and reaching up to seize her arm. ‘We’re about to get cut off by the water.’

  As Marco’s hand closed round her forearm, Claudia automatically pulled back against him, trying to shake him off. Then suddenly his words sank in.

  Her eyes widened with alarm as she looked around, finally taking in the situation. The tide was coming in fast and she was surrounded. Marco, standing up to his knees in the churning water, was reaching up and trying to pull her down from her rock.

  Anger that he had followed her to Wales still filled her, but now a surge of adrenaline mixed with it. If she didn’t move quickly she would be completely stranded and even the rock she was perched on would be submerged as the tide reached its maximum height.

  But she did not need Marco’s help.

  She jumped to her feet, jerking her arm out of his grip, and slid off the rock. The water felt freezing as it flooded into her boots. Then a wave hit her legs, knocking her off balance, and she stumbled backwards, bashing the camera that was clutched in her hand into the rock.

  ‘Come on,’ Marco snapped, seizing her arm and pulling her towards the shore. ‘There isn’t much time before we’ll be in serious trouble.’

  ‘Let go of me!’ She pulled her arm out of his grip again and started heading inland. It was almost impossible to see through the swirling water and she inched forward, feeling her way carefully with her feet. ‘I don’t need your help.’

  Suddenly a particularly strong wave crashed into the back of her legs, making her stagger forwards. She plunged down into the cold, salty sea and felt her hand slide off the edge of the boulder they were standing on, into the deep water surrounding it. She sucked in a frightened breath, knowing she was about to dive headlong into the chasm between the rocks.

  The next instant the water closed terrifyingly over her head. She flailed around in panic, trying to find something to grip on to. Then, a split second later, she felt herself being hauled upright.

  Her heartbeat pounded in her ears and water streamed down her face. For a moment she didn’t know what had happened—then she realised Marco had saved her. She was still trying to catch her breath, but he was already pulling her towards the shore again.

  ‘We have to keep going,’ he said, his arm clamped tightly round her.

  Claudia started moving through the water once more, but the waves continued to tug mercilessly at her legs. She was shaking from the shock of what had happened and it was hard to keep up with the fast pace Marco was setting.

  Suddenly he turned and swept her up into his arms.

  ‘Put me down!’ she protested, automatically fighting his grasp.

  ‘Lie still!’

  His voice shot through her, somehow compelling her to obey, and she stopped struggling immediately. Marco’s arms were strong and his body powerful, and the panic that had filled her when she’d plunged beneath the water gradually subsided.

  The waves pushed and pulled around his legs, occasionally making his stride uneven, but Claudia felt secure. It didn’t take long to reach the edge of the water. But, when he didn’t put her down, she realised that he planned to carry her right across the beach to the meadow beyond. The dark grey shingle crunched and shifted beneath his feet and she felt him instinctively tighten his hold on her.

  As his powerful muscles flexed, she suddenly became completely aware of his body. She was no longer distracted by the sea swirling around them, and she noticed every movement he made as he walked. She could sense the muscular strength of his chest and feel the resilient power in his legs as he carried her over the unstable shingle. She could feel the heat radiating off him, passing straight through the cold sea water that had soaked them both. It was as if a physical, sensual connection was growing between them.

  Her heart started to beat faster and, despite the cold, she felt a flush rise to her cheeks. The next moment they reached solid ground and Marco dumped her unceremoniously on to her feet.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ He launched straight into her, gripping her upper arms and looking at her in a way that demanded an instant response.

  She stared at his furious expression in shock and pushed her dripping hair back from her face with a small, jerky gesture that was restricted by the way he was holding her so tightly. His brows were drawn low, making his eyes appear almost black with anger, and his lips were pulled into a fierce line.

  A flash of irritation whipped through her. What did he have to be so angry about? What made him think he could sweep in and start manhandling her, acting as if she had to answer to him for something that was none of his business?

  ‘What was I doing?’ she asked incredulously, trying in vain to shrug her arms out of his iron grip. ‘What about you—what are you doing here? Why did you follow me to Wales?’

  ‘Didn’t you realise it was nearly high tide?’ he demanded, totally ignoring her questions and giving her a little shake that sent droplets of water flying from her hair.

  ‘I knew the sea was coming in—but I was working,’ she said, trying to sound as if she’d known exactly what she was doing when in fact she’d been shocked to see just how high the water had risen. ‘You get better photos that way. The splashes are bigger. There’s more dynamic energy in the water.’

  She pulled back again but he tightened his grip, suddenly making her ultra-aware of his hands on her arms. The rest of her body was still cold and wet but, where his hands touched, a fiery heat was burning through her sodden clothes and penetrating the flesh beneath.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Marco exclaimed. ‘You were cut off.’

  ‘You didn’t need to come out to get me,’ she said crossly, pulling her arms sharply out of his grip and stepping away from him.

  She wobbled slightly, but she held her head high. She did not need to explain herself to him—and she wasn’t going to let herself be distracted by the feel of his hands.

  ‘You could have been swept away,’ he said harshly. ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t been here?’

  ‘I’m a good swimmer. And I can clamber over rocks just like anyone else,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask you to come out to get me. And I didn’t need you to carry me!’

  ‘Swimming doesn’t come into it—not with those white horses pounding you!’ he exclaimed, gesturing fiercely towards the huge white crested waves that were breaking over the rocks.

  Claudia turned and stared at the wild sea with startled eyes. Suddenly her head was spinning and her legs felt weak. But it wasn’t the power of the waves that was roaring in her ears and making her dizzy. It was hearing Marco describe them as ‘white horses’.

  She had taught him that phrase.

  Four years ago when she’d brought him to Pembrokeshire—to the tiny village where her real mother had grown up—she had told him how much she loved to photograph a stormy sea. The weather had been beautiful as they’d sat together on the headland, looking out over the mirror-flat surface of the bay. On that day it had been almost impossible to imagine the sea anything other
than a tranquil backdrop to a perfect summer’s day.

  Claudia had been so happy. So in love. She’d looked deep into Marco’s eyes and he had pulled her close to him. His lips had found hers and they’d tumbled down on to the springy thyme-scented grass, totally lost in each other.

  But she had given her heart—and her body—to nothing more than a fantasy. Marco’s feelings for her had not been real. He had used her and discarded her. That exact same night, Marco had walked out while she had been sleeping—without bothering to tell her he was going, or even to leave her a message.

  ‘Claudia—’ Marco’s voice, hard and insistent, broke into her reverie and brought her hurtling back to the present ‘—you’re shivering!’

  She stared at him with wide eyes.

  He was right—she was shivering. But whether it was from the cold, or the shock of plunging into the sea, or from the unexpected force of her memories she couldn’t say.

  ‘Why did you follow me to Wales?’ she demanded—repeating the question he had evaded earlier. Her voice caught in her throat as she spoke, but she needed to know the answer. ‘How did you even know I was here?’

  ‘Your friend at work told me,’ he said.

  ‘You mean Rosie?’ Claudia looked up at him in surprise. ‘She shouldn’t have done that. And you had no right to go behind my back, asking questions about where I was.’

  ‘Why not—I wanted to see you,’ he responded. ‘To talk to you.’

  She stared at him, knowing it couldn’t really be that simple. No one followed another person that far just to talk to them. There must be something else. He must want more.

  He was standing with his back to the sea and she could hear the waves crashing dramatically on to the rocky beach behind him. It was an unfamiliar, wild and stormy setting for them to be together. Their brief, intense affair had taken place during the summer, mostly in the elegant and stylish northern Italian city of Turin—and that was where she’d usually thought of him.

  But somehow Marco’s raw masculine presence seemed to fit the untamed beach in the wilds of Pembrokeshire perfectly. His clothes were soaked through, his black hair was spiky with salt water, and the edgy, slightly dangerous quality that usually characterised his expression seemed to echo their elemental surroundings exactly.

  ‘If you knew where I worked, why didn’t you just leave me a message?’ she asked, suddenly feeling unnerved by the brooding sexual energy that glinted in his dark eyes.

  She wrapped her arms across her body and hugged herself tightly. It was an instinctive gesture, as much about defending herself from Marco’s penetrating gaze as about keeping warm. But he had seen her reaction to him, and his eyes glittered all the more.

  ‘Oh, but I forgot—you don’t do messages,’ she added quickly, determined to stand up for herself and not let the sheer force of his personality overwhelm her.

  ‘I couldn’t wait that long.’ He was unfazed by her barbed comment and deliberately let his eyes drift down across her body, leaving a sudden flare of heat where they passed. ‘I needed to see you—now.’

  ‘Why?’

  But Claudia already knew the answer. And if the potent message in his dark and meaningful gaze wasn’t enough, his voice had dropped to a sensual purr that shimmied across her body like a lover’s caress.

  ‘After you’d gone, I couldn’t get you out of my mind,’ he said.

  His eyes burned into hers and Claudia knew exactly what he was thinking about. And that was enough to fill her own mind with powerful images of Marco making love to her.

  But it was not what she wanted. Although her pulse was racing and the deep, dark longing to lie in Marco’s arms again was making it hard to think straight—the thought that he had followed her all the way to Wales simply to bed her was utterly crushing.

  Was that really all she’d ever been to him—someone to warm his bed? Didn’t he care enough about her to ask how she’d been since he’d left her? Of course not. If he cared at all, he would never have left her so heartlessly.

  Terrible tremors ripped through her body, making the shivering that had gripped her even more intense. But it wasn’t just the cold and wet of her physical condition that was affecting her—it was the brutal reminder of just how little she’d meant to Marco.

  ‘We have to get you out of those wet clothes,’ he said, suddenly closing the distance between them. Then, before she could react, he lifted her up again and started striding across the meadow to the cottage.

  ‘Put me down!’ Claudia gasped, struggling against him. The idea of him undressing her flashed through her mind in a series of erotic images which aroused and scared her at the same time. ‘I said, put me down!’

  ‘We need to warm you up right away,’ he said, his voice showing no sign of effort as he hurried towards the cottage. ‘You’re soaked through—we stood in the cold wind too long.’

  As Marco held her tight against his chest, he was shocked by just how hard she was shaking. He could even hear her teeth chattering.

  He didn’t know much about hypothermia. A dip in the December sea obviously wasn’t ideal, but he wouldn’t have thought she’d be at serious risk that quickly. However, she was shivering so intensely that an unpleasant jolt ran through him and settled like a wedge of ice in his chest. He could not let anything happen to her!

  ‘Stop struggling!’ he barked. ‘If you catch your death of cold, you’ll be no good to anybody.’

  His voice sounded harsh even to his own ears and he felt his heart pound with concern beneath his ribs. But he schooled his features into a blank expression and crammed the unwanted emotion back into submission.

  It was not fear for Claudia’s well being that had made him react so strongly. If she was laid up with the flu, it could ruin everything.

  He hurried towards the cottage, cursing her for foolishly letting herself be overtaken by the tide. How she had survived twenty-five years of life when she showed so little concern for her own personal safety, he couldn’t fathom.

  She was normally a streetwise and savvy young woman, well able to look after herself. But the way photography totally absorbed her, blotted out her common sense and awareness, had always made him uneasy. He remembered with sickening clarity the day he’d feared she would fall from the cliff as she’d slid on her stomach nearer and nearer to the crumbling edge, concentrating on getting the perfect shot of fledgling kestrels around their nest on a ledge below her.

  He shook his head sharply, angrily rejecting the vivid memory. He would not think about the past. It was not possible to separate memories of what they had done together—things at the time he thought he’d enjoyed—from the knowledge that it had all been a lie. That she’d duped him into trusting her. And then she had betrayed him.

  ‘Where is the key?’ His voice was as hard as steel as they reached the cottage.

  Claudia looked up at him, momentarily dazed, and struggled to pull her thoughts together—the icy cold was numbing her mind as well as her body.

  ‘P…p…pocket…’ she said. ‘P…put me down.’

  Marco set her down on her feet on the doorstep and she tried to slide her hand into the pocket of her jeans. But she was still shivering and clumsy and she couldn’t seem to get her fingers past the stiff denim.

  ‘Let me.’

  She had barely registered the words when suddenly Marco pushed her hand impatiently aside. A moment later his fingers delved deeply and forcefully into the tight pocket of her jeans.

  It was over in a moment and he was already inserting the key into the lock before she fully realised what was happening. Her mind might be feeling numb—but her body had responded instantly to the intimate invasion of her personal space.

  Shocking desire for him rolled through her, weakening her will to resist him. But, as he stepped towards her, looking as if he planned to pick her up again, she forced herself to dodge out of his reach.

  ‘I can walk on my own.’ She tried to dash inside, but her legs were wobbly and Marco easily
kept pace with her. She had no chance of running ahead and reaching the sanctuary of the bathroom before him. No chance of closing the door and locking him out.

  He strode past her and turned on the shower. Then his attention switched back to her.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ she said, feeling a ripple of apprehension pass through her as she looked at his intent face. ‘You can go.’

  ‘You’re shaking too much to undress yourself,’ he said, looking at her with his eyes narrowed in assessment.

  She drew in a breath and started to protest, but he ignored her attempts to knock his hands away from her body and pulled off her coat and fleece before she could stop him. He dumped them in a soggy pile on the tiled floor and reached for her again, but at last she found the strength in her shaky legs to move decisively away from him.

  ‘Then I’ll warm up in the shower with the rest of my clothes on.’ She spoke with conviction, wrapping her arms across her stomach and holding her T-shirt tightly in place. ‘They’re already wet.’

  She let out a shaky breath as he stepped away from her, but then her eyes widened in surprised agitation as he started to strip off his own clothes. Watching his fluid movements as he removed his coat and sweater made her heart begin to patter. Wild thoughts flicked through her mind—how many more clothes would he remove? What did he plan to do next?

  Then, before she realised what he was about, he knelt down to unlace their boots. A moment later he lifted her bodily into the shower, stepped in beside her and pulled the screen closed behind him.

  ‘This should get your blood flowing again.’

  He adjusted the temperature of the water slightly, then took hold of her upper arms to manoeuvre her so that the water hit the back of her neck and streamed down over her shoulders, warming as much of her body as possible.

  ‘There isn’t room for two,’ she said irritably, lifting her head slightly to look at him—trying not to wonder if he meant the hot water would get her blood flowing or if he was referring to showering together.