THE MEDICI MISTRESS
Clare Connelly
All the characters in this book are fictitious and have no existence outside the author’s imagination. They have no relation to anyone bearing the same or names and are pure invention.
All rights reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reprinted by any means without permission of the Author.
The illustration on the cover of this book features model/s and bears no relation to the characters described within.
First published 2014
(c) Clare Connelly
Photo Credit: dollarphotoclub.com/Syda Productions
Contact Clare:
http://www.clareconnelly.co.uk
Blog: http://clarewriteslove.wordpress.com/
Email: [email protected]
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"O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily
do, not knowing what they do!"
William Shakespeare.
CHAPTER ONE
She peered around the filing cabinet once more, her heart racing.
It was him.
Three years might have passed since their last encounter, but every detail about Giac Medici was forever imprinted on her mind. His body had owned hers; her heart had been his.
Her mouth was dry as she watched him stroll down the corridor as though he owned the place.
Which, she supposed, he did.
From beneath her fanned lashes, and behind the safety of a wall of furniture, she watched as he paused to talk to one of the senior VPs. Morrison, she thought his name was, though his name mattered nothing to her. Especially not at that moment.
Giac’s tanned hands were thrust against his tapered waist, somehow emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his powerful legs. But it was his hands that made her body temperature soar. Remembering how those hands had felt on her body. Persistent, demanding and heavenly, they’d caressed and teased every inch of her.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the unwelcome avalanche of memories.
The way his mouth had breathed across her body as his tongue lashed and tasted her; his arms had encircled her; how it had felt when he’d taken possession of her, again and again, and shown her what pleasure and satisfaction truly were. His passion for her had been unrelenting. Their affair had been illicit and ill-advised, and somehow all the more desperately perfect for that fact.
There was no escape except for the executive boardroom a few steps from her hiding place.
She waited until he was engrossed in a document that Morrison, or whoever he was, held out and then took her opportunity. The door opened silently enough. With a shake of her head, she disappeared, just a wave of ebony silk pony tail and the fragrance of gardenias left in her wake.
In the safety of the cavernous space, she let out the breath she’d held pent up since first realizing he was back. Not just in London, but there, in the offices of Amicus Incorporated.
Three years was not such a long time, but every day had dragged and stretched. How could such a brief affair have reached through the fabric of her life in such a dramatic way? She had loved him, undoubtedly. But he’d killed that love when she’d discovered the truth about his engagement.
The whole time they’d been making love, she’d been building a picture-perfect future in her mind, with Giac Medici at the center of it. While he’d been indulging in a bit of completely despicable, utterly wild sex-on-the-side before tying himself down to another woman for life.
A woman he loved.
A suitable woman.
A woman born to American political royalty, the gorgeous and fascinating Carrie Ewing. She was the daughter of a senator, her grandfather had been Vice President, and she was on the board of several top charities and institutions around the world.
Annie Carlton knew herself to be beautiful, intelligent and interesting; but she was simply not on Giac’s playing field. How could she hope to compete with a woman like Carrie Ewing?
She cringed into the darkness, cursing her naivety in believing that someone like him would ever be serious about a girl like her. He was a self-made gazillionaire. No family money for him. Quite the reverse. From what he had said, his upbringing had been difficult and lonely. He had known from a young age that his success in life would boil down to his actions and deeds alone. He was hard-headed and famously ruthless, as renowned for his hostile takeovers of struggling corporations as he was his staggering good looks.
Which was how Amicus Incorporated had wound up in his swag of companies; and how she, a lowly legal adviser in those days, had wound up in his bed.
She sighed, pushing away from the door and walking deeper into the conference room. Absentmindedly, she ran a finger over the walnut desk, polished to such a sheen it was almost reflective.
The door opened, casting a wedge of light into the otherwise dark space. And she knew. It was Giac. Not because he’d seen her, but because they were drawn together like magnets. It wasn’t design, it was an unknown cosmic force. Slowly, she turned, schooling her features to resemble a mask of composure.
Their eyes connected instantly, forming a string of tension between their two alert bodies. His dark and cynical, ever-watchful, hers enormous circles of apple green in her pale, angular face. For once, she had the advantage. She saw the way a muscle flexed in his jaw; the way his eyes darkened at the same time his skin paled; the way his mouth parted slightly in surprise. He covered it quickly, but she’d seen it.
She’d been expecting this. For years, she’d been waiting for him to return to the London company. His attention to detail was famous. Amicus Incorporated might have been one of his smaller, less important businesses, but it was still in his stable, and his personal attention had been inevitable.
She could have quit, of course.
She would have done so had she wanted to see him less.
“Hello, Giac,” she greeted, her words dripping with ice.
“Annie.” It was a breath. A sound from the base of his throat. But it was enough. She felt Goosebumps race across her skin; she felt her nipples harden beneath the fashionable Donna Karan dress she wore. Her blood thrummed in her ears.
He’d always said her name like the note of a song. Ahhh-nee.
“I didn’t know you were back in London.” With an effort, she kept her tone disinterested; her expression bland.
He looked as though he’d seen a ghost. Annie couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d forgotten about her until that moment. The disquieting notion did nothing for her self-esteem.
He eased the door shut with a gentle click and reached forward. He pressed a button on the wall and the dark blinds that framed the room automatically slatted open, revealing a lined vision of Canary Wharf. Afternoon sun lit up the room, showing his powerful body properly now. She tried not to stare, but his broad chest and muscled arms had always fascinated her. How could someone who worked such long hours possess a body like that?
“There is much you don’t know about my life, these days.”
How true that was. “What did I ever really know about your life?”
Giac didn’t answer. Perhaps it was because he knew he couldn’t say anything to defend his actions. Perhaps he no longer cared enough to even defend himself in the first place. For whatever reason, he stayed silent, long enough for Annie to realize that this conversation would only succeed in pushing her back in the past. Giac’s heart was as untouchable as ever.
“Well,” she said, shrug
ging her shoulders in an imitation of casualness, “I have work to do.”
Mustering as much courage as she possessed, she walked slowly towards the door. Her heels were sky high – at around five and a half feet tall, spike heels had become an essential part of her armor. She no longer felt the way her toes pinched and her arches ached. She was unconsciously elegant, in a cream dress, with a pearl choker; her hair as shiny as a raven’s feather, her eyes mysterious and brooding, like the oceans after a storm.
“Wait.” He snaked out a hand and grabbed her wrist, as she would have sailed past.
Annie’s body jerked in recognition the instant his fingers made contact with her flesh. She forced herself not to show it, but inside, she was quivering with long forgotten sensation.
“Yes?” She asked through gritted teeth. She tried to remember all of the reasons she was beyond these feelings. She was a successful senior counsel now. She had been casually dating a famous West End artist for the last several months. Though it wasn’t serious, they had fun together. She had a life. A good life. She didn’t need Giac striding in with his stubble-roughened jaw, high cheek bones, wide mouth and eyes dark enough to pull you into their orbit.
“I hardly recognize you,” he growled, scanning her face, searching for any vestige of the carefree woman he’d once known. The designer dress and expensive accessories created a stunning image, but it was all wrong for Annie. She had not been uptight. She had not really belonged in this stifling corporate world. The fact that she’d become more enmeshed with it left him with a strange taste of disapproval in his mouth.
She flicked her pony tail, so that the dark mane fell like silk over one shoulder. “You seem to recognize me just fine,” she corrected, reaching down and lifting his fingers from her slender wrist. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“No.” He walked past her, his stride long, his manner intent. He stood between her and the door, his expression quizzical. “How long has it been?”
Three years, two months and about a week on top of that. “I don’t know. A few years?”
“Yes, that would be right.” His wedding had taken place one month to the day after Annie Carlton had stormed out of his life, tears in her eyes and fury in her heart. “How are you?”
“How am I?” Her laugh bordered on the deranged. She heard it, and forced herself to hold it together. This meeting had been inevitable. She had been preparing for it for years. “Do you really want to wander down memory lane with me?”
“There are many thing I want to do with you, Annie Carlton.” He spoke quietly, but his voice was loaded with promise.
Anger raged inside of her. “How dare you?” She leaned forward, her pretty face sparking with emotion. “You’re married.” She spoke caustically. “That mightn’t mean anything to you, but it does to me.”
“You don’t know anything about my marriage,” his words were laced with iron, but Annie didn’t hear it.
“Damn right,” she nodded abruptly. “Nor do I want to. We have nothing to talk about anymore, Giac.”
He closed the distance between them with one step. “How wrong you are.” He stared down at her, his eyes heavy with some unknown emotion, his body seeming huge compared to her slender frame.
She wanted to say something pithy. Something acerbic and pushing, which clearly showed her disapproval. But her brain was turned to mush the moment she breathed in his intoxicatingly male fragrance. It wasn’t a cologne. It was a woody soap, and him. She remembered it well. Her lips parted of their own volition; her eyes seemed incapable of tearing away from his face.
“I would say that we have three years to fill in. And in my experience, it’s always best to pick up where one left off.”
He was going to kiss her. It was blatantly obvious. She could have moved. Ducked away from him and left the room – and him – behind. She didn’t though. She might have hated her weakness for this man, but momentarily, her strong sense of moral righteousness eroded.
His lips on hers were strong and demanding, just as she’d remembered. He was not gentle. He challenged her with his arrogant interrogation of her mouth. She moaned, low in her throat, as he invaded her senses, his lips taking from her what they wanted, and stirring her body to fever pitch within seconds. Desire was like a wave inside of her, fierce and powerful, it drenched her soul to its core.
She was his, as he was hers. Except he wasn’t, a voice in her mind screamed. He was not, and never had been, hers. He belonged to someone else, as much as Giac Medici would ever ‘belong’ to another person.
How many other women had he strung along like this? Driven wild with his prowess in the bedroom, before leaving heartbroken and miserable when he returned to his clueless, beautiful wife?
“Don’t!” She snapped, pushing at his chest with all her strength and stepping back. She spun away from him, so he wouldn’t see the telltale way her fingers shook as she lifted them to her tingling lips.
“Don’t deny that you want me,” he said cynically, watching her carefully.
“I don’t deny that you’re very skilled with your mouth. And your hands. And every damned part of you. But I hate you! I think you’re the lowest of the low, and I want nothing more to do with you.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said simply. “Your body knows better than your mind.”
“My body is treacherous,” she murmured, straightening her dress and running her fingers through her pony tail. Confident that her appearance had been restored, she turned to face him. “I don’t believe in casual sex, Giac.”
“There was nothing casual about our sex,” he contradicted, flicking an insolent gaze to her slight curves, hinted at by the scooped neckline of the dress she wore. “I seem to remember it was desperate, passionate and a very serious business.”
Her smile was saccharine to the extreme. “And your wife? Does she not do it for you in the same way, Giac? Is that why you’re such a cheating bastard?”
He swore in his native Italian, his eyes flecked with a warning rage. “Do not speak to me of Carrie.”
“Why not?” She demanded, her temper growing. “You think it’s okay to try to pick up where we left off, but I’m not allowed to so much as mention the matter of your wife?”
“Si,” he confirmed, so arrogant she couldn’t believe it.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Because I want you, and am not afraid to say so?”
“You can’t want me,” she ground out. “It’s wrong.”
“No.” He moved over to her again, and lifted a hand. Mesmerized, she watched his face, as, with a solitary finger, he traced the outline of her lips. He drew an invisible line, lower, down her pointed chin, and the soft skin of her neck, to the swell of her chest. He cupped her breast with his palm, and used his other arm to hook around her back and pull her against him. His arousal was unmistakable. So, to Annie, was her own.
“Nothing about us was ever wrong.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, as though he was speaking to himself more than her. “Except, perhaps, the timing.”
“Mmm,” she nodded, wanting to pull away but needing to be close to him. “How we met right before your wedding, you mean?”
“Si,” he was lost in the past. “This body,” he whispered, dipping his head so that his lips were pressed lightly against her ear. “It is the stuff of dreams.”
Her mouth parted; her brain was searching for something to say. A hiss of air escaped. Nothing else.
“I can picture you perfectly, beneath this prim dress you wear. Your pale skin, and perfect pink nipples. Your flat stomach and long legs. I can still hear you. The sounds you make when you’re about to come; the way you squeeze around me as though your life depends on it. I have forgotten nothing about you, cara.”
“You don’t get to speak to me like this,” she insisted, though she was a puddle of arousal. “I am not your play thing. Something to amuse you when you decide you want it.”
“Ah, I do want it,” he promised, running hi
s tongue along her jaw.
“Please, don’t.” To her chagrin, her voice was shaking, and wet with unshed tears. “I won’t deny that I… want you… but I won’t be a woman who breaks up a marriage.” She shook away from him, but searched his gaze, her expression beseeching. “I would never have been with you before, if I’d known you were… engaged.” She cleared her throat. “It was all a mistake. A terrible, wonderful mistake.”
“Annie,” his voice was urgent, “I need to speak with you.”
“No.” She held up a hand, her voice restored to its usual imperious tone. “Let’s leave sleeping dogs lie. You’re married, and I’m involved with someone.”
“I see,” he nodded, his Adams apple jerking in the column of his neck. “And who is this man you’re seeing?”
“None of your business.”
He expelled a breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring with silent rage.
“You might be comfortable cheating on someone, but I’m not.” She was somewhat overstating the case between herself and Thomas, but at that moment, she needed her friend’s visage to keep the very real and present Giac at arm’s length. “And I don’t want to be the other woman. Not again. I will never forget the shame of knowing I slept with another woman’s fiancé. And I will never forgive you for having put me in that position.”
The door opened, forestalling any further communication between them. Annie had only a second to pull her professional shield tightly around herself again. She suspected that her face still had remnants of emotional disquiet on it, which did not escape the curious gaze of Lincoln Barrett’s PA, Donna Mills.
Lincoln Barrett followed behind his capable assistant, his expression affable, his pin-striped suit immaculate. His eyes flicked from the powerful bearing of his old friend, Giac Medici, to the woman he vaguely remembered from the legal team. Of the eleven hundred employees at Amicus, it was saying something that he remembered anyone beyond his executive group.
But this woman had an impressive knack for excelling. He had personally walked through the nineteenth floor, where the legal staff were located, and seen her working at all hours. After midnight, on several occasions, her dark head bent, her face a picture of concentration.
The Medici Mistress: Nothing and no one would stop him from having her. Page 1
