‘I’ve heard you…’ She hesitated.
Black eyes bored into her. ‘Heard me what, Angie?’
‘Having…’ she paused, delicately ‘…discussions.’
Angrily, he slammed the flat of his hand against the flank of his thigh. ‘You mean telling my sister how damned lucky she is to have landed herself an aristocrat for a fiancé? To have found a Duca who wishes to make her his wife? So that one day soon she will be a Duchessa!’
Angie stared at him in dismay. What a terrible snob he could be at times, she thought. She’d met his rebellious and bright-eyed sister a couple of times and really couldn’t imagine Floriana settling into life as a member of the Italian aristocracy. Looking into Riccardo’s suddenly cold mask of a face, she thought what a formidable brother he would be—forever laying down the law and demanding obedience. And she felt a little tug of sympathy for Floriana. A sympathy strong enough to make her defend his sister in her absence. ‘But surely this man’s position in society isn’t as important as her feelings for him. Does she…love him?’
Riccardo’s lips curved. ‘Oh, please—let’s not play into that particular fantasy, Angie—especially when I thought I’d made clear my feelings on the subject of “love” in the restaurant earlier. Aldo adores her. He is a wealthy man with many centuries of breeding behind him—and he has provided Floriana with a stability in her life which was sorely lacking. It is an honour that he has selected my sister as his bride! He will provide for her an excellent home and lifestyle—while she will give him the heir he undoubtedly needs to continue the bloodline,’ he finished.
‘Bloodline?’ she echoed incredulously.
‘You have a problem with that, do you?’
‘It seems a curiously cold-blooded way to look at a marriage.’
‘It is not cold-blooded—it is simply practical,’ he snapped. ‘But I suppose you know better, do you, Angie—with your vast experience of matters matrimonial?’
The cruel remark hurt, as no doubt it was meant to—but it fired up Angie’s indignation, too. Why, he sounded as if he was marrying off his poor sister to the highest bidder!
‘Isn’t there something vital you’ve forgotten to mention?’ she demanded. ‘You’re dismissive of love—but what about passion? Is there any of that?’
Passion.
The word dropped into his consciousness like a rock hurled into a still pool and it set off a reaction just like the rippling of waves. A strange word for the mousey Angie to use and yet a word which seemed gloriously appropriate since she was wearing the very colour which denoted passion.
He felt the quickening of his pulse and the sudden pooling of heat at his groin—just as he had done in the restaurant earlier. Temptation mocked him—reminding him that the sweet pleasures of the body seemed nothing but a distant memory these days. With a start, he realised how long it had been since he had lain with a woman and, unthinkably, his gaze flicked over the creamy décolletage of the woman who stood in front of him. White skin against scarlet silk.
‘Passion?’ he echoed as a pulse began a stealthy beat at his temple. ‘What do you know about passion?’
‘I…I read books,’ she answered quickly, aware that she might really have overstepped the mark.
‘Only books?’ he taunted softly.
And all at once, Angie became aware of a different mood entering the atmosphere—a mood both darkly dangerous and yet intensely exciting. Was it her imagination or had Riccardo’s lean body tightened, so that suddenly he looked watchful and alert? Like an athlete in peak condition who was mentally preparing himself for the race ahead. His dark eyes were raking over her just as they had done when he’d first seen her in the dress he’d bought her—but now the look seemed underpinned with something else. Something which even she recognised was doing a very passable imitation of desire.
Her senses quickened and she felt the rise of colour to her cheeks. Suddenly, she felt out of her depth—the reality of her situation bizarre. It was all wrong him being here—with Marco waiting outside in the limousine. She felt like someone who was staring into dark and swirling waters—who had only just understood the dangers of jumping in.
‘Look, it’s getting late and I mustn’t keep you any more. Thanks…thanks very much for the lift, Riccardo,’ she said uncertainly. ‘And for the dress, of course. I love it.’ But even as she said it Angie knew that she would probably never wear that dress again. Where did she ever go which would warrant it—without standing out from the crowd, which she hated? And it wasn’t her.Why would a woman like her wear a dress which probably cost as much as her entire monthly mortgage repayment?
‘My pleasure,’ he said, trying to ignore the stabbing ache at his groin which was hardening by the second. But the suddenly wistful expression on her face made him feel even more uncomfortable. Should he tell her to stop making such a big deal out of the dress? Tell her that…
‘Angie,’ he said softly as he noticed the faint tremble of her lips.
She had never heard that note in his voice before. ‘What?’ she whispered as she lifted her face to look at him—at the hard, beautiful features she knew and loved so well.
The movement of her head made him acutely aware of her perfume and Riccardo found he could not prevent himself from breathing it in, just as he could not tear his eyes away from the sight of her loose hair, which swayed like an armful of ripe corn. Her eyes were darker tonight—not like Angie’s eyes at all—and her lips gleamed at him with a provocation he had never noticed in them before. He scented danger on so many levels—but he couldn’t seem to move away from it. Or maybe he was just rendered powerless by her sleek, scarlet-clad body, which was sending out a siren call to him which was as old as time itself.
And suddenly Riccardo felt himself overcome with a lust too strong to resist and he gave into the overwhelming desire to pull her into his arms—even while he was telling himself that this was wrong. Telling himself that this mustn’t happen. That she would stop it. Sensible Angie wouldn’t let this happen.
But Angie seemed to have taken the night off from being sensible. Because now her eyes were fixed on his face with a look of intensity which seemed to echo the way he was feeling inside—and she was biting her lip as if trying to suppress an urgent kind of hunger. A hunger he recognised instantly because it echoed his own. And suddenly he was lowering his head and was kissing her—and she was kissing him back as if her life depended on it.
CHAPTER FOUR
RICCARDO’S mouth drove down on Angie’s and she shuddered beneath the sweet pressure of his lips—because the potent power of that kiss exceeded every fantasy she’d ever had about the man. And she’d had more than her fair share of those.
Riccardo was kissing her! Her! A million stars exploded in her head and the blood fizzed hotly around her veins. Was she dreaming?
But no. Dreams—no matter how realistic—did not make your heart pound so fiercely that you felt as if its muffled thunder might deafen you. Nor your knees buckle like someone who’d just got out of bed after a long dose of debilitating flu. Dreams did not conjure up with such vivid accuracy the sensation of your gorgeous Italian boss running his hands up and down your body as if he had every right to do so.
‘Oh,’ she moaned, unable to believe that this was really happening—that she was in Riccardo Castellari’s arms and being kissed so long and so thoroughly that she thought she might faint from the sheer pleasure of it. It should have felt all wrong and yet she couldn’t ever remember anything feeling so right. Her fingers fluttered up to clutch at his shoulders as his hands moved to splay themselves over her buttocks and she pressed herself luxuriantly against his powerful frame, unable to bite back her pleasure at the intimate caress. ‘Oh!’
‘You like that?’ he ground out as he tore his mouth away from hers.
‘Oh, yes. Yes!’
Almost helplessly, Riccardo closed his eyes as she pressed her body even closer. He could feel the soft weight of her breasts as they pushed again
st him, their blatant invitation taking him by surprise. He had not planned to kiss her and he could not possibly have guessed the strength of his own response to that kiss. By rights, he should now be beating a hasty retreat from here—blaming the wine and the cloying sentimentality of Christmas time for something which should never have happened. But he didn’t feel a bit like that. The very opposite, in fact—because his hunger was building with swift sweetness and heading towards the inexorable path of fulfilment.
‘Riccardo,’ she breathed helplessly, her breath warm against his ear.
It was the way that she whispered his name that sealed his fate. Before that he still might have been able to terminate this craziness here and now—had not that little moan laid a fresh assault on his senses.
‘What?’ he questioned huskily. ‘What is it?’
The bold words seemed to tumble out of their own accord—but how could they not, when she seemed to have spent a whole lifetime repressing them? ‘I…I want you.’
‘Do you now?’ he murmured, smiling a secret smile into her scented hair. Because that heartfelt capitulation somehow freed him from all the restraint he knew he should be exercising. A restraint he knew he should act on.
She was his secretary, for God’s sake!
But suddenly that didn’t matter. As she writhed against him unashamedly nothing mattered other than the urgent need to possess her. To see whether the body beneath matched up to all the tantalising promise which had been showcased by the scarlet dress. Which had driven him mad with desire all evening.
Deliberately, he circled his hips against hers and she gasped into his mouth as he slipped his hand into the bodice of her dress. He could feel her trembling anticipation as he took one breast into his palm and began to flick his thumb over the stiff, puckered nipple.
‘Oh!’ she cried out again, wriggling restlessly, her fingernails skating over his back and digging into his flesh through the silk shirt he wore. She was eager, he thought, his heart erratically missing a beat. Very eager. Once again, the voice of reason began to clamour in his head, demanding to be heard and to put a stop to this madness—but the needs of his body were more demanding still and he could hold back no longer as he began to ruck the slippery material up over her bottom.
It was a surprisingly firm bottom. Luxuriously, he smoothed his fingers over the high, tight globes—but his access to a still sweeter destination was impeded by the tights she wore.
Pulling his mouth away from hers, he looked down at her as he hooked a careless finger in the thick elastic of the waistband. ‘I think we’d better take these off, don’t you?’ he questioned unsteadily.
Angie was so het up with need for him that she could hardly think, let alone speak. Her lips were dry and her heart was hammering but warning bells began to ring. Couldn’t he just carry on what he was doing, which was giving her more pleasure than she’d ever thought it possible to feel? Strip her here without her having to give him permission to undress her. So that sex, if sex they were going to have, would be driven by passion rather than a cold-blooded discussion about it beforehand. And that way—driven by heated need rather than cool logic—he wouldn’t get the chance to discover her relative inexperience until it was too late to stop.
And then she considered the reality of Riccardo removing her tights—the hold-everything-in tights which resembled cycling shorts and which she had bought deliberately to wear under the all-too-revealing outline of the thin silk dress. Because the last thing she had imagined was that he would be taking them off! Would he be disappointed when he saw what she was really like underneath—with a bit of a tummy, and hips about which the most flattering thing which had ever been said was that they were ‘child-bearing’? How would she compare to the perfectly honed supermodels and actresses he usually went to bed with? Angie shivered with a mixture of dread and sheer excitement—because he was touching her bare skin.
Her lack of response to his question prompted him to rake his fingers through her hair, so that it spilled out all over his hands. Somehow the gesture made her feel curiously wanton—and so did the way he dipped his head to whisper his lips all the way along her shoulder blade.
‘You are suddenly very quiet, cara mia.’
He made the silken words sound like poetry and the butterfly kiss which accompanied them was unbearably beautiful. Shuddering with pleasure, Angie swallowed down her self-doubts. She didn’t care! She didn’t care about support tights or the other women or the fact that they were in her grotty little apartment instead of the fancy places he was used to. All she cared about was Riccardo, the only man she ever had cared about, really—though she must never tell him that. Well, certainly not tonight!
She buried her lips in his ear. ‘Yes, take them off,’ she whispered.
Heatedly, Riccardo glanced around the room. Should he do it to her here? There was a small sofa and a floor covered by a rather tatty-looking carpet. If ever there was a room which was the antithesis of erotic, it was this one. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said urgently. ‘Come. Show me where it is.’
Lacing her fingers with his, Angie led him towards the bedroom—her heart racing with excitement and dread as she tried to see it through his eyes. But there was no time to wish that the place looked more welcoming or that the bed were bigger—because Riccardo was pulling her into his arms again and kissing her into sweet, soft submission once more before turning his attention to her clothes.
‘Now…where was I?’
He slid the zip of her dress down so that it whispered into a scarlet pool by her feet. Next came her bra—he unclipped it with such frightening efficiency that it fluttered instantly to the floor. Only the tights slowed down his smooth progress—and it was with a bit of an effort that he peeled them off and flung them aside, his tongue trailing a moist path wherever her flesh was laid bare.
She gasped when he reached her belly, holding her breath as if scarcely able to believe that he was going to continue his erotic journey. And now he had buried his face in the soft fuzz of hair at the juncture of her thighs and she was shivering with what should have been embarrassment—that her boss should be performing such an intimate act on her. But Angie felt nothing except a wild and delirious excitement as he pushed her back onto the bed. Wasn’t this what she’d spent the last four years dreaming about? She clawed at his shirt buttons, scrabbling to try to pop them open—and was it her imagination, or did she hear one bouncing to the ground?
‘Ah, cara. Lentamente…slowly…’ He was laughing softly now. Surprised—but very turned on by her impatience as he put his wallet, phone and keys on the bedside table. ‘You must wait a little.’
But Angie didn’t want to wait. She felt like someone who had just seen a rainbow—dazzled by its fragile beauty but aware that it could disappear in a moment. Because she loved this man. Hadn’t she loved him for years—and wasn’t this the natural conclusion to all those feelings? And the last thing she wanted was Riccardo having second thoughts and changing his mind about making love to her. If she was destined to spend her life alone—then at least she would have this one, glorious night to cherish in the lonely years ahead.
With a boldness she’d never before experienced she reached out and began to tug at the belt of his trousers and he groaned before removing her fingers.
‘No!’ he bit out.
‘But—’
‘I am too hot and hard to trust anyone but myself with my undressing,’ he groaned as the zip rasped down and he kicked away the trousers before swiftly divesting himself of the rest of his clothes.
Then suddenly he was as naked as she and had joined her on the bed. The thin mattress dipped to the weight of an unaccustomed man beside her and Angie was glowingly aware of the long limbs which enfolded her and the dormant strength which shimmered beneath the muscular frame.
‘Riccardo,’ she whispered. Riccardo was in her bed and in her arms. She wanted to ask him whether this could really be happening to her. To him. To them. But she could find no word
s to frame such a question.
‘Are you protected?’ he demanded.
She shook her head and he said something terse in his native tongue before reaching for his wallet and withdrawing a condom.
‘You want to put this on for me?’ he questioned.
‘No. You…you do it,’ she said, suddenly shy—terrified that she wouldn’t be able to do it. That her fingernails would snag it and he might think…But all her reservations dissolved as he started kissing her again—his beautiful mouth seeming to be on a mission to cover every centimetre of her skin.
She relaxed into it while the hunger built again—caught her up like a feather whirled into the eye of a storm—so that by the time Riccardo moved over her and into her, she gave a little cry.
Immediately, he stilled—his face suddenly a harsh mask of query. ‘Please tell me,’ he shuddered out, with an almighty effort, ‘that you are not a virgin?’
Angie sensed some unknown emotion hovering in the atmosphere—something dark which threatened to destroy this fragile beauty. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Of course I’m not.’
It was the of course which reminded him that all they were doing was taking their pleasure and Riccardo’s lips twisted briefly as he began to move again. Tantalising her. Tormenting her. Driving her to the brink and then stopping. Demonstrating the control and technique for which he was renowned, until she begged him not to stop. And it was with that breathless little plea reverberating in his ears that at last Riccardo let go.
He felt her begin to shudder around him, collapsing against his chest with a little whimpering sound. And only then did he follow her—loving the sensation of spilling his seed into her, even while part of him resented it. Because that moment of letting go was the closest his powerful body ever came to weakness.
For a moment he lay there as sleep crept over him—the way it always did, no matter how much he tried to fight it. And this time he really was trying to fight it because there was no way he wanted to find himself in Angie’s bed when the morning came. But his limbs felt heavy and lethargic and Riccardo knew that he was losing the battle as his eyelids became weighted down. Was this nature’s way of keeping you close to the woman you’d made love to? he wondered drowsily.
The Italian Billionaire's Secretary Mistress Page 4
