Beside him, Angie held her breath until the steady rhythmical sound of his own breathing told her that he had fallen asleep—but still she didn’t dare move, afraid of waking him, of shattering the spell. For surely some strange kind of magic had entered her life this evening? How else could she explain the fact that her beloved Riccardo was lying next to her, naked and contented after making love to her like…like…?
She swallowed. It had been the most wonderful experience of her life. Like everything she’d always known it could be. Like all the books said it could be—only she’d never really believed it before. She’d believed herself to be in love with him for years but the intimacy of actually making love with him had made that feeling increase a thousandfold. Her heart gave another skip—because she was daring to hope that it wasn’t all one-sided. Because Riccardo couldn’t have made love that way unless she actually meant something to him. Could he?
Carefully, she turned her head to look at him. Illuminated by the pale orange glow from the streetlight directly outside her window, he looked as if he had been fashioned in some precious metal—like those amazing statues you sometimes saw in museums. In this light his hair looked intensely black—as deep a colour as a moonless night—and the lush lashes which usually shaded the ebony eyes were now reposing in two dark feathered semi-circles on his cheeks. Never had she been given such a perfect opportunity to study him so closely and she drank in his beauty, noting how the high slash of his cheekbones cast perfect shadows on the golden skin.
Angie’s heart missed a beat. So now what? She longed to reach out and touch him. To stroke his hair. To run her fingertips lovingly along the sculpted outline of his jaw. Perhaps to daringly continue their journey by tiptoeing them down the hard torso and further still—to his own dark tangle of hair. Should she…should she waken him erotically, as she had read that men liked to be awakened?
Or better to let him sleep? He had been under so much strain recently—quite apart from the ructions about his sister’s wedding, he had been involved in several high-powered takeovers. And he was still probably jet-lagged. Wouldn’t it be better to let him sleep—and in the morning, well, who knew?
She smiled. It was Saturday and neither of them had to work. Then she could wake him up with tiny kisses—as many as she liked—and after that she could make them coffee. Why, she might even be able to persuade him to stay in bed while she nipped down to the corner shop at the end of the road. They didn’t sell the kind of high-end range of the market stuff he was used to—but they did stock croissants which tasted pretty good when you heated them up in the oven and served them with a dollop of cherry jam.
Angie gave a little sigh of contentment as she nestled down into the pillow. This morning she had been feeling close to despair and ready to start looking for a new job to get her away from the influence of her boss, and now…
Now?
She snuggled down even further. Now she felt as if the world had come alive with a powerful kind of magic.
What a difference a few hours could make.
CHAPTER FIVE
A MOTTLED ceiling swam into view and Riccardo quickly shut his eyes. But when he opened them again the ceiling was still there. And so was…so was…
So was he.
He held his breath for a moment as he realised that there was someone in the bed next to him and then he went cold when he remembered just who it was.
Angie!
Events from the previous day came flooding back in a dark and unwelcome tide. Giving her the dress. The Christmas party. Wine plus jet lag plus not very much supper. That damned dress! And then…then he had brought her home here and ravished her—and she had wholeheartedly let him.
His heart hammered in his chest as he lay there, dead still in the smallest bed he had slept in since child-hood—until he could risk turning his head without waking her.
Without the dress she looked less like the siren of last night and much more like the Angie he knew—though without her hair tied up. Her head was slumped back against the pillow, her face was flushed and the duvet had fallen down so that he could see one rosy little nipple.
Horror ran through him as his worst nightmare was realised.
He was lying naked in bed with his secretary!
For a moment he let his mind stray down tracks which would soon be out of bounds. The memory of her soft skin. Her unfeigned delight at his touch. The way she had kissed him—as if she had just discovered kissing for the first time. Resolutely he blocked the erotic recall.
Now what?
Gingerly, he began to edge one thigh towards the edge of the bed when he felt her stir beside him and instantly he stilled.
‘Morning,’ she murmured throatily.
Riccardo froze. She had that besotted note in her voice—a breathy kind of worship he recognised only too well. Women always used it after they’d had sex with him and there didn’t seem to be a thing he could do about it. He turned to look down at her, steeling himself against that puppy-eyed look she was directing up at him. Because it wasn’t her fault she was feeling that way; women were conditioned to react differently from men—everyone knew that. Give them a couple of orgasms and they started imagining all kinds of crazy notions. But with a little careful handling—those notions could be quickly consigned to the dust heap. And he needed to handle this very carefully indeed because he respected Angie.
As his secretary!
‘Morning.’ His smile was brief and perfunctory and—most important of all—non-committal. The kind of smile he might give if he was a couple of minutes late to a board-meeting. Leaning over, he planted a light kiss on the tip of her nose. It contained just the right amount of careless affection for her to be reassured that he didn’t think too badly of her—but without giving her any false hope that this might be leading anywhere. Because it wasn’t—and the sooner she understood that, the better. He pushed the duvet away and swung his long legs out of the bed, which hadn’t seemed at all cramped last night—but which now felt like a tiny cage of a place.
Angie looked at him. ‘You’re not getting up?’
‘I need the bathroom.’
Angie smiled. Of course he did. And how very intimate that sounded. ‘It’s down the—’
‘I think I can probably find it by myself,’ he offered drily.
He didn’t seem at all fazed by his nakedness and Angie lay there and watched him leave the room—studying his muscular physique with greedy eyes. Those darkly powerful, hair-roughened legs contrasted with the paler globes of his buttocks where clearly he must have been sunbathing. She should have felt shy, anxious, insecure—but somehow she didn’t. How could she, when he had made love to her so amazingly the night before—had made her feel like a real woman for the first time in her life? Riccardo was naked in her apartment and yet it seemed like the most natural thing in the world!
Wishing she’d had time to brush her teeth, she raked her fingers back through her tousled hair, plumped up the pillows and then arranged herself as decorously as possible against them, longing for him to kiss her again. But her heart sank in dismay when he walked back in the room and she saw that he was picking up a pair of silky boxer shorts which he’d dropped on the floor the night before and which he now looked as if he was about to put on.
She sat bolt upright, unable to keep the alarm from her voice. ‘You’re not…not…going, are you?’
‘I have to.’ He needed to. He needed to get his head straight and to extricate himself as quickly as possible to restore the right and normal order in his life. Because surely she could see that this episode—while enjoyable—was most definitely regrettable. And needed to be cut down and forgotten while it was still fresh enough to be killed off.
But sitting up like that had made the duvet tumble down to her waist and her hair to spill like wild honey all over her breasts—so that for one split second he forgot again that this was Angie. And that split second was enough. Enough to start the urgent tide of sexual desire from sweep
ing through him. He felt it instantly in the stiffening of his body and he saw from the widening of her eyes that she had noticed it, too.
‘Do you really have to go?’ she whispered, pride forgotten in her aching desire to be in his arms again.
Riccardo’s mouth hardened along with the throb at his groin as he registered the provocation in her question and reminded himself that this wasn’t some little innocent he was dealing with—but a sexually mature woman with desires of her own. Just like his. ‘If you carry on staring at me with those big eyes and flaunting those amazing breasts of yours, then I may not be able to tear myself away, mia bellezza.’
Some unknown glint in his black eyes set off a tremor of apprehension whispering over her skin, but Angie resolutely pushed it away. She didn’t want doubt—she wanted him. And he wanted her, too—she could see it in his eyes, even if his body wasn’t making her so blatantly aware of that fact. So why not show him that she could be his equal in the bedroom, even if he was her boss in the boardroom?
‘Who’s asking you to?’ she challenged softly.
A heartbeat of a pause. Then, dropping the shorts, he crossed the room and stood looking down at her—noting the invitation in her darkened eyes and parted lips. The rosy tips of her breasts were peaking beneath his gaze and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to put one sweet nub into his mouth and to lick and suck her there. Whipping back the duvet like a matador, he got on the bed and straddled her, gazing down on her with hungry intent, and then he caught her in his arms.
‘Riccardo!’ she gasped as he pushed her back down against the mattress.
‘Riccardo!’ he mocked, because in that instant he was angry—with her and with himself—for giving into temptation like this when he had already decided it was time to leave. Especially when the clarity which came with morning told him that this was simply prolonging the madness. But desire weakened a man. And no matter how much he knew he should just get up now and walk away—there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to prevent his lips from brushing over her nipple. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ He felt her squirm beneath his touch as his hand moved down to capture her molten warmth. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Y-yes. Yes.’
‘This, too?’
Angie closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘And this?’ The movement of his fingers became more insistent. ‘What about this?’
‘You know I do!’ Gasping again, she blocked the doubts which were now rearing their heads. Telling herself instead that it was glorious to be able to reacquaint herself with his body. To run the flats of her hands possessively over the hard flanks of his thighs. To have him kiss her again and then to feel his welcome weight as he slid on top of her, her body accommodating him as he entered her with such power, her heart thundering as he drove into her and again took her to that exquisite place and allowed her the slow, idyllic tumble down.
Afterwards, she trembled, reaching out her hand towards him—wanting intimacy of a different kind. And some kind of reassurance that they hadn’t just done the most stupid thing in the world. ‘Riccardo…’
A nerve flickered at the cheek she was stroking. ‘Mmm?’
‘That was…that was…’
He planted a quick kiss on top of her head and moved away from her. ‘That was great sex, piccola—which probably should never have happened.’
At first she thought he was joking. Teasing her. But one look at the horribly familiar stubborn expression on his face told her that he was deadly serious—even if the fact that he was now climbing out of bed hadn’t driven the point home with scalpel-sharp precision.
‘You’re going?’
This time the boxer shorts did make it onto his body—and were swiftly followed by the rest of his clothes—although he made a faint sound of disapproval when he slid the silk of his now completely crumpled shirt over his broad shoulders.
‘I have to.’
He didn’t say why and Angie began to sift through her memory to try to remember what appointments he had planned for today. But as far as she could recall, there was none.
She fixed a bright smile to her lips. ‘You don’t want any…breakfast, then?’
He thought of some awkward and protracted meal around that scruffy table of hers and only just suppressed a shudder. ‘Tempting,’ he murmured. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t have time.’
‘Oh? Are you busy today, then?’ she queried, though she hated herself for saying it. And even as she asked she was aware of a new and brittle note which had entered her voice. The old Angie would not have asked Riccardo a question so self-consciously. Nor have pinned quite so much hope on the answer.
Without answering, Riccardo walked back towards the sitting room in search of his jacket and he found it still hanging neatly over the back of the chair. He could hear the pad of bare feet and, in the middle of shrugging the jacket on, he looked up to find her watching him. She was tying the belt on some sort of silky kimono thing and he strove to find the most appreciative way of telling her that it had been a one-off, without actually having to spell it out. ‘Listen, Angie—I had a great time—’
But Angie wasn’t completely dense—and she had known Riccardo for long enough to recognise when he was giving someone the brush off. Hadn’t she seen him doing it often enough during his business dealings? And so she cut him short—burying her hurt at the damning attitude he’d adopted with a crisp question of her own. ‘What about Marco?’
‘Marco?’ he echoed blankly.
‘Your driver and bodyguard. Remember? We left him sitting outside in the car last night.’
There was a pause. ‘Marco can look after himself.’
Angie went over to peer out of the window, wondering how Riccardo’s chauffeur-driven limousine would be received in the narrow and busy street in which she lived. ‘He’s gone!’
‘Of course he’s gone. He usually waits—’
Angie turned round, very slowly. ‘Usually waits for what, Riccardo?’
Riccardo coiled his silken tie and shoved it into his jacket pocket. ‘Nothing.’
‘No, please—do tell me. Or maybe I can guess?’ She felt the plummeting of her heart, the prickle of sweat between her breasts—but didn’t she know that fears were better faced head on? It was not knowing which could eat away at you and destroy you with insecurity. Like all those times her parents had told the bewildered little girl that, no, nothing was wrong. And then it had turned out that Dad had been ill all along and by the time she found out just how bad it was, it was almost too late to say goodbye to him properly.
‘Do you have an allotted time fixed for your nocturnal adventures?’ she demanded. ‘So that if you haven’t reappeared by then, he knows you’ve struck lucky?’
He didn’t flinch from her accusatory stare. ‘Your words, Angie—not mine.’
She flushed. ‘So I’m right.’
His mouth hardened. Was she hoping to make him feel bad? Well, why the hell should he? She had been the one who had been practically begging him to take her. Who had been tantalising him all night long and crossing and uncrossing those milky thighs in his car. ‘You think that this is the first time this particular scenario has taken place?’ he drawled, and then his eyes flicked over her—at the swell of her beautiful breasts beneath the thin kimono. ‘Not for either of us, I should imagine.’
Angie flinched. ‘There’s no need to make me sound like some sort of tramp!’
He shrugged. ‘Again, your words, Angie. What is it that you say in England…“if the cap fits…”?’
She wanted to fly at him—to slap him hard around his arrogant olive face—but what good would that do? As if any woman could ever inflict pain on a man like Riccardo. Stung and angry, she opened her mouth to defend her honour and then shut it again, because there was no point. She could talk until she was blue in the face but it would be a complete waste of time. Riccardo would believe what he wanted to believe—the way he always did. Just as he believed that his sister should b
e grateful to be getting married to some aristocrat in what sounded like a loveless marriage!
Drawing back her shoulders, she proudly held her head up—striving for some kind of dignity when there seemed precious little else left. ‘I think you’d better go now, don’t you?’
Riccardo didn’t move, his eyes narrowing as he registered her anger, trying to work out the best way to calm the situation down. Because although what had happened should never have happened—it wasn’t worth making a big deal out of. It certainly wasn’t worth jeopardising their perfect working relationship for. And Angie wouldn’t want to throw away a well-paid job simply because they’d both got a little carried away after a few drinks. Give her a couple of days and she’d probably feel secretly relieved that he had seen sense. He tried to defuse the tension with a rare and indulgent smile. ‘Look, let’s just forget this ever happened, shall we?’ he suggested easily. ‘Let’s go back to the way it was before.’
Did he really and truly think it was that simple? Silently, Angie counted to ten. If only he knew how close she was to picking up last night’s mug of cold coffee and tipping it all over his arrogant black head. But if she demonstrated her anger or her hurt—then wouldn’t that make him think that she cared? And she didn’t. Not any more. For how could she care about a man who had a lump of stone for a heart? Who could take her to heaven and back in his arms and then leave her feeling like some cheap little tramp in the morning?
‘Just go,’ she repeated, marching to the front door and averting her eyes as she held it open for him, afraid that he would see the tears of shame and humiliation which were threatening to spill from her eyes.
The Italian Billionaire's Secretary Mistress Page 5
