Or was it the gradual readjustment of her eyes to the flickering light which began to register on her consciousness? Giovanni was standing by the divan, a beautifully intricate silver lamp in his hand.
For a moment she thought she must be dreaming as her eyes made the visual connection before her brain had time to decipher all the implications of his presence. His torso was bare, and around his waist was knotted a long piece of material which gleamed golden and scarlet in the lamplight. He had told his son that he looked like a warrior king, but in that moment he looked like a king himself.
Almost in slow motion, she watched him put the lamp down and then unknot the heavy gold brocade at his hip, so that it fell to his feet with a heavy sigh.
And suddenly he was naked.
He stood there, dark and haughty, comfortable and unashamed by his nakedness—and who could blame him? The glimmering light emphasised the long, tawny limbs, the broad, hard chest and flat belly. He really was the most perfect example of the male of the species, she thought, with an aching sense of longing.
Unwillingly, but irresistibly, her eyes travelled slowly down his body- to the very fork of his masculinity. Amid the coiled dark forest of hair was the paler hint of his manhood, and Alexa found her lips drying, knowing that she should feel appalled at the sudden longing which caught her by the throat and by the heart. Was she dreaming?
‘Giovanni.’ She swallowed.
Carefully, he sat on the edge of the divan—close enough for the animal warmth of his body to radiate its heat, but not close enough to threaten her. In the soft lamplight, she lay back, her eyes wide and dark and her face a pale blur. But it was her hair which captivated him—all red-gold satin which spilled out over the pillows around her. That and the dark petals of her lips which had parted in unconscious invitation.
‘You were sleeping,’ he said, but there was a sudden and unexpected lump in his throat.
What was it? The softness of his voice which lulled her, or the building ache of hunger which threatened to silence her every objection?
‘I feel like I still am,’ she said, and part of her wanted him to destroy this spell that the darkness had woven around them. To make her safe to reject him. To want to reject him.
‘Why are you in here, Lex?’ he murmured. ‘All alone on this hard and unforgiving divan?’
‘You know…you know why,’ she said, hating her hesitancy—the stammering uncertainty of her response—and the hunger to have him touch her even though every fibre of her being told her unequivocally that it would be wrong.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Giovanni…’
‘What is it?’
‘I—’
‘Bella,’ he murmured. ‘Bella mia.’
His words were cajoling, coaxing—seeming to beg all kinds of confidences. But she dared not begin to speak, for fear that she would blurt out just how beautiful he was. And how much she had missed seeing his hard dark and golden body naked like this. How the absence of the intimacy of marriage could leave you bereft—even if that marriage had not been one which was made in heaven.
He wondered if she was aware that her nipples had begun to peak through the fine material of her nightgown. That the soft silk clung to her thighs, skated over the flat plane of her belly and skimmed over the narrow curve of her hips. Had ever a woman both tantalised and disappointed him as much as Alexa?
Dio, but he wanted her!
Reaching out, he placed the tip of his thumb beneath her chin, rubbing it in a slow, enticing movement, tempering his hunger with careful, unthreatening seduction. ‘You’re tense,’ he murmured, as the thumb slid along the curve of her jaw. ‘Relax.’
Relax? When just the touch of him was beginning to scramble her senses? How long had it been since a naked man had stroked her skin in the middle of the night like this? All her reasons for being kept awake in recent years had been of a far more practical nature.
She remembered the sleepless nights of Paolo’s childhood fevers. The mopping of his hot brow and the sharp tear of panic and fright—until the crisis had passed and the pale light of morning had crept in.
She remembered too the time when there had been no permanent job—before Teri had opened the shop in the village—and the worry about how she was going to support the two of them without the indignity of having to ask the State for support.
Her mother was living so far away that she might as well be residing on a distant planet—and she had made it very clear that she thought Alexa was a fool to have ended up as a single mother with no alimony. There had been no one to ask and no one to share her growing dread, and during that time Alexa had learnt the harsh definition of how it felt to be completely on her own.
Did the barren quality of her life since Giovanni explain why she was lying there now, as compliant as a cat being stroked by its master?
Alexa tipped her head back, and her protest seemed to be torn reluctantly from between dry lips. ‘Leave it, Gio. Please.’
But she might as well not have spoken, for he did not heed her words, nor loosen his hold on her, just continued to stroke reflectively at her flesh as if he had all the time in the world.
And how was it that even a touch as innocuous as that could weave such a powerfully sensual spell, sending whispering little messages of need and desire skittering over her skin? Alexa could feel the sudden acceleration of her heart, the heated flush to her face as he arrogantly moved his hand down to cup her engorged breast, and she looked at him, startled, even while the nipple sprang harder still into pert life beneath his questing fingers.
‘You want me,’ he whispered. ‘You want me, cara mia. You always did and you always will.’
It was an outrageous sexual boast, and Alexa wanted to deny him—to deny to herself the fundamental truth contained within it—but the expert caress of his fingers was making her melt beneath him.
‘Gio…’
Her eyelids fluttered to a close, and Giovanni allowed himself a small smile of triumph as he bent his dark head and began to kiss her, his mouth grazing hers, feeling her lips part and the warmth of her breath as it mingled with his.
‘Don’t you?’ he persisted, his voice muffled against the sweet taste of her skin.
The pressure of his lips stopped her from replying—or was she simply fooling herself? Because from where could she summon up the strength to tell him to stop what he was doing when it felt as if she had been fast-tracked into paradise? And now he was moving his hand down, so that it lay on the flat of her belly, circling there reflectively. For a moment Alexa froze, waiting for some kind of recrimination—as if he would suddenly start berating her for what that belly had carried within it without his knowledge.
But he made no such accusation. Instead, he drifted his fingers downwards, over the slippery silk, and then further still—heading inexorably but with agonising slowness towards the centre of longing at the fork of her thighs.
‘Don’t you?’ he said again, drawing his mouth away from her by a fraction as he felt her body stiffen in anticipation.
Alexa swallowed. In the dim half-light she could see the feverish glitter of his eyes, and she lifted her hand to touch the hard contours of his face with its fierce look of intent. She could say no, that she didn’t want him—but wouldn’t that be one more lie to add to the pile? And in a way wasn’t this inevitable? Hadn’t it been inevitable since he’d walked into the shop and back into her life last week? ‘Yes,’ she admitted brokenly. ‘Yes, I want you.’
Giovanni knew then that he had her—and that he could make her beg for him if he so desired. Yet if this was victory, it seemed a hollow one—and for once in his life he wasn’t sure why.
His mouth hardened, for confusion was an emotion he could do without. ‘Come. We must not wake our son,’ he said, and he bent to lift her into his arms, holding her up against his bare chest.
Was Alexa imagining the sudden disapproval colouring his voice? She must have been—because why else would he be stroki
ng his fingers teasingly over the silk-covered globe of her bottom as he carried her through to the master bedroom? Yet, although his hands were gentle, his face was implacable as he carried her into the bedroom and laid her down on the bed.
For a moment he just stood, towering over her, staring at her with an expression she had never seen on his face before. Then with a cruel smile he reached down, catching hold of the delicate fabric with both hands and tearing it apart with a single wrench to lay bare her pale and beautiful body.
Alexa gasped as she heard it rip, and felt warm, scented air rushing onto her bare skin.
‘What did you do that for?’
He did not know. To destroy something which was hers? Or to remind himself that ultimately everything was disposable? Silk-satin was no different from the vows made during a marriage ceremony—they could both be torn to shreds. ‘Let’s just say I couldn’t wait,’ he said, in a dangerous voice.
Alexa knew she should have protested—told him that he had just destroyed an expensive gift which might not mean much to him, but sure as hell meant a lot to her. But it was too late for that. Too late to do anything other than gasp again—only this time with pleasure. For he had begun to kiss her again, and his warm naked form was lowering itself on top of her—it seemed that he had spoken the truth and that he couldn’t wait. Or didn’t want to. Because he was big, and hard, and—oh, heavens—now he was stroking on a condom.
‘Gio!’ she gasped.
Hard, honed flesh was melding with the soft, giving nature of hers. His hand was between her legs—fingers luxuriating in her honeyed wetness—and she could feel the tip of him nudging against her as he said something in Italian that in her befuddled state she could not understand.
What was it that made her wrap her legs around his back and push her hips up invitingly towards him—as if all the harsh words and bitterness between them had not happened? Was it simply a sexual hunger which had gone too long unfed? Or was it because deep down, in spite of everything, it was Giovanni who had dominated her waking thoughts and night-time dreams for so long, even though she had done everything in her power to try to forget him?
The man she had loved.
And loved still?
‘No!’ she whimpered in denial.
He stilled. ‘No?’ he drawled, in disbelief.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, and brushed her lips to his shoulder, her fingers tangling in the dark silky waves of his hair. ‘I meant…yes.’
Perversely, her slurred words of incitement made him hold back. To show that he held all the power, and not her. To prove to himself that he could make her beg and make her wait while he had the self-will to resist the wanton thrust of her hips
But then she touched her lips to his throat, licking at the hollow there, the way she’d used to, and that one small gesture took him right back to a time when he had seen in her all his hopes and dreams of a glorious and golden future. For a split-second Giovanni felt as if she had ripped his chest open and was watching his raw heart pumping there.
Furiously he thrust into her, harder and deeper than he had ever thrust into a woman before, as he forced himself to forget that he had married her, that she had ever been more to him than she was at this moment. Just a perfect and willing body sharing his bed. She is nothing to you, he told himself fiercely, and shut his eyes to blot her out.
‘Giovanni—’
‘What?’ he growled.
Alexa’s fingers bit into his broad shoulders as he moved inside her, seeming to stab at her heart itself as he took her further and further towards the peak of glorious fulfilment. Yet somehow it seemed like an empty pleasure. Even as she felt the encroaching rush of desire lapping at the edges of consciousness she realised that he was no longer kissing her.
Above her, his face was a mask—his closed eyes were not seeing her—and even though his body moved with such sweet and piercing accuracy inside hers the whole act somehow felt mechanical.
He wasn’t making love to her—he was having sex with her. Physically satisfying, but cold and functional sex.
She felt a silent anguished protest scream from deep within her, yet it was too late to back out now. Too late to halt the great building whoosh of pleasure. Her own body seemed like a traitor as it came to shivering completion in his arms.
Yet try as he might—in the dark, flowering moment of his own release -Giovanni could not shake off the thought that this did feel different. That he had once desired her in a way which had taken his breath away—and, even if you discounted that, his child had been nurtured within her womb in the interim. A part of him had grown inside her.
Unexpectedly, emotion ripped through him as a ragged cry was torn from his lips. He felt as if the universe was imploding behind his eyes. As if he might die at the very height of it—and that such a death would be matchless and perfect.
He had planned to distance himself afterwards, to roll away from her and to sleep on the other side of the vast bed until his desire returned once more and he could reach for her with nothing other than passion on his mind. But somehow it didn’t happen. He couldn’t move from where he lay, still locked inside her, with his dark head cradled on her breast as he felt the last of the blissful spasms dying away.
‘Gio?’ questioned Alexa, wondering just where the hell they were going after this. But her one-word question fell on ears that did not hear, and she blinked her eyes with something like surprise.
For Giovanni was already asleep.
CHAPTER NINE
ALEXA spent a fitful and apprehensive night while Giovanni slept beside her—the sheets rumpled beneath one hard, dark thigh while his hand rested carelessly at the dip in her waist.
She lay still as their naked bodies brushed together and her ripped nightgown lay in tatters on the floor, and wondered how she could have behaved in a way which was so horribly predictable.
It wasn’t even as if she had been coerced into it. He hadn’t brutally crushed her into his arms the way he’d done that time at her little house, when he’d gone all out to demonstrate his whole repertoire of sensual skills, had he? In fact, he had simply appeared by her bed and let his wrap flutter to the ground—like some cheesy stripper. And she had let him stroke her face and touch her breasts and then practically gone down on her hands and knees and begged him to make love to her.
Make love?
If it wouldn’t have risked waking him then she would have let out an ironic laugh. She had placed herself in enough emotional danger without adding to it—and if she started imagining that what had happened between them last night had been making love then she would be in real jeopardy.
Resisting the urge to wriggle her body restlessly, for fear that it would disturb the virile form of the sleeping man beside her, Alexa stared at the patterns on the ceiling—at the shimmering movement of moonlight reflected through the crystal drops of the chandelier—as night-time drifted slowly into day.
What had she done?
She had compromised herself utterly and completely, that was what she had done. Had had loveless sex with a man who had made no secret of despising her—or of his macho view of the world and a woman’s place in it. Wouldn’t he despise her even more now? The easy virtue he had always accused her of—and which she had always hotly denied—would now seem to have been explicitly confirmed by her actions.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew what he wanted—something which all his wealth and power could not buy him. His son. And if he went ahead with a legal battle to gain custody then what chance would she have? What kind of picture would he have his clever over-paid lawyers paint of her? A wanton? A slut? A puttana, as they said in Italy.
In the end, she went to sleep at the worst possible time—dozing off just before daybreak and thus having to abandon her plan to slip quietly from the bed and get showered and dressed in time to wake Paolo, and not risk him having to see…
‘Papà! What are you doing here, Papà?’
Paolo’s delighted little voice broke
into the cloud of her disturbed dreams and Alexa opened her eyes in time to see her son’s pyjama-clad figure hurtling towards the bed—where an indolently Giovanni lay like a watchful black panther against the bank of pillows.
‘What does it look like?’ Giovanni questioned indulgently as the child hurled himself at him, like a tiny steam train. He smiled as he held his arms out and cuddled the child to him, then yawned. ‘Waking up.’
Paolo stared at him. ‘Will you always sleep with Mamma now?’
Black eyes glittered from over the top of Paolo’s head in Alexa’s direction, but they were watchful, wary. Last night had shaken him. Had left him feeling a way he had not expected to feel. Light-headed, and not quite real. His voice hardened as he closed his mind to it. ‘You will have to ask her that yourself.’
The look she returned to him simmered with an unspoken fury. She was hating her son having to witness her looking like this—with her bedhead hair. Paolo was used to seeing her in an oversized T-shirt, and her nakedness beneath the bedclothes made her feel vulnerable and defenceless—as well as diminishing her opportunities for flouncing out with her dignity intact.
She clutched the sheet to her chin with one hand and ruffled Paolo’s dark curls with the other. ‘Um, darling, would you mind passing Mamma the dressing gown I left lying over there on the chair?’
‘Allow me,’ interposed a silken voice.
And, to Alexa’s horror, she saw Giovanni gracefully uncurl the child from his arms and get out of bed—completely naked himself—and saunter over to the satin kimono as if it was perfectly acceptable for him to pad around the place with nothing on.
Her eyes flashed a message at him. Put some damned clothes on.
He met the look and smiled, his eyes dilating by a fraction as he picked up the green gown and carried it over to her, subtly kicking her ripped nightgown out of sight, which made Alexa’s cheeks flare with mortification. He had torn that expensive nightie from her body—and she had just let him!
‘Paolo, why don’t you go and brush your teeth and Mamma will come and find you in a minute?’ Alexa suggested furiously, though she was trembling so much she was amazed that the sentence sounded coherent.
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