Pride helped her form careless words, and a career on the stage meant that she was able to utter them with a degree of conviction. ‘The hurt I felt was just a part of growing up,’ she said. ‘You were simply a necessary part of my sexual education, Dante.’
For a moment there was a stunned silence, and when he spoke his voice was underpinned with a dark note of anger. ‘I must say that I’ve heard myself described in many ways—but never quite like that before.’ The tip of his tongue slowly traced the outline of his upper lip. ‘And did I provide you with good grades during this sexual education I gave you?’
Justina’s heart skipped a beat as her body began to ache with half-forgotten hunger. She told herself she ought to get out of the car while she still had a chance, but it was as if someone had turned her limbs to stone. ‘I don’t...I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t? That’s such a pity. Then maybe I ought to refresh your memory for you.’
She met the challenge in his shadowed eyes and saw the way his lips had parted. Did she murmur something—or indicate with her expression that she wasn’t averse to the idea? Was that what made him move closer?
And suddenly they were kissing. Kissing as she’d forgotten how to. His hands were at her waist and she was reaching for his shoulders. In no time at all he was running his fingers over her satin-covered breasts and she was moaning like a woman in pain.
He snapped his seat belt free, swiftly followed by hers, but the space inside the car was cramped and already the windows were starting to get steamed up. It was hard to move, because there was nowhere to move, and her cheongsam made it even harder. The realisation that they were sitting right outside her hotel didn’t even enter the equation until she heard Dante mutter something urgent in Italian. He dragged his mouth away from hers and she could see the look of frustration burning in his eyes.
‘Not here,’ he bit out, shaking his dark head. ‘Not like this. Take me inside, Justina.’ He bent his head to drift his lips over hers. ‘Take me into your body before I explode.’
CHAPTER THREE
HER HOTEL ROOM was pristinely tidy. It was one of the things which Dante remembered as being uniquely Justina. While the rest of the band had existed in a rubble of half-eaten room service food and discarded wine bottles she had lived in her own neat little bubble, sitting writing her songs in the middle of all the chaos. He remembered her telling him that it was her particular antidote to a messy and erratic upbringing.
But his thoughts about her orderliness lasted for about as long as it took for the door to close behind them, for him to take her into his arms again and for his mouth to crush down on hers in another hungry kiss. He could feel the restless movement of her body as she writhed against him, but he got the sense that her mind was screaming out all kinds of objections.
Very deliberately, he grazed his mouth over hers with a slow and erotic brush. ‘I want you,’ he said, his words coming out unsteadily. ‘I have never wanted a woman as much as I want you in this moment.’
Justina closed her eyes as his lips moved to her neck, her fingers tangling themselves luxuriously in the thick darkness of his hair. ‘Dante...’ she whispered, knowing that the rest of the sentence went something like, You know we shouldn’t be doing this. But the words remained unspoken—and how could they be spoken when he had started touching her breasts like that?
‘What the hell kind of dress is this?’ he questioned as he felt around for a zip.
‘It’s called a...a cheongsam. I...I bought it in Singapore and I—’
‘I’m not interested in its history!’ Roughly, he cut through her stumbling explanation. ‘The only thing I’m interested in is how to get the damned thing off.’
‘There are buttons down the side,’ she gasped.
‘Sono mille!’ His fingers were trembling as he began to fumble them open. ‘How many?’
She felt cool air rushing onto her skin and told herself to call a halt to this madness. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Her body was too hungry, her desire too strong to be able to resist what he was doing to her. Hadn’t she spent the past five years wondering if she’d ever feel like this again? Wondering if her body would ever feel this incomparable rush of desire? And suddenly Justina knew that she didn’t want to be passive. That if this was to be their swansong then they would come together as the equals they’d never really been. She was no longer the virgin lover he had needed to teach. She had graduated with honours, and maybe it was time to remember just how much she’d loved having sex with this man.
She kicked off her high heels and sent them flying across the room before beginning to tug at his tie.
‘Impatient?’ he queried, thinking that in the past she would have slid the shoes tidily from her feet.
‘Aren’t you?’ she whispered back as she turned her attention to his shirt. She slid open the buttons and greedily peeled it away to reveal the honed torso beneath, bending her head to graze her teeth against his skin, her tongue licking luxuriously against its silken surface.
‘Dio.’ He shuddered, and tore at another button of her dress. He pulled the garment away from her with hands which were shaking, and if such a reaction was unheard of for someone of his experience he didn’t care. He unclipped her bra in one deft movement. Her panties he disposed of by ripping apart the delicate lace with his fingers, and he heard her little gasp of pleasure as they brushed over her honeyed heat.
‘You always liked me to play a little rough, didn’t you, tesoro?’ he demanded as he tugged off the last of his own clothing—and was taken off guard by her fervent passion as she pushed him down onto the bed.
She moved over him, her face filled with an expression he could never remember seeing before as she straddled him. Her eyes were slitted so he couldn’t read them, and she was biting her lips as if she was trying to stop them from trembling.
‘Do it,’ he commanded.
But Justina shook her head. Tonight she was going to call the shots. This was going to be her therapy, the recovery she needed. She would feast on his body until she’d had her fill. She would let the harsh light of reality shine down on this demi-god of her imagination and by morning she would see him for the mortal he really was. This was sex, she told herself fiercely—and she wasn’t going to make the mistake of confusing it with love.
‘I’ll do it when I’m good and ready.’
Dante moaned as she circled her hips to brush her feminine core over his steely erection so that he could almost feel her—but not quite. She was close enough for him to be able to plunge inside her, and yet she kept her moist treasure almost tantalisingly out of reach. His head fell back against the pillow and for a moment he felt almost helpless. This was not how he liked it to happen—at least not with Justina. He liked to be in control, to play the dominant role, and yet she was writhing around on top of him like some teasing whore. And, God help him, he liked it.
‘Per favore,’ he groaned. ‘Please.’
His heartfelt plea made something inside her snap, and despite revelling in her fleeting moment of power Justina knew she couldn’t wait any longer. Positioning herself, she slid down and slowly took his hard, silken length deep into her body. She heard him groan as he filled her and for a moment she couldn’t move. She wanted to fall against him. To collapse against his chest and hug him, clinging tightly as if she would never let him go. To tell him that nothing had ever felt as good as this and nothing ever would. But she wasn’t going to be passive, was she? Or weak. She was going to enjoy her body and make the most out of a situation she had never thought would happen.
Nor should it be happening, taunted a mocking voice in her head, but she shut the door on it as she began to move. Their warm bodies met and reacquainted themselves as she eased his throbbing shaft in and out of her eager flesh. She groaned as he played with her breasts, and when his thumb began to rub
against her clitoris she flung her head back and gave a low and shuddering cry. It felt so amazing that she never wanted it to stop, but it didn’t last as long as she wanted it to. How could it, when they were both so close to the edge? She tried to prolong the erotic dance for as long as possible, but the hot waves were too powerful to hold back. Dark impulses danced over her skin as she gripped his shoulders and pushed her hips forward, driving him in right up to the hilt.
‘Justina!’ he gasped.
‘Dante!’ she moaned in response as she felt the first shimmering tugs hovering at the edge of her consciousness—and then, as she began to go under, he flipped her onto her back, his powerful body dark and tense as he drove into her with increasing speed. Her body felt as if it was exploding with pleasure as the first of the spasms hit her, and then she heard him give his own ragged cry as his head sank down against her neck.
Justina kept her eyes tightly shut as their bodies gradually grew still and felt a brief pang of melancholy wash over her. But she was damned if she was going to let it show. She wasn’t going to start dwelling on how amazing it had been because that was nothing new. And she wasn’t going to start wishing that they could go back to what they’d had before. Because they couldn’t, could they? You could never go back.
Even if you could she wouldn’t want to—not with Dante. Especially not with Dante. Because he was bad news. Or had she forgotten that? Had the urgent greed of her body made her conveniently push away the bitter truth? He’d hurt her more than she’d thought it was possible to hurt and he had the power to do it still. And he would. She knew that. She knew all about the complex factors which motivated him. She knew that he’d seen some of her behaviour as humiliation to his macho pride, and perhaps this was his way of getting even. Taking her body with careless disregard for her feelings.
She wriggled a little, aware that they were still locked intimately together. He was sleeping—or at least he seemed to be doing a good impression of sleeping, with the dark arcs of his long lashes feathering his sculpted cheeks. Once there would have been love as she looked at him, but that emotion had been replaced by a mixture of anger and regret. How could she have done that? How could she? She’d brought him up here to her hotel room and just had sex with him—without any of the usual preliminaries. And why, of all the men in all the world, did it have to be him and only him who could make her feel like this? The only man she’d ever been intimate with was the man who had hurt her. Who had destroyed her trust completely.
She felt him stir inside her. She felt his burgeoning erection and remembered how deliciously insatiable he’d used to be. Once he would have lowered his head to kiss her and started to make love to her all over again. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. Please give me the strength to push him away, she prayed—but Dante got there first.
His silent withdrawal from her sticky body seemed fraught with symbolism—all of it dark. He hadn’t said a single word, and the silence in the room seemed to be growing bigger by the second. He was levering himself up onto one elbow and appeared to be viewing her as dispassionately as a scientist might look into a petrie dish, to see what rogue organisms had sprung up overnight.
‘That was some sex,’ he said, and Justina met the cold expression in his eyes.
She kept her own response deliberately light. Don’t let him know how you feel. Hide your hurt, your anger and your shame and be the kind of woman he usually ends up in bed with. Casual. No-strings. She even managed to curve her lips into the faintest of smiles. ‘You liked it?’
Dante’s face darkened. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how good you are.’ He paused and his voice took on an empty, hollow quality. ‘I’d forgotten quite how good.’
But he had never known her quite like that before, he realised. And, despite his own very comprehensive love life since they’d parted, he felt sick at the thought of her doing the same. He tried to tell himself that it was a good thing to realise that she’d changed. That she was no longer the sweet innocent he’d initiated into sex. He hadn’t expected her to be, had he? Had he?
‘I expect you’ve learnt a lot from all the other men you’ve known in the interim,’ he said.
Justina gave her naked shoulders a little wriggle. ‘I always make it a rule not to discuss other lovers when I’m in bed with a man. It strikes me as particularly bad manners.’
Her words made his mouth harden and he pushed back the rumpled bedclothes before getting out of bed. She watched as he headed for the bathroom, just as she’d watched him do so many times before. His naked olive body was magnificent, the perfect globes of his paler buttocks contrasting with the dark musculature of his powerful thighs.
He emerged minutes later and without another word reached for his clothes and began getting dressed.
‘Going?’ she questioned, still in that same studiedly casual voice.
He paused in the act of pulling on his shirt, his dark eyes flicking over her with a look which was half lust, half disgust. ‘I have a flight to the States in the morning. I told you that.’
‘Of course.’ She didn’t want him to think that she minded him leaving so she got out of bed herself, reaching for the silk robe which was lying neatly folded on the chair by the bed. ‘Would you like a drink before you go?’ she questioned. ‘I can ring down for coffee if you like. It’s a long drive back to London.’
A dark spear of jealousy lanced through him. Dante wondered if she knew how seasoned she sounded. As if she asked men that kind of question most days of the week. He saw her slide the slippery robe over her luscious nakedness and quickly averted his eyes. Maybe she did.
‘No, thanks.’
Justina began pulling the pins from her mussed-up hair and shaking it free. ‘Is there something particular in New York?’ she questioned. ‘Something which can’t wait?’
He curled his tie into a gleaming coil and slid it into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s a big party I don’t want to miss.’
‘Oh?’ He might as well have been talking about the stock market for all the emotion she put into her next question. ‘Something special?’
Dante looked at her. Her hair was now free of all the pins and had tumbled down around her shoulders and she was brushing it. It wasn’t as long as he remembered, but it was still thick and raven-dark. It made her look like some beautiful dark angel, he thought, and for a moment he wanted to kiss her again, to ravage her. To tumble her back down on the bed and thrust right into her all over again until he had emptied himself inside her. But he couldn’t. Or rather, he wouldn’t. Because while once had been a mistake, twice would be insanity. They were too different. They always had been.
He shrugged. ‘Just a party.’
‘Oh?’ Justina fought against the instinct which was telling her to leave it alone and instead let her finger hover over the self-destruct button. ‘Whose?’
‘A girl’s.’
Beneath her silk robe Justina felt her skin ice to goose bumps. Had he...had he done it again? Taken her to bed when he was in a relationship with someone else? Her heart felt as cold as her skin, but somehow she managed another of those light smiles—as if they’d just done nothing more daring than enjoy a cup of tea together, instead of romping wildly on the bed. Because she was not going to fall to pieces.
‘Well, drive carefully,’ she said. ‘And I hope you have a safe journey back to America.’
Dante’s mouth twisted. How dismissive she sounded. As if what they’d done had meant nothing. Because it had meant nothing, he reminded himself bitterly. They both knew that.
His mind began to play back an erotic tape of what had just happened. Justina straddling him. Justina riding him. The way he’d ridden her back until that sweet release had claimed them both. The forbidden ache of sex throbbed thickly through his veins and in that moment of renewed desire he despised himself almost as much as he despised her
for what they had done.
But not enough to stop him from pulling her into his arms and lowering his lips to a mouth which was now closed and resisting. A couple of seconds was all it took for that resistance to vanish, for her lips to part again and allow his tongue to slip inside. A couple of seconds more and she was kissing him right back, her fingers tangling in his hair the way they always did when she was turned on. If he’d given it any longer he suspected that he could have taken her again—right there on the floor on which they stood. He suspected that if he slid one finger between her legs he could make her come in seconds, the way he’d always been able to do. And wasn’t he tempted to do just that? Wasn’t he?
But Justina was pushing at his chest with two balled-up fists and tearing her mouth from his. Her eyes were dark with anger as she took a few unsteady steps away from him, and her breathing was ragged as she struggled to control it.
‘You’ve got what you came for—now get out of here,’ she snapped, because never in her life had she felt so used. ‘Go back to New York and get the hell out of my life.’
For a moment they stared at one another as rage and desire simmered in the air around them, and then Dante picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
‘Goodbye, Justina,’ he said, and the smile which curved his lips was bitter. ‘Thanks for the memory.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NIGHTMARE COULDN’T possibly get any worse.
It just couldn’t.
As warm, fat raindrops teemed from the sky Justina hurried into a shop on the busy Singaporean street as fast as her bulky frame would allow—but it wasn’t easy. The huge swell of her baby made movement difficult, especially in the sultry heat which characterised this vibrant city. A minute was all it had taken for her to get soaked right through, and now she stood shivering as the icy blast of the shop’s air-
conditioning blasted over her damp skin.
A Scandal, a Secret, a BabyMarriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! Page 4
