by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
Then, just as she was reduced to digging her teeth into the fullness of her lower lip in order to hold back the frantic cry of agonised frustration, he suddenly moved with firm decisiveness, sliding under the smoke-coloured silk to curve the strength of his hand over the damp heat of the most feminine core of her body.
‘So this is what you wanted,’ he muttered, acting the part of surprised discovery to perfection. ‘Well, why didn’t you say? You only had to ask…’
‘Vincenzo!’
Amy’s head tossed from side to side on the pillows. It was impossible to hide the way she was feeling, the devastating effect he was having on her. She was lost, adrift on the wildest sea of passion she had ever experienced, totally under Vincenzo’s control, and the worst part was that she didn’t even give a damn about the way that made her look.
Vincenzo’s smile was darkly triumphant as he bent his head to take her lips once more. The kiss swamped her with sensation so that she closed her eyes tight shut in a vain attempt to control them. So it was in total darkness that she heard his voice, and the cruel satisfaction in it as he spoke again.
‘I knew you were mine from the start. Mine and mine alone. I knew that once I touched you, once I had you, you could never go with anyone else. Never think of anyone else; never respond to anyone else. You are mine…’
Mine and mine alone. This time, when I take you, I will hold you for ever. I will never let you go again.
Sex and possession. The power over her that Vincenzo wanted so much he could not believe that she could look at any other man.
She had fallen completely into that power once and it had almost destroyed her. How could she be so blind, so foolish as to risk letting it happen all over again?
‘No!’
If he had flung a bucket of ice cold water right in her face he couldn’t have extinguished the blazing hunger his kisses and caresses had awoken any more effectively.
‘I said no!’
With a strength she hadn’t known she had possessed, Amy wrenched her mouth away from Vincenzo’s kisses, her arms away from the grip that imprisoned them above her head. The force of the movement threw her away and to her right, coming to the edge of the wide bed before she had time to think it might be there so that she tumbled inelegantly from the high, firm mattress. With a small cry of shock she landed painfully on the floor where the thick pile of the carpet only barely cushioned her fall.
‘What the devil…?’
Vincenzo’s response was positively the last straw. Where she had expected shock, probably anger, possibly even hard, bitterly frustrated disbelief, the sardonic amusement that lit his dark eyes from within was much more than she could bear.
‘Amy, mia cara, just what are you doing now? I know you are the most passionately responsive female it has ever been my pleasure to bed, but surely…’
‘This,’ Amy declared through gritted teeth, getting to her feet with as much of the shattered remnants of dignity as she was able to gather round her, ‘has nothing to do with response or passion, and it very definitely has no connection at all with your pleasure!’
‘On the contrary, it has everything to do with it,’ Vincenzo drawled with sardonic humour. ‘Or, rather, everything to do with a major discomfort I’m currently feeling—but that’s something you can put right just as soon as you stop behaving like an outraged virginal nun who’s just woken up to find the local Don Juan in her bed.’
‘I’m not doing any such thing! I may actually be the biggest fool in the world for letting this happen, but believe me, I’m not acting—very far from it!’
‘Amy, innamorata, you’re not making any sort of sense. Would you mind explaining…’
‘This isn’t going to happen!’ Amy interjected furiously, unable to take any more of his coldly mocking tone. ‘It mustn’t! It’s wrong!’
‘Wrong?’
She’d surprised him there. He really couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard.
‘Sbaglio? How can it be wrong?’
He raked one strong brown hand roughly through his hair in bemusement at her declaration and the furious tone in which she had flung it at him.
‘I am your husband. You are my wife. That means that this is not wrong. On the contrary, it’s completely, utterly right. It’s right that we should lust after each other; right that I should want to kiss you, touch you, make love to you.’
‘Love?’ Amy echoed on a snort of contempt that matched his perfectly. ‘It—’
‘And it’s right that you should go to pieces when I do these things,’ Vincenzo inserted smoothly, taking the rug right from under her feet. ‘That you can’t wait to let me take you to bed and make mad, passionate love all night long.’
‘Only if we love one another!’
That stopped him dead. His dark head went back sharply, jet-black eyes narrowing until they were merely gleaming slits under hooded lids and thick black lashes.
‘You don’t?’ he questioned sharply.
‘Love you?’
Reaction was setting in fast; Amy was trembling all over, struggling to get her wildly seesawing emotions back under control. And her aroused body was beginning to protest furiously at the abrupt ending to the glorious lovemaking it had been experiencing, the removal of the powerful sexual climax every awakened nerve had been anticipating eagerly.
‘No, I don’t love you. You killed any love I had for you by the way you treated me.’
Had that hit home? His face gave nothing away, but there was a long, nerve-stretching pause before Vincenzo shrugged in supreme indifference.
‘No matter. We don’t need love for what we have between us.’
‘Vincenzo, no!’
Amy jumped backwards as he made a move to come towards her, his purpose written clearly on those stunning features.
‘You may not need love, but I do! And—and…’
She struggled desperately for inspiration, grabbing at it thankfully when a germ of an idea presented itself. The only thing that might possibly make Vincenzo hold back.
‘I—I’ve found it with someone else.’
‘Someone else?’
It was obvious he couldn’t believe it, that she had rocked his male pride so severely that he was unable to believe that she would even dare to look at anyone else, let alone actually put them in his place.
‘What exactly are you saying?’
As always in times of stress or anger, his accent had deepened, becoming much more pronounced. And the look of dark fury in his eyes threatened to shrivel every word on her tongue.
‘Amy?’ It was ominous, dangerous, laced with warning.
Amy swallowed hard; forced herself to speak.
‘I’ve met someone else,’ she improvised wildly. ‘That’s why I’m here. I came to tell you—I want to marry him.’
Chapter Six
IT WAS worse than she had ever thought it might be.
She had anticipated anger. Perhaps fierce, black fury, or the sort of freezing withdrawal that was a Vincenzo Ravenelli speciality. Or possibly a refusal to listen, to believe a word she had to say.
She got none of that. Instead she was treated to a withering scorn; to the sort of mocking cynicism that seemed to wrench her soul right out of her breast.
‘You want to marry him?’ Vincenzo repeated on a note of such disdain that she winced inwardly just to hear it. ‘Is that a fact? Tell me, my dear wife, do they really do things so very differently in England?’
‘D-differently?’
Vincenzo’s smile was pure acid, eating away at her heart with its travesty of kindliness and understanding for the simple-minded.
‘I realise that it may be not quite what you’re used to, but here in Italy it is usual to get rid of one bridegroom before you acquire another. I believe that the name for marrying two at once—’
‘I know very well what the name for that is!’ Amy snapped furiously. ‘And of course I know that I can’t marry two men at once. Obviously, that’s precisely why
I’m here. But I really can’t carry on this sort of a conversation under these circumstances!’
‘And what circumstances are those?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ She gestured wildly to where he stood, one dark eyebrow raised in enquiry. ‘You are fully clothed…’
Except for the tie she had wrenched away, the buttons her clutching fingers had pulled open, exposing a disturbing amount of smoothly muscled, olive-skinned chest, the shadows of black curling hair arrowing down to the narrow leather belt that encircled his slim waist…
No!
With a shudder of reaction she dragged her weak thoughts away from the wanton path they were taking, forcing herself not to look anywhere but into Vincenzo’s face. Immediately she wished she hadn’t as she felt the full icy force of his baleful glare, bitter as a freezing wind from the North.
‘While I—I’m not suitably dressed at all!’
‘On the contrary. You are perfectly dressed for what I have in mind.’
‘And we both know what that is!’
‘It seems to me that it was exactly what was on your mind too until a moment or so ago,’ Vincenzo retorted smoothly.
He was obviously not a prey to her own fears about looking anywhere but into her face as he let his smouldering black gaze move over her from top to toe in a blatantly sexual survey.
‘And, really, I am thoroughly enjoying the view.’
‘Well, the view is all you’re going to get!’
Spotting her navy cotton dressing gown draped over a nearby chair, Amy pounced on it thankfully, pulling the garment on with such haste that when she fastened the belt the whole thing was distinctly lop-sided. Not that she gave a damn about that, she told herself, tying a second secure bow for good measure. As long as she was covered from neck to toe she felt better, her chin lifting higher as some degree of composure and courage returned.
‘Better?’ Vincenzo enquired with the sort of false concern that had Amy’s teeth snapping together as she bit back the very rude, very angry retort that she was tempted to express. ‘Are you ready to talk now?’
She would have preferred to suggest that they move elsewhere. The combination of Vincenzo’s tall, powerfully male frame, those frankly lascivious eyes, and the softly padded king-size bed—a bed on which only moments before she had been writhing in the closest thing to erotic ecstasy this side of an orgasm—was not at all conducive to clear thought and logical argument.
But to declare as much was to admit a weakness that she was painfully sure that Vincenzo would pounce on immediately, giving her no quarter. And so she managed to nod her head, smoothing down the navy robe until she realised that the way her hands shook betrayed her more than anything she could say.
‘As ready as I’ll ever be—not that there’s much to talk about.’
She considered sitting on the edge of the bed, then rethought hastily as she recalled just why the blue and cream coverlet was especially crumpled in that particular spot. Instead she moved to the nearest chair, holding onto its back for support as she faced him once more.
‘It’s perfectly simple, Vincenzo. I’ve met someone else.’
She was amazed at the ease with which the lies formed on her tongue.
‘He hasn’t asked me to marry him, yet, but I know that’s what’s on his mind. And obviously I can’t say yes until I—I’m free from our marriage. That’s why I came here. To tell you that I want a divorce.’
There, it was done! She said it at last, and in the end it hadn’t been quite as dreadful as she had feared. Once she had got started, the words had come pouring out, tangling on her tongue, almost tripping over themselves in her haste to have them finally spoken. And it hadn’t been completely untrue; just a touch of embroidery on reality. The end result was the same. She wanted a divorce. But not because she planned to marry anyone else.
But as the seconds ticked by and Vincenzo still hadn’t reacted or answered she was forced to doubt her own sanity, wondering whether in fact she had actually spoken the words aloud and not just framed them inside her head.
‘Vincenzo?’ she managed uncertainly. ‘Did you hear…?’
‘Hear? Of course I heard.’
‘Then what…?’
‘You want a response?’ he questioned when her voice failed her as her apprehensive blue gaze met the unyielding force of his black one. ‘Why?’
‘I—I would have thought that was obvious. I need an answer.’
‘And I would have thought that that was obvious,’ Vincenzo tossed back, his tone totally devoid of emotion. ‘Why ask for an answer when you know already what it will be? But if you want me to spell it out…’
She didn’t want anything spelling out. She could already guess what was coming and her heart quailed inside simply at anticipating it. But she didn’t even dare to try to stop Vincenzo now.
‘You want to know if I’ll give you a divorce? The answer is no—never! The Ravenelli family do not divorce.’
Well, she’d asked for it! Whatever else, she’d hoped that at least he would go as far as to consider the idea, not just dismiss it out of hand. Only the thought of the new start she had dreamed of, if she could win her freedom, spurred her on to argue with him.
‘They must…’
The shake of his head was a total rejection of her protest.
‘No way. No member of my family has ever undergone the ignominy of the divorce courts, and I have no intention of being the first one.’
‘Well, tough!’ Despair made Amy assume a hardness she was very far from feeling. ‘I want this and one way or another I’m going to get it! I can always divorce you without your consent!’
‘You can send me any papers you like. I will never sign them.’
‘But you must!’
No, telling Vincenzo Ravenelli that he must do anything was the worst possible idea. From the flare of cold anger in his eyes, the new tension in his strong jawline, she knew that all she was doing was hardening his resolve. She was just making him even more determined to thwart her desire, if it was at all possible.
‘Vincenzo, please!’
Was the man made of stone? How could he look at her like that? How could he look into her pleading eyes, see the glisten of the tears she couldn’t quite control, and still show no flicker of concern?
But wasn’t this just what she should have expected? Wasn’t this the man who had married her simply in order to get her into his bed, and to win a lousy, stinking bet?
‘You have to give me a divorce—or, at the very least, you can’t stop me! We’ve been separated for four years—in another twelve months I can divorce you with or without your consent. When I tell a judge how you conned me into marrying you, how you deceived me, it’ll be obvious straight away that you never meant ours to be a real marriage at all! That the whole thing was a lie from start to finish.’
‘And when I tell him how you’ve behaved since you arrived in Italy, it’ll be even more obvious that you don’t know your own mind—that you’re not really certain whether you want this marriage to end or not,’ Vincenzo shot back, with the air of a medieval knight throwing down a gauntlet in arrogant challenge.
‘That I…?’
Where had that come from? She’d had no warning of the way his thoughts were heading and he had attacked with the speed and venom of a striking snake.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘About you, my beloved wife, and the mixed messages you’ve been giving me ever since you arrived in Italy—the way you’ve been blowing hot and cold, giving me the come-on one moment—’
‘Giving you the…?’ Amy could only shake her head in disbelieving confusion ‘I did no such thing! You set out from the first to seduce me! I—I…’
‘Look at it from my point of view, cara. When my wife turns up on my doorstep, what am I to think? I truly believed that you had come to your senses. That you had come to build bridges, to try to start again with our marriage—and, obviously, I thought that that included a ret
urn to a physical relationship.’
‘Obviously,’ Amy echoed hollowly, sinking down into the chair she had been leaning against, her legs refusing to support her without trembling.
‘Especially when you behaved as if it was what you wanted most in all the world.’
Amy’s head came up in protest, blue eyes flashing rejection of his outrageous assertion.
‘Now, that is just not true!’
‘No?’ Vincenzo queried, black eyes rounding in a look of fake astonishment that gave her a rush of new strength, pushing her out of the chair and halfway across the room towards him. ‘Look at it from my point of view.’
‘I don’t want to look at anything from your warped, twisted point of view!’
Having come this far across the room, Amy didn’t quite know what to do with herself and came to an awkward, stumbling halt to stand, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, glaring at him furiously.
‘I wouldn’t trust you not to distort everything so that it fitted your perverted version of the truth instead of what actually happened.’
‘Perverted,’ Vincenzo echoed, his intonation sending ice sliding down her spine, making her quail inwardly at the danger threatened by his coolly precise enunciation. ‘Distorted. Let me see…’
He swung away from her, prowling slowly around the room, looking for all the world like a big, sleek black panther restlessly pacing the confines of its cage. He gave the impression of having to think of what he wanted to say, but Amy suspected that it was nothing but show. She had never seen Vincenzo at a loss for words in any way, and she certainly didn’t expect him to start now.
Pivoting on his heel, Vincenzo turned back to her, one hand held up, one long finger extended to emphasise his point.
‘You come to my house with little warning—just a telephone message left to say you’re arriving. What am I to think?’
‘You’ve already told me what you thought!’ Amy managed through gritted teeth. ‘And I have told you that you were mistaken.’
