He saw her watching him, and he deliberately touched himself. Saw the way that her eyes dilated as he stroked his finger arrogantly along his aching hardness, provocatively sliding on the sheath and turning practicality into eroticism. And then she lifted one pale, smooth thigh in unconscious invitation, and he could play that particular game no longer. ‘You are wearing far too much, cara,’ he told her softly as he climbed onto the bed next to her.
On an instinct she bent her head forward and licked luxuriously at the Adam’s apple that curved at his throat, and felt him shudder beneath her tongue. ‘Am I?’ she whispered, transfixed by the hungry gleam in his eyes as he glittered a hungry gaze over her body.
‘Much, much too much,’ he murmured, his accent deepening. He peeled the cashmere vest over her head and felt the pounding of his heart as he caught his first sight of her breasts. So full and so pale. Encased in virginal white lace. His mouth twisted at the irony of that, but his thoughts were banished by the need of his body.
‘Matri di Diu!’ he muttered thickly, and dipped his head to her breast, unable to stop the quick flick of his tongue against the nub which strained so frantically through the delicate white lace.
‘Oh!’ The pleasure of his touch was so intense that it was almost like pain. No, not pain—because if this was pain, then how to define pleasure, pure and sweet? Her head fell back helplessly against the pillow as he flicked his tongue again.
‘You like that, don’t you, cara?’ he enquired almost idly, watching the way that her hips moved against the bed in a frantic little circle, and the heat of his own longing almost made him lose his mind. ‘Don’t you?’ he repeated harshly.
‘Yes!’
He unclipped the bra and her breasts fell free, and once more he bent his head, taking the whole nipple greedily between his lips, and sucking on it hard, in an erotic imitation of the way she had sucked his thumb earlier, and Kate very nearly passed out with pleasure.
‘Giovanni…’ Her head moved from side to side on the pillow, as if in denial. No, not denial. She could deny this man nothing. Not a thing.
‘Sí?’ he whispered softly, but words failed her because he had moved his hand between her thighs and parted them.
She licked her lips feverishly as he moved his middle finger inside her thong.
And Giovanni’s breath escaped him on a long, almost helpless shudder as he felt the syrupy desire of her slicking against his skin, feeling her shudder beneath his touch, hearing her moan his name once more. Was she like this for every man? he wondered for one hot and fevered moment.
He moved his finger experimentally against her. And again. And again. Her moans increased, and the sound of her helpless little cries made him grow even harder, almost unbearably so.
‘I want you,’ she whispered.
He gave an almost cruel smile as he lifted his dark head to look down at her. He would make her beg. Women liked to beg. ‘Not yet,’ he told her, on a silky taunt.
‘Please.’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he repeated, on a low, provocative growl.
He wasn’t going to stop what he was doing, Kate realised…
He wasn’t going to stop…
And, to her utter disbelief, Kate felt the inexorable onslaught of fulfilment. The great tearing warmth of…of…
‘Giovanni!’ She said his name urgently. ‘Oh!’ She opened her eyes very wide. ‘This is the best!’ she gasped in astonishment. ‘I’m coming…’
He could see that for himself from the sudden stiffening of her limbs, the way her back arched, the increased slick against his fingers, and then the slow, shuddering spasms which made her cry out loud.
He waited until she was nearly done, and then he straddled her, two taut thighs on either side of her hips, and thrust into her while her body was still pulsing with pleasure.
Her eyes flew open at the renewed sensation. He was so very big. So huge that he filled her completely. But, more than that, it felt so right to have him inside her. As though all her life her body had been yearning to have Giovanni Calverri make love to her like this.
He moved. Over and over. And as he moved he kissed her, and she gave herself up to the sweetness of those kisses, not thinking, not even caring about whether this was right or wrong, because nothing had ever felt this good.
He wanted to prolong it, to make it last forever. He had always been able to do that. Even as a teenager, when the newness of physical pleasure had threatened to overwhelm him. But now he felt the stealthy steal of orgasm come to claim him before he was prepared for it. He tried to fight it. For a moment he almost managed it. But when he felt her begin to pulse around him once more he knew that he was lost.
‘Kate,’ he said almost brokenly, the first and only time he had said her name since their bodies had joined with such bitter-sweet communion.
And Kate wept with some strange, deep emotion against his bare shoulder as she came again, feeling him begin to shudder deep inside her, arms closing around him tightly as she wished that this night could never end.
Giovanni awoke to unfamiliar shadows, his senses leaping into perception in a split-second as he tried to work out just where he was.
Dear God!
There was a sleeping woman beside him, which in itself was not strange, but he knew immediately that this was different. Her scent was different. The long red hair which the night had made dark was different.
And the sex had been different, too. Beautifully and irrevocably different.
Ruthlessly he quashed the memory as his body betrayed him once more with the stirring of desire, and he slipped silently from the bed.
He was of a race that understood secrecy. And stealth—and he had no difficulty moving without sound around the silent room to locate his clothes and shoes, which he carried from the room.
In the bathroom he dressed, glancing only once in the mirror, but once was enough. The wild glitter in his eyes told its own story. As did the darkened contours of his mouth, where she had kissed him as if she were drowning, as if she couldn’t get enough of him.
His mouth twisted with self-contempt as he let himself noiselessly out of the flat into the crispness of the moonless summer night, and to where the black car was sitting reproachfully just as he had left it.
He looked up at the unlit windows of the flat as he turned the key and the engine flooded into powerful life, wondering whether she would appear, clutching a sheet perhaps, bewitching him with that pale and glorious body as she watched him drive away.
But the window remained empty, and relief coursed hotly through his veins, just as desire had heated them only hours earlier.
Two o’clock.
His flight to Sicily had long since departed. And there would be nothing now until the early morning. Night flights were banned—their intrusion into the quiet, sleeping skies around Heathrow not allowed.
He thought about what options lay open to him.
He could go to the airport and wait. Drink some unspeakable coffee while he contemplated his impetuous folly, and thought through the inevitable conclusion of what he had done.
But he shook his dark, gleaming head as if in answer to his unspoken question.
Inactivity would lie too heavily on his conscience.
And on his heart.
He accelerated as if he was aiming for some invisible finishing barrier and headed west.
He drove like a man on a mission—though he was cautious enough to observe the speed limit, but only just, even though the roads were empty of police cars. He had played the devil with fate once already tonight, and a speeding ban would end this remarkable night on an even more bitter note.
His body was still pulsing with the remembered warmth of her body and he uttered a soft curse in Sicilian as he felt the renewed ache of desire. But he forced it away, because the time for passion was now at an end, and he must address the consequences of his actions.
He had betrayed Anna with a woman he scarcely knew—so what did t
hat say about him? More importantly, what did it say about their relationship?
He gave a sigh of regret mingled with anger. He had thought that his life with Anna had been happy—hell, it had been happy, but now for the first time he was compelled to acknowledge that something was missing from their life together, something which had never occurred to him was lacking until he had found it with someone else.
Passion.
The question was whether he was prepared to forgo passion and to cherish instead everything he had shared with Anna.
Or whether Anna deserved better.
He continued to drive though he did not know where, only that the miles eaten up by the machine did nothing to ease his sense of wrongdoing. And it was only when daylight began to break in purest gold shot with rose-pink over the horizon that he slowed down and began to follow the signs back towards the airport.
Unfamiliar light woke her. The cold, clear light of dawn as it flooded through the uncurtained windows.
Kate blinked, her body warm and aching, her mind drifting in and out of sweet, remembered places, and then her eyes flew wide open to greet the pale and brilliant light of early morning as memory slipped sharply into focus, at the same time as did one monumental and heartbreaking fact.
He had gone! Giovanni had gone!
Her heart clenched painfully in her chest and she closed her eyes. Please, please, please…let him still be here, she beseeched in silent prayer.
She held her breath, but the flat remained utterly silent save for the almost imperceptible ticking of the bedside clock whose illuminated face showed that it was almost five in the morning.
She shivered as she remembered what she had done. What they had done. Without thought. And without shame, she told herself fiercely. Maybe it had not been textbook relationship behaviour as taught to her by her mother, but she could not—and would not—regret it.
She pushed the rumpled sheet back and found herself staring with helpless longing at the indentation of where his head had lain on the pillow. She ran the flat of her hand over it, as if that faint touch could magic him back again. And she found herself understanding why women sometimes kissed the pillow on which their lover had rested his head.
She shuddered a breath as hope flared foolishly in her heart. Maybe he was in the bathroom.
But a closer glance around the room killed that hope stone-dead. Only her discarded clothes lay scattered wantonly all over the carpet of the bedroom.
Her cheeks flushed.
It had been beautiful. Passionate and profound. She had felt proud to love him, and had imagined that the feeling had been mutual. A man and a woman sent spinning out of orbit by the power of their mutual attraction.
But if that was the case, where was he now?
She licked at her dry lips distractedly. He had been on his way back to Sicily, she reasoned. Perhaps his business had been of a particularly urgent nature, and he had not wanted to disturb her. Because some unshakable instinct told her that Giovanni Calverri was far too fastidious a man to ever indulge in the transient pleasures of a one-night stand. Why, she had certainly never done anything like it herself!
Which meant that he would almost certainly have left a note.
Her heart was beating very fast as she went from room to room, switching on every light as she did so, so that no surface would go unsearched.
Until she was forced to admit to herself the ghastly, horrible truth.
That Giovanni had left without a trace.
And that was when pain began to metamorphosise into anger…
Giovanni lifted his eyes to the dark-haired stewardess, and frowned, barely noticing the overt look of admiration she was slanting at him. ‘What?’ Automatically, he had lapsed into Sicilian.
Her eyes flashed excitedly as she heard the distinctive dialect, but she was only able to answer him in Italian. ‘I asked whether you would like a cup of coffee before take-off?’ she said in a smooth, practised voice.
What he wanted was for the damned plane to be touching down on the soil of his homeland—and certainly not a flight which involved a changeover in Rome while he waited for a connection.
For half a moment he had considered chartering a private jet to take him on from Rome, but another sharp jab of his conscience had stopped him. Was he really about to start rewarding his outrageous indiscretion with a flamboyant gesture of extravagance?
‘Please,’ he said shortly.
She prettily offered him a tray of pastries but he waved them away with an impatient hand, and spent the rest of the flight forcing himself to go through a batch of papers which could easily have waited.
But he needed something to occupy his mind. Something to try to stop him remembering the red blur of her hair and the emerald gleam of bewitching eyes.
You’re going home, he told himself. With all that that entails.
In Rome, he forced himself to eat a little something, reminding himself that he had had nothing since yesterday’s lunch. But the food tasted bland, and he pushed the half-touched plate away as his flight was announced.
The minutes ticked by like hours as Kate prowled around the flat, her initial sense of desolation gradually being replaced by a feeling of outright fury.
How dared he?
How dared he?
By such a cold and uncaring rejection he had reduced a wonderful night to the bitter realisation that she had indulged in a classic one-night stand.
And then been dumped!
She felt her cheeks stain with shame. They were both mature and consenting adults. OK, he might have decided that he didn’t want to see her again, but at least he could have done her the courtesy of going through the motions of civilised behaviour. It wouldn’t have killed him to have breakfast with her, surely? Or to have made love to her when she woke up? prompted the hungry voice of her senses. He could have taken her telephone number and said that he would ring her, even if he hadn’t meant it.
Bastard!
She couldn’t sleep, eat, or concentrate on anything. She ran a bath and afterwards threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt—and the more she thought about Giovanni’s behaviour towards her, the more her fury grew and grew. But fury seemed to hurt less than shame—and far less than the pang of realising that she would probably never see him again.
She couldn’t understand it. Had she misread everything?
He had been the best lover she had ever had, and she was certain that the experience had been as wonderful for him as it had been for her. She had seen that almost dazed sense of wonder on his face as their bodies had joined together.
So why creep out like a thief into the night and destroy what they had shared? Why leave her with the bitter taste of rejection and confusion?
Several times that day she reached her hand out to the telephone, then decided against using it when she reminded herself that men like Giovanni Calverri had it much too easy.
How would he ever learn that he couldn’t just go around taking what he wanted without showing a little more consideration in the process? Unless somebody actually had the nerve to tell him?
And the unthinkable notion that she might just be one in a long line of broken-hearted international conquests was enough to make up her mind.
Resolutely, Kate reached her hand towards the telephone again, only this time she picked it up.
‘International directories, please,’ she said crisply.
Giovanni drew to a halt in front of the Calverri headquarters, and wondered why everything felt different.
Why he felt different.
Yet outwardly nothing had changed. Heat sizzled off the parched earth and the sky was a dazzling blue as he stared at the huge, old, cloistered villa set in a magnificent piece of land where his family’s silver business was housed. Here, artisans who had been with the company for most of their working lives lovingly created silver heirlooms using traditional methods which had never been bettered.
And every spring students would flock from all ove
r the world to learn their craft at the hands of experts. From these students would be drawn fresh blood and talent which would keep the Calverri business running long into the next century.
Giovanni sighed as he made his way to his secretary’s office. His heart was heavy, and the burden of guilt weighed down on him like lead. Soon he was going to have to face Anna and he just didn’t know what he was going to say to her.
His secretary looked up as he came in, and her eyes widened with pleasure.
‘Giovanni, you’re late!’ she exclaimed, her smile of welcome dying on her lips as she saw the look on his face. ‘What has happened?’ she questioned. ‘Is something wrong?’
Was it that apparent, then? What had happened to his ability to hide his feelings—to present a cool, remote kind of demeanour—so that people never knew what he was thinking?
‘A long journey,’ he said, and shrugged, picking up a handful of documents in a gesture designed to guard against further intrusion. ‘What needs to be gone through? I had better catch up on whatever is urgent, and then I must go and see Anna.’
His secretary smiled. Once she had entertained romantic notions about Giovanni herself, but then reality had set in. He was her boss—an untouchable god of a man. And she adored Anna. Everyone did.
‘Did that order go off to Texas?’ he quizzed.
‘As scheduled.’ She nodded.
‘And what of the Scandinavian project?’
‘Better than expected.’ She smiled back.
His satisfied nod was more automatic than genuine, and he worked away with a quiet determination until all the backlog was cleared and he knew he could put off the moment of truth no longer. He rose to his feet.
‘I will see you tomorrow, Gabriella.’
His secretary narrowed her eyes in silent question, but said nothing other than, ‘Sí, Giovanni.’ And she sat watching as he left the office, disturbed only by the sudden intrusion of the telephone, which she picked up.
‘Pronto!’
The Sicilian's Passion Page 5
