The Italian's Revenge

by Michelle Reid

  He was good and kind and treated her as an intellectual equal rather than a potential lover. And she liked what they’d had together. It was so much calmer and more mature than the relationship she’d had with Vito.

  No fire. No passion to fog up reality.

  Marcus was tall, he was dark—though not the romantically uncompromising dark that was Vito’s main weapon of destruction. And he was very good-looking—in a purely British kind of way.

  She’d wanted to want him. She’d wanted to stop comparing every other man she met with Vito and actually take a chance on Marcus being the one to help her remove Vito’s brand of hot possession from her soul for ever. But had she been in love with Marcus? She asked herself. And the answer came back in the form of a dark shadow. For, no, she had not fallen in love with him nor even been close to falling, she realised now.

  But what really hurt, what really shocked and shamed and appalled her, was that she hadn’t realised just how seriously Marcus had fallen in love with her—until she’d broken her news to him today.

  With a heavy sigh she sat back against the wall behind her, her packing forgotten for the moment while she let herself dwell on the biggest crime of blindness she had ever been guilty of.

  She had stunned Marcus with her announcement that she was going back to Naples and to her husband. She had knocked the stuffing right out of him. So much so, in fact, that he hadn’t moved, hadn’t breathed, hadn’t done anything for the space of thirty long wretched seconds but stare blankly into space.

  The threatened tears arrived. Catherine felt them trickle down her dusty cheeks but didn’t bother to stop them.

  Because Marcus loved her—and she’d always wanted to be loved like that—for herself and not just the heat of her passion!

  Oh, he’d pulled himself together eventually, she recalled with bittersweet misery. Then he’d said all the nice, kind gentlemanly things aimed to make her feel better when really it should have been the other way around and her consoling him.

  But how do you console someone you know you’ve hurt more than you would ever want to be hurt yourself?

  ‘Mummy?’ The concerned sound of her son’s voice reached deep inside to where she’d sunk in, and brought her shuddering back to a sense of where she was. She opened her eyes to find him squatting beside her with a gentle hand resting on her shoulder and his brown eyes looking terribly anxious. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked worriedly.

  ‘Oh,’ she choked, hurriedly pulling herself together. ‘Nothing,’ she said huskily. ‘Just some dust in my eye. How...?’ She rubbed at the offending evidence. ‘How did you get in?’ she asked.

  ‘The front door was open,’ another deeper and very protracted voice grimly informed her.

  Vito. Her heart sank. And now she felt thoroughly stupid.

  ‘You left it on the latch.’ Her small son took up the censure. ‘And we couldn’t find you anywhere so we thought something might have happened to you.’

  Couldn’t find her? Why, where was she? she asked herself with a blank stare at her immediate surroundings.

  She was in her bedroom, she realised. Sitting on the floor between the chest of drawers and the wardrobe while the space around her was piled with hastily filled cardboard boxes.

  Boxes in which to pack her life away, she thought tragically. And without any warning the floodgates swung wide open. It was terrible—the lowest moment of her whole rotten day, in fact.

  So the tears flowed in abundance and she couldn’t stop them, and beside her Santo began crying too. He tried to hug her and she tried to comfort him by hugging him back and mumbling silly words about his mother being silly, and somewhere in the background she could hear things being shifted and someone cursing, but didn’t even remember who that someone was until her son was plucked away from her and put somewhere so a pair of strong arms could reach down and gather her up.

  She simply curled up against a big, firm male body and continued weeping into its shoulder. Oh, she knew it was Vito, but to admit that to herself meant fighting him again, and she didn’t want to fight right now. She wanted to cry and be weak and pathetic and vulnerable. She wanted to be held and clucked over and made to feel safe.

  He sat down on the bed with her cradled against him and beside them Santo came to put his arms back around her; he was still sobbing.

  ‘Santino, caro,’ Vito was murmuring with husky firmness. ‘Please stop that crying. Your mamma is merely sad at having to leave here, that is all. Females do this; you must learn to expect it.’

  The voice of experience, Catherine mocked within her own little nightmare. Yet she’d never cried on him like this—ever. So where had he acquired that experience?

  ‘I hate you,’ she whispered thickly.

  ‘No, you don’t. Your mamma did not mean that, Santo,’ Vito coolly informed his son. ‘She merely hates having to leave this house, that is all.’

  In other words, Remember who is listening.

  ‘We’ll have to stay here, then,’ his young son wailed, his arms tightening protectively around Catherine.

  ‘We will not.’ His father vetoed that suggestion. ‘Your mamma loves Naples too; she is just determined to forget that for now.’ The man had no heart, Catherine decided miserably. ‘Now be of use,’ he instructed his son sternly, ‘and go and get your mother a glass of water from the kitchen.’

  The sheer importance of the task diverted Santo enough to stop his tears and send him scrambling quickly from the bed.

  ‘Now, try to control yourself before he comes back.’ Vito turned his grimness onto Catherine next. ‘You are frightening him with all of this.’

  She didn’t need telling twice to realise that Vito was only being truthful and she had frightened Santo by breaking down. So she made a concerted effort to stem the tears, then pulled herself free of his arms and crawled off his lap and beneath the duvet without uttering a single word.

  What could she say, after all? she pondered bleakly. I’m crying because I hurt the man I wanted to replace you with? Vito would really love to know that!

  By the time Santo came back, carefully carrying the glass of water in front of him, her tears had been reduced to the occasional sniffle. Smiling him a watery smile, she accepted his offering and added a nasal-sounding thank you that didn’t alter his solemn stare.’

  I don’t like to see you upset, Mummy,’ he confessed.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she apologised gently, and pressed a reassuring kiss to his cheek. ‘I promise I won’t do it again.’

  And to think, she slayed herself guiltily, only this morning she had been shouting at him, and here he was being so excruciatingly nice to her! It was enough to make her want to start crying all over again.

  Maybe Vito saw it coming, because as quick as a flash he was ushering Santo out of the room with murmured phrases about Catherine needing to rest now.

  Oddly enough she did rest. Lying there, huddled beneath the duvet, she started out by thinking about Marcus and Santo and herself and ended up falling asleep, to dream about Vito coming back into the bedroom, she didn’t how much later, and silently but gently undressing her before slipping the duvet back over her boneless figure. She could remember dreaming that she had a one-sided conversation with him, but before she could remember what that conversation was about sleep claimed her yet again.

  The next time she awoke she knew it was the middle of the night simply by the hushed silence beyond the closed curtains. She lay there for a while, feeling relaxed and comfortable—until something moved in the bed beside her that had her shimmying over on a gasp of alarm.

  She found Vito asleep in the bed beside her. Lying flat on his back, with an arm thrown in relaxed abandon on the pillow behind his head, he looked as if he had been there for hours!

  But that wasn’t all—not by a long shot. Because from what she could see of his bronze muscled torso, he had also climbed into her bed naked!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘VITO!’ she cried in wh
ispering protest, and issued an angry push to his warm satin shoulder.

  ‘Hmm?’ he mumbled, black-lashed eyelids flickering upwards to reveal slumberous eyes that were not quite in focus.

  ‘What do you think you are doing here?’ Catherine demanded.

  ‘Sleeping,’ he murmured, and lowered his eyelids again. ‘I suggest that you do the same thing.’

  ‘But I don’t want you in my bed!’

  ‘Tough,’ he replied. ‘Because I am staying. You could not be left alone here in the state you were in, and Santo needed the reassurance of my presence. So be wise, cara,’ he advised. ‘Accept a situation you brought upon yourself. Shut up and go to sleep before I awaken properly and begin thinking of other things we can do to use up what is left of the night.’

  ‘Well, of all the—’ She couldn’t believe she was hearing this. ‘What makes you think that all of that gives you the right to climb into bed with me?’

  ‘Arrogance,’ he replied, so blandly that Catherine almost choked on the sudden urge to laugh!

  Only this was no laughing matter. ‘Just get out of here,’ she hissed, giving his rock-solid shoulder yet another prompting push.

  ‘If I open my eyes, Catherine, you will intensely regret it,’ he warned very grimly.

  She was no fool; she recognised that tone. On an angry flurry of naked flesh, she flung herself onto her back, to lie seething in silence.

  Naked. Her heart stopped beating as a new kind of shock went rampaging through her.

  So it had not been a dream and Vito had undressed her! The man’s self-confessed arrogance knew no bounds! she decided as she sent one of her hands on a quick foray of her own body to discover just how naked she was.

  She was very—very naked.

  ‘Did you know you have developed a habit of talking in your sleep?’ he said suddenly.

  Catherine froze beside him. She heard a very muddled and very disjointed echo of words being spoken by her that should have taken place in the privacy of her head.

  Regretful words about Marcus.

  ‘Shut up,’ she gasped, terrified of what was coming. ‘He must be quite something, this man you weep for.’ He ignored her advice in the dulcet tones of one readying for battle. ‘To reach the frozen wastelands where your heart lies hidden. Maybe I should take the trouble to meet him, see what he’s got that I never had.’

  ‘Why bother?’ she slashed back. ‘When you would never find the same qualities inside yourself if you searched for ever.’

  ‘Is he good in bed?’

  Her next gasp almost strangled her. ‘Go to hell,’ she replied, turning her back towards him.

  As an act of dismissal it had entirely the opposite effect, because Vito’s arm had scooped around her and rolled her back before she even knew what was happening.

  And suddenly he was leaning right over her, all glinting eyes and primitive male aggression. ‘I asked you a question,’ he prompted darkly.

  Her mouth ran dry, the tip of her tongue slinking out to moisten parted lips that were remaining stubbornly silent because she was damned if she was going to tell the truth—that she had never even been tempted to go to bed with Marcus—just to soothe Vito’s ruffled ego! Luxurious dark eyelashes curled down over shimmering eyes as he lowered his gaze to observe the nervous action—and completely froze it as an old, old sensation went snaking through her.

  He was going to kiss her. ‘No, Vito,’ she breathed, but even she heard the weakness in that pathetic little protest.

  It was already too late. His mouth claimed hers with the kind of deeply sensual kiss that could only be issued by this wretched man. It was like drowning in the most exquisite substance ever created, she likened dazedly as she began to sink on a long, spiralling dive through silken liquid kept exactly at body heat so it was impossible to tell what part of the kiss was hers and what part was his.

  The man, his closeness, even the antipathy that was pulsing between them, was so sexual that she found herself thinking fancifully of lions again. Her skin came alive, each tiny pore beginning to vibrate with an awareness that held her trapped by its power and its intensity.

  Whether it was she who began to touch him first or whether Vito was the one to begin their gentle caresses, she didn’t know—didn’t really care. Because the heat of his flesh felt so exquisitely wonderful to her starved fingertips, and where he touched she burned, and where he didn’t she ached.

  She tried to drag some air into lungs that had ceased working, felt the tips of her breasts briefly touch his hair-roughened breastplate, felt her nipples sting as they responded to the contact and moaned luxuriously against his mouth.

  With a sensual flick of his tongue, Vito caught that little moan, took possession of it as if it belonged to him. And as his hands worked their old magic on her flesh with the sensual expertise of a master, he watched in grim triumph as, bit by bit, she surrendered herself to him.

  ‘Does he make you feel like this, cara?’ he grated with electric timing across the erect tip of one pouting nipple. ‘Can he send you this far, this fast?’ he demanded as his fingers, so excruciatingly knowing, slid a delicate caress over her sex.

  She shuddered, moaned again, flexed and unflexed muscles that were moving to their own rhythm. ‘Vito,’ she breathed, as if her very life depended on her saying that name.

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘Vito,’ he repeated in rough-toned satisfaction. ‘Who touches you—here—and you go up in flames for me.’

  She went wild then. Three years of abstinence was no defence against what he could do for her. She moved for him, breathed for him, writhed and begged for him.

  His laugh of black triumph accompanied the first deep penetrating thrust of his body. But Catherine was too busy exalting in the power of his passion to care that he seemed to be taunting her surrender. And as Vito gritted his teeth and began to ride her his eyes remained fixed on her shuttered eyelids, because he knew her so well and did not want to miss that moment when those eyelids flicked upwards just before she shot into violent orgasm.

  Then let him see if she was shocked to find his dark face bearing down on her instead of her damned lover’s face! ‘Me,’ he muttered tautly as he grappled with his own soaring need to surrender. ‘Vito,’ he gritted.

  Why? Because despite what he was telling himself the very last thing he needed right now was Catherine shattering his ego by expecting it to be another man making her feel this good!

  So he repeated his name. ‘Vito, cara.’ And kept on repeating it with each powerful thrust of his powerful frame, ‘Vittorio—Adriano—Lucio—Giordani,’ in the most seductive accent ever created.

  Her answering whimper caught him in mid-thrust. Her eyes flicked open. She looked straight at him. ‘Pidoccio,’ she said, then shot into a flailing orgasm.

  They lay there afterwards, sweat-soaked, panting, utterly spent. He on his back, with his arm covering his face, she on her side, curled right away from him. ‘Louse,’ she whispered again—in English this time.

  She was right and he was. So he didn’t deny it. ‘You are my wife,’ Vito stated flatly. ‘Our separation is now officially over. So take my advice and be careful, cara, who you dream about in future.’

  That was all. Nothing else needed to be added to that. Catherine had unwittingly struck at the very centre of his pride when she’d mumbled mixed-up words about Marcus in her sleep. The experience just now had not been performed for mere sexual gratification’s sake, but in sheer revenge.

  * * *

  Naples was shimmering beneath a haze of heat that made Catherine glad they were taking the coast road towards Mergellina then on to Capo Posillipo, where most of the upper echelons of Neapolitan society had their residences.

  Vito was driving them in an open-top red Mercedes Cabriolet that must be a recent buy judging by the newness of the cream leather. And driving alfresco like this beat air-conditioned luxury any day, to Catherine’s way of thinking. She could feel the breeze in her hair and the sun on her s
kin, and if it hadn’t been for the man beside her she would have been enjoying this. The views were every bit as spectacular as she’d remembered them to be. And Santo was safely strapped into the rear seat, happily singing away to himself in whichever language took his fancy.

  The three of them must look the perfect family, she mused. But they weren’t.

  In fact she and Vito had hardly swapped three words with each other since they got up this morning. He’d risen first, rolling out of the bed and striding off to the bathroom very early—but then he always had been an early riser. Catherine had stayed huddled where she was, listening until she’d heard Santo go down the stairs before she made any attempt to stir herself.

  She’d needed her son as a buffer. Catherine freely acknowledged that. At least with Santo there she could try to behave with some normality. But Vito had been as withdrawn and reticent as she had been, as if his behaviour last night had pleased him as little as it had done Catherine.

  ‘...sunglasses in the glove compartment.’

  Catching only the tail end of Vito’s blunt-edged comment brought her face automatically swinging around from the view to find him looking directly at her. Blinking uncomfortably, she turned quickly away again.

  It was all right for him, she thought as she leant forward to open the door to the glove box, his eyes were already hidden behind silver-framed dark lenses, but he hadn’t been able to look at her before he’d put the darn things on!

  Once through Mergellina the car began the serpentine climb on the Via Posillipo. As Catherine turned her attention to enjoying the spectacular view now unfolding beneath them, a flash of gold caught her eye.

  It was Vito’s wedding ring, gleaming in the sunlight where his fingers were hooked loosely around the steering wheel. Glancing down at her lap, she saw her own slender white fingers suddenly looked distinctly bare. In what had been meant to be a dramatically expressive gesture she had left her rings behind when she left Vito all those years ago.