‘I’m coming,’ she whispered.
‘I know you are, tesoro,’ he whispered back, his voice deep and husky.
The murmured intimacy of that comment broke through the last of her resistance and Nicole felt herself dissolve around him. Through shuddered little gasps she could feel her legs splaying and her back arching. He gave a low growl of appreciation as she began to convulse around him and rogue tears pricked at her eyes as Rocco’s own movements became more urgent. She knew from the tension in his body just how close he was to the edge and she gripped his shoulders as he drove into her like a man possessed. And didn’t she revel in the fact that she could still do this to him? Could still make him moan like that as his body jerked with his own powerful orgasm?
There was silence in the room afterwards as his dark head lay pressed against her neck. Staring over his shoulder at the moon-dappled ceiling, Nicole wanted to say something reassuring. To make some cool and clever remark which would make him realise this meant nothing to her. Something to reassure him that she wasn’t reading too much into what had been just sex. But instead she found herself whispering the only thing which was on her mind. ‘Rocco.’
Rocco grew still as he heard her murmur his name like that, trying to regain the control he’d lost from the moment he’d entered her voluptuous body. The way she touched him unsettled him and the way she said his name unsettled him even more because she sounded confused. And wasn’t the truth that he was feeling pretty confused himself? Tangling his fingers in the curls which flowed down her back, he told himself this was all he had wanted. Having her underneath him and hearing her gasp out his name one last time had been the whole point of the exercise. He’d wanted her and now he’d had her—which meant he could just walk away. Could give her the divorce she so desperately wanted and set them both free.
But suddenly it didn’t seem that simple and walking away no longer looked such an attractive prospect. Instead he found his hand straying to her breast and his fingers teasing a pouting nipple into life all over again as he waited for her little murmur of assent. For the silent wriggle of her curvy hips to indicate that she’d acknowledged his hardness growing inside her and wanted it to happen all over again. Only this time she wasn’t so accommodating and instead of wrapping her luscious thighs around his back, she was pulling out from under him and wriggling away, until she was lying on the far side of the mattress—so far away that she might have been on a different planet. He turned his head to see the set of her profile as she stared up at the ceiling, where the moon shadows were dancing in an undulating display of light and shade.
‘Is that it?’ he questioned.
The slight nod of her head was the only indication she’d heard him and when she spoke it was in a voice he didn’t recognise. ‘What were you anticipating, Rocco? Another bout of wild sex? Round number two?’
‘Why not?’ His gaze settled on her hardened nipples, dark against the silver wash of her breasts, and he thought how her body was contradicting the conviction of her feisty words. ‘The first time is simply the appetiser—the second time is the feast. Surely you remember that, Nicole?’
He watched her throat constrict as she swallowed and he could hear the stiffness in her voice as she answered.
‘The circumstances are rather different this time around.’
‘In what way?’ he drawled.
She shrugged. ‘We obviously both enjoyed that—in a physical sense, certainly. Perhaps it’s better not to tempt fate by doing it again.’
‘And if I don’t agree?’
‘I’m afraid you don’t have any choice but to agree, Rocco.’
There was a pause and when he spoke his voice was very calm. It was the same kind of thoughtful response he might have used if someone had raised an awkward question in a board meeting. ‘I thought you wanted me to be accommodating about the forthcoming divorce.’
Slowly, she turned her head to meet his eyes and he thought how beautiful she looked with her dark curls all wild and free and the faint flush which had spread from her cheeks to her breasts.
‘Is that a threat?’ she demanded. ‘Are you saying that if I don’t agree to have sex with you again, you’ll block the petition?’
‘Please, Nicole. Do not insult me. I would not dream of asking you to do anything you don’t want to do.’ He reached across the bed to place his palm over her thigh, pleased but unsurprised by the instinctive quiver of her flesh in response. ‘I’m merely pointing out that it seems a waste for us not to capitalise on our remarkable chemistry while we have the opportunity to do so.’
She pushed his hand away even though he could sense her reluctance.
‘You mean the chemistry which got us into so much trouble in the first place?’
‘Is that how you see it?’
‘Of course it is. Because it’s the truth, Rocco, and one I made myself accept a long time ago. I was just another body. Just another face. Just another one of the long list of women you seduced. The only difference between me and the others was that I was a virgin.’ She reached for the rumpled duvet which lay at the foot of the bed before yanking it up, though he noticed she didn’t include him in the protective cover she gathered round herself. With only her face visible, she stared at him and her bottom lip was jutting out stubbornly. ‘And you felt differently about that. Perhaps you were jaded because you’d had so many experienced women throwing themselves at you. Wasn’t that the way of it, Rocco?’
His answering smile was hard. ‘That first night with you blew my mind.’
‘The thrill of breaking through my hymen, I suppose? That unique tightness which you can never get back.’
He stiffened, unfamiliar with the sudden steel which had entered her voice. ‘You have become very cynical, Nicole.’
Shivering violently despite the warm cloud of duvet which enveloped her, Nicole wanted to ask what on earth he expected. Had he thought she’d just walked away from him without having learned anything? Because if you didn’t learn from your mistakes then what hope was there? She’d realised that in order to survive she needed to view what had happened dispassionately, and there was nothing to be gained from trying to put a sentimental slant on her failed marriage. The giddy virgin who’d fallen for the powerful Sicilian was now just a distant memory and she’d worked hard on gaining a whole load of perspective in the interim. She didn’t fabricate myths or believe impossible things any more, just to make herself feel better. And a single bout of fantastic sex with the man she had married was not going to make her change her opinion.
She realised there was something else they hadn’t talked about—something far bigger than a young women being introduced to sex for the first time—but she couldn’t face bringing up the subject of their baby. Her fingers tightened around the duvet. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it at the time, had he?
And neither had she, she realised, with a sudden flash of insight. Rocco’s reluctance to communicate had suited her very well. He hadn’t wanted to talk about what had happened to them, while she had simply been unable to articulate her pain. Had that made the void even deeper?
She sucked in a deep breath, resolutely bringing her thoughts back to the present. ‘Maybe I needed a touch of cynicism. Maybe I was too much of an innocent in all senses of the word,’ she said, aware of the sudden prick of tears at the backs of her eyes and terrified he might see them. ‘And now I think it’s time you went back to your own bed.’
He shifted his weight slightly on the mattress. ‘Or I could stay here and spend the night making love to you. Since that is what we both want.’
And despite everything which was wrong between them, Nicole was tempted. Who wouldn’t be tempted by such a man? He looked like a lion lying there, so certain of his own strength as the moon coated his powerful body with silver. A quick glance told her that the faint arousal she’d felt while he was still inside her was now fully grown, and didn’t the irrational side of her nature—the hungry, ye
arning side—make her long to put her arms around him and have him do it all over again?
But that way lay a madness which would blur her shaky hold on reality. Already she felt weakened by the realisation of how deeply he could still affect her. She wondered what had happened to the woman who was supposed to be over him—but deep down she knew the answer. That woman didn’t—maybe couldn’t—exist when Rocco held her in his arms. Why make herself vulnerable to him by having more sex when she still had the rest of the weekend to get through?
‘I think I’ll pass on that,’ she said, the surprise on his rugged features only increasing her resolve. She gave him a thin smile. ‘And now I want to go to sleep. Alone.’
He made no attempt to persuade her, rising from the bed in a display of muscular grace—his buttocks pale against the dark olive of his powerful thighs. But as he bent to pick up his jeans Nicole turned onto her stomach and buried her face in the soft pillow, trying to block out the rasping sound of his zip. She heard the door click quietly shut behind him but her emotions were too jangled to even think of sleep.
And she realised that not once during that entire episode had he kissed her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHAT CAN I bring you for le petit dejeuner, madame?’
Her eyelids feeling as heavy as lead, Nicole sat down at the table which had been laid up for breakfast on the terrace, momentarily dazzled by the crystal and silver which gleamed in the early morning sunshine. The air was warm with the combined scent of jasmine and strong coffee and Veronique was gazing at her expectantly.
‘We have bread and croissants, madame,’ the housekeeper continued. ‘Though Signor Barberi has reminded chef that it is the English way to eat a cooked breakfast—should you wish for bacon and eggs.’
Nicole smiled, even though smiling was the last thing she felt like doing. Pulling a face full of remorse would surely be more appropriate in the circumstances. After a restless night haunted by disturbing dreams she had woken up amid sex-scented sheets, revelling in the delicious glow of her body until the heart-sinking moment when she’d remembered exactly what had made it feel that way. Or rather, who.
An image of her unzipping Rocco’s jeans and caressing him intimately rushed into her head and her cheeks burned as, hastily, she put on a pair of sunglasses and pulled her coffee towards her, wishing that last night wouldn’t keep flooding back in a conflicting rush of hungry and humiliating memories. Her cheeks burned as she recalled the way she had welcomed her husband into her body with an urgency which had taken her by surprise—startled her in the discovery that her desire for him was stronger than ever. And that had puzzled her. Because at the tail end of their marriage, hadn’t she resigned herself to the fact that she no longer wanted Rocco anywhere near her?
And he hadn’t wanted her either, had he? They had pushed each other away in every sense of the word. She watched the breeze tugging at the pink petals of the roses at the centrepiece of the table and tucked her hair behind her ears. Last night shouldn’t have happened but there was nothing she could do about it now. She couldn’t wind back the clock and wish she’d suggested Rocco take a hike when he’d wandered into her bedroom—uninvited—and told her to undress.
But her sexual gymnastics had left her with a ravenous appetite and hungrily Nicole eyed the dish of iced peaches before looking up at the housekeeper. ‘I’d love some poached eggs,’ she said. ‘With wholemeal toast, if that’s possible.’
‘D’accord, madame.’
After Veronique had gone, Nicole ate some fruit and watched the expensive yachts bobbing in the exclusive harbour until the housekeeper returned with the rest of her breakfast. She was busy dipping a rectangle of toast into the runny yolk of an egg and oblivious to the presence of anything else when a shadow fell over the table and she looked up to see Rocco standing there, obviously fresh from the shower. His black hair was curling in shiny tendrils around his neck and his jaw looked newly shaved. Unjacketed, his ice-blue shirt contrasted with the much darker hue of his eyes and those exquisitely cut trousers emphasised his long legs. Her breakfast forgotten, Nicole stared up at him and all that blatant masculinity so early in the morning began to do worrying things to her pulse-rate.
‘Rocco!’ she accused. ‘Do you always make a habit of creeping up on people like that?’
‘I move quietly, tesoro. It is in my nature. It’s only because you’re so damned jumpy that you react like that,’ he drawled, drawing out a chair opposite her and lowering himself onto it.
Nicole put her toast back on the plate because eating had suddenly lost its allure. Those thighs, she thought with unwilling hunger, unable to forget their tensile power as he’d driven into her last night. She grabbed her napkin and blotted it over her lips. ‘Maybe it’s just you who has that effect on me.’
He leaned across the table to pour himself a cup of coffee. ‘Should I be flattered?’
She met his gaze. ‘What do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘I never know what to think where you’re concerned, Nicole. Take last night, for example. One minute you’re hot for me and the next as cold as ice. You are something of an...enigma.’
She gave a short laugh. ‘That’s rich, coming from you. The man who never talks about his feelings.’
‘Because that is not my way,’ he said, lifting the cup to his lips and sipping from it. ‘You know that. It has never been the way of Barberi men.’
Nicole pushed her plate away. That much was true. She thought about his grandfather, the man who had helped bring up Rocco and his siblings after their parents had been killed in the dramatic speedboat accident which had been splashed across the front pages of the world’s press. She remembered the day she had arrived at the family complex just outside Palermo, fresh from her honeymoon and slightly daunted at meeting the patriarch of Sicily’s most powerful clan for only the second time since her wedding. Very quickly she’d discovered that the revered elder was as uptight as Rocco about expressing his feelings. She’d thought his lack of warmth was because Turi was an old-fashioned man who would have preferred his golden-boy heir to have married a Sicilian woman with an equally elevated status.
Yet despite the barriers she’d encountered, Nicole had been determined to overcome them and make a good impression. She’d wanted to fit in, no matter what it took, because she’d wanted to make a proper family home for her new husband and their baby. She had spent most of her American honeymoon—when she wasn’t being sick—trying to learn as much Italian as possible in order to impress her new family and especially Rocco’s grandfather. But everything had seemed so new and strange and different when she’d arrived in Sicily. She had felt like a lonely outsider in the huge and sprawling house with nothing much to do all day and nobody to talk to. Rocco had buried himself in work and Turi had spoken only in dialect so that they had barely been able to communicate with each other. Like grandfather, like grandson, she remembered thinking. Maybe her mistake had been to expect anything different. To think that the orphaned nobody who had mopped floors could ever have been considered suitable.
And it was weird. Rocco spoke of her inability to discuss her feelings as if it were a character flaw, while for him it was simply something he accepted as a natural trait of Barberi men. Meanwhile, he showed no inclination to change. He was still concealing his feelings—if he had any—behind the weapons of blame and possession. He was a hugely successful man with a massive global influence, who examined business opportunities in the most minute of detail. He was prepared to bring her out here in order to facilitate a deal, yet he was able to ignore the deep, dark hole at the centre of their marriage and make as if it had never happened.
He was acting as if they had never created a baby together. As if that brief little life had never existed.
Her heart contracted with pain and suddenly Nicole knew that she couldn’t carry on not knowing. Maybe that was why this whole relationship felt so...unfinished. She recognised now that she must shoulder some of the blame, bec
ause she had run away rather than face up to their issues. But she was here now, wasn’t she? Maybe it needed to be resolved once and for all before either of them could have true peace. Was it that which gave her the courage to come right out and say it? The sense that she would never get the answers she sought unless she pushed for them, no matter how painful that might be?
She removed her dark glasses and looked at him. ‘Okay,’ she said, sitting back in the chair. ‘We’ve both accused the other of never discussing our true feelings—’
‘I don’t remember putting it exactly like that,’ he said.
‘You called me an enigma,’ she pointed out. ‘So why don’t we agree to ask each other a question and then answer it truthfully? No excuses—and no getting out of it.’
‘You’re proposing some kind of party game?’
‘Don’t deliberately misunderstand me, Rocco. That’s not what it’s about.’
His flattened lips indicated a lack of enthusiasm which bordered on contempt. ‘No? And the purpose of this interrogation is...what?’
It was a bad sign he even had to ask but Nicole wasn’t going to back down now. She leaned across the table towards him. ‘Couldn’t you just do it, Rocco? Just this once. Just to humour me?’
‘Very well.’ He gave an impatient sigh. ‘As long as you are prepared to ask first.’
How typical of him to say that! Nicole took a deep breath and started to speak and the words came rushing out before she had a chance to question the wisdom of saying them. ‘You only married me because I was pregnant, didn’t you?’
There was a pause. ‘Yes,’ he said at last.
She felt her heart twist as if someone were turning a corkscrew in her chest. She’d known that all along—so why did it hurt so much? Did hearing him say it mean she could no longer pretend that her brief marriage had been anything more than a sham?
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