Читать книгу Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain - Carol Marinelli, Carol Marinelli - Страница 10

CHAPTER SEVEN

FRANCESCA knew what she’d done two flying steps along the hallway but there was no way she was turning around and risking passing that door just as he came out of it.

She’d had enough. She just couldn’t take any more of his cruel sarcasm and anyway, she’d already spied a pair of doors standing shut ahead of her so she just kept going, not caring where those doors led to as long as she managed to put a distance between herself and the hateful Carlo Carlucci before she finally gave in and fell apart.

What she didn’t expect was to drag open those two doors and take two more flying steps, only to come to a perfect standstill, held breathless, feeling as if she’d stepped out of that door and straight into a completely different world.

Lake Alba was floating right in front of her, its smooth surface wearing a moonlit glaze like a sheet of frosted white silk. She had never seen anything quite like it. She forgot she was supposed to be running away from Carlo’s taunting as she stared through a stone archway supported by twin slender pillars that framed the lake like a painting, its base trimmed by a low stone latticework balustrade that seemed to form an edge to the end of the world.

It was the most magical scene she had ever encountered; nothing had prepared her for it on the swift journey here through the winding lanes. Villa Batiste claimed a view of the lake but nothing to compare with this one. They were so close—yet not very close at all. It was a strange very disorientating sensation to stand here and feel as if you could reach out and touch those silver silk waters yet be aware at the same time that acres of layered garden lay in between.

Her feet took her across the wide stone terrace, drawing her like a magnet to stand beneath the arch. She was so enchanted she didn’t notice that she was shivering so badly that her arms had wrapped around her in an instinctive attempt to ward off the cold.

‘The lake changes with every hour,’ a deep voice murmured levelly. ‘She will pull on her shimmering silver cloak in the early morning, a burnished gold one in the late afternoon. In the middle of the day she wears a sensational azure-blue cloak and invites you to come and play…’

‘So you framed it,’ she said softly.

‘One of my ancestors was inspired by that particular vision,’ he replied in a lazy tone that reluctantly refused to take the praise. Then she heard the slow, even pace of his steps bringing him closer as he continued, ‘We are in fact standing in a colonnade of arches, each one carefully placed to form the same framework of the lake whichever door or window you happen to step through in this wing.’

A fleeting glance sideways confirmed that she was indeed standing in the middle of a line of arches that attached to the house by long, gracefully arching ribs on which the moonlight placed more frosted silk.

‘It’s beautiful—the whole thing.’ She turned her head frontward again as he came to a halt directly behind her.

’Gratzi,’ he replied at the same time as his jacket settled across her shoulders and was held there by a pair of hands that curled around her slender upper arms. She shivered compulsively as her chilled flesh grabbed at the warmth the jacket offered. ‘No, cara, don’t prickle.’ He’d misread the shiver. ‘I am not about to renew hostilities.’

Then what does come next—the ravishment? she heard herself thinking. And this time the shiver was a prickle.

‘I’m sorry if I hurt your stepsister,’ she felt compelled to say.

‘You didn’t—he did.’ His grip on her arms altered fractionally so he could turn her round to face him. She found herself staring at the bright white front to his shirt. ‘All I could do was support her through her heartache. While I was doing that I became curious as to who this new woman in his life was, who could make him dare to hurt one of mine.’

‘So whose wounded pride were you out to salve when you went looking for a way to punish him—your stepsister’s or your own?’

This time it was the cleft in his chin that captured her attention when it flexed with his brief, dry smile. ‘Try—both,’ he said and moved his fingers, causing her breathing to feather as he ran them lightly beneath the silk lapel to his jacket, lifting the fabric so it hugged her chilly nape. ‘And you have a novel way of making subtle stabs at a man’s ego, cara,’ he said softly. ‘But I advise you to drop such tactics with me. You see, I like my arrogance. It gives me leave to do anything I want to do even when I know the moment is not appropriate.’

And that was the point when alarm bells began to ring. She managed only to lift wary eyes to his face and note the warning gleam of what was to come before he gave a firm tug on his jacket collar and she was arriving with a breathless gasp against his chest. She felt the heat of him, his sheer physical power, wanted to push away but only found herself raising her chin.

Their eyes connected, almost black consuming anxious hazel with promises that robbed her of the ability to breathe.

‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t…’

And to her hopeless confusion he didn’t do anything but hold her trapped between his body and his jacket and a tense, tingling limbo world between heaven and hell. She couldn’t even tell which the hell belonged to—the kiss or no kiss.

‘Sure?’ he said softly.

She nodded, lips parted and trembling like wicked liars. He was too much—of everything. He overwhelmed in every way there was. ‘I’m out of my depth with you,’ she heard herself whisper and though she wished the words back the moment she’d said them she knew they were telling the utter truth.

His response was one of those sardonic tilts to his mouth. ‘I am wading in pretty deep myself, cara,’ he responded huskily. ‘So don’t let yourself think that those pale cheeks and that frightened expression is going to save you. We will come together sooner or later.’

Then he dropped his head, capturing her lips in a single swift, hard kiss that fused them together with its heat. ‘Again and again and again…’ he murmured with sensual promise as he lifted his mouth away.

Why? Because she’d responded. He knew it. She knew it. She’d even been the one to taste him with the moist, tingling tip of her tongue and placed that gloss on his lips she could see. And the worst of it was she wanted to do it again. She wanted to curl a hand around his nape and bring that mouth back to her. She wanted to…

His chest heaved on a tense intake of air, dark eyes glittering now as he took in the helpless expression colouring her eyes. ‘Come on,’ he said with a low gruffness. ‘It’s too damn cold out here for this…’

This being that she had just committed herself. This being that she couldn’t even pretend to herself that she didn’t want him. Letting go of his jacket lapels, Carlo placed an arm round her shoulders and turned them back to the house.

The door closed behind them; centuries-old blue mosaic caught the tap of her delicate heels. She wanted to say something—anything to break the grim, sexual resolve she could feel pulsing in him. But there wasn’t a single word that came to mind that could halt what was now in flow.

He led her up the left-hand staircase, his arm still keeping her close to his side. They emerged from the stairs into another long corridor flanked by long, narrow windows she saw looked out on the courtyard below. He paused at a door, pushed it open and took her through it. She found herself standing in a bedroom like no other bedroom she had ever been in.

The floor was an ocean of polished dark wood that led her eyes to the huge stone fireplace opposite where logs blazed in a black iron grate. The flames flickered across the floor, the dark terracotta-painted walls and crawled like fingers up the swathes of dark red silk festooning a huge canopied four-poster bed.

The bed dominated the room above everything. It dominated her—grabbed her eyes and fixed the senses exactly where it intended to fix them. If she’d ever wondered what a room designed to pull all the right sensual strings looked like then this would have been it. She even captured an image of herself lying there naked like a wanton on the red silk coverlet. She saw him with his dark golden flesh touched by the flames as he lay at her side.

The vision alone was enough to put her right back into a panic. She turned on him. ‘I don’t…’

Want this, she had been going to say but the words became lost in the feel of his light touch as he plucked the comb from her hair. The heavy twist quivered as it uncoiled its way to her shoulders. He stood observing the effect through dark, unfathomable eyes for a long moment then abruptly turned away.

‘I’ll go and get your case,’ he said. ‘Relax, take a look around, I won’t be more than a few minutes…’

Threat or reassurance? Francesca wondered as she watched him disappear. Then she shivered and turned back to her new surroundings. Her gaze was instantly drawn to the four-poster bed, where those unnerving images still played with her head.

Shame on you, she tried telling herself and tugged her eyes away then moved restlessly across the room towards a long window draped with more red silk. The window showed her a different view of the lake. Its surface wasn’t quite as frosted now, the moon having already continued on its way.

What am I doing here? she asked herself.

An answering tug on certain sensitive folds of flesh made her draw in air on a sharp catch of breath.

‘Oh,’ she choked, and dropped down onto the polished wood window seat, lost her shoes then pulled her knees up to her chin and dragged Carlo’s jacket tightly around her before she lowered her face to her knees.

To hide.

From what she was.

From what she was beginning to turn into.

A betrayed woman with the terrible—terrible desire for another man.

She shuddered, despising herself for feeling like this. Still hurting in so many ways and clearly so darn desperate to prove she was worthy of the title “woman” that she was sitting here having to squeeze her thighs together in an attempt to cut off these tight little tugs that were so much a pleasure as well as a sin.

Sin.

She picked out the word and looked at it. What sin? Whose sin? Where was the sin in wanting to make love?

Her mother’s sin. Her mother’s cold assessment of what sexual desire could do to you. It could turn you into a slave to your own body cravings and the faceless property of the man who took those cravings and used them to slake his own.

Why him though? If she had to turn into this sex-needy person, why did it have to be for Carlo Carlucci of all men? Why couldn’t it have been Angelo? Maybe their relationship could have stood a better chance if she’d been more forthcoming on the physical side. Maybe he would not have gone looking elsewhere and the rest of this dreadful night would only exist in some far-off nightmare and she would be in bed by now—with Angelo—sublimely content in her blindness to what his true character really was like.

Is that what she wanted? she then asked herself. To be lied to so long as she didn’t have to face the miserable truth?

She heard his step in the half-open doorway, felt him pause when he saw the way she was sitting here. Tears burned. Her heart burned. That place between her thighs grew hot on a fresh flurry of excitement because she wanted him.

She wanted him.

Not Angelo. She had never wanted Angelo. Not like this, she groaned silently. Blind didn’t begin to excuse the way she had been behaving around Angelo in the name of that thing called love.

‘I’ve brought your case.’

She nodded. Love was nothing but an illusion anyway, she thought as she listened to his footsteps taking him across to the bed. Love was nothing but a word invented for women to use to justify giving in to this hot sexual ache and for men to use to give them the right to tap into that ache.

Her head twisted at the sound of his footsteps. Heat gathered in her cheeks this time, her eyes glued to him as she followed his approach. Tall, dark, breathtakingly alluring to her newly awoken senses, they drank in the width of broad shoulders and long, lean torso covered in white shirting that did nothing to hide the promise of what she envisioned lurked beneath. The butterfly collar of the shirt had been unfastened and the bow-tie now rested in two loose black strips against the shirt.

He looked relaxed; he even offered her one of his tilted smiles as he bent to take hold of her hands to break the clasp they held on her knees.

‘Come on,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve had enough. It’s time to go to bed.’

He pulled and she uncoiled to land on her feet in front of him. Removing the jacket from her shoulders, he tossed it onto the window seat then turned his attention to the line of bronze studs holding her denim jacket in place.

The word bed made her throw a hooded glance at him, the way he was casually removing her clothes tingled her spine—and he smiled again at those two very revealing actions. ‘It’s OK. The ravishment of Francesca Bernard has been put on hold for the time being,’ he assured her lazily.

‘Shame,’ she heard herself say—then caught her top lip between her teeth and wished the floor would open up and swallow her when he went perfectly still. She attempted a weak smile. ‘Joke,’ she said.

He went back to what he’d been doing but his mouth had a grim look of disapproval about it now.

Disapproval? she repeated inwardly and uttered a thick laugh. The person who disapproved of her around here was herself!

‘Why the laugh?’

‘Don’t ask,’ she advised a little wildly. Because the cool backs of his fingers were brushing against her breasts and making them tingle and if anyone wanted the ravishment of Francesca Bernard then it was Francesca Bernard!

Denim parted and was eased from her shoulders. She shivered as the fabric trailed down her arms, exposing her flesh to the cooler air seeping in through the window behind. The jacket landed on the window seat on top of his jacket then, with the touch of a master at undressing women, he slid his hand to the side of her ribcage to locate unerringly the concealed zip that held the dress in place.

‘I can do the rest myself,’ she told him stiffly.

‘Why rob me of the pleasure?’ he mocked—silkily—bringing her eyes up to clash with his.

He knew what she was thinking, what was happening to her, what she wanted to happen. And the look in his eyes was daring her to just come out and say it.

Ask! that look challenged.

She looked away again—moved away. His hand pulled her back again. She came into full contact with his full length. Her senses took flight on a mad ride of desire, she shivered and shook and sparked up like a firework. Her breathing fractured, her breasts heaved a gasp. His free hand lifted to burrow beneath her hair and his fingers clenched, imprisoning a thick swathe of her hair to use it to pull her head back.

She couldn’t tell if his eyes were angry or on fire with desire. His mouth still looked hard, his cheekbones taut. ‘What do you want from me, Francesca?’ he demanded on a low, dark growl.

The impact of the question quivered its way right down to her toes because she knew exactly what she wanted from him. She wanted him to give her sensual escape. She wanted to lose herself in him and become that other person she had just seen lying in naked abandon on that bed.

And she wanted to emerge the other end of this dreadful night a completely different woman, a sexually liberated woman who could state with confidence—to hell with you, Angelo, I know what I am now and you will never know what you missed out on!

‘I want everything,’ she whispered.

There, she’d said it. She didn’t even regret saying it, she told herself defiantly as his eyes narrowed on her flushed face. Now it was up to him whether he took what she was offering or rejected it.

He didn’t reject it. He took with a swift, dark passion that blew her apart. Her mouth was taken, its inner recesses invaded by the urgent probe of his tongue. She joined in this electric-charged fire dance with an eagerness that could have suggested she always kissed like this, when the opposite was the truth. It didn’t matter, she was with that kiss all the way—totally committed to it, totally committed to greedily learning anything he could teach her that would fuel the fires of what was happening to her. The side zip to her dress gave suddenly, the tight bodice springing free so the dress fell without stopping to the floor, leaving him free to explore new areas of exposed flesh with one hand while the other maintained its fierce grip on her hair to keep her face turned up to the kiss.

It was a very potent display of masculine domination—she knew that even as she surrendered to it. He stroked her waist, her back, her shoulders, he ran his fingers beneath the thin back strap to her flimsy strapless bra—testing its tension before trailing those fingers down the indent of her spine to the edge of her very brief high-leg panties to test their tension as his hand slid beneath.

She’d never felt a man’s hand against the smooth, rounded flesh of her bottom before. She’d never been touched like this at all. It felt strange but so exquisitely sensual she wriggled. He gripped and lifted her into contact with what was happening to him.

The movement tangled her feet in silk organza. On a curse he released her mouth so he could glance down. She was panting and clinging to his neck, too delirious to notice the way his eyes paused to linger blackly on the rise and fall of her breasts cupped in blood-red silk that was losing the battle to keep the tight thrust of her nipples covered. On a soft growl he clamped an arm around her waist and lifted her off the floor to swing her free of the dress—then he held her there, trapped against him, and closed his mouth around one of her breasts. The hot lick of his tongue sliced an arcing sense of tight pleasure across the tight nipple. She gasped out a thick breath, shaken and shuddering, her fingers clutching at his shoulders, and he tugged on her hair again to arch her backwards to bring the other breast pointing invitingly upwards for the delivery of the same experience.

Then they were kissing again, and he was turning with her still clamped against him as he walked towards the bed. That was not all he did on that short journey. With the strength of his hands he lifted her higher, somehow guiding her legs around his hips. The pulsing centre of all this madness made contact with the bulging hardness of his penis and her hips lurched in shock then writhed as a new pulsing wave of pleasure caught fire.

As he let her slide slowly down his length her bra sprang free. Two full, rounded breasts fell out of their bra cups, and she looked down to watch with a kind of fascination as their stinging tips settled against his shirt front.

He muttered something. She looked up into blazing black eyes and an oddly pale complexion. ‘Are you sure you want this?’

She gave him his answer by capturing his mouth with a reckless hunger. When he broke away from her she felt bereft.

Then not so bereft when he began stripping his clothes off, watching her as she stood watching him with a strange mix of fascination and shyness flickering across her expressive face. His shirt was peeled off and tossed away to reveal broad shoulders that gleamed like satin in the fire glow, and a taut, bronzed torso matted with dark hair. His shoes were heeled off and kicked to one side then his fingers went to deal with the fastener and zip to his trousers—and that was the moment when she had to look away.

Her eyes went straight to the bed with its red silk coverlet and its flame-licking promise of what was to come. She dragged in a breath, her senses fluttering on the beginnings of uncertainty, but that was all the time she was given to doubt this because his hand snaked out to cup her chin and he was making her look back at him. He was naked—naked, and so utterly beautiful it was no wonder he could strip with such ease.

His mouth closed over hers again, not fierce but gentle and soft. His other arm coiled around her waist and slowly drew her in. Nothing had prepared her for what it felt like to be held against a naked man. The warmth of him, the intoxicating differences between smooth and rough textures, the heady power of his scent, the unyielding strength in him, the uncompromising evidence of his manhood pressing against her abdomen and the way he moved against her leaving her in no doubt as to how much he wanted this. She released a shaken little breath in response to that knowledge and he stole it from her with a flick from his tongue.

He kissed the heat burning in her cheeks, her shyly lowered eyelids—he drew her that bit closer to him then pressed moist kisses to her shoulder, her neck, then her mouth again while she stood absorbing each tiny pleasure without being aware of how still she was.

‘If you’ve changed your mind and want to stop, this is the moment to say so,’ he said gently.

She frowned, not understanding why he kept asking that question. ‘I don’t want to stop.’

‘Then why are your hands clenched into fists at your sides?’

They were…?

They were, she realised as she tried to move her fingers, only to find they’d locked in two tension fists.

‘I will not make love to a sacrifice, cara. If you’re standing here like this, hoping to God I will wipe Batiste’s loving into oblivion, then you are wasting your time because neither do I play substitute for another man.’

The fact that she’d believed he’d understood, from what he’d overheard Angelo say to Sonya, that she had never been with Angelo like this made her frown as she stared fixedly at the crisp dark coils of hair on his chest. Now she knew he must have misunderstood, there was no way she was going to expose just how little Angelo had wanted her, by telling him the truth.

‘I w-wasn’t thinking anything of the kind,’ seemed a fair compromise.

‘Then why the tension?’

Her lips quivered; she tugged in a breath. ‘Y-you,’ she told him shakily. ‘You’re so…’ She ran the nervous tip of her tongue around her lips.

If she’d conjured up the excuse just to flatter him she could not have found a better one. He laughed, low and throatily, then moved against her in a way that left her in no doubt as to how her little confession was affecting him.

Then he wasn’t laughing, he was dipping his dark head, and suddenly the whole thing became intense again. The deep, drugging kisses, the caressing sweep of his hands. The gentle, pulsing movement of his hips that slowly—slowly began to draw answering movements from her. When he hooked an arm around her waist and used it so he could feed her onto the bed he did it with such smooth control that she wasn’t even aware of what was happening until she felt cool cotton beneath her and opened her eyes to stare in surprise.

The red coverlet had been tossed aside without her noticing, the rest of the covers folded back. And Carlo’s lean, dark golden length was caught by the fire again as he stretched out beside her, then came to lean above her, his dark eyes languid now, sensually engrossed as he sent a hand stroking the length of her body, then began touching light, soft, tantalising kisses in a delicate line along her mouth then across her cheek to her temple and down along her jaw line before returning to her mouth again. Her tongue made its first shy stab between his teeth, her fingers curling into his hair in an effort to hold him still. He let her keep him, he let her trace the moist inner recesses of his mouth and play with the kiss as she’d never played before.

His hand came to cup her breast, the pad of his thumb gently circling the dusky aureole in a slow, breathtaking caress. His mouth moved on again, planting soft kisses along her throat and across the pale slopes of her breast before it closed a tight pink rosebud nipple inside a warm, moist, gently sucking mouth. Sensation became a low deep throbbing ache that spread its sensual fingers to every part of her, quickening her pulses and dragging on her breath. He gave the other breast the same slow, sensual pleasure, his hand gently kneading in tune with his lips until she groaned in sweet agony to it all.

As if the little sound was a sign that stirred his blood his mouth suddenly was back on hers again, taking with driving, hungry passion at the same time his hand trailed a caressing passage down her ribcage to the flat of her stomach before moving on, smooth fingertips slipping beneath the flimsy triangle of raspberry silk and spearing through the dusky mound of curls on a seeking quest.

Shock turned her limbs to liquid, her shaken choke broke their kiss. She opened her eyes and found herself staring directly into naked desire burning molten in the fire glow as his fingers discovered the heart of her. Alien though it was, she squirmed on a wave of white-hot pleasure, her heart pounding at a thundering pace, her fingers clawing at his shoulders as he dipped, withdrew, caressed then dipped again with the smooth, sure touch of a man who knew exactly how to make a woman feel like this. Wild, she felt wild, caught in a slipstream of scintillating pleasure that flowed through her blood. She arched against him, quivering, her breathing reduced to tight, aching little gasps. He captured one of her breasts and she leapt, she shuddered, she sank beneath the rolling surface of shattering sensation and fought him like a mad woman but clung to him desperately at the same time.

And he was hot, his breathing thick and tense, each lithe movement of his body such a sensual act she didn’t know which part of him was going to inflame her next. He murmured something in Italian but she was way beyond being able to translate. The sensual, soothing sound of his voice impinged, though; the gentle brush of his hand across her cheek.

She opened her eyes to find he was frowning—at her naive lack of control no doubt. ‘I’m not…’ used to this, she was about to confess, but he hushed her into silence with the warm crush of his mouth.

Then she was losing herself again in a world made up of pure feeling. He trailed kisses across her breasts, catching each distended nipple and rolling it with his tongue. He kissed her all over. He explored her like a master and she responded with a writhing and whimpering then groaning in protest when his trailing mouth moved to the singing sensitivity of her groin. He kissed her hip, her waist and finally her breasts again, then recaptured her mouth at the same time as he reached for one of her hands and gently curled it around his sex.