Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 15
ОглавлениеBREATHLESS, JEMIMA LEANT back against the door she had slammed behind her in her haste to reach her bedroom. Well, so much for turning down the gift of the clothes with charm and diplomacy! Hadn’t that gone well? She grimaced and groaned out loud. Why did she make such a mess of everything with Luciano? What happened to her brain? What happened to tact? Why had she kissed him back as though her life depended on it? Resisting him, acting repulsed would have kept him at bay, but instead she had encouraged him.
The trouble was, she thought ruefully, nobody had ever made her feel as Luciano Vitale did. When she was at college before she’d begun seeing Steven, plenty of men had tried to get her into bed. In fact being constantly badgered for sex had put her off dating. Ironically, though, she had not set out to still be virtually untouched at the age of almost twenty-four. Her parents might believe that she should remain a virgin until she married but Jemima had focused on a more attainable goal. She had believed that she would retain her virginity until she met someone she loved and she had believed she loved Steven, but Steven had seemed to prize her virginal state even more than her parents and had insisted that they should respect church teaching and wait until they were man and wife. Yet how quickly he had abandoned that conviction when true temptation had come along in the guise of her much sexier sister, she reflected wryly.
‘You can’t turn your back on true love,’ Steven had told her self-righteously before he had gone off with her twin. ‘Julie’s the perfect woman for me.’
But Jemima couldn’t tell herself the same thing about Luciano, not least because she didn’t believe that he was perfect. He was arrogant and domineering and too rich and powerful for his own good. Yet she was madly, wildly and irrationally attracted to him. In addition she respected his sincere affection for Nicky. She also liked Luciano on a level she couldn’t quite explain even to herself, for she did not know where that liking had come from or on what she based it. In the same way, when Luciano was angry and exasperated as he had been earlier she automatically wanted to make everything better for him and improve his mood. Why she felt like that she didn’t know because common sense warned her that Luciano was wrong for her in every possible way. They were too different as people.
Sex was a pursuit in itself for Luciano, an amusement and not necessarily part of a meaningful relationship. Yet he had done commitment in the past. He had been married and a father before she’d even met him and at a relatively young age, Jemima reminded herself, and that suggested that while Luciano might have the reputation of being a womaniser he had always had a deeper and more caring side to his nature.
Across the room, a door opened and she glanced up. Luciano, his jacket and tie discarded, strolled towards her in his shirtsleeves.
‘What on earth are you doing in here?’ Jemima exclaimed in consternation.
‘Finding you. You ran away,’ Luciano condemned. ‘Have you any idea how irritating that is?’
‘You were being too pushy.’
‘I’m naturally pushy.’
‘That’s not an acceptable excuse.’
‘You were trying to pretend you don’t want me,’ Luciano reminded her with a sudden edge of accusation. ‘That was an outright lie!’
‘It’s arrogant to be so full of yourself.’
Luciano shrugged a broad shoulder sheathed in smooth cotton. ‘I’m not the modest type and I know when I’m wanted.’
And he would have had plenty of practice in that line, Jemima reckoned, scanning his lean, dark, flawless features and the intoxicating whole of his fallen angel beauty, which knocked her for six every time she looked at him. That was so superficial of her, she scolded herself, but when she was gazing at Luciano her brain could not concentrate on anything else. In any case her body hummed like an engine raring to go in his radius, making it difficult for her to breathe or move, never mind think.
‘Perhaps you’re waiting for me to offer you a villa or an apartment in Palermo or Rome or Paris...a less temporary and more rewarding position in my life?’ Luciano suggested smooth as glass.
‘Why would I want you to offer me a villa or an apartment?’ Jemima asked him in genuine bewilderment.
‘A mistress has some security. A casual lover has none,’ Luciano pointed out.
‘I really don’t know what we’re talking about here. I thought mistresses died out with corsets,’ she confided jerkily, unnerved by the dialogue because he could not possibly be asking someone like her to be his mistress, his kept woman. That idea struck her as so ridiculous that a nervous giggle bubbled in the back of her throat.
‘I don’t want to talk,’ Luciano breathed with sudden lancing impatience as he met her pale aquamarine gaze. He ran his hands through the thick tangle of hair tumbling round her shoulders. ‘I like your hair. It’s so long. Are you wearing extensions?’
‘No, it’s all me,’ Jemima muttered breathlessly, because he was standing so close now that she could feel the heat of his body striking hers.
And right there, he knew he had her because he knew for a fact that only a few months earlier his son’s mother had had short hair. But he had already accepted that she was a lying fake, hadn’t he? Charles Bennett didn’t make mistakes. Yet, trailing his fingertips through that lustrous skein of golden silk, Luciano couldn’t have cared less about who Jemima was or what she was. He only wanted to see that marvellous hair spread across his pillows and without hesitation he bent and lifted her up.
‘Put me down, Luciano!’ she gasped.
‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I want you.’
‘That’s not enough!’
Luciano shouldered open the door between their bedrooms. ‘It’s enough for me, piccolo mia.’
And she was on the brink of telling him why it wasn’t enough for her when he kissed her, kissed her long and hard and hungrily until the blood drummed in her head and her toes curled and her mind went blank. Her fingers reached up and delved into his black curls, shaping his proud head, roaming down the back of his neck. The need to touch him was so powerful it overwhelmed every other prompting, even the cautious vibes trying to tug her back to sanity.
Luciano settled her down on his bed and studied her with immense satisfaction. He knew what she was. He knew what she was capable of. But he could not be damaged by a known threat. Her greed was a weakness he would use to control her, he reflected with satisfaction while only dimly questioning what had happened to his belief that one night would be sufficient for him. He knew he wasn’t fully in control and it made him feel outrageously free of his rigid rules to do as he liked. She would be his for as long as he wanted her and that was all that currently mattered to him. He bent down and crushed her ripe mouth under his again, one hand closing to the rounded curve of her breast and feeling the race of her heartbeat. His own heartbeat was like thunder in his ears. Her mouth was hot and eager and sweet, so sweet that he couldn’t get enough of it.
His kisses were like an addictive drug that Jemima couldn’t resist. Time and time again, she told herself, ‘Just one more kiss.’ And then what? a little voice piped up at the back of her head. Her spine arched as he lifted her and deftly released the catch on her bra. Before she could react he was peeling her top off over her head and tugging the bra down her arms.
‘You’re glorious,’ Luciano husked, tracing her firm, full breasts with an almost reverent hand, pausing to toy with the protruding tips before bowing his head to lash his tongue across the tender crests.
Jemima huffed, lashes fluttering as sweet, seductive sensation snaked down from her nipples to her feminine core and joined the throbbing heat gathering there. Long brown fingers cradled her bare, rose-tipped curves and his mouth grew a little rougher while he teased the engorged buds, licking and suckling and nibbling with an erotic expertise that made her hips writhe against the mattress. She did not have a single thought in her head, only a sense of shock at the raw intensity of what he was making her feel.
With impatient hands he wrenched her out of her skirt and tossed his shirt on the floor to join it. Jemima gazed up at him with wondering appreciation, her attention lingering helplessly on the sleek bronzed torso composed of lean, hard muscle that swooped impressively down to frame a flat stomach and narrow hips. His shoulders were wide and as rounded with rippling muscles as his biceps. Only then as she reluctantly tore her attention from him did she become conscious of her naked breasts, but as she lifted her hands instinctively to cover herself he caught them in one of his and pinned them above her head.
‘No interfering,’ he told her in a roughened undertone. ‘We only do this my way, piccolo mia.’
Colour washed her cheeks because she felt literally shameless lying there half-naked. He used his mouth to torment a straining nipple and she gasped, all self-consciousness wrested from her in the space of a moment. ‘Let me touch you...’ she pleaded.
He released her wrists. ‘Some other time,’ he mumbled, kissing a haphazard trail down over her ribcage and her tightening stomach to part her thighs.
Jemima froze, incredulous at his position and mortified, at least until he touched her and it was as if wildfire shot through her veins. Just as quickly there was nothing in her mind but a feverish concentration on what he was doing to her and how incredibly good it made her feel. Pushing her thighs back, he started slow with a long swipe of his tongue and when her hips lifted of their own accord he laughed softly.
‘I’m really good at this,’ he told her shamelessly.
And he didn’t lie. He found every sensitive spot of arousal hidden in her tender folds, traced and teased those places with sleek, skilled fingertips, the glide and dip of his tongue and even the edge of his teeth. She could feel herself growing achingly wet in response, her heartbeat thumping inside her chest as if she were running a race. A fullness like a dam began to gather and build low in her pelvis and she turned this way and that to cope with the rise of heat and the throbbing torture of his electric exploration, restricted by his strong hold on her hips. Fire was burning through her as sensation piled on sensation at mesmerising speed. And then her own response started becoming more than she could contain, tiny spasms rippling through her quivering body and finally growing into a convulsive wave that swept her up and flung her high before sending her sobbing to earth again. She felt as though the top of her head were flying off while her body felt detached and heavy.
‘I am burning for you, piccolo mia,’ Luciano growled, sliding up over her to claim her mouth again.
He tasted of her and that shocked her but she was already in a state of shock so a little more didn’t seem to matter. She had stepped out of her safe comfortable world into a far more dangerous one and learned weakness. And it wasn’t the incredible allure of what he had made her feel that was her weakness, she acknowledged numbly. Her weakness was him. It was the heady joy she experienced when she saw the wicked smile in those lustrous golden eyes gazing down at her with satisfaction. It was knowing that his pleasing her had pleased him, made him feel good, lifted him out of the bad mood he had been in. That gave her a high more powerful than anything she had ever felt and incandescent warmth filled her.
‘You do something crazy to me,’ Luciano groaned as he rolled back from her to deftly take care of protection. ‘I almost forgot to use a condom.’
Long fingers gripped her hips as he tilted her back and shifted against her. And she felt him nudge against her most tender flesh for the first time. It relit the fire that he had only recently sated, sending a frisson of reflexive hunger coursing through her again. Below his tousled black curls the arresting planes of his lean dark face were taut; his eyes blazed scorching gold with need. He took her mouth again with his, unexpectedly slow and gentle until his tongue delved between her lips and tangled with her own in a delicious dance. Nothing had ever been as arousing as that kiss and it fired her adrenaline. Her hands lifted to sink her fingers into his luxuriant hair and hold him to her but he pulled away a split second before he pushed into her.
‘You’re still so tight,’ Luciano growled in frustration, stilling in an effort to accustom her to his girth, raw need driving his big powerful body as potently as a gun to his head.
She could feel her body stretching to accommodate him and apprehension gathered. She couldn’t tell him that he would be her first because he believed she had birthed his son. He believed she was experienced and would undoubtedly prefer that to the rather pathetic truth. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and arched up to him in determined welcome, keen to get her introduction over with before the little regretful voices inside her head could gain her attention. And she knew what those little voices were about to tell her and she flatly refused to listen. She wanted Luciano and she wanted to know what all the fuss was about. His every tiny movement sent rippling sensation through her outrageously sensitive body.
Luciano pushed her back another few degrees to get a better angle and thrust home.
A searing flash of pain flared through Jemima and she cried out, eyes flying open filled with tears and surprise. ‘That hurts!’
Luciano stilled, staring down at her with brooding, dark disbelief. He knew what his brain was telling him. He knew that his body had met with a resistance that he could not credit existed. While he had known she was not the mother of his son, he had certainly assumed she would be almost as practised with men as her sister had been. The awareness that he had got that badly wrong shook him back to full awareness, clearing his shrewd brain of the fog of alcohol and aggression that had clouded it.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked rawly.
‘Yes, of course I am,’ Jemima assured him and she shifted under him, washing wild sensation through Luciano’s screamingly taut body while need continued to grip him like a hammer blow to the head. He eased out of the wonderfully tight grip of her and sank back into her with a groan of helpless satisfaction.
The pain diminished to a stinging discomfort closely followed by a jolt of exquisite pleasure. As Luciano moved the pleasure kicked in again and again and Jemima clutched at his arms, her knees rising as she arched to meet his next potent thrust. A wild singing impatience shot with primal need held her firmly in its grip and she lifted her hips in time to his fluid movements. He drove deeper and ground down on her and a helpless moan was torn from her lips as he picked up the pace. He slammed into her and her body clenched round him in excitement, her heartbeat thundering. Glorious sensation shimmied through her pelvis and set up a chain reaction that sent her out of control when she convulsed beneath him. She plunged over the crest into a climax of intolerable excitement that sent spasms of delight rippling through her satiated body.
Weak as a kitten, Jemima wrapped her arms round Luciano only to stiffen as he literally shook her off. In a fluid movement he withdrew from her and sprang off the bed to stride into the bathroom. There was blood on him, Luciano acknowledged incredulously as he stepped into the shower. She had actually been a virgin. Where did that unexpected little attribute fit into the lying and gold-digging and plotting he had ascribed to her? What the hell had he been thinking? What the hell had he done?
Luciano pulled on jeans. Incredibly the mere thought of her lush, shapely body aroused him afresh and he wanted to punch something in frustration. A virgin? He was in deep shock and feeling ridiculously guilty. He had been so convinced that Jemima was a lying, gold-digging cheat like his son’s true mother, like... No, he refused to go there, believing that the past was better left buried. But that past had made Luciano a cruel, distrustful cynic with women.
Jemima should have warned him. But how could she have without telling him the truth? Hadn’t she appreciated that the first time might hurt? He had never had to think of that possibility before because he had never even come close to being any woman’s first lover. He had been the first with Jemima, though, and he found himself savouring that knowledge in the weirdest way. It shouldn’t make any difference to his attitude to her...but somehow it did. He could no longer confuse her with Julie the escort or with his late wife, Gigi. Jemima had been considerably more sexually innocent than either.
Hearing Luciano’s movements in the bathroom, Jemima emerged from her own reverie and hurriedly yanked the sheet up over her bare breasts even if the gesture did strike her as too little too late. Luciano appeared in the doorway. What did he think of her now? she wondered for a split second before reality finally came crashing back down on her again. In the storm of her personal doubts and insecurities she had miraculously contrived to forget the lies she had told and they were about to catch up with her, she reckoned wretchedly. Luciano knew now, he had to know that a virgin couldn’t possibly be Nicky’s mum.
Where had her wits been when she’d let him sweep her off to bed? How had she managed to overlook the need to protect the one intimate fact that could prove she was a liar? Of course it hadn’t once occurred to her that she would have sex with Luciano. Fantasy was one thing, actually acting on fantasy something else entirely. Nor had she calculated the very real danger of tempting a male as aggressively dominant as Luciano. He was passionate and oversexed. Knowing she wanted him, he had targeted her and she had been an easy challenge, she reflected shamefacedly.
‘So...’ Luciano breathed silkily, leaning back against the door frame barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only well-worn jeans. With that much unclad masculine flesh on view she found it impossible not to stare. ‘What price do you put on your virginity?’
Jemima blinked. ‘Price?’ she parroted in stricken disbelief.
Luciano raised a well-defined black brow. ‘Well, obviously there has to be a price for me to pay because you put a price on absolutely everything else. You put a price on my son’s worth, didn’t you? Giving away something for free isn’t your style.’
Her face had flamed hot as a fire. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Luciano shifted an impatient hand and studied her fixedly. ‘Quit with the lies, Jemima. Lies only make me angry and you don’t want me angry,’ he warned her.
Lean muscles flexed below bronzed skin as he changed position. The deep chill in his assurance crept through her like the sudden touch of icicles on too-hot skin. He was scaring her but he didn’t need to scare her because Jemima was already fully aware of the wrong she had done. ‘All right, I won’t tell you any more lies,’ she muttered heavily. ‘You know I’m not Nicky’s birth mother now, don’t you?’
‘Obviously. So what’s the going rate for a virgin these days?’ Luciano asked with scorching derision. ‘Presumably you gave it up for a good reason and with you the reason will always relate to profit.’
‘I’m not like that, Luciano!’ Jemima exclaimed in consternation.
His beautiful sensual mouth twisted. ‘If you can try to sell a baby, I assume you can put a price tag on virginity.’
‘I wouldn’t ever have tried to sell a baby!’ Jemima argued fiercely. ‘I know how wrong that would be!’
‘But it wasn’t wrong to keep his father from him when his mother was already dead?’ he shot at her smoothly.
Jemima flinched at that direct question, sudden tears springing to her eyes and stinging like mad. She could not even blame her late twin for her predicament. Indeed she was all too well aware that she had buried herself in the hole she had dug. After all, she had lied to Luciano from the moment she’d met him and compounded her errors by having sex with him. She had done worse than blur the boundaries between right and wrong, she had stepped right over those boundaries.
‘My first question should be...who are you?’ Luciano drawled. ‘But then that would make me a liar too because I already knew that you weren’t who you were pretending to be before we hit the bed.’
Jemima stared at him in dismay. ‘You already knew?’ she exclaimed, disconcerted yet again. ‘And yet you still...’ Her voice drained away as she glanced involuntarily at the disordered bedding.
Angry tension pulled Luciano’s muscles taut. ‘I wasn’t expecting a virgin...’
Jemima was still struggling to accept his earlier statement. ‘You knew I wasn’t Nicky’s mother and yet you were still willing—’
‘Sex is sex, Jemima, and I had had a lot to drink. When the urge controlled me, I didn’t really care who you were,’ Luciano told her with derision.
Her tightly controlled face washed pink and then ran pale. She knew she was being punished for not being more careful about who she became intimate with. He was telling her that he had just used her to scratch an itch and that the shock of her true identity hadn’t been enough to repel him. ‘How long have you known?’ she whispered sickly.
‘Since we landed in Sicily.’
Her pale eyes widened because she was recalling his change of mood at the airport. ‘I know what you must think of me—’
‘You have no idea what I think of you,’ Luciano cut in with icy bite.
‘I love Nicky so much—’
‘Of course you’re going to say that.’
‘I was afraid that if I told you I was only his aunt, you’d just take him away immediately.’
‘I expected you to say that too,’ Luciano incised, lounging back against the door frame, the light behind him glimmering over his powerful pectorals and the hard slab of rippling muscle below.
‘I’ve been with Nicky since he was only a few days old,’ Jemima told him in her own defence while struggling not to sound pleading.
‘And you knew all along that your twin had acted as a surrogate mother?’
‘Yes, but she wouldn’t tell me your name or any details. Julie didn’t trust anyone...ever,’ Jemima completed with feeling emphasis. ‘She knew that I wasn’t comfortable with the decisions she had made and although she left Nicky in my care she didn’t give me any information that I could have used to interfere with her plans.’
Luciano wasn’t convinced. Consistent liars told more lies with ease, adding complex layers of falsehood to their stories to make them seem more credible. Been there, done that...visited the graves, he conceded with a sudden deep inner chill of recoil from his own experiences. His dark eyes iced over with a diamond glitter.
‘You and your sister grew up in separate adoptive homes?’
‘Yes...’
‘And when did you first meet her?’
‘A couple of months before she got involved in the surrogacy agreement with you and she didn’t tell me about that until she turned up again with Nicky.’ Jemima dragged her attention from him to study her tightly linked hands. Time was flinging her back almost two years and reminding her of her excitement and joy when she had first discovered that she had a twin sister who wanted to meet up with her.
Jemima had not tried to trace her birth parents because she had been fearful of hurting her adoptive family’s feelings. It had not, however, occurred to her that she might have a sibling to find and she had been overwhelmed by Julie’s first approach. It had hurt to learn that her birth father was unknown and that their birth mother had died from drug addiction, but it had hurt more to hear about her twin’s early health problems, her unsuccessful adoption and unhappy childhood.
‘I was so much more fortunate than Julie was. My parents loved me from the beginning,’ Jemima said tautly. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been a bit slow at school but Julie’s family—’
‘I’m not interested in Julie’s life story,’ Luciano cut in smoothly.
‘She’s Nicky’s mother!’ Jemima condemned.
‘And I’m grateful she’s not here to cause my son any more damage,’ Luciano told her truthfully.
‘That’s an appalling thing to say!’ Jemima slammed back at him, sliding her legs off the bed and yanking violently at the sheet for cover.
‘Is it?’ Luciano rebutted grimly, angry dark eyes hard as obsidian. ‘She was his mother and that gave her rights over him but she wasn’t a decent, caring person fit to exercise those rights!’
With a final forceful jerk, Jemima dislodged the sheet and wrapped it round her naked body to stalk back through the interconnecting door into her own room. Eyes wet with tears, she was trembling. Her first foray into sex had gone badly wrong and made her feel worthless and rejected. Her late sister was being abused and there was very little she could say because Julie had done wrong. But very few people were all bad. Jemima blinked back the tears as she dug through her case to extract her dressing gown and dropped the sheet to walk into the bathroom.
She needed to shower, wash away the memory of Luciano’s touch and the feel of his body on hers. Shivering, she switched on the water. Her mind drifted back inexorably to her sister and powerful regret filled her because she kept on thinking that if she had only had a little more time with Julie she could have got closer to her and somehow changed things for the better. On another, more rational level, though, she was painfully aware that Julie had never listened to her and had neither respected her opinion nor sought her advice, particularly where Nicky had been concerned.
But Nicky had crept into his aunt’s heart the moment she’d met him because he had been a most unhappy baby.
‘I don’t know how to be a mum!’ Julie had complained, becoming almost hysterical because her son had been crying and inconsolable. ‘You tell me to cuddle him but I don’t feel comfortable with that. He’s making me feel bad!’
Nicky had suffered from colic and Julie had not been able to cope with him or the sleepless nights. Jemima had tried to help and had ended up taking over. She had blamed herself when Julie had gone back to London to work, leaving her baby in Jemima’s care. She had blamed herself too when her twin had failed to bond with her child but she had also been aware of Julie’s chequered past history. In truth Julie had had many troubled relationships in her life and rarely settled anywhere for any length of time. Running away from difficult situations had been the norm for Julie.
Luciano had no compassion, Jemima thought wretchedly. Julie had done bad things but her sister had not set out to be a bad person. Tightening the tie on her dressing gown, Jemima walked back to the door that still lay open between the two bedrooms.
‘I loved my sister...and I won’t say sorry for that!’ Jemima told Luciano defiantly. ‘But I am sorry I lied to you. That was wrong. I got too attached to Nicky and I was frightened of losing him but I do appreciate that that doesn’t excuse my not immediately telling you that his mother had passed away.’
Luciano’s full sensual mouth twisted. ‘It was a power play, wasn’t it?’
Jemima gazed back at him without comprehension. ‘Power didn’t come into it...’
Somewhere in the distance she heard a thin high-pitched wail and stiffened. ‘Nicky’s crying,’ she muttered, walking to the door.
‘Carlotta will take care of him,’ Luciano countered.
Wrenching open the door, Jemima listened to the wails drifting down from the floor above and started down the corridor. ‘I can’t leave him upset,’ she called apologetically over her shoulder, sensing Luciano’s disapproval and refusing to look back at him.
She would be gone from his fancy island castle soon enough, she reflected wretchedly. He was hardly likely to allow her to stay now that he knew she had lied to him and had no real claim to Nicky. Yet it still stunned her that he had gone to bed with her in spite of that knowledge. He had admitted that he had been drinking. Inwardly she cringed. Had alcohol made her seem more attractive than she was? Why was she even thinking in such a way? What did it matter now? They had had sex and there was no going back from that. It had been a casual thing for him and he had been quick to vacate the bed afterwards. He had actually asked her what price she put on her virginity, she recalled painfully. She felt ashamed and humiliated and blamed him for it.
Why, oh, why had he had to make her feel so bad about their ill-starred intimacy?
