Читать книгу Summer Loving - Ким Лоренс, Cathy Williams - Страница 16

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE INTENSITY BEHIND his words sent a wave of panic through Ava.

She swallowed, cleared her throat and shook her head. She couldn’t show him how his behaviour had affected her. ‘You were too busy renewing your various acquaintances to be bothered with me, so I decided to make my own friends.’

Tawny eyes darkened into stormy pools. ‘And you thought the best way to enjoy yourself is to let another man put his hands all over you?’ His fists were clenched and his pallor had faded a little underneath his tan. The tic beating a wild tattoo in his cheek made her belly swan dive.

‘We were just dancing. No big deal.’

His disbelieving laugh grated on her ears. ‘No big deal?’

‘What did you expect? That I’d sulk in a corner pining for you?’

He released a harsh breath. ‘Ava...’

‘You want to leave, so let’s go.’ Unable to withstand the pressure, she pushed past him and threw open the heavy oak doors that led outside.

The cool breeze after the nightclub’s cloying atmosphere was a refreshing welcome. Heaving lungfuls of air into her oxygen-starved body, she stopped beside the bronze and gold column that fronted the club. She sensed Cesare behind her but thought it safer not to turn around.

‘We can’t keep doing this to one another,’ he finally rasped in a fierce undertone.

‘I agree. We can’t. You’ve withdrawn from me completely, and yet you can’t stand it when another man comes within touching distance of me. Whatever is wrong with us, it’s driving me insane and I can’t stand this any more.’ Feelings she didn’t know how to deal with ricocheted through her at lightning speed.

She seethed with anger, she wanted to cry and she wanted to scream.

Plunging shaking hands into her hair, she lifted the suddenly heavy tresses off her heated shoulders. Tears prickled at her eyes but she furiously blinked them away.

Divorce, it seemed, was her only escape. And yet the thought of that final severing from the man she’d dreamed she would spend the rest of her life with brought a hard lump to her chest.

Her frenzied fingers twisted her hair into a rope at her nape.

Cesare drew closer, bringing a renewed rush of awareness. His relentless, all encompassing heat bored down on her. She sucked in a breath and held it in, afraid to let it out lest it somehow transmitted her turmoil.

Firm hands brushed hers away and his strong fingers replaced hers. Her breath grew laboured as his fingers glided through her hair. ‘It’s time we have that talk, carissima.’ His breath fanned her sensitive lobe.

A shiver went through her. She’d started to turn when a loud wolf-whistle shattered the air from a trio of men who’d just emerged from the club.

The sight of her—arms raised, bare feet and naked, seductively curved back—garnered very male interest that made Cesare growl low in his throat.

With jerky movements, he shrugged out of his jacket. ‘Basta! I don’t care if it offends your female sensibilities. Put this on, now,’ he hissed. Pulling her arms down, he draped the jacket around her shoulders.

His limo, which had pulled up while she’d been lost in thought, stood with Paolo holding the door open. Cesare ushered her into the back seat, climbed in beside her and yanked the door shut.

Rough fists clenched and unclenched on his thigh, but it wasn’t until the car was moving that he spoke.

‘It seems you’ve turned into quite the exhibitionist, cara mia.’ The cold endearment emerged more as a reproach than an affectionate term.

She flinched and tried to move away. Immediately he trapped her arms, stopping her sideways escape.

‘A lot of things have happened while you’ve been busy pretending I don’t exist, Cesare.’

His lips firmed. ‘I can see that. And I’m wondering how all this impacts on my daughter.’

She turned sharply. ‘Stop right there! You’d better erase that whiff of you’re a bad mother I hear in your voice, PDQ! And stop referring to her as your daughter. Up until very recently, your part in all this has merely been the biology. You chose to live away from us! You lost the right to be a father when you withdrew so far physically and emotionally from our daughter, she may as well have been dead to you!’

In the darkened interior of the car, his head went back as if she’d struck him. What little colour had remained left his face. She couldn’t have struck a deeper blow if she’d shot a bullet into his heart.

Immediately contrite, she reached out and grabbed his hand. It remained cold and unmoving beneath hers.

‘Cesare, I didn’t mean that—’

‘I deserved that. But I had good reason. Or I thought I had for a long time, well before the earthquake. What happened with Roberto and Valentina...I didn’t think I deserved a child when Roberto had lost his.’

‘Do you really think Roberto begrudged you a family?’

‘I didn’t think—I knew. He told me many times that I didn’t deserve a family—’ a tight edge of pain roughened his voice ‘—that I deserved to be alone the way he was.’

Her insides fractured at his torment. But she couldn’t stop her own pain from welling up alongside it. She sank deeper into the warm jacket that had so recently draped Cesare’s body. Curiously, she drew strength from it to fight him. ‘I’m sorry he said that to you. But did you really think Annabelle deserved to suffer because your brother was fighting his own monsters?’

‘It was my duty to protect him—’

‘You also had a duty to your wife and child. I know you married me because I was pregnant,’ she forced out painfully, ‘but you shouldn’t have left me alone to bring up our daughter alone.’

A small, taut silence reigned before, ‘You were never alone,’ he said, almost under his breath. ‘You had nannies, household staff and a security detail.’

Rage smashed her burgeoning hope to smithereens. ‘Security detail? Oh, that’s all right then. You know I’ve never been part of a family. I told you how my father and brothers treated me. God, Cesare, I had no idea what I was doing when I had a baby. I expected you to stick around and help me, be with me. Instead you jumped on your jet at the first opportunity, and chased deal after deal. I didn’t marry your household staff or your security detail. I married you! You should have been there, not them!’

His hand tightened painfully on hers and his head dipped in solemn acknowledgement. ‘I should’ve been. No matter my inadequacies as a husband, I should’ve tried harder as a father. Trust me, Ava, I know my failings where my daughter is concerned.’ He spread his fingers in a purely Latin gesture. ‘It’s why I’m here now, trying to right that wrong. I intend not to lose sight of the fact that she is the most important thing in all of this.’

Hearing the words—so resolute and promising where their daughter was concerned, and so excluding where she was—made Ava’s heart catch so painfully she couldn’t speak for several seconds. But she didn’t need to. Cesare was in the mood to unburden himself. ‘Dio mio, Ava, you must remember we barely knew each other before you got pregnant and yet you so quickly put me front and centre of everything you wanted in a family. I couldn’t think straight. You say you had no idea what you were doing but to me you seemed the epitome of calm and composure. When, after a while, you didn’t seem to need me, I left.’

Ava reeled, fiercely glad she wasn’t standing up, for surely she’d have lost the power of her legs. Her spine turned liquid and she collapsed into the soft leather seat. ‘I had no idea...’

The rest of her words dried up as he shook his head, raised a silencing hand before clenching it into a fist mid-air. The action, so wrought with despair, made her inhale sharply. She glanced at his profile.

The corresponding look of wrenching pain on his face made her reach out.

‘Cesare—’

* * *

Cesare couldn’t stop the hiss of pain that slipped through his lips. ‘Enough! Do not say another word.’

Regret, self-condemnation, jealousy and anger all coalesced into a seething ball of emotion in his chest. Emotions he’d been fighting what felt like forever sank their steely talons deeper into him. He was exhausted... Dio, was he exhausted.

‘I’m tired of trading verbal blows with you, Ava.’

He needed a distraction, and he reached for the only thing that had ever been potent enough to melt his control.

Ava’s gasp echoed in the car as he yanked her against him.

Soft contours moulded against his hardness, her eyes widening as she encountered a particularly stiff part of him. His gaze dropped to her lips, his focus hazing at the thought of possessing her, of washing away the tide of blackness that threatened to consume him in the most effective way he knew how.

He slanted his lips over hers, and nearly groaned. Heady, seductive, infinitely dangerous to him. But, right at that moment, he didn’t care about the danger. He wanted a reprieve from the demons clamouring for his soul.

With a feathery sigh, she melted into him and he exhaled in satisfaction. He’d expected bristle and bite, for her to fight the way she always did. Instead she sank further into him.

His tongue, eager to taste, captured hers. Another gasp echoed in the silent interior as his fingers explored what he’d been itching to explore for far too long.

No woman had ever tasted like Ava. Innocent and bewitching, bold and insecure—one minute she kissed him as if she wanted to devour him, the next she whimpered with a touch of timidity.

The heady mix made him harder, torturing him with the need to pull up the short hemline that had been taunting him all evening and just take, take, take.

But, as much as he wanted to rip her panties off, spread her open on the wide limo seat and pleasure them both until one of them passed out, he couldn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with kissing, his insistent body clamoured. He deepened the kiss, letting his mouth perform the task his body couldn’t be allowed to. Ava’s mouth opened wider, her tongue growing bolder in its own exploration.

A dark thought seeped into his mind. Fighting the blackness, he wrenched his lips from hers.

‘You never answered me when I asked if there’d been anyone else. I need to know.’

‘Why, so you can go growl at them the way you did with Mario tonight?’

Irrational jealousy he’d experienced earlier returned. He planted a hard kiss on her lips, determined to wipe the feeling away with the smooth sweep of his tongue.

‘Mario has been left in no doubt as to the consequences should he ever dare to come within three feet of you again.’ He hesitated a beat. ‘Ava?’

Mesmerising green eyes held his. ‘I’m still a married woman. I take my vows very seriously.’ She sniffed, and her eyes darkened. ‘Has there been for you?’

He shook his head. ‘We’re still married, mia amante. I would never dishonour you in that way.’

Her eyes darkened and her swollen lower lip trembled. ‘How can you say things like that to me and expect me not to have hope for us?’

His insides clenched. ‘Ava...’

‘For God’s sake, shut up, Cesare. Just...shut up and kiss me.’

He didn’t need to be told twice.

Lust thundering forcefully through him, he went deeper. She was all fire now, voracious and demanding, her hands frantic as they grasped his nape, grabbed his hair and twisted it between her fingers. His heart tore around his chest like a crazed animal. When her full breasts pressed against his chest, he nearly lost his mind.

His hand moved to her back, encountered sleek, smooth flesh. He pulled back, sucked in a deep breath and watched her fight for breath too. The sight of her moistened, kiss-swollen lips made him groan.

‘What?’ she asked huskily. Her fingers still worked through his hair, scraped his scalp. He’d never have imagined such a simple gesture could be erotic, but the fierce throb of his erection indicated otherwise.

‘We’ve arrived at the apartment.’

It took a few seconds for his words to register. In that suspended time, he basked in her warm supple body plastered against him.

Eyes widening, she sprang away from him. The loss was a fist in his gut. She reached for his jacket and settled it around her shoulders and, oddly, Cesare felt comforted that she had a part of him on her. He toyed with asking Paolo to take them on a long drive out of the city but already the door was opening.

She stepped out, exhibiting an obscene amount of leg, and her bare feet made him want to growl some more.

He carried her shoes and trailed her into the building. He’d chosen to lead a separate life away from his wife and child because he hadn’t thought he had what it took to be a husband and father. He’d drifted through each day, doing what needed to be done—making deals, making more money, taking financial care of his parents.

Now he was hyperaware of every passing minute, of every atom of his being poised on a knife-edge of sharp focus. Focus on the woman in front of him, her stunning body and shapely backside swaying underneath his jacket as she strode towards the lift on the balls of her bare feet.

Inside the lift, he caught her to him but didn’t kiss her. If he started he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Once they were inside the apartment, he kicked the door shut with his foot and reached for her. What he grabbed instead was his jacket, held out by Ava with a determined look on her face.

‘Come here,’ he commanded, every muscle tight with need.

She raised her chin, exposing the satin neck that sent his pulse sky-high. ‘No.’

Shock froze him in place. ‘Che?’

She remained defiant and out of reach. ‘I won’t sleep with you just because you’ve decided that you want me again.’

He prowled towards her. She backed away, making him want to pounce on her. He cautioned himself not to. ‘Again? Hell, haven’t we proved conclusively that I’ve never stopped wanting you? Dio, you only have to walk into a room to make me rock-hard for you.’

Heat bloomed in her cheeks, appeasing him somewhat. As did her soft lips parting on a breath. The fierce shake of her head, however, plunged him back towards supreme frustration. Again he tried to reach for her. Again she danced out of his reach. Irritation sizzled through him.

‘As hot as that was intended to make me—’

‘Did I succeed?’

The rapid rise and fall of her breasts gave him his answer. ‘I’m not going to fall into bed with you, Cesare.’

She shook out his jacket like a matador trying to distract a raging bull. He ignored it and focused on his prize. Another step brought him closer to her. He breathed in her scent and acknowledged that his need for her was beyond his own understanding.

And he was infinitely weary of twisting himself into knots about it.

‘Tell me you don’t want me, mia sposa.’

‘You know I do, but I won’t let you toy with me. What happened to—this is as far as you’re ever going to get?’

Unwelcome heat crawled up his neck. For a man who had a superb command of words, he couldn’t compose a suitable answer aside from the pure, unadulterated truth. ‘We both know that bikini should’ve come with a skull and crossbones warning. I was angry with you for killing me with temptation and wasn’t quite myself when I uttered those words.’ Having Ava taunt him with her body when he’d been fighting his desire had been the last straw. He hadn’t liked being held on the knife-edge of control, as he’d been right from the beginning with her.

‘And now you’ve just decided to hell with it?’

Stalking away from her, he tore off his constricting tie and tossed it away. ‘I haven’t decided anything! What I do know is that you’re driving me crazy and...’ His fist clenched. ‘Dammit, Ava, you flaunted yourself so blatantly.’

‘Well, you’re in luck. I’m not flaunting anything any more. Goodnight, Cesare.’

At first he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. By the time the shock wore off, Ava’s deliciously tempting back had disappeared down the hall and into the guest bedroom.

Unclenching his fist, he raked his decidedly unsteady fingers through his hair. Bravo, Cesare. He’d finally succeeded at what he’d been trying to do since Ava returned—he’d pushed her away.

Except satisfaction tasted like ashes and thwarted lust sucked. He swore and paced the room. It was no use asking himself what he’d been thinking.

When it came to Ava, she only had to touch him and he lost his mind. She only had to look at him with those smoky emerald eyes and his senses flamed with the promise of pleasure.

He spotted his briefcase and his jaw tightened. He strode to it and pulled out the papers. The cold, stark words taunted him. With a simple stroke of his name along the dotted line, he could be free of this madness.

But was that his only option?

Ava’s words in the car struck him. From the beginning, he’d known she had a strained relationship with her own family. To all intents and purposes, he and Annabelle were the only family she had. He’d married her, only to leave her to her own devices because he’d been too caught up in his own angst to see clearly.

Was he man enough to start now?

His fist tightened around the papers. On a decisive thought, he ripped them in two. He’d been too long locked in his own pain for his part in Roberto’s seclusion, he hadn’t stopped to think about Ava’s needs when she married him.

A grim smile crossed his mouth. Had Ava asked for a divorce two months ago, hell, even the day before the earthquake, he probably would have granted it. But not now. He ripped the papers until they were indecipherable pieces.

He still didn’t have it in him to offer her what she wanted, but he, if nothing else, was a damned good negotiator. There would be no divorce.

So what now?

Hell if he knew. He would just have to work it out later.