Читать книгу Modern Romance September Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Julia James - Страница 16

DANTE HAD BEEN up working since the crack of dawn when Belle finally showed.

She gave him a huge smile from the top of the stairs when their eyes met. It was fake as hell and he liked that he could tell that it was fake because she had a highly expressive face. Faint shadows highlighted her violet eyes and proved that she had not slept much better than he had. Served her right for leaving his bed the way she had, he reflected, dark golden eyes simmering. Dante wasn’t used to women taking him by surprise or making moves on their own, and Belle had done both when he had found her gone when he’d got out of the shower the night before. Well, she wouldn’t be doing that tonight, he thought with innate satisfaction, because she would only be sleeping in his bed while she was in Italy.

‘You have about thirty minutes to get breakfast,’ Dante murmured softly, watching the sunlight make a fiery halo of her hair and add sparkle to her eyes. Her outfit—striped cropped trousers and a white top, teamed with canvas sneakers—had a nautical air that gave her the look of a sexy sailor. His keen gaze roamed over her shapely figure and he remembered that she had felt like liquid silk and he hardened instantly.

‘I’m starving,’ Belle admitted unselfconsciously as she dropped down into a seat and the butler appeared to take her order. ‘I can hardly wait to be reunited with Charlie.’

‘We’ll pick him up on the way home. By the way, I’ve arranged for your packing to be done.’

Belle nodded and smiled as a pot of tea arrived. She was disturbingly aware of the lingering scrutiny of Dante’s stunning dark golden eyes. What was he watching and waiting for? She had agreed with his wait-and-see outlook and she wasn’t about to freak out over something that might never happen. At the same time, she had had thoughts during the night that would probably horrify Dante because she had tried to imagine herself becoming a mother. For someone who had never had a mother as such that had been a scary prospect, but she had decided that she would cope, somehow, she would cope the way she always had when life threw up unexpected developments.

And the more she had thought about how different a parent she would be in comparison to her own parents, the more she had warmed to the vague image of a baby she could love. A little boy, a little girl, she didn’t care, but she did like children and the idea of finally having her own family could only warm her heart. That was the right attitude to have, she told herself firmly: turn any negative aspect into a positive so that she was prepared for whatever happened.

‘When will we know?’ Dante asked levelly.

Belle registered that his mind was in exactly the same place as her own and she coloured. ‘In about ten days—’

‘We’ll have a test done as soon as possible,’ Dante told her in the same measured tone.

Belle demolished a croissant in record time, unnerved by Dante’s calm and slightly irritated that he was hiding how he really felt from her, acting all distant and businesslike in the aftermath of the passionate encounter they had shared the night before. Of course, it would be neither civil nor kind of him to admit that he was horrified by their situation, she allowed grudgingly. Really, she was being unreasonable in expecting any more from him than a polite pretence.

Dante watched Belle’s lips curl round a shred of croissant, the tip of her tongue peeking out as she savoured the pastry with unconcealed pleasure, her head tipping back slightly, lashes lowering, her white throat exposed, her slim body momentarily stretching, the fabric pulling tight across the full firm swell of her breasts. He was fiercely aroused by her sensual enjoyment of her food and he marvelled at the way she could make the simplest things seem impossibly sexy. Thoroughly disconcerted by his reaction, Dante attempted to work out why having Belle once had only whetted his appetite for her and stoked it higher, instead of at least partially cooling his immediate interest.

Glancing curiously across the table at Dante, who had gone very still, his attention locked to her, his lean, strong jawline clenching hard, Belle muttered, ‘What’s up?’

‘I still want you,’ Dante breathed in a driven undertone. ‘In fact, if we had the time I’d be hauling you back upstairs right now!’

Eyes widening in astonishment at that bold admission, Belle stared at him and a piece of croissant went down the wrong way. Choking, she gasped and coughed, eyes streaming as she took a drink to clear her tight throat. Well, she guessed she had just got her answer about what happened next, but she hadn’t expected to receive it quite so directly.

‘I’m a passionate guy. I can’t change what I am,’ Dante murmured huskily. ‘But I’m hoping you feel the same way.’

Belle chewed tautly at the soft fullness of her lower lip and could feel the flames breaking out below her skin, an anticipatory warm dampness flowering between her thighs while her nipples tightened in response. ‘Er...yes.’

‘You see,’ Dante pronounced with satisfaction. ‘Nothing between us has to be complicated.’

And she thought, He can’t possibly be so clever and yet so stupid at the same time, can he? Because their relationship had become extremely complicated, not least because of the contraceptive mishap the day before and his desire to continue their intimacy undeterred by that development.

‘You think I’ll be more convincing playing your lover if I actually am?’ Belle queried.

‘If I didn’t want you I wouldn’t be with you,’ Dante said drily. ‘And I wanted you the instant I saw you.’

Belle shifted in her seat, helplessly gratified by that admission.

‘There had to be chemistry for us to do this,’ Dante pointed out. ‘I could hardly pretend to be living with a woman who didn’t attract me.’

‘Obviously not.’ Belle squashed down the urge to ask him how often he saw a woman he immediately wanted in the way he had evidently wanted her. Probably ten or more times a day, she scolded herself ruefully. It bothered her that in his radius she jumped like a fish at a hook, overanalysing his every word, quite unable to re-establish the cool, calm outlook that usually guided her around men.

It was different with Dante; she was different with Dante. He was more in every way than every other man she had ever met, better looking, smarter, more sophisticated and unarguably richer. She recognised her subconscious wish that she was something more special to him than a passing fancy and she almost grimaced with self-loathing. There was no future in their arrangement and the last thing she needed to do was start getting attached to him or developing unrealistic expectations. Cinderella rarely got her prince in the real world.

‘Those who know me will be surprised enough that I have moved a woman into my home with me,’ Dante admitted, raking impatient fingers through his unruly black hair. ‘I have always been very forthright about my lack of interest in marriage and my desire to retain my freedom. So, as a couple, we do have to put on a convincing show.’

‘You’re making me more and more curious about this business deal that is so important to you,’ Belle confided. ‘It must be something pretty special to make you go to these lengths to attain it.’

‘Krystal’s husband, Eddie, owns a piece of land that I hope to reclaim.’

Belle frowned. ‘Reclaim?’ She questioned his choice of that word.

‘The land used to belong to my brother and he was very attached to it. My parents sold it off when I was abroad on business because they’re not sentimental people.’

‘Couldn’t you have bought the land direct from them?’ she asked.

‘No, they would have made other demands of me. I don’t put myself in a vulnerable position with them,’ he replied in a guarded tone, glancing across the room in relief as a collection of suitcases on a trolley were wheeled towards the lift. ‘I believe it’s time for us to leave.’

* * *

Dante worked during the flight, barely lifting his head from his laptop. Belle pondered the situation she was about to enter, the ‘snake pit’ as Dante had referred to it as. An array of unappealing characters awaited her, it seemed, the nasty parents, the clingy troublemaking ex from hell. But no, when he didn’t get on well with his parents, she would hardly be dragged out to meet them, she reasoned, striking his titled parents from the list of challenges ahead. Instead she concentrated on her reunion with Charlie.

The cluster of shouting and gesticulating press-waving cameras as they emerged from the VIP channel at the airport came as a rude wake-up call. ‘Look happy,’ Dante urged in her ear as he locked a supportive hand to her stiff spine. Belle smiled and all the cameras obediently flashed. He didn’t pause to respond to the questions being hurled at him. Security guards escorted them out to the waiting limousine.

‘You’re clearly quite a celebrity in Italy. You should’ve mentioned that,’ Belle told him.

‘Gossip columnists take a ridiculous interest in my private life and for once I’ve given them something to report...thanks to you.’

‘What have I got to do with it?’ Belle demanded.

‘You insisted that you be allowed to be yourself and I have given you your wish. When my staff were asked to identify you, they admitted that you were a waitress I met in France and the press do love to wallow in a whirlwind romance,’ Dante declared with cynical amusement.

‘I just wasn’t expecting that level of public interest in your life,’ Belle told him, already beginning to regret her insistence that she go under her own name with Dante as she wondered if her father would read about her in some newspaper.

On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine her father reading a gossip column, but what did she know about the man? Very little and hopefully any publicity would be confined to the Italian press. Yet her self-respect cringed at the possibility of her father learning that she had moved in with a very rich Italian because he would no doubt assume that she was faithfully following in her gold-digging mother’s footsteps. And she didn’t want to give her long-absent father the excuse to believe that he had been right not to pursue a more normal relationship with her. His rejection and the injustice of being held accountable for her mother’s sins still stung.

Charlie greeted her with rapture at the smart boarding kennels, bounding into her arms as if they had been parted for months. She petted him and calmed him down before turning to Dante to say, ‘Let’s go and say hello to your brother’s dogs while we’re here.’

Dante frowned. ‘I don’t think...’

‘Don’t be mean, Dante,’ Belle argued fierily. ‘Imagine how boring it must be in here for them every day and how much it will mean to them to get a visit.’

Incredulous at being called mean for the first time in his life, Dante spread lean brown hands in frustration and annoyance. ‘Five minutes...that’s all,’ he specified. ‘And that’s all you’ll want because they’re frantic little beasts with no manners at all.’

‘We’ll put Charlie into his travelling box and leave him out here while we visit them. It wouldn’t be fair to unsettle them with a strange dog,’ Belle remarked as she persuaded Charlie into the box. ‘You know, Dante...dogs can learn manners. With a little training, you might find them perfectly acceptable. I’m willing to help if I can.’

‘They’re not coming home with us,’ Dante swore vehemently, registering that when he gave an inch with Belle she tried to take a mile.

‘OK,’ Belle conceded, wondering how long it would take to change his mind as he addressed the proprietor and they were led down a corridor giving access to a line of kennels.

‘They jump up at you and drop hair everywhere,’ Dante complained, angry that he had allowed himself to be shamed into doing something he didn’t want to do.

Belle didn’t know what breed of dog she had expected Dante’s late brother to have owned but she was surprised to see two tiny short-haired chihuahuas, one brown, one black and white, nestled cosily in an extravagant pink basket. As they leapt out of the basket to greet Dante with an enthusiasm he didn’t deserve, Belle crouched down and quite deliberately got in their way. In seconds she had an armful of squirming, overexcited chihuahuas in her lap and she sat down on the floor of the corridor below Dante’s disbelieving gaze and slowly calmed them down with a quiet voice and an occasional sharp no.

‘Do you want to hold them now they’ve settled?’ she asked Dante over her shoulder.

‘No,’ Dante said flatly.

Belle suppressed a sigh and resisted the temptation to ask him to make an effort. She petted the little animals, wondering how Dante could withstand those little pleading dark eyes. He had been doing it for a year, she reminded herself wryly.

‘They’ve never behaved that well for me,’ he confided. ‘Clearly, you’re the beast whisperer.’

Belle sighed as she returned the dogs to their kennels and they whined and clawed at the mesh in disappointment. ‘I suppose I was expecting your brother to have hunting dogs...well, something large and macho.’

‘Cristiano was liked cute dogs,’ Dante admitted quietly. ‘He was gay, and the more our parents criticised him, the more flamboyant he became.’

‘They couldn’t accept him as he was?’

‘Oh, they’re very liberal and accepting in public, and they have gay friends, but they still didn’t want a gay eldest son and heir,’ Dante derided. ‘They tried to disinherit him, tried to change the succession rules to prevent him from inheriting my father’s title, but there was no legal recourse. Tragically, his death suited them.’

Belle stroked his arm as they got into the limo, Charlie already on board, tail thumping noisily inside his plastic carrier box. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘As children we were never allowed a pet because my mother doesn’t like animals. Tito and Carina were Cristiano’s first rebellion. He used to joke that at least the presence of the dogs prevented our mother from making unannounced visits to his apartment in Florence,’ he told her gruffly.

Belle smiled. ‘He had a sense of humour, then.’

‘In the right mood he was the life and soul of the party, but he always suffered from low self-esteem and when anything went wrong, he blamed himself.’

‘Does your mother make unannounced visits to your home?’ Belle asked apprehensively.

‘Not for a long time. Relax... If she shows up, I will deal with her,’ Dante assured her confidently.

‘How far are the kennels from your house?’ Belle prompted.

‘A ten-minute drive.’ A faint hint of colour flared over Dante’s high cheekbones as he met her surprised violet eyes. ‘I’ll look into rehoming the dogs. It wasn’t what Cristiano wanted for them but you’re right, it would be kinder.’

He wasn’t used to pets, having been raised without them, but her heart ached at the depth of grief and guilt that still tormented Dante. He was so very different from the man she had initially assumed him to be. His emotions ran deep and strong. There was nothing superficial about him. If she discovered that she was pregnant, she didn’t believe that he would try to pressure her into doing anything she didn’t want to do and that was a relief. She had had a friend once who had allowed her boyfriend to persuade her into a termination. Her friend had agreed in the belief that it would save the relationship, but it hadn’t, and it had taken a very long time for her to get over the decision she had made. Belle didn’t want to be put in that position, although in her case, she acknowledged unhappily, there would be no relationship to save.

The limo was travelling up a spiralling road with hairpin bends and, almost at the top of the hill, it turned into a lane. Belle was still twisting her head around to catch another glimpse of the staggeringly beautiful view of the Tuscan countryside, green hills and valleys studded with cypress trees, little pale stone hilltop villages, composed of houses with vivid terracotta roofs.

‘Welcome to the Palazzo Rosario,’ Dante murmured, and she swivelled back to be confronted by the magnificent mansion sited at the foot of the drive and her brows went up in stunned surprise.

‘You could’ve mentioned that it was a Palladian palace,’ she whispered in awe.

‘How do you know it’s the work of Palladio?’ Dante enquired.

Belle flushed and her soft full mouth compressed. ‘Why? Isn’t a waitress supposed to know about stuff like that?’ she snapped.

‘Few would recognise the fact at first glimpse,’ Dante told her wryly. ‘I’m curious.’

‘My grandfather had a great interest in architecture and a big collection of books,’ Belle admitted. ‘Growing up he dreamt of being an architect but, of course, it was just a dream.’

‘Why?’

Belle sighed. ‘When he was young, working-class boys went straight out to work as soon as they were legally able to leave school. It didn’t matter how clever they were. Further education wasn’t free, and it wasn’t an option. Grandad worked as an accounts clerk in an office all his life.’

‘But he taught you about architectural history,’ Dante gathered.

‘It was his personal interest. He would save up to buy these big books and then he would share the best pictures and highlights with me,’ she recalled fondly, thinking once again that she had been very fortunate in her grandparents.

‘I learned young as well. The palazzo belonged to my uncle on my mother’s side, Jacopo Rozzi. He was an art historian. He never married and when he died, he left his entire estate to me, which effectively made me independent of my family,’ Dante admitted. ‘I owe him a great debt for his generosity.’

‘Is that how you started out in business?’ Belle asked curiously, climbing out of the limo to look up in wonder at the long colonnaded frontage and the perfect symmetry of the rows of tall windows.

‘Jacopo invested in my business while I was still at university and got me off to a flying start.’ Dante looked down at her, the glow of her usual exuberance drawing him even as he reflected in bewilderment that he had never done so much talking in his life with a woman as he had done with her. She was so natural with him and he had not had that experience with her sex before. Even the attention she was giving the palazzo, rather than him, was outside his normal experience and weirdly annoying.

‘Belle...?’ he breathed silkily before she could rush up the stone steps ahead of him, a newly released Charlie dancing at her heels.

And she turned back to him, wide violet eyes bright below the tangle of red-gold curls on her pale brow. Dark eyes dazzlingly gilded by sunlight, he stared down at her and the hunger she incited surged up inside him with volcanic force. He pulled her into his arms, one hand locking to the back of her head, his fingers meshing into her curls, and he devoured her soft, smiling mouth with his own. Taken by complete surprise, Belle stiffened and then leant into the solid heat of him, the wild, ferociously sweet taste of his hunger melting her deep down inside to create a blossoming ache of need.

Distinctly dazed by that embrace, she stumbled when he set her free and it was all the encouragement he needed to sweep her up into his arms and carry her up the steps with Charlie racing in their wake and barking to indicate his enthusiasm. Belle started to laugh. To say that they made an entrance to the palazzo would have been to understate the case, for a group of goggle-eyed staff awaited them there.

Belle slid down out of Dante’s arms, flushed and embarrassed by his hot-headed behaviour but immediately soothed by the huge smiles that greeted their arrival. Their luggage was being brought in and she accompanied Dante upstairs. Only belatedly did it dawn on her that that seemingly spontaneous kiss had most probably been driven by Dante’s desire to make them seem more like a loving couple. It had been a public statement, nothing more. At that acknowledgement, the bounce dropped straight out of her step again and she scolded herself for believing for one minute that he had simply succumbed to an overwhelming passion.

The first-floor landing was open-plan to the piano nobile, the main reception room according to the usual Palladian floor plan. It was certainly a very grand and richly furnished space. Indeed, her brain was already whirling with images of colourful frescoes, classic statues and more architectural detail than she could comfortably absorb in a short space of time. ‘Do you use this as the main reception area?’ she enquired.

‘Only if I throw a party but that isn’t very often. I converted rooms on the ground floor for normal life. It’s a challenge because Jacopo left me a treasure house and I don’t like making changes but, at the same time, I have to actually live here, so it has to be made fit for purpose,’ he pointed out, following the luggage through a classical double doorway into a simply vast bedroom.

It was only then that Belle realised that naturally they would be sharing a room and that her nights of solo privacy were at an end, but when she laid eyes on the huge canopied bed with its incredibly opulent crimson-and-gold brocaded drapes, she burst out laughing. As if it were not imposing enough, the bed sat on a dais. ‘Please tell me I don’t have to sleep in that monstrosity...’

‘I’ll have you know that that is a genuine Louis XIV bed,’ Dante informed her with amusement lighting up his lean dark features. ‘And it is very comfortable... Look, even Charlie thinks so.’

Belle exclaimed in dismay, ‘Charlie! No!’

The terrier had searched out the most comfortable place in the room and had had no problem leaping up onto the bed and making himself at home there. She scooped him up and set him down on the floor again.

‘So, you live inside a history book. I would never have guessed that about you,’ she admitted truthfully.

‘My parents’ home is only a few miles away and I’ve been visiting this house since I was a little boy. I was grateful for my uncle’s interest in me because I got very little attention at home,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I was brought up by nannies, some better than others, and few of them lasted long because my mother is a demanding employer. Cristiano and I went to boarding school and Jacopo used to come and take us out for the day. He was a very kind man and I think he felt sorry for us.’

‘Was he close to your parents?’

‘No, and when he left me all his worldly goods, they were outraged because they had always assumed they would inherit his estate and to leave it to me, the younger, more rebellious son, was even worse in their eyes.’

‘What age were you when he died?’

‘Twenty-one.’

Belle shook her head, unable to even imagine inheriting the splendour of such a residence and all that went with it at such a young age. ‘You have already lived a most extraordinary life, Dante, and you’re not even thirty yet. You may not have been blessed in the parent department, but you were blessed in other ways,’ she told him quietly.

‘Do you want the official tour now or later?’ Dante enquired.

‘Later would be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m a little tired. I’d like a shower and a nap.’

‘Dinner’s at eight,’ he told her casually.

In truth, Belle was thinking that she needed to pull back and wise up fast. She was at the Palazzo Rosario purely to play a role: that of official girlfriend. Dante had reminded her of that harsh fact when he’d kissed her and carried her in like a bride, for goodness’ sake! Such a public and exaggerated display of affection would not have occurred to Dante if he hadn’t been faking it to make them seem more like a real couple. Real couples kissed and laughed and fooled around like that, but she had to remember that they were not a real couple.

She opened a connecting door and found a bathroom, a gorgeous creation in Carrera marble with a copper bath catching the fading sunlight by the window. Dreamy, she thought, but she was too tired for a bath and would savour its delights some other time.

All her troubled thoughts were concentrated on Dante. The act of sex had plunged their arrangement into a no man’s land of confusion, she acknowledged ruefully in the shower. All of a sudden she didn’t know how to behave, what was acceptable, what was not. Was he expecting her to be all over him like a rash when anyone else was around? Or did the staff not really matter? Probably not, she decided, not after he had staged that big entrance for them. Now he was probably just expecting her to blend into the woodwork while he got on with his normal life. Her true moment of importance wouldn’t arrive for ten days when his guests would arrive...at about the same time as she would be finding out whether or not she was pregnant.

But what were the odds? She winced. She told herself it wasn’t likely but she had already calculated that that accident had happened during her most fertile phase, which wasn’t good.

The door opened and she froze, telling herself off for not locking the door and ready to curl up in a heap on the shower floor. But it was Dante and he gave her a slow smile over the wall that separated the shower from the rest of the room.

‘I decided that I needed a nap as well,’ he husked, reaching down to pull up his T-shirt and haul it over his head, a truly spectacular network of muscles flexing to make that movement possible. Her mouth went dry and she knew that he had only been joking about the nap, her colour heightening.

She had assumed he wouldn’t come near her again until they were in that big bed later that evening. She was learning that it didn’t pay to make assumptions with Dante. He had told her that he was a passionate guy. He liked sex. He liked sex a lot...and he wanted her, had wanted her from the first moment he saw her, and nobody had ever wanted Belle with such immediacy or such passionate intensity. She could live in the moment, couldn’t she? She watched the jeans drop, the classic V shape above his hip bones tightening as he got naked in record time. Sensation clenched low and tight in her pelvis and she was literally holding her breath, seeing Dante naked and aroused for the first time. And yes, he definitely had more than a nap in mind.

He stepped in with her, crowding her back against the tiled wall, hunger smouldering in his dark golden eyes, his body taut against her stomach, and she literally stopped breathing. A wild heat gripped her feminine core but that out-of-her-depth feeling was claiming her again. Only the night before she had still been a virgin, still shy, still ignorant of all sorts of things and, while she was no longer that naïve and unprepared, six feet two inches of Dante, naked and bronzed and wet and ready in the shower, was almost too much to handle.

Long fingers pushed up her chin so that he could see her eyes. ‘Are you too tired?’

Belle trembled. ‘Er...no,’ she told him truthfully, barely able to catch her breath.

‘Too sore?’ he husked.

One of her tomato blushes gripped her from head to toe and she shook her head in urgent negative but even as she did so, she knew she was telling a partial lie. She was still tender, still very aware of what they had done only hours earlier. Yet inexplicably her body now craved him like a dangerous drug, as if that one act of intimacy had smashed all her defences, her inhibitions and her misgivings.

And yet, on another level, she was painfully aware that she wanted more from him than he would ever give her, and her insecurities lingered underneath. All he wanted was sex, but he wasn’t feeling the magnetic mental pull, the attachment that was tugging at her, no matter how hard she tried to resist it. She was convenient, available, here only to play a role that he was paying her for. A role that had somehow become real, only it wasn’t real because she was not his girlfriend and he hadn’t really invited her to share his house with him. In just ten days it would all be over, and she would be gone.

What did that make of her? Did it mean she was like her mother? A woman content to be a man’s plaything for a little while and gratefully scoop up the expensive treats and gifts he was prepared to provide in reward? Horror gripped her.

‘What’s wrong?’ Dante breathed rawly, linking her arms round his neck as if she were a puppet and lifting her up against him, feeling the tension in her slender body, the little tremors running through her.

‘Nothing,’ she protested shakily, fighting that attack of guilty discomfiture, knowing it wasn’t the same thing. Nothing that had happened between her and Dante had been planned by either of them. It had all been happenstance from start to finish.

‘That kiss...outside...it set me on fire,’ Dante muttered thickly, nuzzling his unshaven cheek against her throat, his stubble abrading her softer skin. ‘And the thought of you up here, getting naked in my shower was too tempting.’

‘So I need to stay fully clothed at all times from now on?’ she teased with a little gurgle of laughter.

‘No, I’d probably turn caveman and rip them off you!’ Dante growled, sucking at the skin between her neck and her shoulder to send an arrow of fiery heat darting down to between her legs.

And as he lifted his wet head, golden eyes molten with desire and framed with spiky black lashes, her arms tightened round his neck and she kissed him. There was no yesterday, today or tomorrow in that hungry kiss, no thought of any of that, no uncertainty. She simply couldn’t go another moment without tasting that wide sensual mouth of his and she decided she wasn’t going to beat herself up any more about what she couldn’t resist. And what she couldn’t resist was Dante.

With a stifled groan he braced her against the wall and then he bumped his brow against hers and sighed. ‘Need a condom...rain check. Just because we had one glitch doesn’t mean I should risk you again.’

‘No,’ she agreed as he slowly lowered her down the wall again, her body feeling hollow, plunged from the edge of anticipation to what felt like abandonment.

Dante stepped out of the shower and she heard him rifling through drawers as she finished rinsing the conditioner out of her hair, marvelling that the goop in her hair hadn’t put him off. She was surprised when a pair of arms closed round her from behind and smoothed up slowly over her full breasts, fingertips lingering to pinch her nipples, reviving that hot liquid burn sensation at the heart of her.

‘Had to find my wallet. I don’t bring women here. You’re the first,’ Dante admitted.

‘Where do you take them?’ she heard herself ask uneasily, hurt at the thought of him with other women, telling herself off for that sensitivity, because of course he had had other women in his life.

‘I go to their place...always,’ he stressed. ‘You’re unique.’

But only because he hadn’t had a choice where she was concerned, she reminded herself. She could hardly play the live-in girlfriend from a distance.

‘Unique in every way,’ Dante confided, his hands running all over her slippery body, finding the most sensitive spot, dallying there until she bucked and gasped out loud.

He spun her round and lifted her again, stunning eyes glittering like golden stars with intent as he braced her back against the wall again and sank into her with a guttural groan of satisfaction. She was caught up in the excitement, utterly abandoned to the surging sensation gripping her lower body. She needed more and then more, and he gave it to her in spades, all that she wanted until the terrible tension broke and she reached a breathtaking climax of pleasure that wrung her out.

‘You see, unique,’ Dante told her gruffly in the unbroken silence that followed. ‘You don’t scream. You don’t shout my name. You don’t even tell me how fantastic that was. The irony is that I want you to do all those things for me.’

And she thought about that confession over dinner, all modest in a neat little dress at the beautifully set candlelit table, and the food, absolutely exquisite. She knew she would never scream for him, never shout his name, never, ever tell him how fantastic he was because the minute he got those responses from her she would be the same as her predecessors and, ten to one, he would no longer want her.

Yet the instant she caught herself having such thoughts, she panicked. Her skin turned clammy. She was thinking like a mistress, withholding on the enthusiasm front in the forlorn hope that such an attitude would help her to hang onto his interest. Her mother had been almost a professional mistress, always hooking up with well-off men, making herself indispensable until they moved her into their homes. Pleasing men had been an art form for Tracy. And Belle was determined not to follow in her footsteps, so there would be no scheming, no withholding, no lies. She would be straight down the middle all the way and when he ultimately rejected her, at least she would know that it was her true self he had rejected and not some false image she had put up.