Читать книгу Italian Bachelors: Brooding Billionaires: Ravelli's Defiant Bride / Enthralled by Moretti / The Playboy's Proposition - Линн Грэхем, Leanne Banks - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

‘DON’T DO THIS...don’t do this...’ Isa’s constant refrain was still sounding like a death knell in Belle’s ears as she climbed out of the car Cristo had sent to collect her and mounted the steps that led up into the chapel of St Jude’s. She was wearing an elegant but rather plain vintage dress with a boat-shaped lace neckline. It was her late mother’s wedding gown.

The symbolism of that gesture had appealed to her and in the three weeks that had passed since she last saw Cristo she’d had the dress lengthened to suit her greater height. Mary might never have got her Ravelli to the altar but her daughter was succeeding where she had failed, Belle could not help reflecting with guilty satisfaction. She knew it wasn’t right to feel that way because Cristo was not Gaetano and he had not committed his father’s sins but she couldn’t help it. She was the talk of the neighbourhood, for nobody was quite sure how she had hooked a husband who had only set foot in Ireland for the first time less than a month ago. Indeed there was a crowd of well-wishers waiting outside the old church, quietly ignoring Cristo’s request that the wedding be regarded as a private affair.

Of course, Cristo definitely knew how to garner support and respect in the locals, Belle conceded ruefully. He had decided not to sell Mayhill but to instead gift the historic house to the village as a community centre and endow it for the future. Money talked, money certainly talked very loudly in an area where incomes were low and jobs were few. Mayhill would put the village on the map by becoming a tourist attraction and its maintenance and the business prospects it would provide would offer many employment opportunities. And naturally, it was tacitly and silently understood by the recipients of Cristo’s extraordinary largesse that his father’s affair with Mary Brophy and the birth of their children were matters to be buried in the darkest, deepest closet never to see the light of day again.

Her sisters, thirteen-year-old Donetta and eight-year-old Lucia, were beaming at her from a front pew. Her brothers Bruno, Pietro and little Franco were beside them. Bruno was frowning, too intelligent to be fooled by the surface show and still suspicious of what was happening to his family.

‘Do you really want to marry Gaetano’s son?’ Bruno had demanded the night before when he had returned from school with Donetta, both teenagers granted special leave for the occasion of their sister’s wedding.

‘It was love at first sight,’ Belle had lied, determined to remove the lines of concern from his brow and the too anxious look from his sensitive gaze. ‘And how can you ask me that?’

‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you...but it seems very convenient in the circumstances. I mean, here we are, broke, virtually homeless and sinking fast and along comes Cristo Ravelli in the rescue boat and suddenly our every dream is coming true,’ Bruno had recited thinly. ‘It doesn’t feel real to me—it’s too good to be true. How did you finally bury the hatchet?’

‘What hatchet?’

‘You grew up hating the Ravelli family and now all of a sudden you’re marrying one of them?’

‘He’s your brother,’ Belle had reminded the teenager stubbornly.

‘He’s a super-rich banker and as sharp as a whip. It’s you I’m concerned about. What do you know about being married to a guy like that?’ Bruno had asked worriedly. ‘He lives in a different world.’

But right now, Cristo was in Belle’s world, she savoured helplessly, finally allowing herself to look at the tall, well-built male waiting for her at the altar. Not an iota of the traditional bridegroom’s nervous tension showed on his lean, darkly handsome features. In fact he might just have been an attendant at someone else’s wedding for all the awareness he was showing. Unconsciously, Belle’s chin lifted as if she had been challenged; her heart was pounding fast as a hammer blow behind her ribs and her spine was rigid with all the tension he lacked. After all, she had barely slept since texting him a single word, ‘Yes’, on the day he had proposed to her on the beach.

Accepting had taken a massive amount of courage and she had garnered that courage only by focusing on the advantages of marrying Cristo Ravelli and suppressing all awareness of the downsides. Her family would finally be safe, absolutely safe and secure and that was the bottom line and the only important thing she should concentrate on. What it cost her personally wasn’t important and couldn’t be weighed on the scale of such things.

After all, she had never been in love and was even more certain that she didn’t want to fall in love with anyone. Her memories of her mother’s unhappiness during Gaetano’s long absences were still fresh as a daisy. Mary had only really come alive when Gaetano was around. Every time he departed it had broken Mary’s heart afresh and he would leave her pining and lifeless with only the occasional brief phone call to anticipate while she counted the weeks and days until his next visit. Belle had kept one of those painstakingly numbered calendars as a reminder of what such unstinting, unhesitating love, loyalty and devotion could do to wreck a woman’s life. Mary had lived for Gaetano. Belle only wanted to live for her family and ensure that they enjoyed a much happier and more stable childhood than she had received.

Isa was staying on in the Lodge for the summer and had insisted that Bruno, Donetta and the twins stay on there with her, leaving only Franco to stay with Belle because her little brother was too attached to her to be separated from her for weeks on end. ‘You get your marriage sorted out before you uproot the kids to London and new schools and all the rest of it,’ her grandmother had told her bluntly. ‘You know I don’t approve of what you’re doing and if there’s a risk that this marriage will only last as long as it takes you to come to your senses, you shouldn’t drag the children into it with you.’

Belle had argued until she was finally forced to acknowledge that the older woman was talking good sense. Of course there was a chance that she and Cristo wouldn’t make a go of their ‘practical’ marriage. She would have to make a success of their relationship before she could risk disrupting the children’s lives and bringing them to London to live on a permanent basis. That was a pretty tall order when she had, more or less, agreed to marry a complete stranger.

Thinking along those lines, Belle decided she had to have been insane to say yes with so little thought. It was not that she had not thought about things, simply that she had avoided considering the negative aspects. Going to bed with Cristo had to be one of the more intimidating negative aspects, she conceded, turning hot and cold at the very thought of it, but just living with Cristo, indeed with any man, would surely be the ultimate challenge.

Wintry dark eyes slashed with gold by the sunlight piercing the stained-glass window behind him, Cristo watched his bride approach. She looked absolutely amazing in white, red gold curls tumbling round her narrow shoulders, her bright head crowned by a simple seed-pearl coronet. Lust engulfed Cristo in a drowning wave and his wide, sensual mouth compressed hard. Maledizione! He was convinced that he had never wanted a woman as much before yet he was equally convinced that she would ultimately prove as disappointing as her predecessors. Of course she would, he reflected impatiently, being no fan of optimism or fairy stories. But at least he already knew the worst of her, which was that she was a virtual blackmailer, a gold-digger and a social climber. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, he conceded sardonically and he was exceptionally well versed on the habits and needs of mercenary women.

Her hand trembled in his when he slid on the wedding ring. A nice touch, he thought cynically, a bridal display of nerves and modesty and utterly wasted on Cristo, who was the last man alive likely to be impressed or taken in by such pretences. He was gaining a very beautiful and desirable wife, he reminded himself doggedly, and putting a lid on the threat of an unsavoury scandal. Even his brothers didn’t know what he was doing, for the last thing he would have risked was bringing either of them to the scene of Gaetano’s reckless shenanigans in this little Irish village.

Cristo pretty much ignored Belle on the short drive back to the Lodge, where a small catered buffet and drinks had been laid on for the family and the few friends invited. It had not escaped Belle’s notice that Cristo had not invited a single person and it bothered her, making her wonder if he was ashamed of her and her humble background and lack of designer polish.

Bruno walked up to Cristo in the hall. ‘Could we have a word?’ he asked, youthful face taut and pale.

Bruno was the living image of Zarif as a teenager and that likeness had unsettled Cristo at their first brief and awkward meeting the evening before. It seemed that Gaetano had stamped the Ravelli genes very firmly on all his offspring.

‘Is there a problem?’ Cristo enquired, a fine ebony brow lifting.

The teenager backed into the small space at the foot of the stairs and said gruffly, ‘If you hurt my sister like your father hurt my mother, I swear I’ll kill you.’

Cristo almost laughed but a stray shard of compassion squashed his amusement when he recalled his own turbulent teenaged years. In any case the warning had all the hallmarks of a prepared speech and, having delivered it, Bruno was backing off fast, troubled brown eyes nervously pinned to Cristo as though he was expecting an immediate physical attack. Before the boy could leave, Christo called him back.

‘We’re family now and I’m not like my father in any way,’ Cristo responded very quietly to the teenager. ‘I have no desire to hurt any woman.’

From a tactful distance, Belle absorbed that little interplay. Although she hadn’t heard the conversation, she suspected that Bruno had probably been very rude in his outspoken need to protect her and she recognised with a sense of unfamiliar warmth that Cristo had handled her kid brother with surprising sympathy. Their kid brother, she mentally corrected, yet there it was—Cristo might not be ready yet to acknowledge that blood tie, but he had restrained both his cutting tongue and his temper when he dealt with Bruno and she was grateful for his kindness.

As Bruno moved hurriedly away, his goal evidently accomplished, Cristo studied the slim dark man whose eyes were welded to Belle’s vibrant face as she talked to her grandmother’s friends. Cristo stiffened, aggression powering through him as he recognised the son of the land agent, Petrie. Petrie’s son, Mark, was attracted to his wife. His wife. The shock of that designation ricocheted through Cristo as well and he suppressed his awareness of both strange reactions. He concentrated on Belle instead and watched when she fell still the instant she saw him looking at her, enabling him to clearly see her sudden tension and insecurity.

The golden power of Cristo’s gaze was almost mesmeric in its intensity and Belle gulped down the rest of the wine in her glass.

‘Eat something,’ Isa instructed. ‘You didn’t have any breakfast.’

Belle accepted the sandwich extended for the sake of peace, for although her tummy felt hollow it had nothing to do with hunger. ‘I’ll go and get changed,’ she said uneasily, ruffling Franco’s curly head where he stood by her side.

Cristo was still in the hall, detached from the small crowd by a barrier of reserve that chilled her.

‘He’s not very friendly, is he?’ her sister Donetta whispered in her ear.

Belle forced a smile, cursing Cristo’s detachment and his clear reluctance to use the opportunity to get to know his younger siblings. ‘He’s just shy.’

‘Shy?’ Donetta gasped in surprise.

‘Very shy,’ Belle lied, wanting to lay the teenager’s concerns to rest. ‘It’ll be different when he gets to know all of you properly.’

And the burden of ensuring that it would be different was on her shoulders, Belle acknowledged apprehensively, registering what a challenge she had set herself. Cristo had been raised an only child and a family the size of hers had to be a shock to his reticent nature. Franco was tugging at his jacket, looking up at Cristo with adoring brown eyes, and Cristo was at least tolerating the child, she reasoned ruefully, wondering if that was the most she could hope for from him when it came to the children. And her? Would he only be tolerating her as well? A shiver of distaste at that image ran down her back until she was warmed by the recollection of his considered response to Bruno.

‘Where are you going?’ Cristo enquired when she brushed past him to head for the stairs.

‘I’m getting changed...for the flight you mentioned,’ she extended awkwardly, lashes screening her strained green eyes.

He was her husband, for goodness’ sake, and he had decreed that they would be flying out of Ireland within hours of the ceremony. She had thought about arguing but then had seen no point in trying to put off the inevitable. She had given up her life to enter his and leaving home was the first step in that process.

‘No. I like the dress. Don’t take it off.’

Thoroughly taken aback by the command, Belle glanced up at him in astonishment at the request. ‘I can’t trudge through an airport dressed like this.’

‘I have a private jet and we won’t be trudging anywhere. Don’t take the dress off, bellezza mia,’ Cristo instructed sibilantly, a strong dark forefinger curling below her chin to lift it so that she collided with smouldering golden eyes. ‘I want to be the one who takes it off.’

Face burning, breath coming in tortured bursts, Belle fled upstairs, barely able to credit that he had said that to her. She had read about male fantasies and he had just told her his with a lack of embarrassment that made her all the more conscious of her own ignorance. He was already fantasising about removing her bridal gown. It was a useful message as to what went on in Cristo’s arrogant head. While she was worrying about him getting to know and like their brothers and sisters he was thinking about sex. Was that all their marriage meant to him? Sex and the threat of a big scandal removed?

And if it was, what on earth could she do about it? All her gran’s warnings and dire predictions came crashing down on her at once. What if he was cruel? Unfaithful? Belle swallowed hard, mastering her tumultuous emotions. You made your bed, now you have to lie on it...literally, she told herself sternly as she checked that she had packed the most essential things for herself and Franco.

* * *

Franco cried and begged to get out of his car seat all the way to the airport. Aware of the irritation Cristo couldn’t hide and with her own spirits low at having left home and everything and almost everyone familiar behind her for goodness knew how long, Belle tried to distract the child.

‘Why did your mother have so many children with my father?’ Cristo asked suddenly.

‘She always wanted a big family and I think the kids were her compensation for not seeing much of your father,’ Belle opined and then, hesitating, added, ‘Gaetano wanted nothing to do with them though. When he was here they went to stay with Isa and maybe only saw him once for about ten minutes and it would be very strained. He just wasn’t interested.’

‘He was the same with me and my brothers.’

‘I hated him!’ Belle admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I felt guilty about that when he was killed in the crash.’

‘You shouldn’t, cara,’ Cristo parried. ‘He was a very selfish man, who lived only for his pleasure and his profit. Nothing else mattered to him.’

Belle settled into her seat on Cristo’s opulent private jet. Franco was in the sleeping compartment and, once she had settled her little brother down for his nap, Cristo had informed her that he had hired a nanny for the child, who would be waiting when they reached their destination.

‘Which...is?’

‘Italy. I’m taking you to my home in Italy.’

‘Venice...we’re going to Venice?’ Belle carolled in sudden excitement.

‘No, that is where my mother and stepfather live. I inherited a house in Umbria, which has belonged to my mother’s family for generations. Sorry, it’s not Venice,’ Cristo quipped.

‘Won’t your mother be upset that she wasn’t at your wedding?’ Belle prompted, shooting him a look of wide-eyed curiosity.

‘I doubt it. Anything that reminds Giulia of Gaetano puts her in a very bad mood,’ Cristo admitted, compressing his lips. ‘She never recovered from what he put her through. You couldn’t be in her company for five minutes before she told you that he stole the best years of her life, robbed her blind and slept with—among others—her best friend and her maid.’

‘Good grief...’ Belle breathed, reeling from that blunt admission.

During the flight, even with his laptop open in front of him, Cristo found his attention continually straying from the financial report he was checking. He studied Belle’s delicate profile from below his dense lashes, marvelling at the display of innocence and vulnerability that she continued to exude. Was he supposed to be impressed? Did he strike her as that stupid? After all, Mary Brophy’s daughter was considerably shrewder than her mother had ever been because she had not hesitated to use Gaetano’s children as a weapon to enrich herself. But his awareness of that aspect of her less than stellar character faded whenever Cristo looked at her, appreciating the vibrancy of her Titian curls against her porcelain-pale skin, the clarity of her beautiful green eyes, the feminine elegance of the fingers and unpainted nails adorning the slim hands that held a magazine. She always looked so amazingly natural, he registered, black brows drawing together in a bemused frown as he questioned the depth of his fascination and hurriedly returned to his financial report, trying and singularly failing to rustle up an immediate image of Betsy’s face.

The nanny, Teresa, a middle-aged woman with a warm smile, greeted them at the airport and gathered up Franco with enough appreciation to persuade Belle that her little brother would enjoy the best of attention. Though quite what Cristo expected her to do with her time while someone else looked after Franco, she had no idea. After driving through miles of extensively cultivated agricultural land the sun was going down fast when the limousine began to climb mountain roads with hairpin bends that soon slowed the speed of their passage.

‘It feels as if we’re travelling to the end of the world,’ Belle commented.

‘As far as my mother was concerned, the Palazzo Maddalena, named for one of her ancestors, might as well have been. It was never her style.’

And as the car travelled slowly towards to the massive stone building presiding over the hill tops, Belle knew it wasn’t her style either and her heart and her courage sank to their lowest ever level. For the first time it really hit her exactly what marrying Cristo entailed and the little girl whose earliest home had been a tiny house was ready to surface again because the adult woman was overpowered by the sheer size and grandeur of the property confronting her. Ancient mellowed stone encased the three-storeys-tall palazzo, which had graceful wings spreading to either side. Elaborate terraced gardens in an ornamental pattern spread down the hill in front of it and behind the solid bulk of the building loomed the imposing snow-capped tops of the Sibillini mountain range.

As pale as a newly created ghost, Belle climbed out of the car, her lovely face frozen and expressionless, her wedding gown glimmering eerily in the twilight. Cristo surveyed her with a level of satisfaction that disconcerted him. His wife, his home where he was free to be himself. Her tension, though, was not a surprise because Cristo was convinced he knew precisely why Belle would have preferred Venice. What was the point of marrying a billionaire if she couldn’t enjoy the expected rich advantages that came with the wedding ring? In Venice she could have partied with his mother’s wealthy and famous friends and shopped in expensive boutiques and jewellery stores. An ancestral palazzo in the mountains was no fair exchange.

‘It’s a great place for a honeymoon,’ Cristo informed her with something that just might have been amusement glimmering in his keen gaze.

A honeymoon? Well, she was married. But why was he laughing at her? Did he also see the ludicrous gulf between a boy raised in a gilded Venetian palace and the housekeeper’s daughter? How could he fail to? A tide of self-conscious colour washed Belle’s complexion as they entered the enormous palazzo. She knew time was running out. They had dined on the plane, so not even the need to eat could be stretched out to lengthen the evening ahead. For goodness’ sake, she urged herself, lighten up, wise up. This was the deal; this was the agreement that would ensure her siblings received everything that should have been theirs from birth. They would grow up secure and safe as Ravellis and nobody would have an excuse to mock them or sneer at them. They would have the best of educations and opportunities to equip them to enter adult life. They would never have to worry about where their next meal was coming from. As she listed the countless benefits of having married Cristo Ravelli, Belle’s breathing slowly steadied and she steeled her spine.

Franco clutched at her dress as they mounted the stairs and the manservant who had let them in showed them first to a nursery suite where the nanny tried to detach Franco from Belle. But Franco didn’t like strange places and he started to sob and clutch at his sister and it took Cristo to detach him from her.

‘Kiss-do,’ Franco warbled mid sob, ready to smile until Cristo handed him over to the nanny, and then in desperation stretching his arms out to Belle instead.

Belle moved forward to go to Franco but Cristo forestalled her with a hand on her arm. ‘It’s our wedding night,’ he reminded her drily and the very dryness of his tone disturbed her.

In her opinion only people who loved each other had wedding nights, but that wasn’t what she had signed up for, she reminded herself squarely as Cristo led the way along the corridor and cast open a door across yet another landing into a huge bedroom. In spite of her nervousness, the thrill of desire began to build within her.

Belle’s attention centred on the giant gilded four-poster bed topped with a gilded coronet and stayed there as if a padlock had snapped her into place. Suddenly she was regretting the innate shyness and mistrust that had kept her out of other men’s beds. A little sexual experience would have felt better at that moment when ignorance felt more like a threat.

Cristo closed his arms round her rigid figure from behind and the scent of him engulfed her. He smelled so good, a citrusy mix of designer cologne and aromatic male that did something strange to her senses. Her heartbeat kicked up pace as he tugged her hair back from her shoulders and bent his mouth to her nape. His chest was against her spine and as solid as rock, and lower down against her bottom she was suddenly startlingly aware that he was aroused and that had the oddest effect on her. Even as her nervous tension heightened, she couldn’t help being pleased that she could have that much influence over a male who tended to reveal very little on the surface, and who had stood at the altar in the chapel as though he were an innocent bystander on the brink of boredom.

‘I love you in that dress, gattina mia,’ he growled against her skin, and buried his mouth there in a place she hadn’t even known could be sensitive. Every cell in her body pulled taut with anticipation as he laved her flesh with the tip of his tongue and grazed her with the edges of his teeth in an incredibly erotic approach she had certainly not expected from Cristo Ravelli. She was already trembling, her nipples tingling, a sliding sensation of warmth rising between her thighs. A slice of cooler air feathered her spine and her wedding gown slid down her arms without any warning. A gasp of surprise was wrenched from her but ten seconds later the dress was pooled round her feet and he was lifting her out of it.

He spun her round, swiftly engulfing her hands in his before she could make any move to cover the lacy bra, knickers and hold-up stockings she wore beneath. Shimmering eyes, dark as Hades, flared naked gold as they scanned the full curves of her breasts cupped in the bra, sliding down to her narrow waist and the flare of her hips before seguing down the long, shapely length of her legs.

‘You were definitely worth waiting for,’ Cristo told her with hungry conviction lacing every syllable. ‘You’re gorgeous, cara.’

Belle sucked in a shaken drag of oxygen and then he kissed her with a heat and strength that consumed her. He caressed the seam of her lips, parted them, delved deep and sent a shudder of excitement racing through her that startled her. Yes, as she had noted before, Cristo knew how to kiss and his mouth on hers was deeply addictive and intoxicating. He teased her with his tongue and she shivered and dimly recognised that she was being very efficiently seduced by a man she had once written off as a stuffy banker. Her fingers laced into the thick black hair at the back of his neck and an appreciative growl escaped low in his throat. Just as quickly she became airborne when he scooped her up and settled her down on the bed.

Green eyes dazed, Belle stared back at him, nerves beginning to rise again as he undressed, shedding his tie, his jacket and shoes with a careless haste that flattered her. With his scorching golden eyes pinned to her as intently as though she were Helen of Troy, she realised that he truly did appear to find her very attractive, and when he shed his shirt to reveal six-pack abs and a torso straight out of a male centrefold Belle’s mouth ran dry because for the first time ever she was appreciating the male body. With his every movement sleek muscles flexed below smooth golden skin. A thin furrow of dark hair ran from below his navel and disappeared beneath his waistband and then just as quickly he was skimming off the trousers as well, displaying tight buttocks and a...and a massive bulge in the front of his boxers.

At that point, all of Belle’s virginal concerns surged to the forefront of her mind. Was he supposed to be that big? Was that normal? She could hardly ask.

Cristo wondered why she was blushing as red as a tomato. He had never seen anything more beautiful or more innately satisfying than the sight of her on top of his bed, clad only in delicate lace lingerie. He tugged off his boxers and left them in a heap, on fire for the climax his body craved.

The full-frontal effect caused Belle to edge back up towards the headboard. He didn’t seem to have a single inhibition in his entire body. Her lashes lowered to screen her expression, heat and what she didn’t immediately recognise as hunger snaking through the secret places of her body.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Cristo remarked, tugging her back into the shelter of his arms and reaching behind her to unhook her bra.

‘And you’re very...single-minded.’ Belle selected the word shakily because she thought he had a lot in common with a bullet aimed at a target.

‘I’ve had three weeks to think about this moment,’ Cristo growled low in his throat. ‘Three weeks too long...I wanted you the first moment I saw you.’

‘When you thought I was my mother?’ she parried incredulously.

‘You were crossing the lawn with the dog in tow and looking exactly like yourself,’ Cristo contradicted, raising almost reverent hands to the spill of pale breasts he had unveiled, long fingers tracing the underside of the full round swells. ‘You are totally magnificent, cara mia.’

Her breath was feathering in and out of her lungs in insufficient drags while he played with her straining nipples, teasing and plucking the tender crowns and sending trickles of fire flaming down into her pelvis. He smoothed his hands down over her quivering frame.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Just a bit nervous,’ she gasped, her voice strangled at source as he rested his palm on her inner thigh and then hooked a finger below the lace edge of her knickers and stroked so that a current of pure tingling warmth ran through her veins.

He tipped up her face with his other hand and burning golden eyes assailed hers. ‘Why would you be nervous?’

‘I haven’t done this before.’

‘With me,’ he filled in.

‘With anyone!’

Cristo froze in the midst of trailing off her last garment. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re a virgin?’

The heat of mortification flushed her fair skin like a flaming tide and she couldn’t find her voice and was forced to nod affirmation with a jerk of her head.

‘And this is not a tease?’ Cristo prompted. ‘Not a stupid idea to give me what you think could be a wedding-night fantasy?’

Belle focused on him with disconcerted eyes, striving to imagine how he could even suspect such a thing.

Cristo collided with those clear green eyes and discarded his plans of a wedding-night sex marathon. She wouldn’t be able to handle that. A virgin. He was good at reading people. He was convinced she wasn’t lying and he was shell-shocked because it was not at all what he had expected from her and he did not know whether he liked the idea or not.

‘No, not a tease, cara,’ Cristo said for himself.

‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you?’ Belle guessed.

‘No, I’m not. You’re my wife,’ Cristo pointed out with a sudden sense of satisfaction that she would never be able to compare him to another man in bed, never know anything other than what he showed her. A possessive vibe he didn’t know he had pulsed through him at that awareness.

‘I don’t see what difference that makes. I’m not what you expected,’ Belle protested.

Still taut with arousal, Cristo was tired of talking. He kissed along her delicate jaw bone and then crushed her generous mouth urgently beneath his, shifting over her to lower his mouth to her generous breasts and then string a line of kisses down over her straining midriff to the very heart of her. He eased a finger into her tight channel and she bucked up her hips and he smiled, loving her responsiveness, parting her thighs for a more intimate caress.

‘No...no,’ she began, trying to move away.

Glancing up to meet dismayed green eyes, Cristo made a soothing sound he was sure he had never had to make in the bedroom before. ‘Trust me...I’ll take care of you.’

Belle rested her head back against the pillows and closed her eyes tight, trembling with a crazy mix of mortification laced with tingling sexual awareness and anticipation. He touched her and she gasped out loud because she was so sensitive there and the more he licked and nibbled and tormented her, the more frantically excited she became, all control wrested from her, her body moving in a new feverish rhythm like an instrument being strummed by an expert. Incomprehensible moans and sounds fell from her lips as she writhed and the unbearable ache at her core rose to a crescendo and her whole being was straining towards a climax.

And that was when Cristo lifted over her and eased slowly into the slick, wet welcome of her body. Her eyes flew wide at that shock of sensation, of sudden fullness and stretching inside her.

‘This could hurt,’ he told her gently.

‘I know...’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’m not a baby.’

For the first time in his life Cristo was more concerned about his partner than himself, which felt strangely alien to him. ‘You’re so tight,’ he bit out, flexing his hips, tipping her up to him for a deeper connection and then sliding home to the very heart of her, causing a stinging, fleeting pain that made her grimace.

‘Not too bad,’ she told him shakily. ‘Just do it.’

Just do it? Cristo laughed out loud and grinned down at her preoccupied face. She looked up at him, rocked by the dark beauty of him at that moment wearing that flashing brilliant smile she had never seen before. And then he moved again, sliding back and delving into her again until he was seated to the hilt and strong sensation was exploding like fireworks inside her. The delicious friction as his hips pounded against hers and the speed of his breathtaking thrusts consumed her with wild excitement. It was electrifyingly intense and passionate and so was he, she registered as her body stiffened and clamped tight around him, and wave after wave of pleasure cascaded through her in a climax so powerful she felt utterly drained in the aftermath but decidedly floaty and full of well-being.

‘Well, that was definitely worth getting married for, bellezza mia,’ Cristo groaned hoarsely in her ear. ‘You might be a blackmailer, a gold-digger and a social climber but you’re fabulous in bed.’

Belle’s eyes flew wide in shock and suddenly she was pushing against those brown muscular shoulders and levering out from underneath him in a rage of disbelief at what he had dared to say to her.

She slid out of the bed like an electrified eel and raced into the bathroom in search of a weapon of mass destruction but there was no club, no gun, no whip, nothing with which to thump him good and hard as pride demanded she must. In desperation she filled a glass by the sink with water and stalked back into the bedroom and slung the contents of the glass at him.

Astonished, Cristo sat up dripping in the tumbled bedding, looking extraordinarily and quite irresistibly handsome with his golden skin and bright eyes and tousled black hair and her awareness of the fact only inflamed her more. ‘What the hell?’ he demanded, wiping away the water dripping from his face.

‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, you pig!’ his bride screeched at him like a harpy from his worst nightmares.

‘Speak to you...?’ For a split second, Cristo frowned. ‘Oh...didn’t you like me being honest?’

‘I am not a blackmailer, a gold-digger or a social climber!’ Belle fired at him furiously. ‘How dare you accuse me of those things?’

Cristo shot her a derisive look. ‘I hate drama queens.’

‘You think I care about that? You think I’m ever going to get into that bed again with you after what you called me and the way you spoke to me?’ Belle screamed across the depth of the bedroom, so outraged she could barely frame the words.

Cristo lounged back against the banked pillows looking remarkably unconcerned by that threat. ‘I think you will because if you don’t, I’ll be asking for a divorce,’ he spelt out without hesitation.

‘Right then...I want a divorce!’ Belle spat at him before flouncing back into the bathroom and locking shut the door with a loud click.

Well, didn’t you handle that well? Cristo reflected, very much in shock himself at what he had divulged to her of his opinions. After all, it wasn’t as though such frankness came naturally to him. In fact, Cristo, a man of few words, invariably kept his convictions to himself, but somehow something about that fantastic sex had clashed with his opinion of her inside his head and he had found himself delivering judgement there and then. Had he wanted her to know what he thought of her? he queried with a bemused frown. Had he wanted her to prove him wrong or endeavour to develop her character into something more acceptable to him? And why was he even thinking along such lines? He had meant every word he said and he wasn’t taking it back or apologising for telling the truth as he saw it.