Читать книгу His Royal Love-Child - Люси Монро, Lucy Monroe, Люси Монро - Страница 7

HE TOOK her to a small, family run restaurant outside of Palermo. It was a quarter to nine by the time they reached it. She’d learned Europeans often ate late. The owner was more than happy to give them a table.

As a dinner companion, Marcello lived up to every concept she had of him. He was charming, attentive and so sexy that her body thrummed with an awareness she’d never experienced with another man.

He poured her a second glass of the rich red wine he’d ordered with dinner. “So, Angelo said you were ready for a change and that is why you came to Sicily.”

She’d noticed since coming to Palermo that Sicilians made a distinction between themselves and other Italians, as if they were their own separate country. Marcello did the same thing even though technically, he was from another country altogether. She had heard that his mother was Sicilian. Perhaps that accounted for it.

“Yes, I needed a change.”

“Was there a man involved?”

Strangely she did not find his question intrusive. In an inexplicable way, she felt she could tell him almost anything. “Yes.”

“What happened?” he asked with an expression that compelled her to share her deepest secrets with him.

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Make me feel like I should tell you everything in my head.”

“Ah…there is a lot more to being the head of an international business than being able to count money.”

She laughed. “I know that, but I wasn’t aware that playing the role of father confessor was part of it.”

“You would be surprised. Now tell me about the boyfriend.”

“I thought he loved me, but he used me to get pictures of Tara and Angelo so he could break into tabloid journalism.”

“He was the one responsible for those stories about them in the scandal rags last year?”

“Yes. They hurt Tara, a lot. She’d been savaged by the press once before and Ray’s antics got her fired before Angelo found out what had happened.”

“I hate the tabloids.”

“But you’re in them so often.”

“Like I told you, I create a facade for them to latch on to so they leave my real life alone.”

She’d done the very same thing as a small child. She’d created an image of an outgoing, confident girl that hid her private thoughts and feelings. No matter how intrusively doctors, or even her own parents, played their roles in her life, there was an interior Danette who remained sacrosanct to her alone.

Knowing they shared such a coping mechanism made her feel close to him in a way she would not have thought possible.

“Tell me more about Ray,” Marcello said.

“There isn’t much to tell. He was looking for the main chance and took it, not caring who he hurt or how much he hurt them. I think that’s what devastated me the most. He couldn’t have known my best friend was going to get involved with a media interest like Angelo Gordon, or that her notoriety would be so easily revived.”

At least that’s what she’d thought. “Our relationship started out for the usual reasons…I think. My family is wealthy and maybe he figured all along that I might take him into circles he could use to advance his career goals, but I really think that he saw the main chance and just went for it.”

“And this hurt you?”

“Very much, but I’m over him now.” And she was. It had happened faster than she’d thought it could.

The move to Italy had been the right choice.

“The betrayal by a lover is the most devastating.”

“He wasn’t my lover, thank goodness.”

“So, the relationship wasn’t very old?”

“That depends on how you define old. We were together for a few months.”

“And he did not take you to bed?”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part,” she said, stung that Marcello should think that she wasn’t fanciable.

“No doubt. Why did you hold back from him?”

“It never felt right. It made him angry, but I didn’t realize how much. He said some very cutting things when we broke up.”

“I see.”

“Do you? What do you see, Signor Scorsolini?”

“First that you must call me Marcello when we are away from the company.”

She smiled despite the heavy feelings in her heart from her trip down memory lane. “All right.”

“Second, that the man was a fool and obviously not very good in the seduction stakes.”

“Or I’m not easily seduced.”

“Be assured, I love a challenge.”

She gasped at his blatant claim and the implication of it. “I’m not looking for that right now.”

“But you have found it, as I will delight in showing you. I want you and I intend to have you.”

But he didn’t push for even a good-night kiss when he took her home that night. And it was the same on the three dates they had after that over the next two weeks. No matter what he had said, he seemed perfectly happy with a platonic friendship, while her physical awareness of him grew with every moment spent in his company.

She even started having sexy dreams about him. She would wake up feeling embarrassed by her obvious desire and disturbed by the strength of it…not to mention how easily he’d infiltrated her subconscious as well as her conscious life.

He’d asked her to maintain their status quo at work and to keep their time together strictly confidential. She’d agreed without pause. No one was going to accuse her of trading on a relationship with a man to get ahead in her career. Besides, there was something really alluring about clandestine meetings with the super sexy Marcello.

She loved talking to him on the phone and knowing that they were carrying on a conversation on a whole level that the people around them knew nothing about. Then he had to go away on a business trip and she missed him like crazy. He only called once and it was a short conversation. It had to be…she’d been at work.

They had plans to eat out the night after he got back, but when he came to pick her up, she had made dinner. She wanted time with him, to be completely natural together and the only way for that to happen was behind closed doors.

He sniffed appreciatively when she ushered him inside. “It smells so good, I almost want to beg to stay in and have leftovers.”

“We are staying in, only they aren’t leftovers. I made dinner.”

“Is it a special occasion?”

“I thought I could teach you how to play Golf.”

His brow drew together in puzzlement as he looked around the cottage’s small living room. “I am already a competent golfer.”

She laughed at his incomprehension. “It’s a card game and one of the few that is as much fun with two people as four.”

“Oh. Cards?”

“I thought you might be happier eating in and relaxing than going out to a restaurant, but if you’d rather…I can just wrap dinner up and get my coat.”

“Not at all. I have never had a woman cook for me.”

“Not even your wife?”

He rarely mentioned Bianca, but she knew he’d married young and his wife had died in a tragic accident.

“To my knowledge, Bianca did not know how to cook.”

“Was she a princess?”

“To me? Yes, but she was not born to royalty. She was from a very wealthy Sicilian family. Her mother was my mother’s best friend.”

“It sounds like a match made in heaven.”

“It was, but I lived in hell on earth when she died.”

Why that should hurt so much to hear, she didn’t know, but she did realize it wasn’t all pain on his behalf. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. They say time heals all wounds.”

“I don’t know about healing, but it does dull the pain…or makes it easier to cope with.”

“Are you talking about Ray here?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Funny, how she’d told him so much about herself, but never about her corrected spinal deformity. It was too painful to talk about even now. The wounds it had visited on her life were too deep to expose to him or anyone else, for that matter.

She’d never told anyone about her decision not to have children because of it, or how alienated she’d felt from the world around her and even from her own body. Her brace had acted as a barrier between her and the sensation of touch for thirteen years. It had also distorted her view of her body. How could she explain what it was like to look into the mirror and see a figure that was defined by an expensive plastic encasement? She could not even be sure whether the curves were hers, or the result of the brace.

When she’d finally stopped wearing it, she had been afraid her body would change back, that her spine would curve once again and that the female curves she saw in the mirror would disappear now that their plastic encasement was gone. She’d been twenty-one before she’d finally decided her body really was hers again.

And even then, she often saw the brace when she looked in the mirror, rather than the actual woman looking back at her.

She shrugged. “Everyone has pain in their lives, Marcello. I’m no different, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t ask you about Bianca to hurt you.”

He touched her hand—nothing sexy, just a small brushing of their fingers—but her entire body felt like it had been electrified. “You did not. You never dig for juicy details or push me to bare my emotions. I appreciate that.”

She laughed. “You would. The only person I know who is more private about their feelings than myself, is you.”

“I would not have guessed you were such a private person at first.”

“Protective persona. Most of us have them.”

“Not my brothers. What you see is what you get with them.”

“Are you sure about that? I bet even your father has an image he allows the rest of the world to see that protects the man behind his skin…the man who isn’t a king.”

“There, I know you are wrong. King Vincente is exactly as he appears to be. A sovereign to the marrow of his bones.”

“Or he’s just very adept at hiding any weakness, even from the people he loves the most.”

“Trust me, his weaknesses are in no way hidden.”

She had a hard time believing the son could be so very different from the father, but she didn’t know either well enough to argue the point. “Whatever you say.”

“I say that I am very appreciative that you chose to cook for me.”

She smiled and led him to the small dining room, where she’d set the table with candles and her best dishes.

“It looks like a scene set for seduction.”

“Maybe it is,” she joked.

He turned to face her and put his hand on her face, the warm fingers sending more tingles of sensation zinging through her body. “I would not mind.”

“I was only kidding.”

“I am not.”

“Um…maybe you had better sit down.”

He sat and he said nothing more, but he kept giving her looks throughout dinner that were as effective as any caress.

Afterward, they took dessert, a homemade lemon sorbet, into the living room.

He pulled her to the sofa beside him, their hips touching. “Dinner was fantastic. Thank you, cara.”

“You…you’re welcome.”

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I…”

“Do you mind?”

“No.” This was what she had wanted when she invited him to stay in for dinner, but when it came to the sticking point, she was nervous.

What if he found her as big a dud as Ray had done?

Marcello followed through on his promise to kiss her with a thoroughness that had her clinging to his shoulders while desire pooled low in her belly. He tasted like the lemon sorbet and sexy, delectable male. It was so different than when Ray had kissed her. With Marcello, she just wanted more and more and more. And he gave it to her, exploring her mouth with his tongue and letting her return the favor.

Finally he ended the kiss with a series of gentle pecks on her swollen lips. He lifted his head. “That went well, cara. I think we should do it again.”

She nodded, incapable of speech.

Then he put his hands on her waist and brushed his thumbs up and down over her rib cage. “But this time, I want you sitting on my lap.”

He couldn’t know it, but that kind of touch was incredibly foreign to her. She’d developed habits as a child that kept people at a distance physically. Unconsciously she’d avoided Ray’s touch as well. And when they did neck, he’d had a tendency to go straight for certain body parts. She hadn’t enjoyed his caresses all that much and had assumed it was because she just wasn’t very sexual. She now realized she’d been absolutely, terribly…no, wonderfully wrong.

Because she was reacting to Marcello’s touch like a woman who had been in a desert her whole life and was just now stumbling on the Lake Erie of sensation. And in many ways, it was true.

Ray had not had the water she needed, but she felt drenched by emotions from Marcello’s touch.

She scooted into his lap, loving the feel of his hard thighs below her. His hands moved around to caress her back with an erotic sweeping motion that made her tremble.

“You’re very good at this.”

He laughed and pressed his lips to hers again.

His hands moved all over her body in gentle, brushing strokes that made her feel like he was trying to see her with his hands. It was amazing and she grew scorching hot as her breasts swelled inside her lacy bra cups and the place between her legs grew damp and achingly swollen.

He stopped kissing her. “Don’t you want to touch me?”

“Huh…what?” she asked, dazed by the deep, dark cravings rolling through her.

“Your hands are clenched at your sides.”

“Oh, I don’t mean them to be.” And to prove she meant what she said, she splayed her fingers across his chest.

Heat emanated from him to her fingertips, even through his clothes. “I want to feel your skin.”

“Then do it. I am not going to turn down any way you want to touch me, Danette.”

There was something important in that reassurance, but she couldn’t work it out in her head right now.

She unbuttoned his shirt with shaking hands and touched him with those same trembling fingers. She’d never felt this way touching Ray, like she was on a very important journey of discovery. One that would kill her if she didn’t take it.

She explored Marcello’s chest with total concentration given to every nuance of feeling, every detail of his masculine build her fingertips encountered. His muscles made ridges under his bronzed skin. The dark, curling hair that covered his chest and disappeared in an enticing V into his pants was surprisingly soft to the touch. Shouldn’t male hair be coarse and, well…manly? But it felt so sexy, so incredible…and the skin beneath it was so warm. It was like touching heated satin.

She traced each ridge and she pressed her fingertip into his belly button while her thumb brushed the hair-roughened skin below it.

He groaned. “Cara, you are playing with fire there.”

He was fire…all elemental heat. Everything a man should be for a woman.

Her hands swept up his torso, stopping at his rigid male nipples. “You are so different from me,” she breathed.

He choked out a laugh. “You talk like you’ve never touched a man before.”

“I haven’t. Not like this.”

His hands froze in the act of pushing her top up to expose her skin to his heated gaze.

“What are you saying? Tesoro, you cannot be a virgin. I do not believe it.”

She stared at him, and then blinked, trying to make sense of his shock. “Why not? I told you that Ray was not my lover.”

“But surely there have been other men.”

“No.”

“But American girls date in high school and college. Everyone knows this to be true.”

“This one didn’t.” The passion clouding her brain began to fade. “I never had a boyfriend.”

“Why not? Were your parents too protective?”

“You could say that.” And she hadn’t wanted to date, either. She didn’t like explaining about the brace and no way would she have let a boy touch her and touch it. She couldn’t stand being so exposed.

Marcello moved back from her, gently removing her hands from his body. “This is not right. I thought you were a woman of experience. I cannot take your innocence.”

No, he couldn’t mean it. This wasn’t some Victorian tragedy. She was a modern woman, and perhaps waiting for marriage was something she’d thought at one time she would do, but she didn’t feel that way right now. She didn’t want any other man to be her first.

Only this one.

“But I can give it to you.”

“I am not looking for marriage here. I do not want a long-term relationship.”

“I’m not looking for marriage, either.” She’d missed out on so much, the dating, the furtive moments of passion teenagers share, the love affairs in college. “I want to experience it all with you, Marcello. I trust you.”

“But you are a virgin. You should wait until you get married.”

“I want you to be my first man. I’ve never felt this kind of desire before and I’m afraid I’ll never feel this way again. I sure didn’t with Ray.”

“He was a creep.”

“Yes, but you’re not. I know you won’t hurt me…I know you can make it special my first time.”

“You know this, huh?”

“You may not be the playboy the media paints you, but you’re experienced enough to know what you’re doing. You make me crazy just being with you.” She didn’t want to beg, but she was close. “If you want me, too…at least a little…I want you to be my first lover.”

“I want you a great deal more than a little,” he growled, his eyes shooting blue flame at her. The hottest kind of flame and she felt singed to the depths of her soul.

“I’m glad, Marcello, because I want you a lot, too.”

“Our relationship remains strictly private. I will not allow the media into my personal life, which means others cannot know about us, either.”

“I don’t have a problem with that.”

Danette abruptly returned to the present. She hadn’t had a problem with the secrecy then…. but this was now and she did have a problem with it. A big problem. She just wasn’t sure what she could do about it.

If anything.

She loved him and that love demanded a role in his life that stretched beyond a secret affair. Maybe if she told him her feelings he would acknowledge his own and they could move to the next step in their relationship.

It wasn’t that she thought he lacked confidence. If he knew he loved her, he would say so, but his heart was locked up tight behind the wall he’d built after Bianca’s death. Danette had managed to knock out chinks here and there, evidenced by the fact that their relationship had lasted so long and how much time they spent together doing stuff besides making love.

While he refused to tell her how many women had come before her, he had let slip that none of them had lasted beyond a very brief liaison. He had been with her for six months and made no indications he was even thinking about moving on.

There was also the fact that he frequently made love to her without protection. He’d done so again the night before.

The first time it had happened, she’d been shocked by her response. Since she had decided as a teenager not to have children and risk passing on her spinal deformity, she should have been really upset by his lapse. But her first reaction to the realization he’d forgotten the condom had not been dismay. Far from it: she’d had a piercingly sweet image of a little boy with her eyes and Marcello’s smile.

She had experienced a craving for that child that was so great, it had been a physical pain in her chest.

Nevertheless, she’d brought up the option of her going on the pill, but Marcello had been adamant it was not necessary. He knew from one of the many discussions they had on every topic under the sun that she had some family history of breast cancer, and therefore concerned about the possible increased risk from long-term use of the pill.

She’d agreed to allow him to continue to be responsible for the birth control and had not raised the issue again the next time he forgot. Instead she’d researched the probability of passing her severe idiomatic juvenile scoliosis onto her children. She’d discovered that, far from what she’d feared, there was actually no known genetic predisposition for what had happened to her.

She couldn’t dismiss the very real fact that her mother had been afflicted with a less severe case. Even so, she’d all but convinced herself it was a risk worth taking. She refused to allow her childhood disease and what it represented to stand between her and Marcello.

Right now, she had to weigh the fact that he talked like the future was uncertain for them against the fact that he forgot to use birth control almost as often as he remembered. No man took that many risks with pregnancy when he hated the idea of spending his future with the woman involved.

Marcello wasn’t the irresponsible kind. If she got pregnant, she knew he’d want to marry her. He had a strong sense of moral and family responsibility. Both of which would require that his child not be born illegitimate. In turn, that must mean he was considering a future with her, even if he was leery about admitting it to her, or even to himself.

It might be a subconscious thing on his part, but his actions spoke loud and clear about where he was at with her emotionally. At least she hoped they did. No amount of wishful surmising on her part could replace hearing the words from his lips.

His wife’s death had devastated him. She’d quickly realized that he didn’t want to risk that kind of pain again, but she could have told him that love did not respect the fear of being hurt.

Just look at her. She had come to Italy licking her wounds. She’d been grateful for the job that Angelo had gotten her so that she could get away from her memories. And she’d been convinced that the last thing she would allow herself to do was to get embroiled in another relationship. Only, that was exactly what she had done and she’d gotten in deeper with Marcello after two weeks than she had in months with Ray.