Читать книгу Androletti's Mistress - Melanie Milburne - Страница 11

NIKKI spent the happiest six days of her life in Massimo’s company. She stalwartly refused to think about her wedding on Saturday. It was as if by not thinking about it she could really be the person Massimo believed her to be. She was a young carefree woman in love for the first time, relishing every moment of being truly adored and treated like a princess.

She knew it would have to end when the week was up, but she tried not to dwell on it too much. She comforted herself that Massimo was a man of the world. He would forget about her as soon as he boarded the plane back to Italy; his brief fling with the tall, blonde Australian girl would no doubt be a distant memory as soon as the first drink was served on the flight back home.

They explored the sights of Melbourne together, walking through the Bourke Street Mall to window shop, dining at some of the restaurants along the Southbank complex, and even spending some time at the world-famous Crown Casino where Nikki watched in awe as Massimo won a small fortune at one of the black-jack tables.

Later in the week they hired a car and visited the beautiful Yarra Valley, notorious for its picturesque vineyards, where the rolling green hills and valleys they passed prompted Massimo to say how much it reminded him of Sicily.

‘I would love to show you my homeland,’ he said as they drove back after spending a wonderful afternoon at Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. ‘We do not have koalas and kangaroos and wombats, of course, but there are many wonderful historic buildings and artifacts.’

‘I would love to travel the world one day,’ Nikki said dreamily, looking out of the window as the verdant fields went by. ‘I’ve only ever been to…’ She stopped, her heart thumping at how close she had been to revealing how she had lied about where she had originally come from.

‘You were saying?’

‘Er…I’ve only ever lived in Australia,’ she said. ‘I know it’s a big and diverse continent, but I haven’t seen much of it really…’

He sent her a smile. ‘You have no need to be ashamed, cara,’ he said. ‘You are young. You have plenty of time to see the world.’

On the last day Massimo arranged to meet her after he had his meeting in the city. As soon as she saw him walking towards her outside the art gallery, where she had spent the morning filling in time, she knew things had not gone well for him. His handsome face looked pinched and his mouth tight.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, touching him on the arm.

He placed his hand over hers and gave it a tiny squeeze. ‘I do not want to spoil our last afternoon and evening together talking about my business. Suffice to say things did not go according to plan.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

He gave her a strained smile. ‘I will just have to wait a little longer to achieve what I want, but then the best things in life are worth waiting for, no?’

‘I guess…’ she answered, looking down at their linked hands.

They walked past the Shrine of Remembrance through to the Botanic Gardens, stopping to have afternoon tea at the café overlooking the lake, where ducks waddled in search of crumbs and cheeky sparrows darted in amongst the chairs and tables in spite of the shooing actions of the staff.

Massimo smiled indulgently as she surreptitiously bent down to scatter some crumbs from the coconut cake he’d bought her. ‘You are not supposed to encourage them,’ he said, indicating the DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS sign nearby.

‘I know, but I can’t help feeling sorry for them,’ she said, a fleeting shadow of sadness moving across her face. ‘They’ve probably got little babies to feed.’

He reached across the table for her hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissing each fingertip in turn, his intense gaze holding hers. ‘You have such a kind and tender heart,’ he said in a deep, gravelly tone. ‘I have waited a long time to meet someone as sensitive to the needs of others as you are.’

Nikki gently pulled her hand out of his, her whole body tingling with awareness. As each day had passed, she’d found it harder and harder to resist him. He had not pressured her to sleep with him, which surprised her. She had assumed, like many men with his jet-setting lifestyle, that he would have leaped at the chance of a one-week fling with a woman he had singled out for his attention. His kisses had been passionate and tender, enthralling and tantalising, and yet each time their mouths had touched he seemed to be keeping himself in check.

‘You are feeling nervous and uncertain, cara?’ he asked into the little silence.

‘W-what do you mean?’

He reached for her hand again and began stroking the sensitive skin on the underside of her wrist in slow, sensual movements that sent a riot of sensation to her toes and back. ‘I want you,’ he stated bluntly. ‘I have wanted you from the first moment I saw you but something about you made me realise you are not a one-night stand sort of girl. I deeply respect that about you.’

Somehow she found her voice in time to croak out, ‘T-thank you.’

‘I have a bit of a reputation for working hard and playing harder,’ he confessed. ‘I can assure you, it is highly unusual for me to have spent more than three dates with a woman before bedding her.’

Nikki swallowed.

He smiled at the twin flags of colour on her cheeks. ‘You are a virgin, yes?’

Her eyes fell away from his. ‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I wish I still was. My first and only time was horrible…’

He frowned, and his hand encircling her wrist tightened protectively. ‘You were…’ he paused over the word ‘…raped?’

Her eyes came back to his, her colour still high. ‘No, I just didn’t realise it would be so…so one-sided, if you know what I mean.’

His fingers began their sensual magic against the satin surface of her skin. ‘You did not experience pleasure, Nikki?’

‘Not really.’ She gave a little wry grimace and added, ‘Not at all, actually.’

His eyes darkened with tenderness as he pulled her to her feet. ‘We have one night left, cara,’ he said, linking her arm through his. ‘I want to make it as memorable as possible.’

Nikki had not dreamt how truly memorable it would be. They went back to the hotel hand in hand, the silence that hung between them heavy and pulsing with promise.

She felt it all through their last dinner together in the hotel restaurant. Each time his eyes caught and held hers, she sensed the sexual tension building in him. She could feel it thrumming in her own body, a deep and low pulse that begged to be assuaged.

She felt it in the lift as they silently climbed the floors to his room, each number showing above their heads like a countdown to paradise.

And she felt it in the thudding pulse in his fingers as they tilted her face to receive his kiss, the self-control he had been reining in all week finally slipping as the door of his room closed behind them.

‘I should not be doing this,’ he said, pressing hot kisses to the side of her neck as he lifted her hair out of the way. ‘I told myself I would wait until I return from Sicily, but I want you so much I am burning inside and out with it.’

Nikki raised her face for more of his drugging kisses. ‘I want you too,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘I want you to make love to me. I want to feel pleasure…Your pleasure as well as mine.’

He held her from him, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘Are you absolutely sure, cara? I can wait for you. I will make myself wait for you if you do not feel ready to take this step.’

She pulled his mouth back down to hers. ‘Don’t make me wait,’ she pleaded desperately. ‘I don’t want to wait another minute.’

He undressed her, the slow movements of his hands belying the true state of his arousal. She felt it against her, the hard surge of his body and how he fought to control it in order to prepare her properly for his passionate possession. His mouth was on hers, and then on each of her breasts, sucking gently at first, and then harder until her back arched with intense longing.

He laid her carefully on the king-sized bed, trailing a hot blaze of kisses all over her body, her mouth, her neck, her breasts and the tiny cave of her belly button before moving lower. She totally melted under the sweep and stroke of his tongue as it separated her feminine folds, the sensation of such an intimate caress sending her pulse skyrocketing. Her body began to convulse, the earth-shattering release beyond anything she had ever imagined.

He waited until she was calm once more before reaching for a condom. She watched with wide eyes as he came back to her, taking his time again in kissing and caressing her, until she was begging him to fill her. ‘Oh, please…oh please…’

‘You are getting impatient, Nikki,’ he said playfully, kissing her lingeringly, the sexy saltiness of her own body on his lips inciting her to grab at him greedily, her pelvis rising to meet the downward thrust of his.

Nikki heard his deep groan of pleasure as the small, tight sheath of her body grasped at him, the honeyed warmth enveloping him totally. He tried to control his thrusts to keep them slow and not too deep, but she was having none of it. She clung to him, her fingers digging into the tautness of his buttocks to keep him where she wanted him.

She felt herself begin to climb the mountain again, the pinnacle getting closer and closer with each surging movement of his body within hers.

The overwhelming power of his release surprised her, as did her own. It was like an earthquake rumbling between them, rocking them back and forth, shaking them, shattering them into a thousand tiny pieces.

She held him against her as his breathing gradually came back to normal, the skin of his back raised in tiny goose-bumps, under the soft pads of her fingertips.

He lifted himself up on his elbows to look at her, his dark eyes full of wonder. ‘Do you realise what you have just done, Nikki?’ he asked.

‘W-what?’ she asked, a shadow of uncertainty flitting across her face.

‘You have made me fall in love with you,’ he said. ‘For ever.’

Nikki felt her throat tighten. Oh God! What had she done? This should not have happened. She should not have let it happen. She had no right to sleep with a man to whom she could offer nothing but a one-night stand, for that was all it could ever be.

He reached past her to take something out of the bedside drawer. ‘I have something for you,’ he said.

Nikki tensed as he retrieved the small package. Throughout the week he had bought her gifts—not expensive ones, which had made it easy for her to accept them, with perhaps not an entirely clear conscience, but she’d reasoned she wanted something to keep as a reminder of what she could have had if life had dealt her a different hand of cards.

She took the tiny package from him, her fingers beginning to tremble slightly as she felt the cushioning of velvet beneath the tissue wrapping. ‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice sounding rusty.

‘Open it and see,’ he said, smiling at her.

She began to undo the tiny silk ribbon, each movement of her fingers meticulously slow. The tissue fell away, and the red velvet box lay in her hand like a square of blood. She knew what was in it before she opened it, knew too that she should have handed it straight back and told him the truth, but instead she slowly lifted the lid.

A diamond solitaire ring gleamed up at her, its sheer brilliance taking her breath away.

‘Put it on,’ he said into the silence.

Nikki had never hated herself more than at that moment. The shame of her past was nothing to what she was experiencing now. But as if her fingers had a mind of their own they lifted the ring from its velvet home, and slid it on her ring finger where Joseph Ferliani’s ring was supposed to be. But, unlike the heavy, cumbersome cluster Joseph had insisted she wear, Massimo’s ring was exquisitely delicate, suiting her slim hand perfectly.

‘Will you marry me, Nikki?’ Massimo asked as he took her hand in his. ‘I know this is terribly rushed, but I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you.’

Nikki bit her lip in anguish, tears springing in a crystal stream from her eyes as she met his. ‘I don’t know what to say…’ she began. ‘It’s been so sudden…so totally unexpected.’

He brought her closer to the warmth of his body and, holding her hand to his heart, smiled down at her. ‘It looks like I will have to be patient and wait for your answer on my return,’ he said. ‘That will give you time to talk it over with your family. I am forgetting how very young you are. I am nine years older than you, so it is reasonable to expect you to be feeling a bit overwhelmed—especially now, after we have made love for the very first time.’

She was overwhelmed, but with guilt. It prodded and poked at her from every angle like a thousand pointed daggers. How could she have let things get to this stage? What had she been thinking? She should have known from the beginning that a man like Massimo Androletti would want more than a quick fling. She should have had one drink with him that first night and left, then he would not have had to suffer the pain of rejection, and she would not have known what it felt like to be truly in love, only to have to walk away because of circumstances beyond her control.

‘Massimo, there’s something I need to tell you…’

He bent his head to press a soft kiss to her mouth. ‘No, cara,’ he said. ‘Do not give me your answer until we meet again. I am flying to Palermo on Sunday. I am sorry I cannot spend the day with you tomorrow, but I have an engagement to attend which I cannot get out of.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, inwardly blowing out a breath of relief. ‘I have something on as well.’

He held her close, his arms strong and protective around her. ‘I will miss you, Nikki. Every day we are apart I will miss you.’

‘Me too,’ she whispered, her heart breaking into a million pieces.

He put her from him. ‘I will not say goodbye, but vederla presto.’

She looked up at him in puzzlement. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means “see you soon”,’ he said, and sealed his promise with a burning kiss.