Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 35

ASHAFT of alarm went streaking down his backbone and massed deep in his abdomen. He spun, sharp eyes piercing the darkness to scan the room for a sign of her shadowy figure—curled in a chair, maybe, or standing by the window.

She wasn’t there. The alarm leapt up to attack his heartbeat. She wouldn’t, he told himself. She couldn’t have quietly dressed and left him while he’d been busy drowning his sorrows—could she?

No, he wouldn’t have it. He might have behaved like a rotten bastard, but Antonia would never just walk out and leave!

But then there was Kranst waiting on the sidelines, he remembered, and started moving, unsure, so damned unsure of himself that the uncertainty was actually making his legs feel hollow with fright!

It was the whisky, Marco told himself. But he was still going to kill her when he found her for scaring him like this, he vowed, as he began striding round the apartment opening doors and closing them until he came to the locked door belonging to one of the spare bedrooms.

Relief shuddered through him, followed by a shaft of white-hot fury at her whole attitude. Stubbornly forgetting his own bad behaviour. he banged hard on the door. ‘If you don’t unlock this door I’ll break it down!’ he shouted threateningly.

And kept on banging until the door flew open.

Antonia was already walking away from it even as it swung back on itself. Her hair rippled about her naked shoulders and his body almost screamed as it responded to the carelessly sensual sway of hers. And it was the turn of the red silk wrap to lie in a discarded blot on the floor.

‘Don’t ever lock me out of a room in my own home again,’ he ground out as he strode forward.

‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she replied in a voice meant to freeze a man’s nether parts.

A willingness to grovel was forgotten—ousted by a much more satisfying desire to remind her just who called the tune around here.

Arriving at the bed, she prepared to climb back into it. In two long strides he stopped her, by the economical act of scooping her off her feet. Her protesting shriek was ignored, as were her wriggling attempts to get herself free. Without a single word from his tightly clamped lips, he turned and began carrying her out of this bedroom and down the hall to his bedroom.

‘You are such a primitive underneath the layers of breeding,’ she sliced at him disgustedly.

He stopped dead and kissed her—so hot and so hard she was gasping for breath by the time he lifted his head again.

‘Is that primitive enough?’ he asked, not in the least bit insulted she’d called him that. In fact he liked the whole scenario, since he was feeling very primitively aroused right now.

Marco shut the door behind them with a very satisfyingly primitive kick. The bed waited. He dumped her on its pale blue cover, then followed with the long hard length of his body in a very primitive manontopofwoman pinning down.

Her angry eyes shot amber bright warnings at him. Her beautiful hair streamed out above her head, and her clenched fists made a puny but determined effort to do him some damage. ‘Get off me,’ she insisted. ‘You’re just a big brute—and you taste of whisky!’

‘And you taste of champagne and woman—my woman,’ Marco growled back, enjoying this new primitive role that allowed him the rare luxury to completely dominate.

Her breasts heaved against the solid wall of his chest and her slender hips writhed delightfully beneath the pressure of his. She felt the rise of his passion and spat her utter contempt at him, while the mocking arch of his eyebrows asked her who was to blame.

She hit back with more than her fists, ‘Stefan was right about you,’ she lashed. ‘You are a—’

Ducking between the flailing fists, he stopped the words with his mouth. Discussing Kranst was not going to happen in his bed! he grimly determined, and kept on kissing her until her hands stopped punching and began to anxiously knead his shoulders instead.

Triumph sizzled through his system; the red-hot heat of desire spun through his blood. He made love to her as if there was no tomorrow and, because there was still the heat of an angry fear burning behind the passion, he drove her to the edge more than once before ruthlessly drawing back again.

‘I hate it when you do this to me,’ she sobbed in frustration.

‘You would hate it more if I didn’t do it at all,’ he threw back.

Her breath broke on a whimper because she knew he was right. The helpless little sound did things to him no woman could ever begin to understand. He thrust into her with the force of absolute possession.

‘You belong to me. Just remember that next time you feel like wrapping yourself around another man.’

If he’d expected her to respond at all, it was not the way she did. With the slick roll of her body he suddenly found he was the one pinned down and she the one most definitely on top. For the next few minutes he experienced what it was like to be utterly seduced by a woman hell-bent on making him embarrass himself.

It didn’t happen. He was no one’s easy victim. But Antonia in this mood was irresistible. She was the true sensualist born to pleasure man. She kissed him and stroked him and rode him towards heaven. And when his body began to tighten and his heart began to pound, she gave him back a taste of his own medicine by pulling away to rise up and stand over him.

Feet planted either side of his body, hands resting in the delicious groove of her slender waist, and her wonderful long golden hair spiralling around the face of an absolute wanton, she asked, ‘And who do you belong to, Marco?’

The little minx. The beautiful, outrageous little minx! he thought, and, with a laugh of appreciation, he jackknifed into a sitting position, clamped his hands to her hips—and gave his mouth the pleasure of bringing her to heel again.

The battle progressed to a different level. She gasped and protested and tugged at handfuls of his hair in an effort to dislodge him, and eventually lost the ability to stand. She was groaning and trembling but still in there fighting, matching him kiss for kiss, caress for caress, intimacy for exquisite tortuous intimacy, which had them crossing a few boundaries they’d never attempted to cross before in their quest to get the better of the other.

By the time he was back where he belonged—on top and deep inside her—he had lost the will to pull back again. Hot, bathed in sweat and no longer on this planet, they rode the fiery dragon with a focused compulsion that blocked out everything else.

He climaxed first—she was so damned determined to make him do that. But she followed a half-second later, urging him on with the convulsing tug of her muscles towards the kind of prolonged orgasm that laid them both to waste for long minutes afterwards.

Yes! he thought with a deep satisfaction as he lay heavy on her, fighting for breath. This was it, the elixir of life, and to hell with the covetous Kranst. To hell with his disapproving mother! he added fiercely to that—he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the dismissive curse regarding his father, but inside he was aware that the need to hold on to what he had here was beginning to overshadow everything else.

Lying there beneath him, almost completely engulfed in his body and his scent and the glorious weight of his utter satiation, Antonia wondered ruefully if she would ever find the energy to move again. Her bones felt like liquid and certain muscles were trembling in the aftermath of something pretty spectacular, even for them.

What she couldn’t understand was how it could be like that after what had gone before it. She should have been repulsed by his touch. She should have lain like a stone beneath him. But she hadn’t—she hadn’t…

Weak, you’re weak, she derided herself miserably, and made a move to remind him that she was still here, just in case he’d forgotten while he basked in sexual bliss.

With a kiss to her brow, he acknowledged her presence, then relieved her of his weight by rolling them onto their sides so he could wrap her against him.

‘You move me like no other woman,’ he murmured huskily.

Did he think that was a compliment? she asked herself. Because it wasn’t. She had no wish to be tagged and sorted according to performance. In fact, if she had the energy she would take serious offence and get up and leave!

But she didn’t have the energy. And, in truth, lying here against him in the soft darkness of the summer night, with one of his hands gently stroked the curve of her hip while the other absently grazed over her left shoulder, she could think of no other place she would rather be.

Weak, she repeated. It was her biggest problem. She needed to be with him though she didn’t want to need. He was arrogant, self-motivated, insensitive and…

Her sigh warmed his throat. Dipping his dark head, he caught the sigh with the kind of kiss that squeezed the heart dry. When it was over she reached up to touch his lips with her fingertips, unable to believe that a mouth could be so tender and not feel something deeper than desire for her.

‘I wish I’d never met you sometimes,’ she quietly confided.

‘Only sometimes?’ he threw back.

Tipping her head, she expected to find him smiling. But he looked quite sombre as he gazed down at her through swirling smoke-blue eyes set between kohl-black lashes in a polished bronze framework no gifted sculptor could improve upon.

‘Do you want me to apologise for my earlier behaviour?’ he asked her. Huskily spoken, sincerely meant. No, she thought sadly. I want you to love me. Then had to swallow the lump of tears in her throat as she gave a shake of her head. ‘I just want you to promise never to do that to me again,’ she replied.

Smoke-blue eyes darkened with repentance. ‘On my life,’ he vowed, and sealed it with a kiss, then repeated it again and again until both the vow and the kiss became yet another seduction.

It was his way, a willingly humble side to his proud character, which had the power to demolish her resistance far more easily than the ruthlessness he had meted out before.

Her fingers began trailing tender caresses across hairpeppered, muscle-hard, satin-tight flesh. He was built to worship, she thought mistily. Built to make any woman melt with desire. It was she who deepened those soft penitent kisses into one long sensual banquet. She who slid onto her back and drew him over her, then slowly relaxed her thighs so he would settle between. In a wonderful intimacy that had her long legs tangling with his and her body arching to a sensual rhythm, they indulged in a different kind of kiss.

His mouth left hers to taste other parts of her, and she sighed in pleasure as it closed on her breast. Fingers trailed into his hair, stretched out to glide down the satin smoothness of his back. He shuddered in response and drew on her nipple until she felt the needle-sharp pleasure reach deep down into her very core.

As quickly as that, it all began again. No tormenting this time, no battle of wills. In only seconds he was feeding his powerful arms beneath her so he could lift her into closer contact with the pulsing length of his sex.

Dragging his mouth from her breast, he requested, ‘May I?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she invited, aware that they were both more than ready for this.

This time he came into her with the gentle force of a man who was very mindful of his own power. She willingly accepted him, and wasn’t surprised to hear them both utter those exquisite sighs of pleasure because, quick though this was, they were perfectly in tune.

Can I walk away from him? Antonia found herself questioning as not just her senses but her whole world began to quicken. Can he really want this to end?

As if he could sense that her mind had strayed, Marco was suddenly rearing up and over her. His eyes were like two dark circles of passion, his mouth warm and moist and hungry for hers. ‘This is special,’ he said roughly. ‘And it is ours.’

‘Sometimes it feels as if you hate me,’ she whispered.

‘No, never,’ he denied, and crushed her mouth beneath his and crushed all thoughts from her head by other means.

The next morning, the light brush of his lips on her cheek awoke her. Opening her eyes, she smiled sleepily at him.

Clean-shaven and smelling deliciously vital, he was already dressed for his busy day in a dark grey suit and pale blue shirt that did sensational things to his golden features.

‘Get up, get dressed and come and join me for breakfast,’ he invited. ‘I have a surprise for you.’

‘A surprise?’ she repeated, yawning while stretching.

‘Mmm,’ he murmured, and it was the sexiest murmur Antonia had ever heard in her entire life.

It brought an invitation to her eyes and a hand reaching up for him. ‘Show me now,’ she commanded in a tone which was demanding something else entirely.

He caught the hand, kissed it, then firmly replaced it back on the bed. ‘Not on your life.’ He grinned. ‘You have to come downstairs looking prim for this surprise.’

And with that thoroughly intriguing statement he turned and strode out of the room. Antonia watched him go with a smile in her eyes, quietly amazed at how a night of loving could turn their relationship around. The man was an enigma of complicated mood codes: one minute looking as if he wished to see the back of her, the next almost dying with pleasure in her arms. Now he wanted to please her with surprises—though how he’d found the time to come up with anything to surprise her with at—she checked the bedside clock—seven o’clock in the morning was completely beyond her.

Innovative, that was what Marco was, she thought indulgently as she climbed out of the bed and went off to shower and dress, as instructed, in something prim. Her choice was a white tailored linen suit teamed with amber accessories that almost matched the colour of her eyes.

On her way to the breakfast room, she popped her head into the kitchen and was surprised to find no housekeeper there to exchange the usual morning greetings. Still frowning slightly at Carlotta’s absence, she entered the sunny breakfast room to find her favourite breakfast bowl of fresh fruit and a steaming pot of hot coffee waiting for her on the table—and her favourite man reclining in his chair reading his morning newspaper.

But he paused to watch her walk towards him with his eyes narrowed in male appreciation. ‘Perfezione,’ he murmured, as she leant down to press a morning kiss to his ready lips.

‘Grazie,’ she returned in mocking relief. ‘For this is about as prim as I get.’

The sun caught the strawberry highlights threading through her neatly pleated hair, and played sultry games with the amber colour of her conservatively styled silk blouse. On her feet she wore classically plain court shoes and a simple string of pearls she had owned for ever and didn’t warrant locking away in Marco’s safe circled her slender throat. Her make-up was so natural there was barely any sign of it and her smile said everything was right in her world.

‘Where’s Carlotta?’ she asked as she sat down next to him.

‘Called in sick,’ Marco explained. ‘I found her message waiting with our answering service, along with a hundred and one others…’

Antonia’s hand froze momentarily on its way to pick up the coffee pot. Stefan, she remembered. Stefan had said he’d been leaving messages for her all last week. A small silence began to vibrate with the hum of expectancy while she waited for what Marco was going to say next.

But he said absolutely nothing, and when she dared a glance at him, he was behind his newspaper again. He wasn’t going to mention Stefan’s calls, she realised. And she was damned if she was going to mention them and put at risk all this wonderful harmony they had managed to recapture.

So, ‘Did Carlotta say what was wrong?’ she enquired instead.

The newspaper twitched, long brown fingers flexed slightly, as if he was aware that she was aware of Stefan’s calls and those fingers were reacting to the fact that she too was going to pretend they had never happened.

‘Summer flu,’ he replied. ‘She does not wish to pass it on, so she expects to be away for the rest of the week.’

‘Poor Carlotta. I must send her a get-well card,’ she murmured, and finished pouring her coffee before transferring her attention to her bowl of fruit. ‘Did you prepare this?’ she asked.

‘Mmm.’ It was not quite the sexy Mmm of before. Was he angry? Was he annoyed that she wasn’t going to ask about Stefan’s calls?

‘Molti grazie, mi amante,’ she returned, determinedly keeping her tone light. ‘This unusual act of servility is most definitely your biggest surprise to date.’

The husky dark tones of a very male laughter flipped her heart over, then it flipped again with relief when he folded the paper away and she was able to see the humour also reflected on his beautiful face.

He wasn’t brooding about Stefan. He wasn’t going to let this newly attained harmony spoil because of a few silly messages. ‘Eat your fruit. Drink your coffee,’ he advised indulgently. ‘We have approximately ten minutes before we have to leave.’

‘Leave?’ She frowned. ‘Why? Where are we going?’

‘I’m going to Venice,’ he replied as he got to his feet. ‘And you, mi bellisima, are coming with me.’

With that, he dropped a casual kiss onto the top of her head and began to stroll arrogantly for the doorway.

But this time no warm smile followed him. No feeling of delight that he was planning to take her along on one of his business trips for the first time since she’d entered his life.

So much for protecting harmony, she mused grimly as she felt it all wither away. ‘When did you decide this?’ she fed quietly after him. ‘Before or after you played back the messages?’

He stopped walking and turned, an almost saturnine figure with his features suddenly cast in bronze. ‘Before,’ he replied, earning himself a flash of scepticism. ‘It was learning that Carlotta would not be around to play chaperon that clinched your fate for you,’ he answered that scepticism. ‘For no woman plays Marco Bellini false while he is safely ensconced elsewhere, capisce?’

Oh, she understood all right. He didn’t trust her to be alone in Milan with Stefan in the same city. ‘So the surprise you promised was never intended as a pleasant surprise,’ she concluded, and smiled cynically. ‘How typical of you to give with one hand and take back with the other.’

‘On the contrary,’ he argued. ‘The trip to Venice could be a pleasure for both of us. It really depends on whether you want to make it so.’

‘Or not, if I decide to stay here instead,’ Antonia pointed out.

The threat had him walking back to her. When he reached her side, he bent to place one hand on the back of her chair, the other flat on the table. The way he loomed over her hinted at menace. Placing her fork in the bowl of fruit, Antonia refused to let her fingers shake as she placed them down on her lap, then sat back in the chair to face his hard gaze squarely.

‘You prefer to stay here?’

His eyes held hers, and were loaded with challenge. Answer yes and she would be lying, not to mention confirming his suspicions about her motives. Answer no and she would be feeding his ego with something she had no wish to feed him now.

She went for the compromise. ‘Stefan is my friend. Why can’t you accept that?’

His eyes didn’t waver, not for a second. ‘Do you prefer to stay?’ he repeated.

Hers did, though; they flickered away on a frown of irritation. ‘Of course I would rather be with you,’ she sighed. ‘But not under duress, and not because you feel it’s your only option!’

‘I could throw you out. That’s another option.’

‘I could walk!’ she lashed back. ‘That’s an even better one!’

‘Are you coming?’ The wretched man wasn’t fazed in the slightest.

‘Yes!’ she snapped, and dislodged his hand by pushing back her chair and shooting to her feet with a jolt of anger.

He just sent her a mocking look. ‘Then eat your fruit and drink your coffee,’ he suggested, and with a wave of a hand walked away again. ‘Come and get me from my study when you’re ready to leave.’

‘I’ll need longer than ten minutes to clear up here before we go,’ she threw impatiently after him.

‘For you, mi amante, I will delay our flight!’

Magnanimous in victory, he left her standing there not sure whether to smile or scowl. The smile won, twitching impulsively at the corners of her mouth as she sat down to finish her fruit. Twenty minutes later she was annoyed again because he hadn’t told her until just before they were leaving that they were going to stay over in Venice, so she hadn’t bothered to pack a bag.

‘Shop for what you need when we get there,’ said the man to whom money had a different meaning.

‘For want of a further five minutes it seems terribly extravagant,’ she complained.

‘Time is money to me, cara,’ he pointed out.

‘Then I’m sorry for costing you money while you waited,’ she said primly. ‘What a problem I am to you.’

Sarcasm or not, he slashed a grin at her. ‘My biggest problem is going to be keeping my mind on business when I know you’re within easy reach of me,’ he murmured lazily.

‘Then I hope you spend your meetings in a state of permanent distraction.’

‘While you do what?’

‘Spend your money as fast as I can produce the credit cards,’ she answered.

He laughed, and kissed her until the lift arrived. After that it didn’t really matter any more that he was only doing this to keep her and Stefan apart. The harmony was back, and she was happy to bask in it. Happy to bask beneath the amount of care and attention he paid her throughout their short flight to Venice and the ensuing journey along the canals until they came to their hotel.

Heads turned, people stared. She basked in that also. For being with a man like Marco Bellini was a bit like walking alongside royalty: paths were smoothed, people deferred. He was rich, he was known, he was handsome and single. Women envied her place in his life. Men envied all his many advantages.

Having safely delivered her to their hotel, he left her to her own devices while he went off to keep his appointments. She shopped till she’d dropped, and spent the rest of her time trailing around some of the tourist sites amongst the thick summer crowds and the heat that melted.

By the time she arrived back in their suite she was so exhausted it was all she could do to run a bath and sink into it. On the bed lay the smart designer bags to go with her new smart designer purchases. On the floor lay the scatter of her discarded clothes.

Letting himself in a few minutes later, Marco smiled at the evidence of her occupation. Antonia was untidy by nature, though she would make the effort to try not to be because she thought it must irritate him. Being brought up to strict rules set by a succession of nannies meant that regimental neatness had become second nature to him.

But it didn’t irritate him. In truth, he liked to walk into a room and see instant proof of her presence. The bathroom door stood ajar, and from behind it he could hear the lazy slap of water which told him what she was doing now.

It was the easiest thing in the world to strip off his clothes and go in there to join her. Up to her neck in bubbles, she smiled as he approached, lifted her knees to allow him room to sit down opposite her, then, on a contented sigh fed her feet up his chest as he stretched his long legs on either side of her.

‘Long day?’ he enquired.

‘Spent your money. Played tourist. Got too hot. Killed my feet. Came back here to die peacefully. And you?’ she returned the enquiry.

‘Made a few lira, invested a few lira.’ His accompanying shrug said it was par for the course. ‘Threw my impressive weight around a bit. Came back here to make love to this woman I know.’

Her eyes began to gleam. ‘Is she any good?’

So did his. ‘Molti bellisima,’ he softly confided, and picked up one of her feet to begin an expert massage to its slender sole. She liked that. Closing her eyes, she simply lay back and let him indulge her.

In fact Marco indulged her in many ways during the next few days. They dined in quiet out-of-the-way places where the tourists didn’t go, walked hand in hand through narrow streets like dark caverns, and made love for most of the night. When he had to leave her to attend his meetings he made it brief, and secondary to what was really going on here in Venice.

Which was the steadily strengthening realisation that she was becoming more and more important to his happiness than he had ever allowed himself to believe before.

By the time they caught the flight home to Milan, on Friday afternoon, he knew he was almost ready to make the ultimate commitment. Only—

He wanted to see what Kranst had planned before he laid himself open. Antonia hadn’t mentioned Kranst. He hadn’t mentioned him. But had she been in touch with him? Did she know what Kranst was up to? Did she know that Marco was worrying about it?

Did she care?

He needed to know the answers before he made any kind of commitment because, damn it, he had his pride to protect here!

It was a hesitation that was going to cost him, though Marco couldn’t have any way of knowing it then.

They arrived back at the apartment late on Friday afternoon, to find Carlotta back at her post and smiling her usual welcome. She thanked them for the postcards Antonia must have sent her, then went on to relay a series of messages, most of them business, but some from his mother wanting him to call her as soon as he got in.

‘My father?’ he questioned sharply.

But Carlotta shook her head. ‘I asked,’ she said. ‘Your mamma assured me he was pleasingly well.’

So he nodded, and decided to leave any calls home until after this evening was over.

That was another mistake.

There were also several calls for Antonia from Stefan Kranst which, from their content, told him that Antonia had held faith and not attempted to contact Kranst while they’d been away. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and kiss her for that, but good sense warned him not to make an issue of it—just as she was sensibly asking no questions about that other taboo subject, his parents.

Franco rang as they were sharing a pot of coffee while relaxing for an hour in front of the TV before they needed to start getting ready to go out. Marco felt fine, very at peace with himself and the beautiful creature curled up beside him. He and Franco chatted as best friends do. He was thanked for the painting they’d given the de Maggios as an anniversary present, and for the thought which had gone into it, and tried to pass the whole thing off as if he knew exactly what Franco meant. But he didn’t, and his gaze was sardonic when he remembered how easily he had let Antonia off without answering that little bone of contention between them. Then he suggested dinner somewhere after the Kranst showing.

It was at that moment that the tension began to creep in. Antonia sat up and away from him. Studying her profile, he heard Franco telling him that he and Nicola were not going tonight because they were spending the weekend up at Lake Como with her parents. Franco suggested Wednesday instead. Marco agreed, then hurriedly rang off.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked instantly.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I think I’ll go and get my shower now—’

But he wasn’t so easily fooled. ‘Kranst can only hurt you if you let him,’ he said quietly.

‘It isn’t me Stefan hurts, Marco,’ she replied, smiled a sad smile and walked away.

She was referring to him, of course, and it was a strange experience to acknowledge that she was right. Kranst did have the power to hurt him. He hurt Marco’s pride and his ego, because the artist had a part of Antonia he had never been able to touch. What part that was exactly he had not been able to work out, but it had something to do with the way she refused to accept any hint of criticism where Kranst was concerned, whereas Marco she could find fault with very easily.