Читать книгу Marriage In Peril - Miranda Lee - Страница 9

ODDLY, Brooke’s first reaction was fury, not distress.

The room was dark, she noted angrily. Leo must have turned the bedside lamp off when he came in.

She rolled over to check the luminous numbers on the bedside clock and saw it was twenty minutes past eleven. Not too late, so a wife wouldn’t be suspicious. Certainly not one as stupidly doting and one-eyed as herself!

With a bitter resentment in her heart, she rolled back onto her side, facing the far wall, curling her body up in a foetal position, glad she was wearing one of her more modest nighties.

Leo had a thing for short, slinky black satin night-wear which barely covered her bottom. This particular nightie was much longer, reaching her knees. It was particularly low-cut up top, however, and had only the thinnest shoulder straps keeping it in place. Still, with her back to him, its length was the most important factor.

I’ll pretend to be asleep, she vowed savagely as she lay there. That way I won’t say anything I might regret in the morning.

Maybe if Leo hadn’t stayed in the shower so darned long Brooke might have been able to keep to that vow. But fifteen minutes went by and the water was still running, evoking all sorts of darkly jealous thoughts.

He was trying to wash the smell of her off his body. He probably reeked of her, and that heavy, musky perfume she always wore.

By the time the taps were turned off, five minutes later, Brooke had rolled back over and was glaring in the direction of the bathroom, watching and waiting for him to come out.

She was still glowering at the door when it finally opened.

Leo emerged, obviously trying not to make a sound, turning off the bathroom light before carefully closing the door behind him.

But not before Brooke got a good long look at him, framed in the brightly lit doorway.

There was no doubting Leo was an impressive man naked. Brooke had never seen better.

He had it all. Broad shoulders. Deep chest. Flat stomach. Slim hips. Gorgeous olive skin. Not too much body hair. Strong arms and lovely muscular thighs…with more than adequate equipment in between.

Brooke had been overawed by him from the first time he’d stripped for her. She was still overawed by him. Even now, when she wanted to hate him.

Her heart began to pound as his darkened silhouette crossed the room, lifted the sheet and slid, still naked, into the bed. Not an unusual occurrence. Leo often slept in the nude.

But the cool, casual arrogance of the man infuriated her. When he rolled over and put his back to her, she wanted to kill him.

Brooke lay there, scowling up at the ceiling, thinking of the cruellest most uncivilised way of putting him to death for his crimes against her and their marriage. The guillotine was too quick and too kind. The same applied to a firing squad. She wanted him to suffer as she was suffering, to endure…in agony.

Hanging, drawing and quartering would do just fine, she decided. Like in past times. But only after a few years’ solitary confinement in one of those cold, old prisons, where his only companions would be cockroaches and rats!

Unfortunately, there was no real solace or satisfaction in such thinking, and Brooke’s jealous fury was soon sidelined by an equally savage determination to know for sure just how great Leo’s crimes against her were: how far things had progressed, how many times he’d been unfaithful to her that day.

The state of his body, she resolved with a wild recklessness, would be much more telling than the sight of his car in that car park this afternoon.

He flinched when her hand landed on the indent of his waist, then stiffened when it began to slide around further. Abruptly he rolled onto his back, his head twisting on the pillow to face her.

By this time the palm of Brooke’s hand was resting provocatively on his stomach, and her heart was racing. With fear of what she’d find, she wondered? Or fear of what he’d do if she dared touch him down there?

‘I thought you were asleep,’ he said, his voice as cool as his skin.

‘I was.’ She could just make out his face. The moon was out and the curtains which covered the bedroom windows were light and filmy, letting in enough light to see by once your eyes had adjusted.

Leo was looking at her rather oddly, his eyes narrowed and wary.

‘I tried to be quiet,’ he said, a measure of defensiveness in his voice.

‘Why?’

‘Mamma told me you’d had a bad migraine all day. She said she’d given you some pills.’

‘Yes. She did. She’s very kind, your mum.’

‘True.’

There was a moment’s awkward silence when Leo said nothing further and Brooke’s courage began to fail her. Her hand lay still on his stomach while her heart thudded away.

‘You’re very late, Leo…’

‘Yes. I know. I’m sorry, but Lorenzo’s left a damned awful mess behind him. I’m trying to have everything sorted out before we leave on Friday. I haven’t finished yet, either. I wasn’t as productive today as I would have liked to be. Too many interruptions. So I might have to work late tomorrow night as well.’

‘I see,’ Brooke said, and another awkward silence fell between them.

‘It’s not like you to have a migraine, Brooke,’ Leo said at last. ‘I wonder what brought it on?’

Thinking of you in love with Francesca all these years, she wanted to throw at him. Thinking of you in bed with her all afternoon and half the night.

Such thoughts renewed her bitter resolve to see the lie of the land, once and for all.

‘I feel much better now,’ she murmured, and slid her hand back and forth across his stomach.

He sucked in sharply.

‘So I see,’ he bit out.

When he made no move to stop her, Brooke’s hand changed direction. A little shakily, it began to travel downwards, till it encountered then encircled her intended target.

Shock held her fingers still for a few moments. For never had Leo felt so limp, or less interested in her touch!

As Brooke had already found out this afternoon, it was one thing to think something, another to find hard evidence of its truth, even when that evidence wasn’t hard, but soft. Crushingly, cruelly soft!

Waves of emotion swept through her. Dismay. Devastation. Despair! How could he betray her this way? Deceive her? Destroy her!

And how could Francesca? The bitch! And so soon after her husband’s death!

Eventually, surprisingly, the wish to kill them both was sublimated by the mad desire to make Leo respond, to show him that she—his wife—knew him better than any other woman, knew what he liked, could give him pleasure unequalled elsewhere. Francesca couldn’t possibly do for him what Brooke knew she could.

Finally, her frozen fingers began to move once more.

His groan sounded like a protest, but she stubbornly ignored it, using her acquired knowledge of his body to arouse him. After all, hadn’t Leo tutored her personally in what he liked during the first few weeks of their relationship, spending long evenings and even longer nights in extending her sexual education, showing her at the same time that her previous lovers had been total ignoramuses?

All they’d wanted were quickies.

But his flesh was depressingly slow to respond, its lack-lustre performance very telling. Her normally responsive and very virile husband must have been making love all day to be like this!

Brooke refused to give up. He would respond, she vowed with an icy resolve, her heart hardening against any distracting or distressing emotions.

‘This isn’t like you, Leo,’ she murmured, all the while caressing him intimately.

‘I thought you were asleep,’ he muttered through obviously gritted teeth. ‘I’ve just had a very long, very cold shower.’

In truth, his skin was cold. But she didn’t believe his lengthy shower had anything to do with consideration for her.

‘Then maybe you need a little extra help,’ she said, and, sliding down his body, boldly took the evidence of his recent betrayal between her lips.

This wasn’t something Brooke ever did off her own bat. Only at Leo’s behest. Even then, it wasn’t something he asked for much nowadays. In fact she couldn’t remember the last time. Probably last summer, here, in this very room. But in the past it had unfailingly aroused him, no matter how many times he’d already made love to her.

It aroused him now, his flesh swelling quickly. Brooke was merciless, her only aim to make him so excited that he would lose control. She wanted to seduce him so totally that he would forget everything else…and everyone else. Especially Francesca.

At the back of her mind Brooke knew she was acting out of sheer desperation, but she couldn’t stop for the life of her. One part of her was almost horrified by what she was doing. Another part remained coldly detached, driving her on to do everything she could think of. And more. Her hands joined her lips in the fray, finding all sorts of erotic areas to torment and tantalise. She was more adventurous than she’d ever been before.

Dimly, she heard him moan, felt his own fingers splay shakily into her hair. When they tightened, she thought for one awful moment he was going to drag her away, make her stop.

But he didn’t.

He muttered something in Italian at one stage, his voice low and shaking.

She stopped momentarily to glance up at him. His handsome face was etched clearly in the moonlight, his hooded eyes almost shut, his mouth grimacing.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ she purred.

When a violent shudder shook his head from side to side, she smiled an amazingly cool smile, dipped her head, and continued.

His breath began coming in raw, panting gasps. He was erect now, all right. More than he’d ever been, his flesh almost cruelly stretched. And straining.

A wave of dark triumph flooded Brooke, bringing its own brand of excitement and satisfaction. For at that moment Leo was hers, totally. He had no will of his own. No ability to think, let alone stop her.

Or so she’d thought.

Brooke was so caught up in her own dizzying sense of power that she didn’t notice Leo’s hands abandon her hair. When they slid under her arms and pulled her up off him, her cry of shock and frustration was very real.

Ignoring her protest, Leo pushed the satin nightie up to her waist, grasped her buttocks in an iron grip and lifted her till she was kneeling high above him. Before she knew it, his titanic erection was between her thighs and she was being forcibly drawn downwards onto it.

Her lips gasped wide at the swiftness of this turnaround, plus the stunning pleasure as her husband slid, hard and huge, into her. She hadn’t realised till that moment how turned on she was.

So much for being removed from the experience!

So much for being the one in control!

Suddenly, all she wanted was to move, to feel him filling and refilling her. But he was holding her too tightly for the riding motion she craved. In desperation, she swayed back and forth, wriggling her hips and squeezing her insides to create some friction, to ease the craven need which was suddenly driving her wild.

‘Be still!’ Leo commanded, his thumbs and fingertips digging into her flesh.

‘But I don’t want to be still,’ she choked out.

‘I can see that,’ he growled, then smiled the wickedest smile up at her. ‘But I need a little time to compose myself before we continue. Still…maybe I can help you out in the meantime.’

His black eyes glittered in the moonlight as he reached up to brush her tangled hair back off her flushed face, pushing it right back off her shoulders before slowly sliding the thin straps off her shoulders, peeling the nightie downwards till her breasts were totally exposed.

Brooke knew, without looking at them, that they were cruelly swollen, and her nipples as hard as rocks. She had nice breasts. Big, without being too big. Breastfeeding had made them drop only a little, and her nipples were much larger than before.

‘I should neglect you in the bedroom more often,’ Leo muttered thickly, ‘if this is the result.’ Reaching up, he took both nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, and gave them both a sharp tug.

Shock—and something else—quivered down Brooke’s spine. Leo had never done anything remotely like that to her nipples before. He was usually so gentle and tender with her breasts, using his mouth and tongue more than his hands.

When he did it again, Brooke wasn’t sure if the sensation was pleasure, or pain. All she knew was it left her nipples with the most delicious burning feeling.

She stared downwards and saw they looked longer and harder than she’d ever seen them, brazenly standing out from her breasts, eager for more of the same. Leo took possession of them again, none too gently once more, rolling the still burning flesh between his fingers in a slow, twisting motion, bringing not a cry, but a moan. Of the most amazing pleasure.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ he murmured, echoing what she’d said to him earlier.

Excitement rendered her speechless. He laughed a low, sexy laugh and then continued the delicious torment.

In the end she could not bear his eyes upon her, watching her gasp and squirm.

‘Leo…please…’

‘Please, what?’ he drawled, obviously enjoying her breathless arousal. ‘Stop? More? Tell me, mi micetta. I’ll do anything you want. Though you’re hardly a kitten tonight. More of a tiger. I think you’d have eaten me alive if I’d let you.’

‘Leo, please,’ she repeated huskily, her face flaming with both embarrassment and excitement.

‘What is it you want me to do? Touch you down here…is that it? Like this?’

She stiffened, then groaned. No, no, not there, she agonised. And not like that.

Leo sometimes made her come first by touching her there. But never before when her body was displayed in such a vulnerable and exposed fashion, never with him watching her responses so blatantly.

Her stomach curled over at the thought.

But he kept touching her in exactly the right spot, and soon she just didn’t care.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned, stiffening and squirming as she tried to hold on, not wanting the magic—or the madness—to end.