Читать книгу Modern Romance November Books 1-4 - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 21

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THEY WERE MARRIED in Naples in a beautiful church not far from the home of Salvio’s parents. The ancient building was packed with people Molly barely knew—friends of the family, she guessed, and high-powered friends of Salvio’s who had flown in from all around the world. Most of them she’d met the previous evening during a lavish pre-wedding dinner, but their names had flown in one ear and out of the other, no matter how hard she’d tried to remember them. Her mind had been too full of niggling concerns to concentrate on anything very much, but her main anxiety had been about Robbie.

Because Salvio had quietly arranged for her brother to fly from Australia to Naples as a pre-wedding surprise and Molly’s heart had contracted with joy as Robbie had strolled into the restaurant where everyone was eating, flashing his careless smile, which had made many of the younger women swoon.

She had jumped to her feet to hug him, touched by Salvio’s unexpected thoughtfulness, as she’d run her gaze over her brother in candid assessment. From the outside Robbie looked good—better than he’d looked in a long time. He was tanned and fit, his golden curls longer than she remembered, and his clothes were surprisingly well chosen. But she’d seen his faintly avaricious expression as he’d taken in the giant ring on her finger and the expensive venue of the sea-view wedding reception.

‘Well, what do you know? You did good, sis. Real good,’ he’d said slowly, a gleam entering his grey eyes. ‘Salvio De Gennaro is minted.’

She’d found herself wanting to protest that she wasn’t marrying Salvio for his money but Robbie probably wouldn’t have believed her, since his teenage years had been dedicated to the pursuit of instant wealth. She’d wondered if his reluctance to maintain eye contact meant that his gambling addiction had returned. And had then wondered if she was simply transferring her own fears onto her brother.

But she wasn’t going to be afraid because she was walking into this with her eyes open. She’d made the decision to be Salvio’s wife because deep down she wanted to, and she was going to give the marriage everything she could. Who said that such a strangely conceived union couldn’t work? She was used to fighting against the odds, wasn’t she?

Holding herself tall, she had walked slowly down the aisle wearing the dress which had been created especially for her by one of London’s top wedding-dress designers. The whole couture process had been a bit of an ordeal, mainly because a pale, shiny fabric wasn’t terribly forgiving when you were overendowed with curves, but Molly had known Salvio wanted her to look like a traditional bride. And in her heart she had wanted that, too.

‘Your breasts are very...generous.’ The dressmaker had grunted. ‘We’re going to have to use a minimising bra, I think.’

Molly had opened her mouth to agree until she’d remembered what she’d vowed on the day of Salvio’s proposal. That she was going to be true to herself and behave like his equal because the strain of doing otherwise would quickly wear her down. And if she tried to be someone she wasn’t, then surely this whole crazy set-up would be doomed.

‘I think Salvio likes my breasts the way they are,’ she’d offered shyly and the dressmaker had taken the pins out of her mouth, and smiled.

The look on his face when she reached the altar seemed to endorse Molly’s theory—and when they left the church as man and wife, the strangest thing happened. Outside, a sea of people wearing pale blue and white ribbons were cheering and clapping and Molly looked up at Salvio in confusion as their joyful shouts filled the air.

‘Some of the supporters of my old football club,’ he explained, looking slightly taken aback himself. ‘Come to wish me in bocca al lupo.’

‘Good luck?’ she hazarded, blinking as a battery of mobile-phone cameras flashed in her face.

‘Esattamente. Your Italian lessons are clearly paying dividends,’ he murmured into her ear, his mouth brushing against one pearl-indented lobe.

Just that brief touch was enough to make her breasts spring into delicious life beneath the delicate material of her wedding dress and Salvio’s perceptive smile made Molly blush. Lifting up her bouquet of roses to disguise the evidence of physical desire, she thought how perfectly attuned he was to her body and its needs. Their sexual compatibility had been there from the start—now all she needed to concentrate on was getting pregnant.

After the wedding they flew to their honeymoon destination of Barbados, where they were shown to a large, private villa in the vast grounds of a luxury hotel. It was the closest thing to paradise that Molly could imagine and as soon as they arrived, Salvio went for a swim while she insisted on unpacking her clothes—because she didn’t quite trust anyone else to do it so neatly. Old habits die hard, she thought ruefully.

Knotting a sarong around her waist, she went outside where her brand-new husband was lying on a sun lounger the size of a double bed, wearing a battered straw hat angled over his eyes and nothing else. A lump rose in her throat as she watched him lying in the bright sunshine—completely at ease with his bare body which was gleaming with droplets of water drying in the sun. For a moment she couldn’t actually believe she was here, with him. His wife. She swallowed. Even her title took some getting used to. Signora Molly De Gennaro.

He turned to look at her, his gaze lazy as it ran a slow and comprehensive journey from her head to the tips of her toes.

‘How are you feeling?’ he questioned solicitously.

Trying not to be distracted by the very obvious stirring at his groin, she nodded. ‘Fine, thank you,’ she said politely. ‘That sleep I had on the plane was wonderful.’

‘Then stop standing there looking so uncertain.’ Pushing aside a tumble of cushions, he patted the space beside him on the giant sunbed. ‘Come over here.’

It occurred to Molly that if she wasn’t careful she would end up taking orders from him just like before, but it was probably going to take a little time to acclimatise herself to this new life. To feel as if she had the right to enjoy these lavish surroundings, instead of constantly looking around feeling as if she ought to be cleaning them.

Aware of the sensual glitter of his eyes, she walked across the patio and sank down next to him. Straight ahead glimmered a sea of transparent turquoise, edged with sand so fine it looked like caster sugar. To her left was their own private swimming pool and any time they wanted anything—anything at all, as they had been assured on their arrival—all they had to do was to ring one of the bells which were littered around the place and some obliging servant would appear.

She stuck out her feet in front of her, still getting used to toenails which were glinting a fetching shade of coral in the bright sunshine.

‘You’ve had a pedicure,’ Salvio observed.

She blinked and looked up. ‘Fancy you noticing something like that.’

‘You’d be amazed what I notice about you, Molly,’ he murmured. ‘Is that the first one you’ve ever had?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’ She lifted her chin a little defensively. ‘I suppose that shocks you?’

‘Not really, no. And anyway—’ he smiled ‘—I like being shocked by you.’

His hand was now on her leg and she felt his fingertips travelling slowly over her thigh. Little by little they inched upwards and her mouth grew increasingly dry as they approached the skimpy triangle of her bikini bottoms. She swallowed as his hand came to a tantalising halt just before they reached the red and white gingham. ‘Salvio,’ she breathed.

‘Sì, Molly?’ he murmured.

‘We’re outside. Anyone can see us.’

‘But the whole point of having a private villa,’ he emphasised, ‘is that we can’t be seen. Haven’t you ever wondered what it might be like to make love in the open air?’

She hesitated. ‘Maybe,’ she said cautiously.

‘So why don’t we do it?’

‘What, now?’

‘Right now.’

She swallowed. ‘If you’re sure we really can’t be seen.’

‘I may be adventurous,’ he drawled, ‘but I draw the line at rampant voyeurism.’

‘Go on, then,’ she whispered encouragingly.

Salvio smiled as he trailed his lips down over Molly’s generous cleavage which smelt faintly of coconut oil and was already warm from the sun. Through her bikini top a pert nipple sprang into life against his lips and he thought how utterly entrancing she could be with that potent combination of shyness and eagerness, despite her lack of experience. ‘You are for my eyes only,’ he added gravely, hearing her sharp intake of breath as he began to undo the sarong which was knotted around her hips. ‘Except you are wearing far too much for me to be able to see you properly.’

The sarong discarded, his finger crept beneath her bikini bottoms to find her most treasured spot, where she was slick and wet. Always wet, he thought achingly. Her enjoyment of sex was so delightfully fervent that it made him instantly hard. He expelled a shuddering breath of air as she responded to his caress by reaching down to touch him intimately, and he moaned his soft pleasure. He liked the way she encircled him within those dextrous fingers and the way she slid them up and down to lightly stroke the pulsing and erect flesh. He liked the way she teased him as he had taught her to tease him and to make him wait, until he felt like her captive slave. But today his hunger would not be tempered and he could not wait, his desire for her off the scale. He had let her sleep on the plane because she had looked exhausted after the wedding, but now his appetite knew no bounds. The bikini was discarded to join the sarong as he wriggled his fingers between her legs. She jerked distractedly as he found her tight bud, her nails digging into his bare shoulders as he increased his rhythmical stroke.

‘You like that,’ he observed, with a satisfied purr.

‘Don’t...don’t stop, will you?’ she gasped.

He gave a low laugh. ‘I have no intention of stopping, bedda mia. I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to.’ But suddenly he no longer wanted to pleasure her with his finger and, positioning himself over her, he parted her thighs and drove into her. He groaned as she matched each urgent thrust with the accommodating jerk of her hips. He revelled in the feel of her, the taste of her and the smell of her. Was it because there was no need for a condom that sex with Molly felt even more incredible than it had done before? Or because he was the one who had taught her everything? She’d never taken a man into her mouth before him, nor sucked him until he was empty and gasping. Just as she’d never had anyone’s head between her thighs other than his. He closed his eyes as excitement built at a speed which almost outpaced him. Was he really so primitive that he got some kind of thrill from having bareback sex with his one-time virgin? He drove into her again. Maybe he was.

She began to come, her moans of pleasure spiralling up from the back of her throat and hovering on the edge of a scream, so that he clamped his mouth over hers in an urgent kiss. He felt the rush of her breath in his mouth and the helpless judder of her body clenching around him—and his own response was like a powerful wave which crashed over him and pulled him under. With a groan, he ejaculated, one hand splayed underneath her bottom while the other tangled in her silken hair. Beneath the Barbadian sun he felt the exquisite pulsing of his body as passion seeped away.

For a while he just lay on top of her, dazed and contented, his head cushioned on her shoulder as he dipped in and out of sleep. But eventually he stirred, his fingertips tilting her jaw, enjoying the beatific smile which curved her lips as she opened her eyes to look at him.

‘So. We have a choice,’ he said slowly. ‘We can get dressed again and ring for drinks, or I can go inside and fix us something and you can stay exactly as you are, which would be my preference.’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t mind you waiting on me for a change,’ she said. ‘Unless you’re going to do that helpless man thing of making a mess of it because it’s domestic, so that you’ll never have to do it again.’

His mouth twitched into a smile as he rose from the lounger. ‘Is that what men do?’

‘In my experience—well, only my working experience, of course. Every time.’

‘Not this one.’ He picked up the battered straw hat which had fallen off, jamming it down so that the shadow of the brim darkened his face. ‘I don’t like to fail at anything, Molly.’

She watched him go. Was it that which had hurt the hardest when his life had imploded around him—the fact that he would be perceived as a failure? Had that been at the root of his reluctance to return to Naples very often? Yet he had picked himself up and started all over again. He had made a success of his life in every way, except for one. Just before they’d boarded his private jet to fly here, he’d told her how delighted his parents were that he had chosen her as his bride and she found herself thinking how skewed life could be sometimes. His mother hadn’t liked Lauren Meyer, but Salvio had loved her. He’d told her that himself. And if this marriage was to continue, she must resign herself to the fact that she would only ever be second-best.

But that had been her life, hadn’t it? It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to it. When you worked in other people’s houses you had to put yourself second, because you were only there to help their lives function smoothly. You had to be both efficient yet invisible, because people didn’t really see you—only the service you provided.

Did Salvio see her? she wondered. Or was she simply a vessel to bear his child? The woman he had transformed with his vast fortune, so that she could lie in a Barbadian paradise, looking out over an azure sea as if she’d been born to this life?

The chink of ice made her glance towards the entrance to their villa, where Salvio was standing holding two tall, frosted glasses. As he began to walk towards her she wondered how a man could look so utterly at ease, completely naked save for his sunhat.

Handing her a glass, he joined her on the lounger and for a while they sipped their drinks in silence.

‘Salvio,’ she said eventually, watching the ice melt in the fruity cocktail.

He turned his face towards her. ‘Mmm...?’

‘What am I actually going to do? I mean, once we get back to England and you go back to work.’

He swirled the ice around in his glass, his fingers dark against the sunlit condensation. ‘Weren’t we planning to have a baby?’

‘Yes, we were. Are,’ she corrected. ‘But that might not happen straight away, might it? And I can’t just sit around all the time just...waiting.’

There was a pause. ‘You want me to find you something to do?’ He studied her carefully. ‘There’s a charitable arm belonging to my company. Do you think you’d like to get involved in that?’

She hesitated, genuine surprise tearing through her at the realisation he must think her good enough to be a part of his organisation. But it wasn’t his validation which pleased her as much as the thought that this would make her a more integral part of his life—and wasn’t that what marriage was all about? ‘I’d like that very much.’ She smiled, but his next words killed her pleasure stone dead.

‘You know your brother tapped me for a loan at the wedding?’

The glass she was holding almost slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and quickly Molly put it down, her cheeks flaming. ‘What?’

‘He said he had an idea for a new business venture and asked if I’d like to invest in it.’

‘You didn’t say yes?’

‘You think I’m in the habit of throwing money away? I asked him how much he had already raised, and how—but he seemed reluctant to answer.’ Beneath the shadowed brim of his hat, she saw that his eyes were now as hard and as cold as jet. ‘Did you know about this, Molly?’

It hurt that he should ask but, when she thought about it afterwards, why wouldn’t he ask? Salvio had been a target for women during his playing days and had fallen for someone who saw him as nothing but a trophy husband. He made no secret of not trusting women—so why should he feel any differently about her?

‘Of course I didn’t know he was going to ask you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And if he’d sought my opinion I would have told him not to even think about it.’

He nodded as he stared out at the bright blue horizon and the subject was closed. But Molly’s determination not to let his silky accusation ruin the rest of the day only went so far, and suddenly she was aware of the aching disappointment which made the sunny day feel as if it had been darkened by a cloud.