Читать книгу The Complete Boardroom Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Yvonne Lindsay - Страница 19

CHAPTER NINE

LUCA STOPPED AT the door, his hand on the knob. Had he even heard that? Or was it his imagination conjuring up what he wanted to hear from a siren who had him so twisted inside out that he barely knew which way was up any more?

He didn’t turn around and forced out a drawl. ‘What is it, minha beleza? You’re ready to come this time?’

He felt dark inside, constricted. He’d really thought he’d seen something incredibly vulnerable in Serena—he’d finally believed that she truly was exactly as she seemed—and then...wham! She couldn’t have made more of a fool of him if she’d professed undying love and he’d believed her.

There was no sound behind him and he whirled around, anger like a molten surge within him. When he saw the pallor of Serena’s cheeks and how huge and bruised her eyes looked he pushed down the concern that rose up to mock him and said scathingly, ‘Nice try, namorada, but I’m not falling for whatever part you want to play now. Frankly, I prefer a little consistency in my lovers.’

Luca went to turn and leave again, but Serena moved forward jerkily. ‘Please, just wait—hear me out.’

He sighed deeply, hating the ball of darkness in his gut. The darkness that whispered to him to run fast and far away from this woman.

He turned around and crossed his arms, arching a brow. ‘Well?’

Serena swallowed. Her hair was like a white-gold curtain over her shoulders, touching the swells of her breasts under the robe. Breasts that Luca could taste on his tongue even now.

Incensed that she was catching him like this, and yet still he couldn’t walk away, he strode past her over to his drinks cabinet and delivered curtly, ‘Spit it out, will you?’

He poured himself a glass of whisky and downed it in one. Hating that she’d even made him feel he needed the sustenance. His hand gripped the glass. He wouldn’t look at her again.

‘Serena, so help me—’

‘You were pushing me to talk...and I didn’t want to. So I pretended just now...pretended that I wanted to be alone. I didn’t mean what I said, Luca.’

Luca went very still. An inner voice mocked him. She’s still playing you. But he recalled the way she’d looked so hunted...just before something had come over her expression and she’d morphed into the ice queen in front of his eyes.

Slowly he put the glass down and turned around. Serena looked shaken. Pale. Yet determined.

‘I’m sorry.’

Her voice was husky and it touched on his skin like a caress he wanted to rail against.

He folded his arms. ‘Sorry for what?’

She bit her lip. ‘I wanted you to think that I’d had enough so you’d leave, but that’s not true.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Luca drawled, and saw how she went even paler.

He cursed out loud and went over to her, taking her by the arm and leading her to a couch to sit down.

‘Serena, so help me God, if this is just some elaborate—’

‘It’s not!’ she cried, her hands gripped together in her lap. ‘It’s not,’ she said again. ‘You were just asking me all these things and I felt threatened... I’ve never told anyone what happened. I’ve always been too ashamed and guilty that I didn’t do something to stop it. And for a long time I doubted that it had even happened...’

Luca knew now that this was no act. Serena was retreating, her mind far away. Instinctively he reached out and took her hands, wrapping them in his. She looked at him and his chest got tight. Damn her.

‘What happened?’

Her hands were cold in his and her eyes had never looked bigger or bluer.

‘I saw my father kill my mother when I was five years old.’

Luca’s mouth opened and closed. ‘You what?’

Serena couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Luca, as if he was anchoring her to something. Her throat felt dry.

‘When I was five I heard my parents arguing...nothing new...they argued all the time. I sneaked downstairs to the study. When I looked in through the crack of the door I could see my mother crying. I couldn’t understand what they were arguing about, although in hindsight I know it was most likely to do with my father’s affairs.’

Luca was grim. ‘What happened?’ he asked again.

‘My father backhanded my mother across the face and she fell... She hit her head on the corner of his desk.’

Serena went inward.

‘All I can remember is the pool of blood growing around her head on the rug and how dark it was. And how white she was. I must have made a sound, or something. The next thing I remember is my father dragging me back upstairs. I was crying for my mother...hysterical. My father hit me across the face...I remember one of my baby teeth was loose and it fell out... A doctor arrived. He gave me an injection. I can still remember the pain in my arm... The funeral...everything after that...was blurry. Siena was only three. But I can remember the doctor coming a lot. And once the police came. But I couldn’t speak to them. I wanted to tell them what I’d seen but I’d been given something that made me sleepy. It didn’t seem important any more.’

Her voice turned bitter.

‘He got it covered up, of course, and no one ever accused him of her death. That’s when it started. By the time I was twelve my father and his doctor were feeding my medication habit. They said I had ADHD—that I was difficult to control. Wilful. That it was for my own good. Then my father started saying things like bi-polar. He was constantly perpetuating a myth of mental uncertainty around me—even to my sister, who always believed that I tried to take my own life.’

‘Did you?’ Luca’s voice was sharp.

Serena shook her head. ‘No. But even though I denied it my sister was programmed by then to believe in my instability just like everyone else. My father even made a pretence of not allowing me to take drugs for the condition—while he was maintaining a steady supply to me through the doctor on his payroll.’

Luca shook his head. ‘But why didn’t you leave when you could?’

Serena pushed down the guilt. She had to start forgiving herself.

‘I couldn’t see a way out. By the time I was sixteen I was living the script my father had written for me years before.’

She reeled off the headlines of the time.

‘I was a wild child. Impossible to tame. Out of control. And I was addicted to prescription drugs... Siena was innocent. The good girl. Even now Siena still retains an innocence I never had. My father played us off against each other. If Siena stepped out of line I got the punishment...never her. She was being groomed as the perfect heiress. I was being groomed as the car crash happening in slow motion.’

Luca’s hands had tightened over hers and it was only then that Serena realised how icy she’d gone.

‘Why haven’t you ever gone to the police about your mother’s death?’

Shame pricked Serena. ‘Who would have believed disgraceful, unstable Serena DePiero? It felt hopeless. I felt hopeless. And in a way I had begun to doubt myself too...had it really happened? Maybe I was dreaming it up? Maybe I was just some vacuous socialite hooked on meds?’

Luca was shaking his head and Serena instantly went colder. She’d been a fool to divulge so much. She pulled her hands back.

‘You don’t believe me.’

Luca’s gaze narrowed and his mouth thinned. ‘Oh, I believe you, all right. It just about makes sense. And I met your father—he was a cold bastard.’ He shook his head. ‘He turned you into an addict, Serena.’

Something fragile and treacherous unfurled inside Serena. Acceptance.

She said huskily, ‘I’m sorry about before. I didn’t want to tell you everything.’

‘So what changed?’

Serena felt as if she was being backed into a corner again, but this time she fought the urge to escape or to push him away. ‘You deserved to know the truth, and I was being less than honest.’

‘Less than honest about what?’

He was going to make her say it.

Serena was captivated by Luca’s gaze. Time seemed to have slowed to a throbbing heartbeat between them. In the same moment she was aware of a giddy rush through her body—a sense of weightlessness. She’d told someone her innermost secrets and the world hadn’t crashed around her.

Serena’s belly swooped and she took a leap into the void. ‘I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night alone. It was just an excuse.’

Luca looked at her and something in his eyes darkened. Desire. He cupped her face in his hands and slanted his mouth over hers in a kiss so light that it broke Serena apart more than the most passionate kisses they’d exchanged.

When he pulled back she kept him close and whispered shakily, ‘Will you stay, Luca?’

She suddenly needed him desperately—needed a way to feel rooted when she might float off altogether and lose touch with the earth.

Luca kissed her mouth again and said throatily, ‘Yes.’

He stood and pulled Serena up with him, and then he bent and scooped her into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather. Her arms moved around his neck but she couldn’t resist trailing her fingers along his jaw, and then reaching up to press a kiss against the pulse she could see beating under his bronzed skin.

His chest swelled against her breasts and her whole body pulsed with heat and awareness.

He put her down gently by the rumpled bed, where the scent of their bodies lingered in the air, sultry... Even though they’d already made love Serena was trembling as if they hadn’t even touched for the first time.

They came together in a kiss of mutual combustion.

There was no time for Serena to worry about her body letting her down again because she was too feverish for Luca—hands spreading out over his bare chest, nails grazing his nipples, causing him to curse softly. Her hands moved to his trousers, and she unzipped them, freeing his erection. She took him in her hand, relishing the steely strength.

Luca’s hands were busy too, opening the belt of the robe and sliding it over her shoulders. Serena looked up at him and took her hands away from his body so that the robe could fall to the floor.

His gaze devoured her...hot. Dark colour slashed his cheeks as he tugged his trousers down and off completely, kicking them aside.

He pushed her gently onto the bed. Serena was shocked at how fast her heart was racing, how ragged her breath was.

Gutturally he said, ‘I want to take this slow—not like before.’

But Serena was desperate to feel him again. She was ready. She shook her head and whispered, ‘I don’t want slow. I want you.’

He caught her look and said rawly, ‘Are you sure?’

She nodded again, and saw his jaw clench as if he was giving up some thin shred of control. He reached for protection and she watched him smooth it onto his erection, an almost feral look on his face.

Serena’s sex pulsed with need. She lifted her arms and beckoned him, spreading her legs in a mute appeal.

His eyes flashed and he muttered something indistinct. He leant down to place his hand on her sex, cupping its heat. Serena found his wide shoulders and gripped him, biting her lip.

He spread his fingers and explored her secret folds, releasing the slick heat of her arousal.

His voice was rough. ‘You’re so ready for me.’

‘Please...’ said Serena huskily. ‘I want you, Luca.’

Every cell in her body felt engorged with blood as he came down over her, pressing her into the bed, his body hard next to her softness. Crushing it deliciously.

He bent his head and took one pebbled nipple into his mouth, his teeth capturing it for a stinging second before letting go to soothe it with his tongue. This teasing was almost unbearable.

Serena was about to sob out another plea when he pushed his thick length inside her. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath as he pushed in, relentless, until he was buried inside her.

‘You’re so tight...like a vice.’ He pressed a kiss to her mouth, hot and musky. ‘Relax, preciosa...’

The endearment did something to Serena. She felt her body softening around him. He slid even deeper and a look of deep carnal satisfaction crossed his face, making something exult inside her. A sense of her own innately feminine power.

Her nipples scraped against his hair-roughened chest with a delicious friction as Luca started to move in and out, each powerful glide of his body reaching deeper inside Serena to a place she’d locked away long ago. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. It was as if he was holding her within his gaze, keeping her rooted in the inexorable building of pleasure.

He reached around to her thigh and brought it up over his hip, his hand smoothing her flesh, then gripping it as his movements became harder, more powerful. That hand crept up and cupped her bottom, kneading, angling her hips, so that he touched some part of her that made her gasp out loud as a tremor of pleasure rocked through her pelvis.

Unconsciously Serena tilted her hips more and Luca moaned deeply. His thrusts became faster and Serena could feel the tight coil of tension inside her, tightening and tightening unbearably, to a point of almost pain.

She was incoherent, only able to stay anchored by looking into Luca’s eyes. When she closed hers briefly he commanded roughly, ‘Look at me, Serena.’

She did. And something broke apart deep inside her.

Her whole body tautened against his, nerves stretched to screaming point. Luca moved his hand between them, his fingers finding the engorged centre of her desire, and he touched her with a precision that left her nowhere to hide or hang on to. She imploded. Her control was shattered—the control she’d clung to all her life. Since her world had fallen apart as a child, when being out of control had become her control.

In one instant it was decimated, and Serena soared high on a wave of bliss that was spectacular. The definition of an orgasm being a petit mort, a small death, had never felt so apt. She knew that a part of her had just died and something else incredibly fragile and nebulous was taking its place.

She floated back down to reality, aware of her body milking Luca’s own release as he shuddered and buried his head in her shoulder, his body embedded deep within hers. Her legs wrapped around him, and the pulsations of their mutual climaxes took long minutes to die away.

* * *

Luca was in the kitchen the following morning, making breakfast, before he realised that he’d never in his life made breakfast for a lover. In general he liked being in a situation where he could extricate himself rather than have to deal with the aftermath and unwelcome romantic projections.

But here he was, cooking breakfast for Serena without half a second’s hesitation or any desire to put as much space between them as possible. His head was still fuzzy from an overload of sensual pleasure and the revelations she’d made.

He couldn’t help thinking of her: a little girl, traumatised by the violent death of her mother, with a sadistic and mercurial father who tried to discredit her as soon as he could. Somehow it wasn’t that fantastical to believe her father capable of such things.

He thought back to that night when he’d watched Siena come to bail Serena out of jail. The way she had tended to Serena like a mother to her cub...the way Serena had leant on her as if it was a familiar pattern. Both had been manipulated by their father’s machinations. Both had been acting out their parts. The good girl and the bad girl.

It all made a sick kind of sense now, because Luca knew he hadn’t imagined the vulnerability he’d sensed about her that night he’d first met her...

A sound from behind him made him tense and he turned around to see Serena, tousle-haired and dressed in the robe, standing in the doorway. She looked hesitant, shy, and Luca was falling, losing his grip. Everything he thought he’d known about her...wasn’t.

His hands gripped the bowl he was using to whisk eggs. ‘Hungry?’

‘Starving.’

Serena’s voice was husky, and it fired up Luca’s blood, reminding him of how she’d shouted out his name in the throes of passion just short hours before. How she’d begged and pleaded with him. How she’d felt around him.

Deus.

* * *

Serena came into the kitchen feeling ridiculously shy. Luca looked stern, intense.

‘I didn’t know you cooked.’

Luca grimaced in a half-smile, some of the intensity in his expression diminishing slightly as he continued whisking. ‘I don’t...I have a very limited repertoire and scrambled eggs is about as haute cuisine as it gets.’

Serena sat up on a stool by the island and tried not to let herself melt too much at seeing Luca in such a domestic setting in worn jeans and a T-shirt, his hair mussed up and a dark growth of stubble on his jaw.

‘Where did you learn?’

He was taking thin strips of bacon now, and placing them under a hot grill. He didn’t look at her. ‘When my mother left, my father let the housekeeper go; he always felt it was an unnecessary expense.’

Serena felt indignation rise. ‘But how did you cope? Did your father cook?’

Luca shook his head. ‘I was at boarding school outside Rio for most of the time, so it was only the holidays when I had to fend for myself.’ His mouth twisted. ‘One of my father’s many mistresses took pity on me when she found me eating dry cereal. She taught me some basics. I liked her—she was one of the nicer ones—but she left.’

More sharply than she’d intended, Serena said, ‘She wasn’t the one who seduced you?’

Luca looked at her, a small smile playing around his hard mouth. ‘No.’

Embarrassed by the surge of jealousy, Serena said, ‘Your father never married again?’

‘No.’

Luca poured some delicious-smelling coffee out of a pot into big mugs, handing her one. Serena bent her head to smell deeply.

‘He learnt his lesson after my mother walked away with a small fortune. She’d come from money in Italy, but by then it was almost all gone.’

Serena thought of his parents not even caring which boy went with who and felt sad. She remarked almost to herself, ‘I can’t imagine how I would have coped if Siena and I had been separated.’

Luca put a plate full of fluffy scrambled eggs and crispy bacon in front of Serena. He looked at her as he settled on his own stool. ‘You’re close, aren’t you?’

Serena nodded, emotional for a second at the thought of her sister and her family. ‘Yes, she saved me.’

Luca’s gaze sharpened. ‘It sounds to me like you saved yourself, as soon as you could.’

Serena shrugged minutely, embarrassed again under Luca’s regard. ‘I guess I did.’ She swallowed some of the delicious food and asked curiously, ‘Is your twin brother like you? Determined to right the wrongs of the world?’

Luca sighed heavily. ‘Max is...complicated. He resented me for a long time because my father insisted on leaving everything to me—even though I tried to give him half when our father died. He was too proud to take it.’

Serena shook her head in disbelief, and was more than touched to know that Luca had been generous enough to do that.

‘He had a tougher time than me—our mother was completely unstable, lurching from rich man to rich man in a bid to feather her nest, and in and out of rehab. Max went from being enrolled in an exclusive Swiss boarding school to living on the streets in Rome...’

Serena’s eyes widened.

‘He pulled himself out of the gutter with little or no help; he wouldn’t accept any from me and he certainly wouldn’t take it from my father. It was only years later, when he’d made his first million, that we could meet on common ground.’

Serena put down her knife and fork. Luca had shown signs of such intransigence and an inability to forgive when she’d first come to Rio, but now she was seeing far deeper into the man and realising he’d had just as much of a complicated background as she had in many respects. And yet he’d emerged without being tainted by the corruption of his father, or by the vagaries of his mother—vagaries that she understood far too well.

For the first time Serena had to concede that perhaps she hadn’t done too badly, considering how easy it would have been to insist on living in a fog, not dealing with reality.

Luca was looking at her with an eyebrow raised. He was waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t heard. She blushed. ‘Sorry. I was a million miles away.’

‘You said when you first got here that you wanted to see Rio?’

Serena nodded, not sure where this was going or what might happen after last night.

‘Well...’

Luca was exhibiting a tiny glimmer of a lack of his usual arrogance and it set Serena’s heart beating fast.

‘It’s the weekend. I’d like to show you Rio.’

The bottom seemed to drop out of Serena’s stomach. She felt ridiculously shy again. Something bubbled up inside her—lightness. Happiness. It was alien enough to take her by surprise.

‘Okay, I’d like that.’