The Italian's Mistress (HQR Presents)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘I want…’ She hesitated. ‘I want…’

  ‘Say it,’ he said. ‘I won’t go any further until you do.’

  She wanted to call his bluff but was too far gone to do so.

  ‘I want you,’ she said. ‘I want you.’

  He lifted her and placed her on the bed, coming down over her with his weight. ‘Then, cara, you shall have me.’

  She clawed at him with greedy fingers, tearing off his swimming trunks to get at his hard, smooth flesh. Her hands shaped him, caressing him until he sucked in a ragged breath with her increasingly bold movements.

  ‘So my little temptress has not forgotten all I taught her,’ he growled as he searched for her warmth with devastating accuracy.

  She gasped as he slid into her with one deep surge of his powerful body, the full weight of him a delicious burden pressing her down…down…

  ‘You are so ready for me,’ he groaned against her mouth, ‘so moist and warm.’

  ‘You don’t play fair, Lucio.’ She whimpered as he sought the delicate pulse between her thighs.

  ‘Do I not?’ He smiled above her mouth. ‘But you will forgive me in the end. You want this too much.’

  She did want it. She wanted it all. She wanted him to pleasure her the way he used to do, but she wanted more. She wanted him to forgive her, to love her in spite of her one mistake…a mistake of which she still had no memory.

  ‘Please…’ She was teetering on the edge, all her muscles straining to get to the highest pinnacle…closer and closer…

  He pushed her over with a deep thrust of his body, her senses instantly singing with the rapturous chorus of release.

  Lucio waited for as long as he dared before he followed her to paradise, his body tensing against hers in shuddering pleasure as each ecstatic expulsion was executed.

  He rolled away and flung a hand across his eyes, his chest moving up and down with his laboured breathing.

  Anna edged away, suddenly embarrassed at how she’d responded to him, clawing at him, almost begging like some sort of cheap little tart who had no principles.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lucio caught her before she leapt off the bed.

  She gave his fingers around her wrist an arctic glare. ‘I need to use the bathroom.’ She raised her eyes to his as she tugged on his hold, ‘Is that all right with you?’

  He let her hand drop and lay back on the pillows, his eyes following her as she stalked stiff-backed to the en suite bathroom. ‘I would advise against sulking, Anna,’ he called after her. ‘Don’t forget, you are the one with the most at stake.’

  She turned around to glare at him. ‘Twist the knife all you like. I’m not afraid of you.’

  He smiled a hateful smile and folded his arms behind his head in a pose of such masculine superiority she wanted to hit him with something. ‘Be afraid, Anna,’ he drawled, his eyes twinkling at her goadingly. ‘Be very afraid.’

  She slammed the bathroom door on him but even when she had the shower running on full she was sure she could still hear the sound of his mocking laughter.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANNA barely slept the night before the morning of Sammy’s operation, tossing and fighting with the bedclothes until she tumbled out of bed with darkened eyes and sallow skin.

  In spite of their physical intimacy, Lucio hadn’t slept with her for a full night, preferring to leave the big bed to sleep elsewhere. Anna fought against acknowledging her disappointment even to herself, much less to him. She simply rolled over each time and pretended to be asleep although, invariably, it was a long time before she managed to relax enough to do so.

  Sammy wasn’t allowed any breakfast so, after taking a couple of sips of a cup of tea she had no stomach for, Lucio led the way out to his car.

  ‘Stop worrying, Anna,’ he chided her gently as he held the door for her. ‘Sammy is going to come out of this like the little champion he is.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’ She bit her lip. ‘He’s so little…it’s such a big operation.

  ‘It’s relatively simple compared to what it was a few years ago,’ he reminded her. ‘Back then it was open chest surgery and weeks, if not months, of rehabilitation. Sammy will be in and out of there before you know it.’

  She wished she could have his confidence.

  Sammy chatted excitedly all the way to the hospital, his sense of importance increasing by the minute by all the attention he was receiving.

  ‘Will you be there when I wake up, Mummy?’ he piped up from his child seat in the back.

  ‘Of course I will, darling.’

  ‘I will be there too, Sammy,’ Lucio reassured him.

  Anna slanted him a glance and muttered in an undertone, ‘Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping.’

  He returned her look. ‘You think I don’t care about him, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s not your child, Lucio. Caring about him won’t make him yours.’

  His fingers on the steering wheel tightened. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

  She turned away from his grim expression, her hands tightening in her lap.

  ‘You throw that in my face once more, Anna, and I will not be answerable to the consequences.’ His voice was a savage undertone.

  There was a strained little voice from the back. ‘Are you and Daddy fighting?’

  Anna threw Lucio a see-what-you’ve-done-now look and clamped her lips together.

  ‘No, poppet,’ Lucio said with a little smile. ‘Mummy and Daddy really do love each other. We just have a little trouble communicating it.’

  ‘What’s commun…comm…that word mean?’ Sammy asked.

  ‘It means understanding where the other person is coming from,’ Lucio explained. ‘It can take years to get it right.’

  Anna tossed her head and stared sightlessly at the view outside.

  Mummy and Daddy love each other, indeed.

  ‘…and now he’s asleep,’ the anaesthetist said as he adjusted the mask over Sammy’s little face. ‘Why don’t you and your husband have a coffee in the parents’ room and we’ll come and see you when we have your little man sorted out.’

  Anna wanted to say, he’s not my husband and nor is Sammy his little man, but the words died in the back of her throat.

  ‘Come on, darling.’ Lucio took her arm and led her from the operating suite.

  Once outside, they stripped off the theatre gear they’d been requested to wear as they accompanied Sammy to theatre.

  ‘He’ll be fine, Anna.’

  She took off her overshoes and tossed them in the bin provided. ‘I can’t help thinking that somehow this is all my fault.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She scrunched up her cap and sent it too in the direction of the bin. ‘I’m being punished for…for…’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘But you’re punishing me,’ she said, looking at him. ‘Making me pay for my sins, you said.’

  He looked uncomfortable under her challenging scrutiny. ‘I was angry. People say all sorts of things when they’re angry.’

  She sat on the only chair and put her head into her hands. ‘I just wish I could turn back the clock…’

  She felt his hand touch the back of her head. ‘We can’t, no matter how much we’d like to.’

  ‘If he dies I will never forgive myself.’

  ‘He won’t die.’

  ‘I won’t forgive myself either way.’

  ‘Stop this, Anna.’

  ‘How can I stop it?’ She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes shadowed with regret. ‘I can’t move forward because I don’t remember what happened.’

  ‘I don’t wish to have this discussion now,’ he said. ‘It’s pointless.’

  ‘But don’t you see how it keeps coming back to this?’ she asked.

  ‘There will be a time when this ceases to be important.’

  Yes, she th
ought dejectedly—when you’ve gone back to Italy to pick up the reins of your own life, leaving me to heartache and a lifetime of loneliness. She chewed the jagged edge of one nail.

  ‘Don’t.’ He pulled her hand away from her mouth, lifting it to inspect it, his long fingers warm against the chill of hers. ‘You used to have such lovely nails.’

  ‘Yes, well, I used to be such a lovely girl back then too, or so you said.’

  He frowned at the bitterness in her tone and dropped her hand. ‘We seal our fate with the choices we make, Anna. There’s no escaping that fact.’

  She bit her lip on her stinging reply. What was the point of arguing with him? She had done the wrong thing, not him. She had betrayed him and had been paying for it ever since.

  ‘Everything went very well.’ The cardiac surgeon took off his theatre cap and smiled at them both. ‘You can see him in Recovery now, but he’ll be sleepy for quite a while yet.’

  Anna leapt to her feet. ‘He’s going to be all right?’

  ‘Of course he is,’ the doctor reassured her. ‘Mind you, I’m glad you brought his surgery forward the way you did. It doesn’t do to wait around in these sorts of cases.’

  Anna stood gazing down at her sleeping son, the various tubes and tapes on his little body tearing at her heartstrings. She owed Lucio so much. He had saved Sammy’s life as surely as the surgeon who’d performed the operation. How would she ever be able to thank him?

  Lucio left her with Sammy to speak with the nursing staff, coming back a few minutes later with a container of juice for her. ‘I thought you might be thirsty.’

  She took the juice with a grateful look. ‘You must have been reading my mind.’

  ‘How is he?’ He took the other chair and leant his arms on his knees.

  ‘Still sleeping.’ She unscrewed the top of the juice and took a sip. ‘He made a murmur once or twice but the nurse said they doped him up to keep him still. He won’t wake for hours.’

  ‘Maybe we should leave and come back in the morning,’ he suggested.

  She swung around to face him. ‘I can’t leave him!’

  ‘Anna…you’re exhausted. You won’t be doing him any good by fainting with exhaustion.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave him.’

  He got to his feet and made his way back to the door. ‘Have it your way, then, but I think you’re going to regret it.’

  ‘There are other things I regret much more,’ she shot back as he opened the door.

  He turned back to look at her for an endless moment. ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ he said, and stepping through closed the door behind him.

  It was a long night.

  Sammy slept through in blissful ignorance of his mother’s lonely vigil by his bedside, a vigil broken occasionally by the visit of one of the nursing staff to check on his condition.

  ‘You look tired,’ a nurse on the graveyard shift observed. ‘Would you like me to find somewhere for you lie down?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘I want to be here in case he wakes up.’

  The nurse put Sammy’s chart back on the wall above his head. ‘I don’t think there’s much likelihood of this young man waking up too soon. Dr Frentalle likes to keep infants quiet until the femoral artery puncture site settles down. Movement can set off a major bleed so it’s best to be conservative in management of the first few hours.’

  ‘I’d like to stay here all the same,’ Anna said, turning back to Sammy’s sleeping form. ‘It gives me time to think.’

  ‘I could do with some of that myself.’ The nurse gave a wry smile. ‘Call us if you need anything.’

  Anna gave her an answering smile and, once the nurse had left, sat and watched Sammy until her eyes started to close and her thoughts drifted back to a night four years ago…

  ‘…Come on, Anna.’ Carlo’s voice was cajoling, ‘Surely you’re not going to refuse a drink with your future brother-in-law?’

  ‘I really don’t think—’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ He smiled a wolf’s smile as he handed her a glass of chilled champagne. ‘I won’t eat you.’

  ‘I didn’t think anything of the—’

  ‘You don’t like me, though, do you, sweet Anna?’ he asked, watching her like a hawk does his next meal.

  ‘You’re Lucio’s brother,’ Anna said, lowering her nervous gaze from the hard glitter of his. ‘You’re family…’

  ‘Family, eh?’ Slightly crooked teeth appeared between full lips stretched into a fabricated smile. ‘I must say, I don’t think of you along the same lines as my sister Giulia.’ His eyes ran over her suggestively. ‘Not the same lines at all.’

  She began to rise. ‘I must go and find Jenny—’

  His hand snaked out and took her arm. ‘What’s the hurry? Don’t you want to stay and talk to your new big brother?’

  ‘I—’ His hold was impossible to throw off and she began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  ‘Your sister is a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ he asked as one of his thick fingers stroked along the fluttering pulse in her wrist.

  Anna didn’t care for the predatory tone in his voice. She’d seen his narrow-eyed gaze on her sister when he thought no one was looking. Jenny was only fifteen and her protected upbringing and her hearing problems left her totally vulnerable to the sort of wiles of someone like Carlo. Anna determined right then and there she would make sure he didn’t get a chance to act on his intimations, even if she had to suffer his company herself.

  ‘I think I will have that champagne after all.’ She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

  His eyes glinted as he handed the glass of bubbling liquid. ‘I knew you wouldn’t say no. Lucio would want me to entertain you in his absence—it’s a matter of family honour, you understand. I am the family head when Lucio is out of the country. What do you call it in Australia? The boss?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She gritted her teeth at his patriarchal arrogance and lifted the champagne to her lips.

  ‘You are a very lucky young woman, Anna,’ he said after she’d taken a couple more sips. ‘You are marrying into one of Italy’s aristocratic dynasties. The Ventressis are known all over the world for their business acumen. You will want for nothing as Lucio’s wife.’

  ‘I’m not marrying him for his money,’ she felt compelled to say.

  One of his dark brows rose in what could only be described as world-weary cynicism. ‘You are going to find it hard to convince most people of that. All women want security. Throughout history women just like you have chosen husbands for that reason alone. It is part of evolution is it not? The survival of the richest?’

  ‘The fittest,’ she corrected him. ‘Survival of the fittest.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he mused. ‘One must indeed be very fit to entertain a young and passionate wife.’

  Anna took another deep sip of her champagne to disguise her increasing discomfiture with the way the conversation was turning.

  ‘I’ve heard you, you know,’ he said.

  Her fingers around the stem of her glass tightened. ‘W…what?’

  His eyes flicked to her breasts and back to her widened eyes. ‘It is fortunate your sister is deaf for she might be a little shocked at her big sister’s hearty response to her fiancé’s attentions, would she not?’

  Anna was too embarrassed to think of a suitable response. He’d heard her and Lucio making love?

  ‘But I am not shocked.’ He smiled. ‘I am delighted for my brother. I am jealous, but then maybe little Jenny will be just like her sister, no?’

  ‘No!’ Anna put the glass down with a snap.

  ‘What is wrong? You don’t think I would be a good lover?’

  ‘No, I mean yes…I—’

  ‘Come now, Anna, don’t be so hard on your new brother. Do you not find me attractive? People always say how Lucio and I are alike. Are you not the least bit interested in whether we are alike in…what shall I say? Other more intimate ways?’

/>   Her head felt strange all of a sudden and her limbs weak.

  ‘I don’t think this is a good—’ She clutched at the edge of the sofa to stop herself tilting towards him.

  ‘What is wrong, little one?’ His voice was all concern.

  ‘Nothing.’ She took a couple of calming breaths. ‘I felt faint, that’s all.’

  ‘It is all this talk of love that is disturbing you. You are missing your lover, no?’

  She blinked away her blurred vision and concentrated on his swimming features. ‘Yes…yes, I miss him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, cara a mio. I will take very great care of you while he is away. Do you need to lie down?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘What about another drink?’

  She shook her head but another glass of champagne was pressed into her hands and she took it, not wanting to offend him.

  ‘You are on edge, Anna,’ he said as she sipped the drink. ‘You need to relax. You are amongst family; you have nothing to fear.’

  She was starting to relax, her shoulders and neck loosening as she took another sip of the delicious champagne.

  ‘Do you…have a girlfriend, Carlo?’ she asked, filling the silence.

  His eyes met hers across the short distance that separated them. ‘I have many girlfriends. I am what you say…a play-toy?’

  She giggled at his mistake. ‘A playboy, Carlo. What you are is a playboy.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ He grinned at her.

  ‘Very definitely a playboy.’ She twirled her glass in one hand as she surveyed his handsome features. ‘Of the very worst sort.’

  He gave her a crestfallen glance. ‘Now I truly am offended.’

  She laughed again. ‘I think it would be nearly impossible to offend someone like you. You are too streetwise.’

  ‘Streetwise? What does that mean?’

  She finished her champagne before she answered. ‘It means you are very familiar with the ways of the world.’

  ‘Ah, but is that not a good thing?’

  She gave a casual shrug of one slim shoulder as he reached to refill her glass. ‘I guess one can never be too rich, Carlo, but one can very definitely be too cynical.’