‘You have beautiful hair,’ Luca told her, threading his fingers through the long chestnut mane that felt like silk against his skin. ‘And a beautiful body,’ he growled as he trailed his lips down her throat before moving lower to the deep vee between her breasts.
His kisses scalded her skin, and the ache low in her pelvis grew more insistent as he slowly drew the straps of her negligee over her shoulders, peeling the wisp of black lace down so that, inch by heart-jolting inch, he bared her breasts. Athena held her breath as he cupped the pale mounds of firm flesh in his palms. She was not repelled by his touch, she discovered. She liked the feel of his hands caressing her.
‘You are exquisite,’ he said hoarsely.
His eyes blazed with a smouldering intensity and Athena realised that he wasn’t joking—he really did think she was beautiful. He made her feel beautiful, especially when he rubbed his thumb pads over her nipples so that they instantly swelled to hard peaks and he gave a groan of appreciation. Her breasts felt heavy, and the tingling sensation in her nipples seemed to have a direct connection to the spiralling throbbing sensation between her legs.
Driven by instinct, she moved her hips restlessly, and felt a quiver of excitement as he slid his hand over her stomach and ran his fingers along the edge of the black lace knickers.
‘Mia bella Aphrodite...’ Luca stared down at Athena’s creamy, perfect breasts with their rosy tips, and her glorious hair spread like a silken curtain across the pillows, and desire jack-knifed inside him. ‘You should have been named after her—the goddess of beauty and pleasure,’ he said thickly, anticipating the pleasure-filled night he was sure was ahead.
His words penetrated Athena’s mind and the haze of sensual delight Luca had created began to fade as the warm blood in her veins cooled.
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Let me touch you, Aphrodite. Do you wear low-cut tops to tantalise me with a glimpse of your breasts? Have you any idea how much I want to feel your firm, youthful flesh? Your body was designed for sex, and you’re hungry for it, aren’t you?’
She looked up at Luca, but inside her head she heard the sound of her cotton blouse ripping, and her high-pitched cry as she tried to hold the torn material across her breasts. She heard her parents’ friend Peter Fitch’s panting breaths as he forced his hand inside her bra, his strong fingers pinching her flesh, hurting her, making her feel sick with fear when he shoved his other hand between her legs. This was Uncle Peter, whom she had known all her life. He shouldn’t be touching her and saying horrible, disgusting things about what he wanted to do to her.
She looked at Luca but it was Peter Fitch’s face she saw leering at her, sweat on his brow, his eyes glazed.
‘No! Stop!’ Panic ripped through her and she pushed frantically against the male chest leaning over her, while in her mind she fought against the hands ripping her blouse.
But it was Luca’s chest that her hands were splayed flat against, she realised as the images in her head receded and the past turned into the present. It was Luca who was staring at her—not Uncle Peter.
She took a shuddering breath.
‘No?’ Luca drawled.
His voice was deceptively soft, but Athena sensed he was confused and frustrated by her sudden change from being warm and responsive to her curt rejection of him.
‘What happened to make you change your mind?’
It was only natural that he wanted an explanation, she acknowledged. But his cynical tone annoyed her. He spoke as if it had been a foregone conclusion that they would have sex, but that had not been her intention when he had started to kiss her, and if anyone had changed their mind about the rules of their relationship it was him.
She could not tell him the real reason why she had pushed him away. The sexual assault had been humiliating, and although logically she knew it had not been her fault she had never forgotten Peter’s accusation that she had deliberately led him on. The Latin tutor had insisted that she was wanton and eager for sex and that that was why she had worn a blouse that had revealed a hint of cleavage. Perhaps Luca believed that by wearing a sexy negligee she had sent out a message that she was available.
She bit her lip as logic once again pointed out that there was nothing shameful about a single, twenty-five-year-old woman living in the twenty-first century letting it be known that she was sexually available. The problem was her and her hang-ups. She wished she could let go of the past and make love with Luca. But now she was on dangerous ground—because Luca was a playboy and all he wanted was casual sex.
‘When we made our deal you said our marriage would be in name only,’ she reminded him. ‘You also told me there would be no point in falling in love with you.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What does love have to do with what, up until a few minutes ago, you were as keen as me to enjoy? Why is it wrong to take pleasure in sex for no other reason than that we find each other attractive?’
Athena knew it would be pointless to deny his assertion that she was attracted to him after she had initially responded to him so enthusiastically.
‘Sex wasn’t included in the deal we made,’ she muttered. ‘You might be happy to indulge in casual sex, but for me making love is more than simply a physical act—it’s a way of expressing the deep emotion of being in love.’
Having never had sex, she didn’t know how she could be so certain of her feelings; she just knew that, for her, love and the act of making love were inextricably linked.
‘Ah...’ Luca finally understood.
Presumably if he offered to pay Athena more money she would turn back into the sexually responsive woman he’d thought—damn it, he’d known had wanted him as much as he had wanted her. The rubbish she’d spouted about sex needing to be an expression of love was ridiculous.
He still wanted her, he admitted as he stood up and looked at her lying on the bed. She had pulled her nightgown back into place, but her plump-as-peaches breasts were in danger of spilling over their lacy constriction and her pebble-hard nipples were clearly visible beneath the sheer material. Dio, she was small but perfectly formed—a pint-sized goddess.
He frowned as he remembered that the big freeze had happened after he had called her Aphrodite. He had almost thought she had seemed afraid. But afraid of what? Of him...? The idea made him feel uncomfortable. Maybe he had come on to her too strongly, but it hadn’t been all one-sided, he reminded himself. The sexual awareness between them had been electrifying.
She sat up and pushed her hair back from her face. In the lamplight Luca caught the sparkle of tears on her lashes and something kicked in his gut.
‘Athena?’ he said softly.
‘You said you needed a pillow...’ She avoided looking at him as she handed him one.
He hesitated, feeling reluctant to leave her when she was clearly upset. ‘What happened just now? Do you want to talk about it?’
And say what? Athena thought miserably. She felt ashamed—not about the sexual assault, but the fact that she had been unable to deal with what had happened to her when she was eighteen. She wished she could move on. At first when Luca had started to undress her and touch her breasts she had enjoyed his caresses—before ugly memories of the assault by her Latin tutor had intruded and her desire had been replaced with the feeling that she was dirty.
‘Please go,’ she whispered.
She held her breath when he did not move away from the bed, each passing minute stretching her nerves, until he sighed heavily.
‘Goodnight, piccola. Try to get some sleep.’
The snick of the door closing told her she was alone. She wondered what piccola meant.
The unexpected gentleness in Luca’s voice proved to be the last straw for her raw emotions, and she could not hold back her tears.
* * *
In the sitting room, the makeshift
bed Luca had made on the sofa was comfortable enough, but he could not sleep. He wondered how many other bridegrooms had spent their wedding night relegated to the sofa in the honeymoon suite. Not many, he would bet. But this was not a real wedding night—just as his marriage was not real.
He should feel jubilant that he had found a way to meet the terms of his grandmother’s will. And of course he was relieved that he would not have to move Rosalie away from Villa De Rossi. But he had barely given a thought to his position as chairman of De Rossi Enterprises, or the fact that his own design company, DRD, could now continue to use the De Rossi name.
His thoughts centred on his new wife. The muffled sound of crying he could hear from the bedroom tugged at his conscience. He remembered it was less than forty-eight hours since Athena had discovered her fiancé had been unfaithful. Perhaps she was heartbroken that her dreams of marrying Charles Fairfax had been shattered and that she was trapped in a sham marriage with him for a year.
Muttering a curse, Luca took his frustration out on the pillow and thumped it hard, before rolling onto his side and waiting a long time for sleep to come.
* * *
‘Athena?’ Luca knocked on the bedroom door a second time. After what had happened the previous night, when he had walked in and seen her wearing that sexy little negligee that had sent his blood pressure soaring, he wasn’t going to risk entering the room without her permission.
She opened the door and he stared at her in surprise. The pink towelling robe provided by the hotel was at least five sizes too big for her and she looked as soft and sweet as a marshmallow. Without a trace of make-up, and with her glasses perched on her nose, she looked fresh-faced and wholesome. She was the complete opposite of the glamorous socialites Luca usually chose to be his mistresses, and he could not understand the powerful rush of sexual hunger that swept through him.
Last night he had vowed that, apart from having to pretend in public that they could not keep their hands off each other, when they were alone he would keep his hands very much to himself. It was disconcerting to admit that his will power was already being tested.
‘I’ve arranged for some clothes to be sent over to the hotel from the Las Vegas DRD store,’ he told her. ‘You can’t spend another day wearing your wedding dress.’
Athena followed him into the sitting room and looked along the rail of assorted outfits. ‘They’re not really my style,’ she said, holding up a scarlet dress that she could tell would cling to her curvaceous figure. ‘I tend to wear clothes that are less fitted and have a higher neckline.’ And preferably are not such an eye-catching colour, she added silently, thinking of the mainly beige or navy skirts and blouses in her wardrobe in England. She glanced at the price tag on the dress and quickly hung it back on the rail. ‘These are definitely not in my price range.’
Luca’s brows lifted. ‘You’ll soon have a million pounds in the bank. I assumed you planned to spend a substantial amount of it on designer clothes. But I’ll pay for any clothes you choose now.’ He held the red dress against her. ‘This will look fantastic on you. With your colouring you can carry off bold shades.’
‘How do you know it will fit me?’ Athena reluctantly took the dress from him.
‘I have spent my entire adult life dressing women.’ His eyes gleamed wickedly. ‘And undressing them. I made a professional guess as to your size.’ Helped by the fact that he had run his hands over her body last night and memorised the shape of her narrow waist and full breasts, Luca mused.
Athena had thought of another reason why the clothes Luca had chosen wouldn’t be suitable. ‘Tight-fitting dresses and skirts are no good for my line of work. I need to wear things that will allow me to move easily and even to roll around on the floor.’
He looked surprised. ‘I thought you said you didn’t work. What is your job anyway? Circus performer?’
She felt a sudden release from the fierce tension that had seized her when she had opened the door to Luca and been swamped by memories of how he had nearly made love to her last night.
Her lips twitched. ‘I’m a qualified nursery nurse and I work with young children up to the age of about five years old. A lot of the time the job involves getting down on the floor to play with them. The nursery I worked at closed down a couple of months before I’d planned to marry Charlie. I told you—I used the time to go on cookery courses so that I would be able to give sophisticated dinner parties like the wives of his banker friends. Actually, most of the dishes I cooked were a disaster,’ she admitted, thinking of her soufflés that had failed to rise and her mayonnaise that had curdled, whatever she did to it.
‘You won’t need to work while we are married—or after we divorce, if you invest your million pounds wisely.’
‘Of course I’ll work.’
She hesitated, wondering if she should tell Luca of her intention to give the money he was paying her to the orphanage project in India. Charles had been uninterested in her fundraising campaign for the street children of Jaipur, she remembered, and although her parents were supportive, Athena knew that they still wished she would focus more on furthering her career rather than her charity work.
But the orphanage meant a lot to her. She felt she was actually doing something worthwhile that could change the lives of homeless children, and she was afraid Luca would not understand her decision to give such a vast sum of money away to charity.
‘I love being a nursery nurse,’ she told him. ‘I realise it may not be easy to find a job at a nursery in Italy, because I can’t speak the language, but there might be a family that wants to employ an English-speaking nanny.’
She looked again along the rail of clothes and picked out a couple of dresses.
‘I’ll try these on, and I’ll pay for them. You are already paying me a fortune. I won’t allow you to buy my clothes.’
Five minutes later she walked back into the sitting room, feeling painfully self-conscious. The scarlet dress moulded her body like a second skin. ‘It’s too clingy,’ she told Luca, ‘and the shoes are too high.’
Luca swung round from the window and was powerless to prevent his body’s reaction as his gaze encompassed Athena’s hourglass figure shown off perfectly by the fitted dress. She was every red-blooded male’s fantasy! And where had those legs come from? The three-inch stiletto heels accentuated her slim calves—and gave her a delightful wiggle when she walked, he noticed as she came towards him. She had swapped her glasses for contact lenses, and caught her hair up in a loose knot with stray tendrils framing her delicate face.
He swallowed. ‘You look incredible.’
She bit her lip. ‘You don’t think the dress is a bit too...?’
‘Too what?’ He was puzzled by her doubtful expression. Hadn’t she looked in the mirror and seen how gorgeous she was? How had he ever written her off as the plain Howard sister?
‘Too revealing...’ Athena mumbled.
‘You have a beautiful figure and I think you should absolutely show it off.’
Luca silently acknowledged that the last part of that statement was a lie. He didn’t want other men looking at Athena. He had discovered he had caveman tendencies, and would like to lock his wife away where only he could see her. Unfortunately the need to convince the board of De Rossi Enterprises that his marriage was not fake meant that he and Athena must court the attention of the paparazzi. His global fame as a top fashion designer guaranteed that pictures of him and his new bride wearing a sexy red dress would feature in newspapers around the world.
‘I have something else for you.’ He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket.
Athena frowned when he handed her the box. ‘What is it?’
‘An engagement ring. I thought you’d better be seen wearing one at the press conference I’ve arranged for us to give this morning. Open it,’ he bade her.
Her hands shook
as she lifted the lid and revealed an exquisite oval sapphire surrounded by white diamonds. ‘They’re not real stones, are they?’ she choked.
‘Of course they’re real. I didn’t get the ring out of a Christmas cracker.’
‘It must be worth a fortune.’
Athena did not know much about jewellery, but she had seen a similar ring in the exclusive shop in the hotel’s lobby and been astounded by the price tag.
‘I’d rather have a ring from a Christmas cracker.’ She bit her lip. ‘It doesn’t seem right for me to wear this.’
The engagement ring was beautiful, and she felt that it should be a token of love between a couple who were in a genuine relationship—rather than a stage prop to fool the press and ultimately Luca’s great-uncle and the other De Rossi board members that their marriage was real.
‘People will expect me to have given you an engagement ring,’ Luca said as he slid the ring onto her finger.
It fitted perfectly. Athena could not explain why tears blurred her eyes, making the diamonds that encircled the sapphire glisten.
‘I’ll return the ring to you at the end of the year, when our marriage is over,’ she said huskily.
Luca gave her an intent look. ‘It’s yours to keep.’
‘No.’
He recognised the resolute angle of her jaw and shrugged. In truth, he was puzzled. His assumption that Athena was as much of a gold-digger as Giselle did not fit with her refusal to accept anything from him.
He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve arranged the press conference for ten o’clock. You can leave most of the talking to me. I’ll explain that we fell in love at your sister’s wedding in Zenhab, but because we had both promised to marry other people we fought our feelings until we realised that we couldn’t live without one another. Hopefully the story will convince my great-uncle and satisfy fans of romantic fiction,’ he said sardonically.
* * *
Luca was a consummate actor, Athena thought later as she sat next to him at the press conference, and forced herself to smile for the paparazzi who had crowded into the room and jostled for a prime position to take photographs.
A Bride Worth Millions Page 10