by Lynne Graham
‘No-don’t even think of trying to deny it ‘gioia mia. ‘ Lydia felt her skin prickle and flush pink from her chest up over her throat to her face. Chagrin was eating her alive but at the same time tiny sensual aftershocks were still gripping her-and not unpleasantly.
Ready to do anything to escape dialogue on the subject of her total inexperience she closed her eyes and shifted her hips experimentally. She felt amazing. He felt amazing. The pain was gone as though it had never been. On a level where neither pride nor conscience could influence her she was still shamefully eager to explore the pleasure that had beckoned only to be so cruelly snatched away.
‘Lie still’ … Cristiano grated. ‘l’m trying not to hurt you.’
She looked up at him from below her lashes thinking how handsome his lean bronzed features were and how much she ached for him hating that enslavement but equally trapped by it.
‘You won’t hurt me.’
‘I already have.’
‘But please don’t stop.’
A sudden vibrant smile curved his sculpted mouth and with a raw groan of capitulation he sank deeper into her yielding warmth. She caught her breath at the intensity of sensation and trembled. He lifted her to him and moved with fluid insistent rhythm. She gasped out loud for it was bliss sheer bliss to every newly awakened sense. Her heartbeat raced her excitement was unleashed and control abandoned. It was everything she had ever secretly dreamt of and she cried out loud as the spiralling charge of dark sweet pleasure forced her to a wild summit of rapture.
Cocooned in the aftermath of that surfeit of physical pleasure she felt joyful and amazingly alive.
She inhaled the achingly familiar scent of his skin and smiled dizzily. He kissed her with languorous gentleness and she lay contented in the circle of his arms. She adored the silence the intimate feel of his long hot damp body entwined with hers. For the first time in many weeks she was at peace.
He freed her of his weight but continued to study her with intent golden eyes that revealed no trace of emotion. Likewise his expression betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Yet the electric tension that had entered the atmosphere was a powerful indicator of his true frame of mind. Her relaxation and her mood took a swift downturn in response.
‘lt seems’ Cristiano drawled his melodic italian accent unusually thick ‘that we have a lot of talking to do cara mia. l’m not very good at that with women. You’ll have to make allowances. But I need a shower first.’
Lydia was as still as a statue in the giant bed. So that was sex she thought her strained eyes feeling prickly, her throat tight and dry. She had finally found out what all the fuss was about and had not even been disappointed as she had vaguely expected. In fact just minutes ago after their passion she had been feeling incredibly happy. That lowering recollection made her squirm. Even the slightest movement made her aware of a host of little aches and tender places that she would sooner not have been reminded about. She had not expected the stab of pain that had betrayed her inexperience. She had been even less prepared for Cristiano to realise that she was a total fraud in the sexual sophisticate stakes. He had been astonished but he had not laughed she rerlrlindez herself dully. Was that a plus?
Her brow indented. What did it matter what he thought? Why was she even wasting time wondering what he might think? Of what interest or relevance was that to her? There was nothing personal in their arrangement. That horrible contract said all there was to say. There had been no need for Cristiano to warn her that he didn’t make a habit of talking to the women in his life. His lawyers had created a fifty-page contract expressly to enable their fabulously wealthy client to avoid that challenging necessity. She was just bedroom entertainment, and if he was displeased by her sad lack of exciting expertise between the sheets he could dump her right now no questions asked no apologies required. Suddenly it was as though a giant black hole yawned beneath her feet.
No longer able to stand being still she scrambled out of bed. Terribly aware of her nakedness she wondered where her own clothes were. Stowed away by efficient staff in some other bedroom set aside for her use she guessed. For it had been obvious back in London that Cristiano preferred to preserve his own space. Her eyes aching, she snatched up his shirt and pulled it on. She felt as if she was falling apart inside and that maybe only her skin was still holding her together. She rolled up the sleeves once twice and noticed that her hands were shaking.
What was the matter with her? What the heck was the matter with her? Couldn’t she live with the fact that she had been born to be Cristiano Andreotti’s whore? Hadn’t she just willingly given him what she had so effortlessly denied other men? Desperate for fresh air she opened the door on to the stone balcony beyond the windows.
Her memory was serving up an excruciatingly accurate picture of her behaviour while she had modelled the clothes for Cristiano. She pressed her palms to her burning cheeks in an effort to cool them. He had called her a tease and she might not like the label but he had been right on target with that charge. She had gloried in his attention and revelled in every minute of being watched by him. The suggestive buzz in the atmosphere had thrilled her to death.
But, in the aftermath she felt sick with shame and bewilderment.
With him she was another persona woman she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. She didn’t like the way she behaved with him. She hated Cristiano Andreotti she absolutely hated him but when she looked at him when he touched her when he smiled in a certain way, this horrible cringe-making weakness could still surface inside her. She had not known that sexual attraction could be so powerful that it would totally overwhelm her loathing for him. How could that happen? Especially when she knew exactly what sort of a guy he was.
Arrogant, heartless notorious for his lack of emotion. It took a real bastard to give a woman white roses with one hand while with the other he bet fifty grand with his friends on the certainty of bedding her! Desperate to punish herself for her behaviour Lydia made herself relive that moment over a year back, when she had appreciated that the guy she had fallen hopelessly in love with was an unspeakable four letter-word.
Her insistence on a separate bedroom that weekend at his country house had exasperated Cristiano.
‘l’m not into celibacy, and 1 don’t see sex as a reward you give me either. We’re both adults’ he had told her with a silken derision that had cut her to ribbons.
‘So perhaps you should think about whether or not you want to be with me.’
Had he known what it would do to her nerves when he said that? That threat had cast her into despair when she was already feeling unsure of herself. Going to bed with him had felt like an enormous step to her and she had needed to believe that if she slept with him it would actually mean something to him.
Although she’d been very much in love with Cristiano they had still only managed to get together five times in almost two months. He worked impossibly long hours travelled the globe and was a stranger to compromise. Accustomed to others eager to accommodate his needs and wishes Cristiano had been inclined to blame her for the infrequency of their dates.
Even so, she had been terrified of losing him that weekend and had soon crumbled beneath the pressure. At pathetic speed she had decided that it was time to shelve her sexual insecurities and misgivings and capitulate. Ready to share that change of heart with him she’ d tracked him down to the billiards room where he’d been playing a game with his society friends. Knowing that he would hardly thank her for interrupting that all-male gathering, she’d been about to walk away again unseen when she’d heard her name mentioned.
‘So, let’s talk about Lia Powell,’ she had heard Philip Hazlett suggest, and her tummy had lurched in dismay.
‘What about her?’ Cristiano countered calmly.
‘Don’t keep us in suspense. Here we are together again and you can tell all-omitting no sordid detail. There’s fifty grand riding on this and it’ s not the money, it’s the principle. ‘
‘Has the ic
icle finally put out? I can’t believe you’ve strung her along for two months for nothing! ‘ another voice commented.
‘The gossip says the frozen lady is besotted so the odds are that Cristiano is already shagging her senseless.’
Philip Hazlett had loosed a coarse laugh.
‘Betting against the Andreotti ability to score even against such odds wasn’t our cleverest move’
That cruel hilarity echoing in her ears Lydia ran. Her world of dreams was shattered. It was demeaning to accept that she had been on the very brink of winning his bet for him by sharing his bed that same night. At first she planned to confront him, but deeper reflection persuaded her that she wasn’t tough enough to conceal how devastated she was. The discovery that she was the pitifully naive target of a sexual bet laid by rich bored men in need of amusement had almost destroyed her already fragile self-esteem.
Afraid that Cristiano might seek her out in her bedroom she took refuge out in the stone summerhouse in the grounds while an endless party continued through the night in the huge house. It was there that Mort Stevens found her red-eyed and wretched and cold at four in the morning. He was amazingly kind and understanding.
‘You want to save face and l could do with some raunchy headlines to remind my fans that l’m not dead yet we walk out of here together and enjoy the bloody big scandal it will create? It’ll infuriate Andreotti…and what’ s more he’s certain to lose his bet! She wanted so badly to hit back at Cristiano and since he didn’t given a damn about her taking off with Mort was her only option. It also made it unnecessary for her to see Cristiano again.
Unhappily Mort was arrested at the airport for possession of drugs and she was arrested with him. Her most important client dropped her from their advertising campaign and the ironic rumour that Cristiano had dumped her for drug abuse began to do the rounds. By the time her name was finally cleared her career was dead in the water and she was yesterday’ s news.
Drifting back to the present, Lydia shivered a slim fragile figure sheathed in a blue silk shirt that acted as a wonderfully understated foil for her natural beauty. She should have learned her lesson then, she reflected painfully. When she tangled with Cristiano Andreotti she always got badly hurt…
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE shower, Cristiano punched the cold button and stoically withstood the icy jets pounding his hot damp skin. Raking wet black hair from his brow he switched on the heat and leant back against the marble wall.
A virgin ! She had told him so and he hadn’t believed her he conceded his even white teeth gritting on that acknowledgement. Revenge had hit a roadblock a tripwire that led straight to a stick of dynamite capable of blowing his whole life apart. He was in deep shock. Even while he looked for someone to blame he knew that his own bone-deep aggression and arrogance had brought him down.
And just when everything had seemed so perfect that he could taste it. For she challenged and amused him in a way that no other woman had ever contrived to do.
It should have been ideal-a relationship with a business basis that was on his terms. Black and white simple and straightforward with no room for misunderstandings or emotional scenes. He had liked that. He had really liked that. It hadn’t mattered that she was mercenary and untrustworthy. A hunger for money had been the fatal flaw that had led to her downfall and with the background he came from he understood avarice better than most. He had been happy to feed her addiction with money and jewellers and luxury beyond her wildest dreams. He had learnt very young what women expected from him. But now all bets were off on every score because Lydia Powell was not the woman he had believed she was. How could she be? His image of her had been turned on its head and blurred out of recognition by one inescapable truth…
Eighteen months ago, without the slightest suspicion of the fact he had been trying to railroad a virgin into his bed. Women had always eased his hunger so readily, so immediately, that he had been impatient at her reluctance. He grimaced. It was not a pretty picture. But even less could he comprehend her dawn elopement with Mort Stevens. Unless he mused he put those two facts together and read the message that had escaped him at the time when he had still lacked the most important piece of the puzzle. Per Dio how could he have been so slow to make the obvious connection that he now saw? A rush of rare anger energized Cristiano and he snatched up a towel.
Lydia gave a nervous jerk when Cristiano reappeared in the bedroom. His black hair was still spattered with crystalline drops of water. He had paused only long enough to pull on jeans and a black shirt which hung unbuttoned to reveal a hair-roughened brown wedge of lean muscular chest.
She had never seen him so casually dressed before and it unsettled her.
‘I’ve finally worked out what you were up to eighteen months ago’
Cristiano delivered with icy clarity.
A bemused expression stamped her lovely face and she threaded an uncertain hand through the pale tangle of blonde waves tumbling across her brow her frown deep ening. His reference to the time when they had been dating completely disconcerted her.
‘What I was. . up I don’t understand. ‘
Diamond-hard dark eyes gleamed with scorn.
‘You were upping the ante. You decided to play a stupid childish game with me and if you got badly burned you have only yourself to blame for it! ‘
Her soft full mouth fell wide.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Your sudden extraordinary flit from my country home with that ancient creaking rock legend Mort Stevens! ‘
Cristiano derided with a sardonic smile.
‘obviously you were trying to make me jealous.’
Hot chagrined colour flushing her creamy complexion Lydia went rigid angry astonishment holding her still.
‘I don’t believe 1’ m hearing this. Trying to make you jealous?’ she repeated with ringing distaste.
‘Where do you get that crazy idea from’?’
‘It’s the only explanation that makes sense-‘
‘Well it’ s the wrong one! ‘
‘Dio mio, what else could you have been doing with him? I now know that you didn’t sleep with Stevens. There no secret affair. The entire exercise was a manipulative infantile ploy.’
Lydia was getting so mad that she could hardly think straight.
‘There is such a thing as an affair without sex!
she launched back determined not to back down and admit that he had guessed any part of the truth.
‘ls there?’
Cristiano vented a caustic laugh of disagreement.
‘It was all a fake. You holed up in his apartment for a few hours and then he took you to the airport to see him off and to introduce you to the press as his future fiancée. It was to boost his image and his album
sales. it’s so obvious now. I don’t know why I didn’t see it at the time-‘
‘You didn’t see it because that’s not how it was ! ‘
‘At one in the morning you rang my mobile hung up before l could answer and switched off your own phone’
Cristiano recalled.
‘That was your opening move and it was supposed to bring me to you. When it didn’t you had a note delivered to me saying that as things didn’t appear to be shaping up between us you thought it was time for you to move on. That was the real bait-your threat to walk out of my house my moment to appreciate that I was losing you-‘
‘You had already lost me !’
Her luminous blue eyes were bright with tears at his scathing recital of events that night.
‘And I did not have the note delivered to you. 1 left it sitting in my room.’
Cristiano looked unimpressed.
‘You were still in the house when that note was delivered-but l don’t react to that kind of pressure. I decided that if you were that keen to go home and sulk l would let you do it.’
Loathing leapt up so high inside Lydia she was dimly surprised that she did not burst into spontaneous flames.
<
br /> ‘So far you have called me stupid childish and manipulative-‘
‘bella mia. l’m being very restrained in my choice of words.’
As Cristiano spoke he was watching the sunlight lend translucence to his shirt and reveal the provocative outline of her delicate rose-coloured areolae. Almost imperceptibly he tensed striving to cool the instinctive surge of desire that she aroused. perhaps that’s because in retrospect there is something rather pathetic about the little charade you were so determined to play out for my benefit.’
Her hands planted on her slim hips, Lydia slung him an irate glance. ‘Listen to me-there was no charade, no attempt to make you jealous! ‘
Cristiano groaned out loud. ‘He used you for a publicity stunt, and you used him to try and wind me up into offering more than a casual fling. Do you really think you’re the only woman ever to try that on me? Of course l was supposed to chase after you and snatch you back out of his wizened old arms wasn’t 1?
Her face burning hotter than hellfire Lydia snatched up a silver-backed hairbrush lying on the dresser and flung at him.
‘He’s a much nicer guy than you are! ‘
Cristiano sidestepped the flying missile with offensive cool.
‘But it’s me you shagged.’
‘Because—’
Glittering dark golden eyes pinned to her Cristiano took a step closer. He just wanted to drag her into his arms and sink deep into her beautiful pale body again. He had never been so hot for a Woman. ‘Because you want me’.
‘Because we have a contract ‘ she hissed back colliding with his shouldering gaze. Her heartbeat started to race.
‘The enthusiasm with which you’re fulfilling my expectations is almost more than l dared to hope for, ‘gioia mia ‘
Cristiano murmured huskily.
He was so close she trembled, and she attempted to break the spell with words wanting to fight with him to keep temptation at bay.
‘Why can’t you appreciate how much I hate you’?’ Cristiano closed long fingers to her elbows and drew her up against him. She jerked taut but her eyes were as radiant as stars. As his hand splayed to her hip to gather her closer he could feel the tiny little vibrations passing through her slight figure and it gave him a high.