Her jaw line tightened, and her eyes glittered up at him as his strong arms enveloped her.
'I love you,' he said simply.
She sighed then, and looked away.
'I want to marry you,' he whispered into the shell of her ear.
Her head jerked and she stared at him with a startled expression. 'What did you say?'
'I want to marry you,' he repeated.
Her pulse raced. 'But . . . but you don't know anything about me,' she protested in an unsteady voice.
'I know enough.' His voice was sure as he pressed his lips to hers. It was a velvet kiss, not short, not long, somehow almost chaste. He smiled down at her. 'You have not given me a reply. Or perhaps you have, with your kiss?'
'No . . . I mean . . . I don't know anything about you,' she went on helplessly.
'What is there that you need to know?' He tightened his arms even more firmly around her. 'Only that you love me.'
'Other things,' she said weakly. 'Little things.'
He met her gaze then, and seeing her earnestness, chuckled softly. 'Let me see. I am twenty-nine years of age and I have no brothers and no sisters. My parents live in Italy, and they constantly chastise me because they think I am wasting my life flying airplanes and racing cars. I have spent the last few months traveling across America, and now I am returning to Italy. Premier Mussolini has summoned me, and when Il Duce calls, people respond. Even di Fontanesis. It seems he has plans in mind for me.'
'Plans?'
He nodded. 'He wants me to take a commission in our armed forces, which probably means I will have very little time to fly and race, both of which I love with a passion.' He smiled good-humoredly. 'Is there anything I have left out?'
She looked up at him for a long moment, her face serious. 'You're teasing me,' she said.
'Perhaps. But it is all true.'
She took a deep breath, her body trembling. Her mind was swirling in a vortex. It was all doubtless the truth, but those few, threadbare facts were a fraction of the fabric which composed his whole self. Love required mutual compatibility, and that was composed as much of strong bonds as of thousands of idiosyncrasies. What was he like when he was angry? What were his favorite movies? Where had he been to school? What was his favorite color? Was he ambitious?' How could she love someone when all these, and so many other things about him, were a total mystery to her. After all, what did she know about Luigi di Fontanesi?
Next to nothing.
Yes, she knew only one thing. And it was the only thing that mattered.
She wanted him.
She yearned to share all his secrets, craved to discover all the little things about him. Wasn't that love - that endless journey of discovering a person over a period of many years.
She sighed, her mind a swirl of confusion. Her deep- rooted physical fear of him, as well as that paradoxical physical yearning which consumed her . . . the way he seemed able to arouse her passion with a single burning glance . . . the electrical charges that tore into her whenever he touched her - was that love? Or was it merely an overpowering chemical reaction rooted in physical attraction?
No, it must be love, she decided. Why else, when he was near, did she have no control over her emotions? Why else did she let him guide her heart. Her very soul?
'You are very silent,' he said. He grinned down at her warmly, and she drew a deep breath of fear mixed with anticipation.
'Luigi - ' she began, but he swooped down and his lips sought hers with a hunger she had never known. For a moment she struggled, gripping his hard, muscled arms with her fingers, and then she went limp and shut her eyes, losing herself in the heat of his kiss. His hands caressed her, his arms trapped her. She felt her breasts pressed flat against his solid chest as he kissed her even more deeply. His thighs rubbed against hers and she felt the warmth radiating from him, felt too the firm, urgent outline of his penis straining against the fabric of his trousers. And then she let herself go completely. Warm currents of lust lapped at her around the edges, receded, and then came curling in on a tidal wave which swept violently over her. She felt she was drowning helplessly, and she couldn't remember a time when she had ever felt anything sweeter.
He raised his head, and her eyes opened slowly. His gaze and hers lingered and merged, and with one hand he let go of her to stroke the creamy skin of her cheeks, the graceful curve of her neck, raking his fingers through her hair, running his hand softly down the youthful hardness of her breasts.
'I think,' he said between urgent little sucks on her lips, 'that it is time to consummate our love.'
Her eyes flared and she stiffened, but words deserted her.
'I never take no for an answer,' he whispered, 'not when we both need it so much.' He knew how he felt about her, and knew there was no longer any need to wait.
He gripped her more fiercely and kissed her again. His lips moved slowly, taking soft little nibbles out of hers, and then he kissed her deeply, until she was dizzy and lost in his desire, in her own. As though in a dream, she found herself being led off to the plush luxury of the Trianon Suite.
When they reached his suite, he took her by the hand and led her to the bedroom door. She hesitated for a moment, and he raised her hand to his lips and held it there without speaking; words were not necessary. Then he stepped aside, so that she could enter first. For a long moment she looked into the dark bedroom, where only twin pools of light glowed at each side of the bed. Then she gazed at him. His head was tilted, his eyes glowing softly. She took a deep breath and entered the room.
Champagne was already uncorked on the nightstand, the gold-sheathed neck of the bottle sticking out of the silver ice bucket at a jaunty angle. The music of gentle violins wafted from the speakers built into the paneled headboard. The quilted satin coverlet on the big double bed shone with the rich softness of burnished gold.
Her heart skipped a beat, and anger swelled up within her. So he had expected her to spend the night and make love. Why else was there music and champagne? He had planned this, connived it. He had known she would come.
He saw her sudden stiffness and said, 'I always listen to music and drink champagne at bedtime,' he said. 'Other people prefer a brandy or a cognac. I prefer champagne. I find it helps me to sleep.'
She nodded and bowed her head. The anger seeped back out of her as quickly as it had risen. A clock ticked softly. The air smelled salty, and faintly of cologne.
She sensed that he was right behind her. The moment he closed the bedroom door, she felt his hands at her waist. Almost without applying any pressure, he turned her around to face him. She gazed up into his eyes, and the secret of all the little things she yearned to know about him began to be revealed to her. She noticed the slight indentation in the very middle of his under lip. He gazed at her half-open lips, at the slight, charming overbite, the pearly smooth whiteness of her perfect teeth.
She lifted her arms, gently draping them around his neck. And so the night began. They made love with great care.
He is a sorcerer, she thought, and I am under his spell.
His hands were a silken glide along the smooth velvet of her bare arms. She no longer feared what might happen. This was a rite which women have passed through since time immortal, and her primordial instincts guided her.
She watched in rapt fascination as he removed his clothes, enthralled by his economic movements as he slipped out of his shirt and trousers, and folded everything neatly on a chair. His tightly packed muscles rippled and shifted with his every move. His buttocks were small and firm, his hips almost nonexistent. She hadn't realized how slender and lean his body was, or how long it stretched gracefully from waist to shoulders.
He turned to her again, his face alive with a strange animation, his sex strong and erect.
He led her to the bed, then leaned over and snapped down the burnished gold coverlet. As he straightened, she laid her hands on his shoulders, then parted her lips, and he opened his mouth to receive her kiss. Her body trembled
as the last vestiges of her youth fell away, shed by this night. He held her away from him and gently raised her white gown over her head. The silken fabric felt like cool, clinging fingertips lightly massaging her flesh. When she was naked, she stood silently with her hands at her sides, as though waiting for his appraisal. He slid the pins out of her hair, one by one. When she shook her head, the blonde curls bounced lightly down around her face. He seemed pleased, smiling as his fingers flowed through her soft curls and she let her head loll backwards. He pulled her to him then almost roughly, pressing her full breasts against his chest and his rigid penis against her soft belly. She moaned and he lowered her backward onto the bed. She felt the satin coverlet shifting gently under her as his smooth flesh slid atop her own. Moist lips brushed moist lips, and darting tongues playfully sought each other, caught up in a sensuous dance.
He closed his lips on her nipples, and rolled them gently between his teeth. Then he kissed her everywhere, awakening every inch of her body with his tongue, gently teasing her shoulders, elbows, the soft inside of her knees. Her body trembled with pleasure and, no longer able to lie still, she returned his caresses, raking her nails ever so lightly across his buttocks, then taking his small, hard nipples between her own fingers. His lips returned to her breasts and as he bit her gently she felt her nipples swelling and becoming erect. Closing her eyes, she let herself float among the exquisite burst of pain and pleasure, returning each sensation to him as he electrified her.
Slowly he let go of her nipples and kissed her deeply, then turned her on her side, kneading and kissing the smooth velvety skin of her buttocks. He ran his tongue up and down the ridges of her spine so that she cried out and tensed, and then his mouth nuzzled the nape of her neck. She had never felt sensations quite so delicious or so entirely consuming. Every nerve of her body seemed tuned to him as he turned her again and trailed a line of burning kisses down from her neck, between her breasts and over her flat belly. Then slowly, tantalizingly, he bowed his face between her thighs. Without needing to be guided, she rolled her hips up to meet him. His tongue caressed the taut mound, then sought out the very core of her ecstasy, his tongue playing at the velvety flesh until she felt herself mad with desire and arched her entire body in fine agony.
As he rose and prepared to mount her, she swallowed hard and wet her lips. Suddenly she was afraid. She felt his legs rubbing against hers, and then she felt his organ probing between her legs. His penis nestled there, poised, and then as he kissed her deeply she felt a searing pain. She moaned, and he froze, then began to pull out of her.
'No,' she whispered, her eyes glazed over with a loving determination. She shook her head. 'It's alright, Luigi. Don't stop.'
'You are sure?'
She nodded, and then he kissed her again, at the same time slowly but surely thrusting into her. She grabbed a corner of the pillow and bit down as something within her tore and gave. She could feel a dampness seep down her thighs, as he continued to gently slip in and out of her flesh. His pace, at first slow, built steadily until her pain was forgotten and she found herself pressing her hips against him to match his rhythm. He reached under her to clasp her buttocks and press her closer, and then she felt they were truly one, welded together as he reached again and again more deeply into her. Tension filled her body and her breath was coming in short little gasps when she suddenly felt herself leap free of a precipice and fall into a world of thick, exploding pleasure. Wave after wave enveloped her as he buried himself within her and froze, crying out, his whole body taut as the ecstasy throbbed between them.
Then he collapsed on top of her, his breathing raspy, his skin slick with perspiration, their bodies still joined.
When, after a long moment, he lifted himself off her and lay down beside her, she looked away, afraid to meet his eyes.
She felt his firm hand on her chin as he turned her to face him. 'I love you, Charlotte-Anne,' he whispered solemnly, kissing the tip of her nose. 'I must marry you. You must be mine.'
His eyes melted her fears, and her heart began to beat again.
'And you?' he asked softly. 'Do you wish to marry me?'
She smiled tremulously. Her eyes glowed, but her heart was weary. Oh, if it were only so easy! But for another six months, she was still underage. She had promised her mother to attend L'Ecole Catroux, for at least half a year. What if he didn't want to wait that long?
Still, she found herself nodding, and a warm contentment rushed through her. She stared up at the ceiling as he raised the coverlet over them both. The room went dark as he turned out the lights.
His body felt warm against hers. He draped an arm over her, and nuzzled close to her. She felt so safe, so relaxed that sleep wasn't long in coming.
Her last conscious thought was that now she knew, she no longer felt torn.
And suddenly an acting career no longer seemed important at all.
7
The suspense was killing her.
Elizabeth-Anne had never felt so nervous in her entire life. Her ears were ringing with tension, and her mouth was dry. Outwardly, though, she appeared calm, if a little sleepy with indifference. She glanced at Larry, sitting across from her at the white-draped table. He too looked the very essence of languid ease, although she knew that his insides were just as knotted as hers.
She and Larry were closing in for the kill, and neither of them had any way of knowing whether or not the quarry was going to escape.
'It's a game,' Larry had told her forcefully in the yellow- and-black Rolls-Royce on the way to this meeting. 'Just don't forget that. It's just a poker game and, though the stakes are high, forget they're even there. Remember, you win some and you lose some. The only trick is to win more often than you lose.'
But that, she thought now, was easier said than done.
This particular 'poker game' was not taking place in a casino or the smoky back room of a seedy bar. They were seated at a long dining table in the lavish banquet room of the Shelburne Hotel on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-Second Street. Besides the two of them, the other 'players' were four lawyers, two representing Elizabeth-Anne and two representing Milton Shelburne, an accountant for each of them, as well as a representative from each of their respective banks.
Elizabeth-Anne glanced at Milton Shelburne. He was their quarry, and a formidable one. He was tall, with a paunchy stomach that kept him a foot back from the table. His black, olive eyes were shrewd, his thinning dark hair combed back, and his moustache was well-trimmed. He wore a custom-made suit, and heavy gold cufflinks shone from under his pin-striped cuffs. He looked every inch a wealthy and powerful man, and the pungent Havana cigar he was smoking only reinforced that image. Although Elizabeth-Anne realized that he was in all likelihood even more nervous than she or Larry, he did not show it either. In fact, despite the stakes, everyone at the table looked sedate enough for a church social.
Elizabeth-Anne was dying to check the time, but she didn't glance at her wristwatch. She reiterated over and over to herself just how important it was to give the impression that she and Larry believed time was of no consequence. They had to lull Milton Shelburne into a false sense of security, as though there were no pressure to finish the negotiation quickly. If they didn't, Shelburne might get wise and manage to wiggle out of their trap by, somehow, working out a better last-minute deal with one of the other bidders who had since dropped out.
As things stood, it was the most peculiar negotiation Elizabeth-Anne had ever, and would ever, partake in. To begin with, it had come as a totally unexpected, eleventh hour sale, although she was not supposed to know that. She and Larry had been in New Jersey, finally buying the Tourist Court whose purchase she had delayed, along with her wedding, after she'd discovered Charlotte-Anne's affair with Mickey Hoyt. Charlotte-Anne had departed for Europe a week before, and Elizabeth-Anne had finally felt ready again for business. As soon as she had gotten the message that the Shelburne had unexpectedly come on the market, she had insisted they change their plans. Inste
ad of going on to Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia to check on Elizabeth-Anne's hotels there, they had hurriedly returned to New York. After an all night session with her lawyers and accountant, a bleary-eyed Elizabeth-Anne had met with her bankers at nine that morning, then gotten busy and called around town.
And had hit pay dirt.
One of her many contacts had the lowdown on Milton Shelburne, and had given it to her. It was supposed to be a well-kept secret, but the word was that Shelburne was in a very bad state. True, it was the word of only one source, but Elizabeth-Anne had trusted her contact implicitly in the past and it had paid off. So now she felt confident that no matter what impression Shelburne projected, there was no way he could hold out. He had until five o'clock of that very afternoon to come up with a buyer, or else all would be lost.
At a few minutes to five, he would take whatever they offered.
Elizabeth-Anne knew that she had to have the Shelburne Hotel. It was the kind of opportunity that arose only once in a lifetime. The Shelburne was located two blocks north of the Hotel Pierre, and it took up an entire city block. The imposing structure had been designed in 1887 by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, the same man who had given New York the Dakota Apartments and the Plaza Hotel. But nowhere was Mr. Hardenbergh's genius as readily evident as at the Shelburne Hotel. The sprawling lobby could have come straight from a Renaissance palace, with its gracefully arched ceilings and triforium walkways. But it was the huge central courtyard which made the structure so distinctive. Elizabeth-Anne could already picture the fantasy jungle she would create under that soaring ceiling of skylights at the Shelburne, rich with lush palms, splashing fountains, and masses of potted orchids. But the one thing she and most every New Yorker agreed was the building's tour de force were its lofty, majestic twin spires that rose high above the street to scrape the clouds.
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