A Dangerous Solace

by Lucy Ellis

  The bed dipped as he slid in beside her, as at ease with his nakedness as she was not.

  Don’t panic, her good sense told her. It was what she told her junior associates. You have the tools to get out of this. You just need time to process what’s happened and a solution will come to you...

  Oh.

  Ava’s eyes went wide as he encircled her with his arms and splayed his hand in her hair, stroking her, looking at her as if she belonged to him. He began to croon things to her in Italian. Sweet things. She knew they were sweet because of his tone, because of the way his hand smoothed the back of her neck, his lips brushed against her temples. His voice was so deep, yet he spoke so softly, and he touched her as if she were something infinitely precious.

  The saliva built up in the back of her throat and Ava swallowed painfully hard.

  No one had ever treated her like this. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t let this go on. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t her.

  ‘Gianluca?’ Her voice was all scratchy, she didn’t even sound like herself.

  ‘Luca—I want you to call me Luca, innamorata.’ He touched her ear with his lips and an involuntary little whimpering sound escaped her. She felt him smile.

  ‘Is that the drill?’ she forced out, her heart just about hammering out of her chest. ‘Once you get a woman into bed she gets access to the secret name?’

  If she’d thought she could cloak her anxieties in a joke it had backfired.

  It came out too snarky, too aggressive. But how could it emerge as anything else when all she was feeling was exposed and, under that, soft and fuzzy...and terribly, terribly vulnerable? If this man dropped her she could break into oh so many pieces.

  He said something under his breath in Italian. She knew it was a curse because she could feel the freeze shoot through his bigger body before so warm and enveloping against her own. He eased himself up abruptly onto his elbow and she was instantly thrown into the even more vulnerable position of having to gaze up at him and having nowhere to go.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  His tone brooked no argument, and the man who had whispered sweet nothings to her was suddenly the man she had insulted.

  Like a flash of light in a dark room she understood her caustic comments had hurt his pride. His very old-world Latin machismo, which made him seem impenetrable, was also what made him vulnerable to her attacks. She didn’t mean to attack him. She only wanted to protect herself...

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘You speak of other people while you are in my bed. You speak of me as if I am some sort of predator.’

  His features were pulled taut and Ava could see she had drawn blood.

  ‘I don’t think that. I—I just wanted us to be...honest with each other. You’re acting as if—’

  ‘As if what, Ava?’

  ‘As if I mean something to you—and how can I when we’ve only known one another a few days?’ She brought out the big guns. ‘What about Donatella?’

  It took Gianluca a moment to work out who the hell Donatella was, and when he did it made even less sense. Apparently it made sense to Ava. She was glaring at him. He made a manful effort not to laugh.

  ‘Ava, I have never been intimate with Donatella. She was a—how you say?—a prop.’

  ‘Prop?’

  ‘Some women—they go out, they take a man with them to hold their handbag, si?’

  Ava looked at him suspiciously. ‘I don’t know any women like that.’

  ‘Donatella carried my drink,’ he supplied dryly.

  ‘You made a woman follow you round a nightclub carrying your drink?’

  ‘It’s a euphemism, Ava. I did not want to be hassled by anyone, so I chose the lesser of the evils—Donatella.’

  Ava was clearly considering this. Gianluca watched several emotions cross her face. Felt himself relax as she sank back onto the pillow.

  At last. Progress.

  ‘You must think I’m a complete idiot!’

  She shot up out of the bed, dragging the sheet with her, but he wasn’t having that. He grabbed it with one hand and she was left naked beside the bed. She did what he thought of as the classic pose—one arm strapped across her breasts, the other across the sweet little mop of curls at the juncture of her thighs—and backed away from the bed.

  ‘Cara...’ he said, making a placatory gesture.

  ‘Don’t you darling me, you liar!’

  He stiffened and toyed with the idea of just picking her up and rolling her back into bed. But he told himself she was overwrought, and that if he wasn’t careful she might hurt herself. Or him. He tried not to smile as he bounded out of bed.

  She had backed herself into the wall, but not before spotting her robe. She had it on in a trice.

  ‘How stupid do you think I am?’ she snapped, securing the belt with a violent yank. ‘She was beautiful. She was wearing nothing.’ Her voice trembled. ‘She wasn’t a handbag!’

  ‘Prop,’ Gianluca amended under his breath, advancing cautiously on her.

  ‘She wasn’t that either. Is that how you’re going to describe me to the next fool woman you kidnap and hold hostage? A prop?’

  Ava was holding herself so rigidly it was a shock to her system when he threw back his head and laughed. The rich, raw, edgy sound of it hemmed her in. They stood much as they had when they begun this dance earlier.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Ava, if I don’t laugh I’ll throttle you.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, more to herself than to him.

  ‘I know, cara.’ He rested one hand on the wall beside her head. Big, naked, magnificent, he made her feel entirely too girly for her own comfort. He was looking at her as if she were something he was making alterations to, and perhaps he was—cutting her right out of the picture.

  Ava braced herself. This was the fall-out of giving in to the fantasy, of letting one’s emotions rule. It always brought about bad things. This was what she had lectured Josh about—leading with his head, not his heart, taking only considered risks, not coming to Italy and marrying an Italian girl from an old family and ruining his life.

  But who had ruined her life?

  She was a woman who had thrown it all away seven years ago with this man, and up until a blissful five minutes ago she had been lying in his arms—only to find herself once more in the process of dismantling the tiny scrap of wonderful she’d scraped back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I shouldn’t have lashed out at you.’

  Gianluca wasn’t really listening. He was distracted. No man would blame him. He could feel her warmth, smell the vanilla scent on her skin. He knew intimately now the softness of that skin. All women had soft skin—it was what made them wonderfully different—but with Ava it felt...she felt...softer...more pliant.

  She just felt better.

  He was so hard it was a special kind of torture.

  He’d come back to the room and his idea had been to pull on soft old jeans and a T-shirt and do some work while he waited for Ava to wake up. He’d planned to order food. They’d eat, talk. He’d apologise for bringing her here without consulting her, she’d apologise for being a shrew and foolishly reckless, and perhaps something could be salvaged from the wreckage that was today. Perhaps he had been marginally high-handed with her, but he wasn’t accustomed to women who made his life difficult.

  Finding her curled up, looking so sexy-sweet in her skimpy shorts, he’d lost interest in talking. A hitherto unknown part of him had wanted to wake her up and shake her, tell her she had all the sense of a deer in headlights when it came to looking after herself with men.

  She shouldn’t have been curled up in some baby-doll outfit like Dorothy in a sea of poppies. She should have insisted on separate rooms. She should have shifted to another hotel. She should be halfway back to Rome! She sure as hell shouldn’t trust him! If she were one of his sisters...

  Which was
when he’d shrugged off his sports coat, removed his watch and phone, drawn over her the quilt folded at the end of the bed to keep her warm.

  He’d stood there, looking down at his handiwork, and then asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing.

  When no answer had been forthcoming he’d hit the shower.

  Right now he felt the same way he had when she’d uttered those immortal words, ‘Maybe this isn’t a good idea.’ Had he really sprinted from the hotel, across the road, and grabbed enough protection to keep the birth rate down on a small island?

  All he’d known was that he needed a chemist, needed condoms—needed to make this right for her.

  It had only been when he saw her, wrapped up in that robe, looking fearful, that he’d recognised he needed to slow this down, coax her back out into the open. It had almost killed him, but taking the time to dismantle Ava’s protective mechanism had possibly been one of the most erotic encounters of his life.

  He wasn’t going to make any sudden moves now.

  ‘Will you answer a question?’ He made sure he held her eyes seriously, hard as it was not to let his gaze drift down.

  She was looking up at him, all her anxiety stamped on her expression.

  ‘I guess I don’t have a choice,’ she said begrudgingly.

  He almost smiled. ‘Ava, you’ve always had a choice. You continually exercise it. You exercised it right into our bed, and now you want to pretend I have once more taken advantage of you when we both know this was what you wanted from the moment I offered you my services.’

  ‘Services?’

  She gave a start as he leaned down and brushed his mouth against her ear, ‘Gigolo, escort, servicer of women.’

  He drew back a little, enough to see that her lashes had drifted down, her lush mouth was quivering. She looked softened, delicious.

  ‘Is that the fantasy you want?’ he murmured over those full lips. ‘Do you want me to be those things for you? Because I will do it, Ava. I’ll be whatever you want me to be in this bed. But don’t ask me not to be tender with you—don’t ask me not to be passionate, to pretend this isn’t important to you.’

  ‘How do you know it’s important to me?’ Her voice was husky, her eyes downcast.

  ‘Because...’ he bent a finger around the edge of the robe ‘...my little porcupine...’ he nudged it down until the shadowy cleft between her breasts came into view ‘...otherwise you wouldn’t be curled up so tight right now all I can see is bristles. Ah, look—there it is.’ He dragged the robe open and spread his hand over her stomach. ‘Your velvety little belly,’ he said, and felt the muscles in her stomach contract beneath his hand.

  Ava felt the muscles in her pelvis do a similar dance, but if her insides hadn’t been trembling from his declaration of intent—to be tender, to be passionate—she would never have nestled a little closer. Any awkwardness she felt was far outweighed by unhappiness with her own behaviour and trying to make sense of his. This man had not been careless with her feelings, she marvelled. He had, in fact, been careful and incredibly tender.

  ‘I told you—a porcupine is a rodent,’ she mumbled, moaning as he pressed his mouth softly, coaxingly to hers.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’ He nibbled on her bottom lip.

  Ava suspected she might pass out from anticipation.

  ‘Ask me, then.’ Her voice was full of longing.

  ‘Why did you come to Rico’s the other night?’

  ‘I wanted to see if you’d changed.’ She hesitated before throwing herself over the cliff. ‘I wanted to spend time with you.’

  He didn’t seem surprised. He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Si, and why do you think I brought you here, hmm?’

  Could it be that simple with a man as complicated as this?

  Once again Gianluca Benedetti had taken her assumptions and sent them scattering like marbles.

  She didn’t have the energy to go chasing after them.

  Instead she put her hands on his shoulders as he kissed the soft seam of her mouth, parted her lips. He stroked his tongue along the inner curve of her bottom lip. He seduced her mouth. He was the most beautiful kisser and when he was inside her he made her see stars.

  Ava gave a little sigh and heard the rumble of a chuckle in his chest.

  Yes, she was a pushover—and he knew he had her in the palm of his hand.

  * * *

  They emerged into the sunny street in front of the hotel around noon the next day.

  Gianluca, showered and shaved and completely energised, looked incredible in a simple pair of dark trousers and one of those shirts he wore that seemed to be tailored to his powerful body.

  He held her hand and walked right past the posse of pretty girls who yesterday had taken up so much of his time. Ava glanced at them and hoped her little smile wasn’t too smug.

  As he moved ahead of her to open the car door she caught her reflection in the mirrored surface of the window and knew beyond doubt that she had to purchase some new clothes.

  Gianluca had said nothing about her trousers this morning, and she’d picked her girliest top—a short-sleeved cotton blouse with a scooped neckline. But if clothes maketh the woman they didn’t reflect at all how she was feeling.

  The shiny black Italian sports car shot out into the traffic, with Gianluca driving with the insouciance for which the Italians were famous—one hand on the wheel, the other playing with her hair, as if he couldn’t stop touching her.

  Ava’s heart was pounding like a bird gone crazy in its cage.

  She wanted to tell him how different this was for her—the Amalfi coast, driving in a sports car with her lover...her lover... Nobody back home would believe it.

  A flutter of nerves swept through her. There were so many things that could go wrong.

  Heck, she didn’t believe this—not after the long hours she’d worked back in Sydney, the routine that had become her safety zone in an unsafe world. How had she managed to break out of that?

  But she didn’t feel unsafe with Gianluca. As they drove in this mad way past scooters and pedestrians and other gazillion-dollar sports cars her sense of unreality was Technicolor, but the command of the man beside her, not only over the car but his environment, was reassuring.

  Gianluca Benedetti...maybe not so much playboy of the western world...maybe not at all... She looked at him with soft eyes. Maybe the man to get a crazy lady out of a fix.

  ‘If you keep looking at me like that, tesoro,’ he growled, ‘we won’t be getting where we’re going.’

  ‘And where are we going?’

  ‘I thought a little touristing around the coast. There are some pretty sights I’d like to show you.’

  ‘I’d like that too, but—’

  How did she broach this? I need to stop at some boutiques because all the clothes in my suitcase look like I’ve just stepped out of a business-is-us catalogue!

  ‘But...tesoro?’

  ‘Can I have an hour? To myself?’

  He gave her a curious look. ‘You will not run off?’ he asked, quite seriously.

  ‘No!’ Ava shot back just as seriously. ‘Why would you think that?’

  He grinned. ‘Just checking.’

  She relaxed and felt foolish. She wasn’t used to this kind of banter, although she could quickly grow used to it. Her heart felt light and fluttery in her chest, as if she’d run a race and stopped and her heart didn’t know it yet.

  ‘Where should I drop you? When should I pick you up?’

  Ava bit her lip. She wanted clothes—except she didn’t know where to begin looking.

  ‘Ava?’

  She scanned the road, spotted some well-dressed women coming out of a shop with bags. Bingo!

  ‘Anywhere here,’ she instructed nonchalantly.

  He grinned at her, as if she hadn’t fooled him in the least, and double-parked.

  ‘Are you sure I’m not wanted?’

  He was, but she needed to d
o this herself. How embarrassing to ask a man to shop for her because she didn’t have the first clue about what really suited her.

  She had no doubt Gianluca was an expert, but the thought of him with a bevy of other far more fashion-conscious women before her wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on.

  ‘Come back in an hour.’ That should give her enough time. She hoped.

  As the sports car shot off once more into the traffic she felt a pang of regret, but she needed to do this for herself.

  The stores seemed uniformly ordinary—and then she entered a boutique where instantly she saw what she was looking for. A long pale blue silk dress with an overlay of gossamer material embroidered with tiny blue forget-me-nots. As a little girl she had missed out on having a mother who liked to dress her up. She’d grown up in jeans and T-shirts, a real tomboy, not through preference but necessity.

  This was the sort of dress she’d always thought was too girly for her even as she’d admired the look on other women.

  Ignoring the price tags, Ava finally walked out with three bags, laden with her purchases. She was feeling better about her body and it gave her more confidence, trying on clothes that suited her. She made a few more purchases down the road, ditching her trousers for good and feeling much freer in a pair of white capris.

  She spotted the sports car in the traffic and waved a bag at him.

  Even an hour away from him and she felt her heart expand when she dived into the car. He was looking at her as if checking she was in one piece.

  ‘Shopping? I should have guessed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked uneasily as she strapped herself in.

  ‘Women and shopping.’

  She relaxed. ‘Oh, yes. That old chestnut. You know, studies have shown—’

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  ‘Oh.’ She gazed back at him. ‘That was nice.’

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, and he wasn’t looking at her new capris.

  ‘I just picked up a few things more suited to the coast,’ she wittered.

  He was looking at her and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. A horn blasted at them from the road but Gianluca continued to stare.

  ‘What?’ she asked self-consciously.