A Dangerous Solace

by Lucy Ellis

  ‘They were not welcoming,’ Ava said tightly. ‘That’s why I elected to move to a hotel.’

  He had to ask. ‘Where were you staying?’

  Ava dropped her gaze to the base of his throat.

  ‘The Excelsior,’ she said in a tight voice.

  The same hotel he’d picked her up from last month. The same hotel he’d driven past that day on his way to the hospital...

  He couldn’t believe it—the Excelsior!

  ‘I stayed there all day...’ She lifted her eyes to his. ‘Hoping you’d call.’

  She’d hoped he would call?

  ‘How?’ It burst aggressively out of him and he let go of her, because he didn’t trust the strength in his hands. ‘How was I supposed to call?’

  She staggered back as if hit by a blast furnace.

  ‘You didn’t leave a number. But you knew who I was. There was nothing stopping you, Ava.’

  She looked stricken. ‘I know.’

  ‘Not. Good. Enough.’ The words stamped through his brain, made him want to pound something. He held on to the edges of his self-control as a tidal wave of anger swept everything he’d planned for this afternoon out of reach. He hadn’t known until this moment how strong his feelings were.

  Ava had wrapped her arms around herself. But her chin was up and she looked defiant, not scared.

  ‘I know that too,’ she said. ‘But, really, what would have happened? Had you fallen head over heels in love with me? Were we going to spend the rest of our lives together? It was just a night, Luca, and I knew you’d had many just like them. I only had that one. One.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I wanted to take it with me—intact, perfect.’

  ‘Perfect?’ He snarled. ‘What was perfect about it? Casual sex with a guy you didn’t know? Didn’t want to know afterwards?’

  She flinched, her eyes reproachful.

  ‘Oh, and you have never done that? You have never just had sex with a woman you had no intention of seeing again?’

  ‘Si, I have done that.’ He looked into her stormy green eyes, more dark blue than green in this light, in this mood. ‘But I had no intention of doing that with you.’

  Ava’s sharp intake of breath was the only sound, but in his head Gianluca was hearing himself on this subject for the first time.

  The excited voices of a group of children coming up from below had Ava reacting first, looking around as if realising where they were. Without even glancing at him she bolted for a gate to the winding walkway that wound down to the base of the incline.

  He was breathing hard by the time he reached her at the car, but it had nothing to do with the exercise. She had her arms folded and she looked murderous.

  ‘I can’t believe you would lie to me like that,’ she flung at him.

  Fury pumped through his veins. At himself, at his father, at this woman who demanded too much from him.

  ‘I do not lie, I do not cheat, and you—’ he stabbed a finger at her ‘—you do not run from me again!’

  ‘So speaks Prince Benedetti, Prince of—’

  ‘Of all he surveys—si, I got it the first time.’

  He took hold of her elbow and jerked her around, dragging her up against him. The scent of her—vanilla and female skin—filled his senses. But the warm, fragrant softness of her body didn’t remind him of all the times she had cleaved to him naked; it only served to enrage him more.

  She did this to him. She made him crazy and furious and then she sucker-punched him with the fact that she was a woman he would do anything for, and that just left him with nowhere to go.

  He wanted her in ways that weren’t just sexual—ways that would make any single man nervous—and it was beginning to make him pazzo...crazy.

  Maybe he was crazy. Especially now, as he hauled her up and kissed her. He didn’t make it tender or easy or any of the things he’d done with her before. He kissed her with all the wildness of his lust for her, and Ava’s body sprang up against his as if this was what she had been waiting for.

  A lot of things were different in both their lives. It was time to take the gloves off and see what this thing between them was made of.

  He had her up against the car, her skirt worked high on her thighs, and his hand found her hot, wet welcome. She jumped and cried out when he touched her, lifting one leg to his hip, dragging him in against her, rubbing her sensitive inner thigh over his jeans, inviting what was inevitable... He knew right there and then that he had a matter of seconds to make up his mind before his body did it for him. He was a heartbeat away from freeing himself from the purgatory of denim and thrusting inside her.

  He cursed, reefing away from her. They were in the middle of a car park! No one was around, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have company in the next five minutes.

  Ava’s eyes were unfocussed, dark, and her colour was high. Her chest rose and fell as, visibly shaken, she drew her stretchy cardigan around her shoulders. Some of the buttons were loose at the top of her dress but she didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, trying to exert some control on the situation, pressing her into the car. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  But Ava’s head was down, she looked fragile, and although he told himself it was her own fault—she’d created all this—it wasn’t true.

  He was just as responsible as she was for that night, and she hadn’t just run from him—he’d lost her.

  He’d been so caught up in what his family wanted from him he’d let this—Ava—go.

  And maybe that was the price his father had finally exacted—not the stint in the military, or the loss of his football career. The true legacy of being a Benedetti was wanting a woman and not being able to hold on to her. Not the way he wanted to.

  The small square box lay heavy inside his jacket.

  Without speaking another word he put her in the car and took her home.

  * * *

  Ava stripped off her clothes and immersed herself under the water jets in the wet room. She found she couldn’t cry, although the feeling was a pressure in her body, one she couldn’t relieve. As the warm water ran down her back she didn’t make any effort towards washing her hair, which had been her plan, just let the water sluice through it.

  She felt fragmented—as if all the pieces of the Ava she had built up so carefully over the years not only to survive but to flourish had broken apart and she now had to work out which parts went where.

  I had no intention of doing so with you.

  Those words had hurt her. Because they hinted at what she suspected was true—she could have had all this seven years ago and she’d thrown it away because she’d been afraid to reach out for it and have it disappear.

  The only delusion, it seemed, had been her own.

  ‘Ava.’

  He was stripped, bigger than her, muscular, his broad shoulders, narrowing to his lean hips, those long, powerful legs. His expression was intent on her.

  He often shared her shower, but right now she felt too raw, too exposed to be naked in front of him. She turned towards the splashback, feeling trapped.

  She wanted to weep when his hands slid over her hips. As if sex would make everything all right—more likely the emotional turmoil of this afternoon hadn’t affected his attitude to that part of their relationship at all. He was a man—what did she expect? Sensitivity? Cry on another woman’s shoulder for that.

  Yet as he smoothed one hand around her inner thigh and the other cupped her breast, and as he played his mouth hot and teasing over the back of her neck, Ava could feel her body delighting in his touch, eager to experience this yet again.

  She had never thought herself a sexual creature. She had often wondered late at night when Bernard had gone home—she had never let him stay overnight—if she had enhanced that night with Gianluca in her memory. But now she knew better. Memory couldn’t supply the heat of his body, the scent of him on her skin, the hunger of his mouth, the demand, the way he stretched her with his size and his sheer stamina
. Nor could it replicate the gentleness with which he held her afterwards and how supremely female she felt—replete, wanted, loved.

  All illusory, of course. It was just the way you felt after good sex—great sex.

  She’d never had great sex before, so she was bound to get confused.

  Just as her body was confused now, as he turned her in his arms and heat rushed up from her sex and set her whole body alight.

  ‘Gianluca...’ she said on a sigh, her brain trying to assert itself.

  They were toe to toe and his erection nudged her belly.

  He kissed her, his mouth hot, wet under the spray. He tasted so good. Her fingers tried to get purchase on the hard ridges of his shoulders, slipped to his biceps, silk over steel. His physicality did it for her—the hardness of his honed body, so different from her own. His hair-roughened chest felt so good riding against the sensitive tips of her breasts.

  Too easy—too easy to lose herself in this.

  ‘Things have been too intense over the last few weeks,’ he explained as his mouth roamed over her neck, her shoulders, found her nipple. His voice was slurred with lust. ‘Let’s just do this—this works for us, tesoro.’

  Ava wanted to weep as he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

  There was so much to say. But this—for now—would do.

  He thought this would do.

  He picked up a cloth, soaped it up and began to drag it over her until she was wobbly-kneed and leaning back against the tiles. He slid to his knees and found the soft heat between her legs. Ava shoved a fist to her mouth to stifle the scream building inside her, her other hand tangling its fingers in his hair. She pulled hard as she convulsed, and screamed anyway. He picked her up and, dripping water, took her to the bed, rolled her onto her belly and entered her from behind with a swift certainty that had her senses firing again.

  He was impossibly deep inside her and she climaxed with a shocking immediacy.

  His expression as he turned her over was almost feral in its wildness. There was none of the gentleness he was usually so careful to show to her, handling her as if she were somehow less robust than him, easily bruised, needed special consideration.

  Ava was damn well aware she was going to have bruises tomorrow, and she didn’t care.

  He thrust so deeply inside her that she gasped, and then again and again, until there was no room for thought, no doubt, only the tension coiling once more, coming like an earthquake from a long way away.

  Her mind orbited separately from her body as she wrapped her legs around him and clung until she was sobbing out her pleasure. He made a deep, gratified sound and then there was just their bodies joined, her heavy breathing as she lay with her head plastered to his shoulder, his harsh breathing as his chest rose and fell.

  Ava slowly became aware that tension still inhabited her body, despite the most intense orgasm of her life. Feeling unbearably heavy, she lifted herself up and rolled onto her back, gasping for breath as if she’d just run an endurance race.

  She flopped her head to one side and his eyes met hers, still glowing with that intense explosion of desire she’d seen in them as he thrust inside her. It was banked down now, but it was there. Feral, hot, intensely male.

  This works for us. That was what he had said. No soft words, no promises, no mention that she would be going home soon. Just, Things have been too intense...this works for us.

  The tension pulled wire-tight and she knew she had two choices. She could kill him...or she could kill him.

  ‘Again,’ she said.

  * * *

  Hours later, when it was still and dark and the only sound was the cicadas through the open windows, he said slowly, ‘That night we met I had a lot on my mind.’

  He felt her shift but she didn’t say a word.

  ‘My father and I had had an argument the day before. God knows it didn’t seem important at the time.’

  ‘What did you argue about?’ Her voice was soft.

  ‘I had responsibilities and I was trying to evade them.’

  ‘What sort of responsibilities?’

  ‘Look around you, Ava. I’m a Benedetti.’

  Around them was a vast bedchamber. A great empty marble fireplace, lights in sconces, frescos on the wall, heavy bed-hangings. He wondered if she understood the weight of having all this history around your shoulders.

  It wasn’t exactly subtle.

  ‘I was eighteen when I graduated from the military academy and went away to the States to start an Economics degrees at MIT. My father assumed I would be using that degree to work in the family business and he turned a blind eye to my life in the US. I was almost twenty-one when I graduated and was recruited to the professional football league.’

  He scrubbed his jaw where the beard was already growing in.

  ‘Tell me about the soccer. It must have been very glamorous.’

  ‘Sometimes. Mostly it was training and keeping my nose clean.’

  ‘And parties, and girls...’ she trailed off.

  ‘It was a wild time,’ he admitted, not about to lie to her. ‘But for me it was all about the freedom. You can’t know what it was like after all the years of toeing the line.’

  Ava made a soft snorting sound. ‘Oh, I think I can, but go on.’

  ‘We had a confrontation the day before Alessia’s wedding. I told him this was my chance and I wasn’t giving it up. My father said I should be by his side at the meetings with the Agostini Banking Group. It was time I showed him I was serious. I told him they were nothing better than organised criminals, and he struck me. I said things I could never take back. I told him I hated him, that he was weak. I hated him for what he’d done to my mother and that my whole purpose in life was never to be like him.’

  He pulled himself up a little straighter in the bed.

  ‘He told me I was to put on a suit and go to Naples with him for the meeting. I laughed at him and chose instead to go to my cousin’s wedding.’

  ‘Our night,’ she said softly.

  ‘The night of the reception, the night we were together—yes, our night.’

  Now there was only the sound of the cicadas. They both seemed to be holding their breaths.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘He had a massive heart attack. He was only fifty-three.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I never got to take any of it back. He was under tremendous strain. He’d dug himself a hole stretching back twenty years, full of debt and corruption. The entire banking group collapsed, two of his business partners were gaoled, and most of the property was sold to meet the debts.’

  ‘And you joined the military after all,’ was all she said.

  ‘For the honour of my family, for my father. It was what he wanted,’ he said softly. ‘I know it’s hard to understand, and I don’t entirely understand it myself, but ours was once a good name. It represented service to the state, an integrity that could not be compromised, and in two generations that had been destroyed. I wanted to build something from the ashes, and the military seemed as good a place as any to start.’

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t contact you,’ she said slowly. ‘I rang all those numbers you gave me and only one of them, the one to your office, was connected. I guess the message was never passed on.’

  Gianluca stilled. ‘The media went after our family like piranhas. All the numbers were changed. You left a message, cara?’

  ‘A number and my name.’

  Gianluca was silent.

  Ava moistened her lips. ‘That’s why you never came for me.’

  ‘Came for you?’

  ‘When I left that morning I thought you knew who I was.’

  ‘But how, cara? You only gave me your given name, and even that I got wrong.’

  She lifted her head, blinked at him. ‘Wrong?’

  ‘I thought you said Evie.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ She began to roll off the bed.

  He caught her hand. ‘Where are you going?’
/>
  Ava pulled her hand away. She grabbed her silk robe from the chair and pulled it around her nakedness.

  ‘To get a drink.’

  * * *

  Gianluca had a nice range of spirits in his study, but Ava reached straight for the sherry.

  He might not have known her name, but she was the one who’d got everything wrong! Making believe that night was special only to her, holding on to it in her hot little hand as if it belonged to her. Cutting him out of the picture completely.

  Life had taught her to keep her feelings locked up. Her father leaving. The upheaval her mother’s illness had wrought as she and Josh were farmed out to friends and neighbours.

  She remembered all too well as a small girl believing her mother’s assurance that their father would come back to them. As she’d grown older she had learned to rely only on what she could quantify, and she had worked hard to pull herself up out of the poverty cycle their mother’s illness had put them in.

  But that need to guard herself and shred reality of all illusion had done her no favours when it came to her personal relationships. Josh had fled the country to get away from her, she’d wasted two years of her life in a relationship with a man she would never love, and as for her one chance at having something truly magical—she’d destroyed it simply through fear.

  She’d run when she should have stood her ground.

  Cowardly Ava.

  She splashed a little sherry on the sideboard.

  ‘Ava.’ His deep voice cut through the shadows.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in a voice she barely recognised as her own because it was so deep with the weight of emotions she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in so long—perhaps ever. She tried to think of something else to say, but what came out again was, ‘I’m sorry.’

  She almost dropped the glass as he came up to her.

  He took it out of her hand, lifted it to his nose. ‘This won’t do, Ava. Sherry?’

  He put the glass on the sideboard and drew her into his arms.