by Penny Jordan
‘If you want me to act the doting adoring girlfriend and cling to you like a limpet, then I’m sorry but—’
‘What I want you to do is behave as any intelligent, sophisticated and self-confident woman would—with dignity and grace to which you will add total and absolute loyalty of a type that speaks discreetly rather than loudly of your devotion to me.’
He reached for the bottle of wine and held it out to her, but Leonora shook her head, afraid that if she drank any more wine she might be tempted to tell him just what she thought of the prospect of having to pretend to be devoted to him—either discreetly or loud. Even so, she couldn’t resist saying sweetly, ‘You won’t want me displaying this loyalty by saying that it would be a good idea to skip the socialising and go and have sex instead, then, I take it?’
The look he gave her was hard-edged, with a mixture of warning and contempt.
‘Only the immature believe that sexual vulgarity is attractive. And besides, no woman of mine has ever needed to ask me to take her to bed. You will not speak with, flirt with, dance with or disappear with anyone else. If asked, you will say that we met through your brother, and you will remain charmingly and discreetly vague about the length of time we have known one another, and the nature of our relationship and its past and future, referring anyone who asks about it to me. You will behave towards me as though you are proud to be with me and as though you love me. As an example you will, for instance, place your hand on my arm and look intimately at me, making clear to others that there is no man on this earth you would rather be with who could take my place in your heart and your life.’
‘So I don’t have to do much, then?’ Leonora couldn’t resist saying.
‘You are the one who put your brother’s career at risk.’
‘But you are the one who is blackmailing me into playing a role that is totally abhorrent to me,’ Leonora retaliated. ‘If I did love anyone then it would be a love born of mutual respect and commitment. Not some...simpering, adoring, dutiful hero-worship thing. And if I wanted to give the man I loved a look in public that said I wanted to go to bed with him, then he would be pleased and proud to drop everything to do just that.’
‘That may have been your experience with previous lovers.’
‘My experience is nothing whatsoever to do with you.’ And nor was her lack of it, thank goodness, Leonora acknowledged, recognising that the conversation was beginning to move into a potentially hazardous area.
Somehow she doubted that Alessandro Leopardi was a man who would understand why a woman of her age was as lacking in sexual experience as she was other than to say that such a lack reinforced his already low opinion of her. It couldn’t be easy for him, she decided, having to depend on her to play what was obviously an important role so far as he was concerned when he disliked and despised her so much.
‘If you really want my acting as your besotted but über-discreet love interest to work then you’re going to have to behave publicly as though you want me in that role,’ Leonora pointed out to Alessandro.
‘It will be enough that I have asked you to accompany me.’
For sheer arrogance he really took the prize, thought Leonora in disbelief.
She could hear a bird singing in the courtyard, and she turned to look towards it, commenting, ‘Your garden looks lovely.’
‘But I must warn you it is out of bounds,’ Alessandro informed her. ‘And I must ask you not to go into it. Now, I shall run through everything with you again, just to be sure that everything is understood. Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, you will be taken to acquire a suitable wardrobe for the weekend. Your measurements will be taken and sent to a theatrical costume agency in Milan, which will supply a costume for you to match my own and fly it direct to Sicily. Immediately after lunch we shall leave for Sicily. I shall fly us myself on this occasion. My brother will greet us on our arrival at the castello, and you will be welcomed formally as my current lover.’
‘How are you going to explain my disappearance so immediately after the weekend is over?’ Leonora asked him curiously.
‘Easy. I shall have discovered during the course of the weekend that you were beginning to bore me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Leonora couldn’t resist saying. ‘I’d be in danger of expiring from boredom myself if I was really anything like the dull creature you seem to think so perfect.’
CHAPTER FOUR
IT MIGHT BE midnight but she was still wide awake—and the forbidden garden below her balcony was really too tempting to resist. All the more so because it was forbidden. What harm could it really do for her to go down the stairs and just take a look? None at all. Alessandro was obviously the kind of man who liked making rules for the sake of it, in order to flaunt his power.
The matching strapless top and three-quarter-length bottoms of the leisure suit-cum-sleepwear combo she was wearing were practical and respectable enough for her to go down into the garden, and if Alessandro should happen to see her then so what? He was hardly going to do anything, was he? He needed her compliance over the weekend too much to lock her up in a dungeon, or whatever it was his ancestors had done to those who annoyed or opposed them in any way.
As she negotiated the narrow flight of wrought-iron stairs Leonora mused that it was puzzling that, whilst Alessandro so evidently admired his elder brother and felt grateful to him, at the same time he did not trust him enough to confide in him about his planned deceit—which ostensibly he was carrying out because of his father.
Since they were both middle children, Leonora tried to imagine herself in his position. Piers had never been her protector in quite the same way that Falcon Leopardi appeared to have been Alessandro’s, so that wasn’t quite the same. She did love her brother, though. But she had felt sharply aware of being the only non-partnered one of the three of them the last time they had all been at home together, she reminded herself.
She had reached the garden, but she didn’t move into it, stopping instead to digest the reality of her own admission to herself. That was not the same as what Alessandro was planning to do, though—and anyway, his elder brother did not have a partner. She didn’t know why she was bothering to try to understand what was motivating him, anyway. He didn’t deserve her sympathy.
She wandered into the garden, intrigued by the formality of the long, narrow canal.
‘Arrgghh—’
The sudden shock of spurts of icy-cold water hitting her from every direction had Leonora screeching in shock, trying to dodge out of the way of the jets that were soaking her clothes and her hair with ever-increasing force.
‘I warned you not to come down here.’
A firm hand closed round her wet arm, ruthlessly yanking her away from the canal and through the darkness of the garden to another set of stairs.
Soaking wet, her teeth chattering, Leonora complained, ‘But you didn’t warn me that you’d set up a booby trap for me in case I did.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The water jets are the reason I told you not to use the garden. They were at one time a traditional feature of Renaissance Italian gardens, installed to amuse their owners and soak unsuspecting guests. These are undergoing some restoration work, which has resulted in an inability to turn off the jets whilst new parts are awaited.’
‘If you’d told me all of that in the first place then I’d never have come into the garden.’
‘My warning should have been enough. To anyone other than a woman who insists on behaving like a rebellious child it would have been.’
He was still holding on to her, and Leonora pulled away from him. Her movement activated a security light, which burst into life, illuminating the marble paved area on which they were standing, a statue clinging lovingly to a basket of grapes—and the fact that the shirt which Alessandro had been wearing during dinner was now plastered to his torso and tha
t her own drenching had resulted in her leisurewear turning completely see-through.
Leonora’s panicky squeak combined with her frantic attempt to move back into the shadows brought an audibly impatient exhalation from Alessandro’s grim, downturned mouth.
‘Your modesty is risibly unnecessary,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Even if you were the most desirable woman I had ever met, and I had spent the entire evening anticipating taking you to bed, the sight of you right now would have dampened my ardour even more thoroughly than the water jets have done your clothes. What on earth are you wearing, by the way?’
‘It’s leisure and sleepwear,’ Leonora answered.
‘Appalling. The only thing a woman should ever sleep in is her lover’s arms or her own skin.’
Right now the unpleasantly clammy embrace she was enduring was beginning to make her shiver and long for one of the huge, thick, fluffy towels she had found in her en suite bathroom, Leonora decided.
‘Well, now that we’ve both agreed that we don’t turn one another on, and that a bit of unplanned alfresco sex is out of the question, would you mind telling me the fastest and driest route back to my bedroom?’
By the time she had finished speaking she was shivering so much her teeth had started to chatter.
He, on the other hand, looked predictably arrogantly handsome—the victor surveying the spoils of war with a contemptuous downward glance at her from beneath deliberately dropped eyelids. The light fell cleanly on the pride-honed sculpted flesh of his cheekbones and the hard masculinity of his jaw. A shudder of something she could neither control nor understand jolted through her.
‘This way,’ Alessandro told her, gesturing towards the stairs. ‘It’s a bit of a long way round, but it will be dry.’
The steps went up to a balcony much wider than her own, complete with a table and chairs, and to an open door through which she could see a starkly and magnificently male bedroom, illuminated by a modern chandelier of driftwood and silver.
Leonora looked at Alessandro, and then at the room, and then back at him, resisting the firm pressure of his hand in the small of her back as she hung back a little, and said foolishly, ‘But that’s your bedroom.’
‘Correct. It is also the only way you can get to your own room without going back through the garden.’
He sounded exasperated and irritated, but Leonora had now become distracted by the delicious warmth spreading out through her body from his hand against her back. If she leaned into it the warmth would increase and spread further, reaching right down to her toes, for instance, and up to her...
‘This is all your fault,’ she accused him. And it certainly was—because no one else had ever made her feel that she wanted to soak up the warmth of their touch in such a blatantly sensual way.
‘You were the one who initiated it.’
Stung by his claim, Leonora whipped round and defended herself indignantly.
‘No, I wasn’t. You were the one who touched me. Oh!’
Oh, indeed. It was obvious from Alessandro’s expression that they were at cross purposes, and Leonora’s face flamed as his gaze, which had been fixed grimly on her face, slid down over her body, resting deliberately on the full thrust of her breasts against the wet fabric of her top. Its intensity was somehow, and quite shockingly, causing her nipples to tighten into aching peaks, making her want to wrap her arms protectively around her body to conceal their betrayal.
This really wasn’t a good idea, Alessandro warned himself. She wasn’t his type—and anyway, her temporary role in his life was better remaining strictly business. But her ridiculous comment had caught his sense of humour, and her breasts were absolutely delicious—would be even more so without the top that was clinging to them, covered instead by his hands, their hard, flaunting nipples caressed by his lips and his tongue... What harm could it really do? In fact it could only add authenticity to their roles.
Alessandro was going to touch her, kiss her—do something more than that, perhaps. Leonora panicked and backed into the bedroom.
Alessandro followed her, his hunting instincts aroused.
‘You said you didn’t want me,’ Leonora reminded him as he reached for her and drew her towards him with one lazy movement of his arm.
‘You said you didn’t want me,’ he taunted her, rubbing his nose erotically against her own in a way that sent a jolt with the power of a dozen jet engines surging through her body. His words were a whisper as soft as morning clouds against her lips, as he added meaningfully, ‘And you lied.’
Leonora sucked in her breath, a dozen furious objections on the tip of her tongue. But Alessandro’s tongue was tracing the shape of her mouth, and its intimacy shocked her into a heart-thudding silence. Any thought of doing verbal battle with him had been vanquished. Any thought of doing anything at all was an impossibility, she admitted helplessly as the soft, teasing stroke of the experienced male tongue suddenly became a determined thrust that took advantage of her weakness. She clung on to Alessandro’s shoulders for dear life as the dizzyingly swift ascent of her response to the sensual possession of his kiss took her so high that she felt as though she was suffering from oxygen deprivation.
How could such an argumentative, awkward, irritating woman cling to him as though helpless beneath the sensuality they had ignited? How could she melt into his arms and into his kiss as though they were what she had been born for? And how could he be stupid enough to respond to her reactions like some raw, crass boy who had never known a woman’s arousal before?
Alessandro didn’t know. What he did know, though, was that her response was inciting him to push aside her wet top and then span her narrow ribcage with his hands, deliberately tormenting himself by delaying the moment when he slid them upwards to hold the soft weight of her breasts, splaying his fingers against them, rubbing her nipples with the pads of his thumbs, feeling the jolt of pleasure that rocked through her body and hearing the sharp, almost shocked moan she sobbed against his kiss.
At the sound of her arousal pleasure ricocheted through him. He wanted more—her naked body in his arms, beneath his hands and his lips, her cries of need filling his ears in the hot, secret darkness of his bed. He wanted to know her and enjoy her and fill her with a pleasure and a satisfaction that would be unique within her sexual experience. She had challenged him, and now, having done so, she had totally undermined the hostility he had felt, with the sheer sensuality of her abandoned response to him, like honey after vinegar, stealing from him his resistance to her.
And he must resist, Alessandro recognised. He must resist or face the consequences. There was no place in the purpose for which he was allowing her into his life for any kind of intimacy between them—least of all this kind.
Alessandro could feel the resistance of his body to his thoughts, but he was not a man who allowed physical needs—of any kind—to dominate his actions.
Alessandro had stopped kissing her, Leonora recognised. He had stopped touching her too, and was stepping back from her, leaving her to shiver, bereft of his body heat. The night air touched her damp clothes and naked skin.
‘So,’ Alessandro announced calmly, ‘now that I have indulged your sexual curiosity, perhaps I should remind you of my warning to you earlier about the role I expect you to play? It is a role that does not and will not—ever—require your presence in my bed.’
He had indulged her sexual curiosity? Leonora’s face burned. She wasn’t the one who had kissed him or pushed up his top and touched him. No, but she was the one who had responded to his kiss and quivered with open longing beneath the experienced touch of his hands on her breasts.
‘You were the one who brought me here,’ she told him fiercely.
‘And you were the one who was curious.’
Leonora opened her mouth to deny his accusation, and then closed it again. Could she honestly put her hand on
her heart and say that she had not been curious about what it would be like to be kissed by him, a man so far outside her own circles and way, way outside her personal experience? But surely it was only natural that she should have wondered? Wondering, though, did not mean that she had actually wanted him to kiss her. Had she? Not beforehand, perhaps, but once she had felt the warmth of his breath on her lips and the touch of his hands on her body, hadn’t she wanted more?
‘I’d like to go back to my room, if you could point me in the right direction?’ she told Alessandro, desperate to escape from her own thoughts as well as from him and his too-knowing questions.
Nodding his head, he answered her. ‘This way.’ Striding across the bedroom and then into a large open-plan sitting-room-cum-office, he turned to look at her, frowning before telling her briskly, ‘Wait here.’
What else could she do? She had no idea how to find her way back to her room, and she certainly didn’t fancy wandering all over the apartment dressed as she was, in a still very damp leisure suit.
He wasn’t gone long, returning carrying a large taupe-coloured bath towel, which he tossed towards her saying, ‘You’d better wrap this around you,’ before going to open the door and waiting for her to join him. ‘Follow this corridor until you reach the stairs, then go past them and continue down the next corridor. You room is the first door on your right.’
Thanking him, Leonora hugged the towel around herself and made her escape.
* * *
That was the trouble with women, Alessandro told himself as he returned to the work he had been doing before he had seen Leonora in the garden. They just could not resist giving themselves the ego boost of getting some man—any man, more often than not—hot for them.