by Lynne Graham
'You really love that bastard,' Alex murmured flatly.
She covered her cold face with spread fingers, as if she could somehow hold in what she was feeling. She fought to get a grip on herself again.
A pair of determined hands drew her forward and balanced her. With enormous effort, she managed to slide her arms obediently into the jacket which Alex extended.
'What was the crack about the two million?'
Sara's slender length tensed as she shakily tugged her hair out from beneath the collar of her jacket and shook it back out of her way.
'You have the most beautiful hair. I always wanted to see it loose.' Alex's dark eyes rested on the silky black torrent tumbling down to her waist. 'Don't ever get it cut.'
She slowly lifted her head, bewildered green eyes colliding with smouldering gold. It was electrifying. Stunned, she kept on looking at him. 'Marco said... Marco said you'd pay two million pounds for one night with me...'
Alex tautened, dark colour accentuating his hard cheekbones. 'You are even more drunk than I thought you were.'
Her glazed eyes fell from his. 'I've put my foot in my mouth—'
'I intend to put my fist in Marco's.'
'I was only joking.'
Alex pressed her towards the door. 'He wasn't...'
'H-honestly?' she stammered in disbelief.
'You think I'd be here if it wasn't true?'
He guided her out through the buzzing reception area. Her blitzed brain was endeavouring to absorb what he had confirmed. Alex Rossini wanted her. He found her desirable. What would have threatened and appalled her a mere twelve hours earlier now, for some reason, fascinated her. 'You were so kind this afternoon—'
'And I wouldn't be kind without a hidden agenda?'
'No,' she said without even thinking about it.
A chauffeur was standing by the door of a silver limousine. Sara climbed in, slid along the richly upholstered leather seat. Her luxurious surroundings made no impression on her at all. Don't think about Brian, don't think about Brian, she urged herself feverishly. 'Why didn't you...? I mean, you never showed—'
'Sara, I'm not a lovesick teenager. I find you physically very attractive. That is chemistry.'
'Sex.'
'Sex,' Alex agreed drily.
Was that the way Brian wanted Antonia? Did it matter whether it was love or infatuation or simply lust which had motivated him? Would love hurt any more than the way she was already feeling? Had it only been guilt which had made him chase out of the flat in her wake? Stop it...stop it a little voice shrieked inside her. It's over, Sara. Accept it. Alex was right. You could never trust Brian again.
'You think I'm very naive,' Sara muttered, closing out the seething turmoil threatening her again.
'No. I don't think this is the time for this conversation.'
'I don't believe in love any more.' For hadn't Brian done all the right things? Romantic cards, constant phone calls. Last night he had been with her, holding hands, smiling.. .the consummate actor, and she had been the blind fool, for she had noticed nothing different.
'How would you like to sink into an alcoholic stupor and have a nice long sleep?' Alex enquired with unconcealed hope.
'Very, very much,' she whispered painfully.
The silence pulsed with undertones that she didn't understand.
'I really didn't know your feelings went this deep.' A grim laugh splintered from him.
She didn't show her feelings. She had learnt that young. But today she had been brutally wrenched out of her protective shell. 'How could you know?'
'I thought you were more in love with the bridal trappings ... not to mention the wallpaper books, fabric swatches and paint-cards,' Alex enumerated with sardonic bite.
'I wanted a home that was really mine. Easy to mock what you've always had, Alex.' Sara shot him a look of angry intensity that challenged him and then tore her gaze away again, but he stayed etched in her mind's eye. The gleaming black hair, the slashing brows, the hard, arrogant slant of his mouth and nose. Hard—that was the definitive word. He might be possessed of a quite intoxicating masculine beauty but the raw stamp of power and fierce force of will overlaid those spectacular dark good looks like bonded steel.
Her head was pounding sickly. 'I'm not even asking you where we're going...'
'You're safe with me. Tonight you don't have to think for yourself.'
She closed her aching eyes. The one male in the world whom she would never, ever have trusted and yet all of a sudden she instinctively did trust him. Alex Rossini, protector. She ought to have laughed at the idea but instead she fell asleep.
Sara surfaced from a nightmare, shivering and perspiring. She sat up with a dizzy start and found herself in a completely unfamiliar room. The bedside lamps were lit on either side of the wide divan bed. The sheet tangled round her was silk. She lifted an uncertain hand to the thin, strappy nightdress clinging to the damp thrust of her breasts and fell still only when she saw the tall, dark male rising from a chair in the shadows.
'Alex...' she whispered shakily as it all came back in jagged bits and pieces and she breathed in sharply in relief, helplessly reassured by his presence.
'Feel like something to eat?' He sounded so normal, so casual.
'Where am I...? Oh, Lord, to have to ask that,' she muttered between clenched teeth.
'This is my house. I didn't think leaving you alone in the company apartment would be very wise—'
'Your dinner party.'
'Cancelled. Not one of my better ideas.'
From below the screen of her lashes she surveyed him with inescapable fascination. Nothing seemed real—not the day's events, certainly not the extraordinary alteration that had taken place in their relationship within the space of hours. She had not looked before she'd leapt today. He had looked for her, watched over her, kept her safe. Why? Did he want her so much that he was prepared to put up with her as she was now?
'I'll order some food.' i
The door flipped quietly shut in his wake but still she looked to where he had been. She had got blindly, foolishly drunk and Alex Rossini had picked up the pieces. But he hadn't expected her to react that way... What had he expected? Why should he have expected anything when he couldn't have known what would happen to her today? The dinner party—'Not one of my better ideas'. He had talked almost as though the dinner party had been stage-managed in advance for her entertainment, which was crazy. She must have misunderstood him.
She slid out of bed. Her head was still swimming a little. She grimaced at the foul taste in her mouth and was exceedingly grateful to find a bathroom through the other door that she had espied. Her own tousled reflection in the mirror shook her. Peeling off the nightdress, she switched on the shower and stepped into the cubicle, grateful for the warm water and the rich lather of the soap that would wash her clean.
Who had undressed her and put her to bed? Alex? How strange that she shouldn't be plunged into stricken mortification over the idea. Yesterday she would have died a thousand deaths. Today—tonight—she knew that she had already betrayed so much to Alex Rossini that the once slavishly cherished sanctity of her own body no longer seemed worthy of such earth-shattering importance.
And why didn't she face it? She had very probably driven Brian into Antonia's arms! She had refused to sleep with him before they got married. Deaf to his every protest, she had been determined to wait for their wedding night, had smugly believed that the sexual restraint would lend an extra-special meaning to the vows they would take. Only now there wasn't going to be a wedding day... and it was cold comfort to acknowledge that she had saved her virginity but lost the man she loved. Maybe she had got exactly what she deserved. She had put her wretched principles first and where had it got her? She slid back into bed, forcing her cold face into the pillow, raw with the bitter pain of rejection and humiliation. Nothing was ever going to give her her pride back.
She didn't hear the door open; she went rigid when she was gathered up into strong male
arms, and then her nostrils flared on the scent of Alex and she trembled, her arms uncoiling and curving round him very, very slowly. No, I mustn't do this.. .she thought. But it felt so good, so damned good to be held close. The breath shortened in her dry throat. Her fingers splayed centimetre by centimetre across one powerful shoulder and stayed there. She was almost paralysed by her own daring.
The silence thundered in her ears.
He released his breath in a faint hiss and she could feel the savage tension in his taut, muscular frame and the pounding of his accelerated heartbeat against hers. And Sara smiled for the first time in hours with a sense of gratified wonder and curved even closer, her other hand sliding against his silk shirt-front, feeling the heat of his flesh burning through the fine fabric. His response was intoxicating.
'Is this a solo party...or a masquerade?' Alex demanded softly. 'I am not him. You will not close your eyes in my arms and pretend that I am.'
Shocked, she tipped her head back, eyes wide, and met a vibrant gold challenge. 'I know who you are,' she whispered dazedly, yet in his arms, even with her eyes open, she felt as if she was living some fantastic dream.
Lean hands closed gently round her wrists and pushed her back against the pillows. He curved one long-fingered hand to her cheekbone and held her still, raking her bewildered face with grim intensity. 'You want me to want you now,' he said tautly.
It was the truth, although she hadn't seen it for herself. Hectic colour lashed her cheeks beneath that appraisal. 'Yes...'
'Not like this,' Alex swore, his eloquent mouth hardening. 'And not tonight.'
She had been stumbling round like a clown half the day under his gaze. No doubt whatever imagined attraction he had endowed her with had evaporated fast when he had been faced with such pathetic reality. Alex Rossini was accustomed to sophisticated women and none of those experienced ladies would ever have made such a fool of herself in his presence as she had. As he released her a semi-hysterical laugh was torn from her. It came out of nowhere and shook her.
'Don't...' Alex reproved her thickly. 'I want to make love to you very badly. I've wanted you for a long time but I won't take advantage of you when you don't know what you're doing.'
But she did know, for she knew herself far better than he did and she wasn't the type to have an affair with her boss, or the sort of woman who longed to see herself made notorious in newsprint as Alex Rossini's latest bed-partner for a few adventurous weeks. There would be no tomorrow for them; there was only tonight. He couldn't take his eyes off her, she registered in fascination.
'Sara...?' he prompted rawly, his blunt cheekbones overlaid with dark colour and prominent with ferocious tension.
Green eyes gazed back at him in defiant challenge. 'One night... and it won't cost you two million. It won't cost you anything. I don't put a price on myself,' she told him with a bitter edge to her voice because she knew now that once she had put a price on her body and that price had been a wedding ring.
'Cristo...' Alex seethed down at her in sudden incredulous frustration. 'What's come over you that you're talking like this?'
Her jewel-like eyes were relentlessly nailed to his as an unfamiliar feeling of power took her over. 'I want.. .1 want to be wanted tonight...'
'OK...' Alex sprang upright in one driven motion and stared fulminatingly down at her. 'But you remember that this is not how I wanted it to be between us.'
And how had he imagined it would be? The two million for one wild night? Had that been his sexual fantasy? Or a few candlelit dinners, a lot of Italian charm and compliments and so to bed? Alex usually conducted his affairs with style. With flowers, gifts, country weekends, cruises on his fabulous yacht, Sea Spring. This was more honest—much more honest—than either proposition and she did know exactly what she was doing, didn't she...? Didn't she? For an instant Sara had a frightening glimpse of her own emotional turmoil and knew that she was actually on the brink of an abyss, knew that she simply couldn't bear the thought of the long, lonely hours of the night which stretched ahead, knew that Alex's desire was balm to her savaged ego.
But had any woman but her ever wanted Alex Rossini for company rather than physical gratification? She wasn't expecting the latter, wasn't expecting any rolling waves to hit any metaphoric seashores, could be honest enough now to admit to herself that she had never been particularly interested in that aspect of human relations, even with Brian. It had been no sacrifice for her to practise celibacy. All that clumsy, awkward, heavy-breathing stuff had, frankly, left her cold, but she was intelligent enough to accept that other women didn't feel that way. She had often heard her own sex talk unashamedly about their sexual urges and once she had worried that there was something lacking in her because she did not feel the same needs as they apparently did. Then she had come to terms with her own essential coolness in that field.
She heard the shower switch off, the door open again, the sound of his footfalls on the thick carpet and thought, Dear heaven, what am I doing? Am I crazy, am I on the edge of a breakdown to be inviting an in timacy that I don't even want? And then Alex reached for her, pulling her up against him with a long, powerful arm. A stifled gasp of shock escaped her as he drew her into remorseless contact with every lean, hard line of his masculine physique. He rolled lithely over on the bed, taking her with him, and gazed down at her with burning golden eyes.
'You can change your mind,' he told her not quit evenly.
Eyes to drown in, eyes to tempt a saint, so wickedly beautiful in that hard male face that they took her breath away. Sara looked up at him, bereft of words, suddenly hopelessly entrapped by that all-enveloping gaze. She wondered, in a state of complete abstraction, what it would be like to be kissed by him, which was about as far as her craven imagination was inclined to take her.
'I want the lights on... I don't want you to forget... bella mia,' he murmured with a sudden fractured roughness that tingled down her spinal cord and made her shiver. Forget what? she almost asked, but she couldn't make her voice work and it didn't seem important.
He wound his forefinger into a silky strand of her hair and slowly lowered his dark head, almost as if he expected her to shout, No! at the last possible moment, but Sara was wholly entranced. Bella... beautiful, she was savouring dreamily.
And then she found out what his mouth felt like on hers and she froze when his tongue probed between her parted lips. She had never liked that... but his sensual mouth became more insistent, more demanding and she trembled, pulses suddenly racing, heart accelerating madly, and she discovered that she had no resistance, no urge to pull back from that intoxicating pleasure.
Her head swam, a kind of stunned disbelief threatening to demand utterance, but he kissed her breathless and it would have taken restraint to initiate dialogue and she had none at all. She was carried blindly from one seductive kiss to the next, as badly hooked as an addict on heady delight.
Sure fingers moved against the full thrust of her breasts and a surge of such tormenting excitement took her in its grasp that her mind was a complete blank. She couldn't think, indeed she could barely breathe as she felt her own flesh swell, her nipples pinching into tight, prominent buds. He ran his mouth down the extended line of her throat, strung a line of inflaming kisses along her collar-bone, dallied on pulse-points and places she didn't know she had until that moment, and left her weak but with every skin cell alive with quivering, devastating anticipation.
'Look at me...' Alex demanded.
Her lashes flew up on command. She looked, lingered, drowned in smouldering gold. 'Alex,' she mumbled shakily, the fingers of one seeking hand pushing through his thick dark hair, shaping his head in an involuntary caress that also held him fast.
A brilliant smile flashed across his sensual mouth. He ran the tip of his tongue teasingly down the valley between her breasts and she shivered violently. 'Alex,' she said again without the smallest shade of doubt.
He peeled the nightdress out of his determined path, slowly shaped the qu
ivering thrust of her achingly sensitive flesh with expert hands and then imprisoned a throbbing pink nipple in his mouth, suckling hungrily at the tender bud. Her whole body jerked in the surge of scorching heat that he evoked, the sudden, shat tering, first-time pull of nerve-endings awakening to sexual passion taking her over. What remained of her control vanished simultaneously.
She heard a voice moaning, didn't recognise it as her own, her fingers tightly gripping the hot, sleek smoothness of his shoulders as her back arched. Pleasure she had never dreamt of was shooting through her in agonising waves and there was hardly a pause between one peak and the next. She twisted beneath him, couldn't stay still, wanting, needing, her thighs trembling, tight ening on the ache building inside her.
He said something caressing in Italian, and the last thought that she would afterwards recall was that Italian was definitely the language of love in that incredibly rich deep voice of his, and then he skimmed a hand through the damp curls at the base of her taut stomach and the world became a delirious, multicoloured shower of lights behind her lowered eyelids as he discovered the moist heat at the very heart of her. She cried out, gasped, shuddered. The hungry ache fired higher and higher, the strength of her own need biting so deep that it hurt, driving her to the edge of torment and making her plant desperate little kisses over any part of him that she could reach, her tongue tasting him, her teeth grazing him as her slender hips rose pleadingly against his most intimate caresses.
'Wait...' Alex groaned raggedly. A split second after he drew back from her Sara tugged him back again with insistent hands and covered his mouth wildly, feverishly with her own, automatically utilising everything that he had taught her to keep him in the circle of her arms. He stiffened and then with an earthy groan surrendered with raw enthusiasm, his long, muscular length shuddering as his hands settled on her thighs and he moved against her, freeing her swollen lips, gazing down at her with ferocious hunger. 'If this is a dream, I don't ever want to wake up,' he confessed with passionate conviction.
'Alex...' she gasped tautly, her entire quivering body reaching up to his in helpless need, reacting with liquid-honey-enticement to the tantalising, hot, hard probe of his flesh against hers.