The Wedding Night Debt: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella)

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Have you been thinking about me?’ Dio asked lazily. ‘Because I’ve been thinking about you.’ And marvelling that it had taken them this long to get where they were now, but then again the whole question of the penniless divorce had driven the situation.

  He walked slowly towards her and she gave a little nervous squeak. ‘I thought we were going to...er...well, when we were away...’

  ‘Why stand on ceremony? The honeymoon’s been cut a little short by my unexpected meeting in New York anyway, so fair’s fair, wouldn’t you say? I don’t want to be short-changed on time. If I’m to pay for two weeks, then I want my two weeks, or as good as...’

  The last thing Lucy was expecting was to be swept off her feet. Literally. The breath whooshed out of her body as she was carried out of the kitchen. She felt the thud as he nudged the door open with his foot and then she was bouncing against him, heart racing as he took her up the stairs.

  To his bedroom, which she had been into many times before. It was a marvel of masculinity. The colours were deep and rich, the furniture bold and dark with clean lines. Even with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she could visualise it. Once, when he had gone away, leaving the house a lot earlier to catch a transatlantic flight, she had gone into the bedroom to air it before the cleaner came and had remained frozen to the spot at the sight of the rumpled bed, still bearing the impression of where he had been lying. She could remember tentatively touching it and then springing back because it had still held the lingering warmth of his body.

  It had shaken her more than she had thought possible.

  He dumped her on the bed and then stood back, arms folded, for once lost as to what his next move might be.

  He had been fired up with confidence downstairs, when he had hoisted her into his arms like a true caveman and brought her to his bedroom. But now...

  She looked unimaginably beautiful and unimaginably fragile, her eyes wide and apprehensive, making him feel like a great, hulking thief who had snatched her from her bed and carried her off to his cave so that he could have his wicked way.

  Dio raked his fingers through his hair and moved to the window where he stood for a few seconds, looking outside, before snapping the wooden shutters closed, blocking out the street light.

  Lucy stared at him from under her lashes. Her heart was still pounding and the blood was still rushing through her veins, hot and fierce. She wanted him so badly right now that she felt like she might die of longing, yet he was just standing there, looking at her with brooding stillness.

  Maybe he had come to his senses, she thought.

  Maybe he had realised that you couldn’t just bargain with someone’s fate the way he had with hers. Maybe he had seen the light and come to the conclusion that to blackmail someone into sleeping with you just wasn’t on.

  And if that was the case then why wasn’t she feeling happier? Why wasn’t she sitting up and making a case for having her divorce without a bunch of stupid stipulations? Why wasn’t she striking while the iron was hot, trying to locate Mr Decent who must surely be there hiding behind Mr Caveman?

  She wasn’t feeling happier because she wanted him, simple as that.

  Maybe if he had never mentioned sleeping with her, had never looked at her with those amazing, lazy, sexy eyes, she would have walked away from their marriage with her head held high and all her principles burning a hole inside her.

  But he had opened a door and she wanted that door to remain open. She wanted to enter the unexplored room and see what was there...

  She stirred on the bed then pushed herself backwards so that she was propped against the pillows, which she arranged under her, her vibrant blonde hair tangled around her flushed face.

  Dio was her husband yet she felt as tongue-tied as a teenager on her first date with the cutest boy in class.

  ‘Why are you just standing there?’ she challenged, dry mouthed. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted? To carry me up here so that you could get what you paid for?’

  Dio flushed darkly and scowled. Was that how he had sounded? Like a thug?

  ‘Nearly a year and a half with no sex, Lucy. Are you telling me that I got a fair deal when I married you?’ His voice was harsher than he had intended and he saw her flinch.

  ‘Maybe neither of us got much of a fair deal.’

  Personally, Dio thought the deal she had ended up with had been a hell of a lot better than his.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘You brought me up to your room for sex and here I am. You’re getting what you paid for!’ Brave words, but the way she cleared her throat alerted Dio to the fact that she might be talking the talk, but that was where it probably ended.

  It seemed just one more thing that wasn’t fitting into the neat slot he had shoved her into for the past year and a half.

  A cold, opportunistic woman would surely not have been able to replicate the nervous wariness he could see beneath the brave statement of intent?

  Her fingers wouldn’t be digging into her arms to stop them from trembling...

  ‘I find that I’m not as much into self-sacrificing martyrs as I had imagined,’ Dio said, pushing himself away from the window ledge against which he had been leaning.

  ‘Even the ones you forked out good money to buy?’

  ‘You were never that cynical, Lucy.’ He had a vivid image of her laughing at him with genuine, girlish innocence, the sort of girlish innocence that had made him lose his mind. She might not have been quite as innocent as she had pretended but she certainly hadn’t been as sharp-tongued as she was now.

  ‘I grew up,’ she said with painful honesty.

  ‘You can run along,’ he told her, reaching to the top button of his shirt. ‘I’ve had a long flight. I’m tired. I’m going to have a shower and hit the sack.’

  She didn’t want him to.

  She could play the passive victim and scuttle off but she wasn’t going to do that. She felt as though she had spent the past year or so playing the passive victim—had spent practically her whole life playing the passive victim—and now would be her only window in which to take control of a situation.

  ‘What if I decide that I don’t want to run along?’ she asked with considerable daring.

  Dio stilled, hand still poised to remove his shirt. Her chin was mutinously jutting out and he smiled, reluctantly amused by the expression on her face: stubborn, holding her breath, eyes squeezed tightly shut..

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You know what I’m saying.’

  ‘I like things to be spelt out in black and white. No room for error then...’

  ‘I’ve wondered, okay?’

  ‘Wondered what?’ He was standing right by the bed now, looking down at her with a smile of male satisfaction.

  ‘What it would be like...you know...? With you...’

  ‘Even though you’ve spent many months being an ice-queen?’

  ‘I’ve been very friendly with all your clients.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve been longing for a few of those smiles to be directed my way,’ Dio murmured. He slowly began unbuttoning his shirt, watching her watching him as his brown chest was exposed inch by inch.

  Lucy was riveted. How long had she wanted this? How had this insane desire been so successfully hidden under layers of resentment and simmering anger, with a large dose of self-pity thrown in for good measure?

  She watched as he tugged the shirt out from the waistband of his trousers, drew in a deep breath and held it as he shrugged off the shirt altogether, tossing it casually on the ground.

  ‘So, you’re curious...’ He felt as though he was suddenly walking on clouds. It was an extremely uplifting sensation. In fact, when it came to the feel-good factor, this was as good as it got. Her eyes were huge and, yes, curious. He was bulging in his
trousers, thick and hard and desperate for a release, which he was going to take his time getting to.

  Drugged by the sensational vision of him half-naked...her bronzed god of a soon-to-be ex-husband... Lucy was deprived of speech. She nodded and didn’t even bother trying to tear her eyes away from his glorious body.

  ‘I confess I’m curious too,’ Dio admitted, basking in her undiluted fascination with his body. ‘So it’s time for you to return the favour...’

  ‘Huh?’ Lucy blinked.

  ‘One good turn deserves another,’ Dio said drily. ‘Or, in this case, one semi-striptease deserves another.’

  ‘You want me to...?’

  ‘We’re man and wife.’ He gestured broadly. ‘A little bit of nudity should be as nothing between us.’

  ‘I hate it when you do that,’ she complained. He grinned and that grin erased all the forbidding, harsh lines of his beautiful face; made him seem almost boyish.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Oh, don’t play the innocent with me.’ But she smiled shyly and sat up. Her fingers were shaking; her hands were shaking. He had no idea that she had never done anything like this in her life before. Okay, at university there had been some good-natured fumbling with the two boys she had dated for six months and three months respectively. But they’d been boys and he was...

  Dio...

  Nerves ripped into her with a vengeance, but she had committed to this path, wanted this path, and she wasn’t going to give in to cold feet now.

  But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t shaking like a leaf as she dragged the tee-shirt over her head and flung it to the ground where it joined his shirt.

  He had folded his arms and was staring, just as though she really was performing a proper striptease for his benefit only.

  Which, she supposed, she was, in a way.

  She closed her eyes, reached behind, unclasped her bra and, still with her eyes shut, flung the bra onto the little growing heap of discarded clothes.

  ‘You can open your eyes,’ Dio drawled. He was surprised he could talk at all because the sight of her was enough to take his breath away.

  He loved the way she was sprawled there on his bed, her head averted. He could see the tiny pulse beating in her neck and, God, he wanted to fall on her, take her, sate himself with her body.

  She was beyond captivating.

  Pale, slender, her small breasts pert and pointed, her nipples as pink as he had imagined, but bigger. Perfect, circular discs that sent his blood pressure soaring.

  Lucy opened her eyes and slid a hesitating, self-conscious sideways glance at him. She had no idea where she had found the courage to do what she had done, but she had had to do it, and one look at the naked hunger and desire in his eyes was enough to restore every scrap of her wavering self-confidence. She glanced at his trousers, then back to his face, and he laughed.

  ‘So my beautiful ice-maiden thaws...’ He slowly unlooped his belt from his trousers and then pulled down his zipper. He was utterly confident when it came to his own nudity and he really liked the way she was still looking at him. He pulled down the trousers and his boxers in one easy movement, and her eyelids fluttered as she took in the impressive girth of his erection.

  ‘Your turn now...and then you can touch...’ He loosely held himself and noted her quick, sharp intake of breath. Just one more of those little hot reactions and he knew that he wouldn’t be responsible for what happened next.

  Their eyes held and she wriggled her jeans down until she was left only in her panties. She couldn’t stop looking at his big hand holding himself.

  ‘Let me feel you first,’ Dio said raggedly. He reached down and slipped his hand to cup the moist mound between her legs, then he pushed his finger in before sliding it along the slippery slit until he felt the throbbing nub of her clitoris.

  Lucy gave a long, low groan and parted her legs.

  There was no room in her head to contemplate her absolute lack of experience.

  He would find out soon enough...

  CHAPTER SIX

  DIO STRADDLED HER and for a few seconds he just looked down at her. His fingers were wet from where he had touched her and felt her excited arousal.

  She still seemed unable to meet his eyes in the shadowy darkness of the room and he gently tilted her face so that she was forced to look at him. He wanted to take her fast and hard...he was so aroused that he could scarcely breathe...but he could sense her nerves and, with a sigh, he lay down alongside her then hitched himself up on one elbow.

  ‘Tell me you’re not in the grip of second-thought syndrome,’ he murmured, stalling her attempts to cover herself with his duvet.

  Lucy’s burst of self-confidence was fading fast. Her husband was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on and, having spent far too long fantasising about him, she was even more bowled over at his beauty in the flesh. No fantasy could do him justice. He was a man in the very peak of his prime. No part of his impressive body was untoned. His stomach was washboard-flat, his shoulders broad and muscled. His sheer perfection not only made her teeth chatter with nerves but also made her very, very much aware of her lack of experience.

  He would have slept with countless women. You could tell that just from the way he was so comfortable in his own skin. He was a man who didn’t mind women feasting their eyes on him, who probably enjoyed it.

  She didn’t imagine that his teeth were chattering with nerves at the thought of hopping into the sack with her.

  She had to fight off the urge to leap off the bed and make a sprint for her clothes on the ground.

  ‘No, of course I’m not,’ she said, dry-mouthed. If he’d been short-tempered or impatient at her sudden shyness, she might have found sufficient anger to rally her mental forces and shrug off her attack of nerves. But his voice was low and curiously gentle and it reached something deep inside her that she hadn’t revealed in the long months of their marriage.

  Something vulnerable and hesitant. Gone was the hard veneer she had manufactured to protect herself.

  ‘Then why the sudden reticence?’ He traced the circle of her breast, running his finger in a spiralling motion until he was outlining her luscious pink nipple. He watched it stiffen and lowered his head to flick his tongue over the toughened nub.

  Lucy took a dragging breath and stifled a groan.

  ‘I... I just never thought that we would find ourselves in this situation,’ she confessed, expecting the barriers that had existed between them to shoot back into place but, when he replied, his voice was pensive.

  ‘Nor did I, not that I didn’t want it.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she laughed nervously. ‘The package without clothes might not be exactly what you’d expected.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I’m not the most voluptuous woman on the planet,’ she said lightly. ‘Too flat-chested. When I was at school, and all the other girls were developing breasts and hips, I just developed height and everything else stayed the same. I barely need to wear a bra. Men like women with big boobs. I know that.’

  ‘You know that, do you?’ He teased her throbbing nipple with his tongue and felt her melt under his touch.

  ‘Yes. I do. Why else do you think those men’s mags have always been so popular?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever given it a passing thought. I’ve never read those things. What’s the point of looking at a picture of a woman when you could be lying in bed with one?’ Dio told her truthfully. He hadn’t actually banked on doing a whole lot of talking in this arrangement. He had wanted the body she had deprived him of. And since when had sex involved long, soul-searching conversations?

  Certainly they never had with him.

  In fact, before Lucy, women had been pleasant interludes in a hectic, stressful work life. He had never bec
ome emotionally attached—had never encouraged any woman to think that he was, had never given any of that a passing thought. Meaningful conversations had been thin on the ground.

  Against all odds, considering she should have been the last woman on earth he would want to have any sort of relationship with, Lucy had been the one woman to lodge underneath his skin. He had never delved deep into asking himself why that was. He had assumed that it was because she was also the one woman who hadn’t made bedding him a priority.

  Which—and why wouldn’t this have been a natural conclusion?—was why he wanted her; why he had been unable to treat the marriage as the sham it had turned out to be and carry on playing the field. It had irritated the hell out of him that she had not given a damn one way or another whether he fooled around or not during their marriage and that, in turn, had been a source of slow-burning anger and dissatisfaction.

  Now that she was within reach and he could see that burr under his skin finally being dislodged, he thought that conversation was the least he could do.

  If she wanted to talk, then why not?

  He couldn’t, however, understand the self-denigration. Where had that come from? She had led a pampered, privileged life, the only child of wealthy parents. True, her father had been no better than a common criminal, but that didn’t nullify all the advantages she had had.

  She was, literally, the golden girl. Seeing her in action over the past year or more had really shown him just how easy she found those social graces; just how at home she was moving in the circles which he had been denied, thanks to her father.

  He couldn’t care less because he had made it to the top but he couldn’t seriously credit that the self-confidence she had always oozed was anything but bone-deep.

  He wondered where she was going with this and reluctantly was curious to find out.

  He kissed the corner of her mouth and she squirmed and manoeuvred her body so that they were facing one another.

  ‘Have you any idea how tough this is for me?’ Dio asked her roughly and Lucy blushed.

  ‘What?’