On a sigh Giancarlo gave up trying to appear absorbed in what he was supposed to be doing, and got up, then strolled over to brace his arms either side of her as if he were checking on what she was working on at the moment.
She smelled delicious, of something so delicate it teased his nostrils every time he came near her.
Stirred up his senses. ‘How about an early lunch?’ he murmured huskily, moving in to brush his mouth against her cheek.
She blushed; he felt the heat beneath his lips. It amazed him how she could still blush like that, especially after the weeks they’d spent being so intimate with each other.
Was the blush a lie too?
‘You’re insatiable,’ she condemned him—but she didn’t put up any kind of a fight as he pulled her to her feet.
‘I adore you,’ he replied, not even bothering any more to hold the endearments back. But then, he had stopped doing that a long time ago. She just hadn’t noticed. ‘Come to bed with me, cara,’ he commanded grimly. ‘I need you…’
I need you. Those three little words were like manna from heaven to her love-starved ears. He needed her, and when had she ever been able to deny that she needed him?
‘I seem to recall you needing me this morning,’ she reminded him as he began leading her along the hallway.
As arrogant as always, and so gorgeous it wasn’t fair, ‘I will take that as a challenge, signorina,’ he warned without pausing in his stride. He trailed her behind him down the hall and across the sitting room they rarely bothered to use, into a room they used all too frequently—but she didn’t demur.
For she knew she would rather be doing what they were about to do than what they had been doing, which was sitting there worrying—separately.
So, without a murmur she reclaimed her hand and took a few paces away from him. Then, with her back proudly facing him, she began to undress, coolly and unselfconsciously, aware of his eyes dark on her, and that the tension of earlier would be melting away in favour of this more appealing diversion.
So the top she was wearing came over her head, then she kicked off her shoes and shimmied out of her skirt, and, as a final touch, loosened her hair to let it flow over her shoulders before she turned to face him.
‘Dio,’ he breathed as enlightenment hit. ‘You provoking little witch, you knew this was coming!’
‘Homework.’ She grinned, because she was wearing the red lace underwear he had bought her.
He started towards her with his fingers already at his shirt buttons and his eyes promising revenge.
But she even took control of this. ‘No, I want to do that,’ she said, and knocked his hands away to replace them with her own…
It was easy to stand here and let her undress him. It was, in fact, the easiest thing in the world for him to lose himself in the pleasurable touch of this beautiful woman as she kissed and stroked his shirt from his body, leaving him to enjoy the gentle quiver of white flesh cupped in provocative red lace as she worked her way down his torso.
He didn’t touch her; he didn’t attempt to help. He just stood there feeling the blood of life begin to pump the fire of passion into him as she dropped to her knees to remove his shoes and socks before reaching up to tackle his trousers.
This was what he wanted, he told himself. In fact he needed this display of sensual worship to help soothe his vulnerable ego. As he stared down at her golden head with its hot copper lights, and watched her slender white fingers efficiently strip away the rest of his clothes, he heard himself murmur lazily, ‘Be gentle with me, cara.’ Because in this game he knew exactly where he stood with her.
High on the plinth of passionate lovers—if there were such a thing.
‘Why?’ she questioned, looking perfectly cool as she ran her eyes over what she’d exposed. ‘Nothing I see here looks that fragile.’
And to prove her claim she closed her fingers around him. The air was sucked into his lungs on a shuddering gasp that forced his eyes closed on a shaft of fierce inner response, and for a long moment he just hovered there, waiting, wanting, knowing what was coming—
Then, ‘No,’ he rasped on a rough-toned denial, and was suddenly pulling her to her feet so he could close his arms around her.
‘Why not?’ she wanted to know, and he understood her confusion, because he didn’t usually stop her when she was in this kind of mood.
But he had suddenly discovered that he needed to be the one in control here. It was the only way he was going to cope with the lowering knowledge that somewhere, somehow he had become this woman’s sex slave.
If anyone had told him two weeks ago that he, Giancarlo Cardinale, would one day find himself in this invidious position, he’d have laughed in their face!
The next few hours drifted by utilising the best remedy he knew for easing stress. It made for a long and languorous lunch-break. With bodies entwined they built the magic, with touch and taste and sensual caresses that helped cocoon them once again in the warm, moist-honeyed sweetness, which culminated in her lying beneath him. Limbs wrapped with limbs, and with him moving deep inside her, with his eyes and his mouth and the gentle touch of his hands, he made a different kind of love to her.
It was a small piece of heaven.
The same remedy came into play again late that same evening. And another day went by, and another, until nothing was easing his stress levels—because she still wasn’t telling him anything he needed to know.
Unable to stand it any longer, he took a different kind of evasive action.
‘Go and get dressed up,’ he said one evening. ‘We are eating somewhere special tonight…’
There was nothing that unusual in them eating out—they ate out quite frequently, in fact. So what felt different about this evening? she asked herself while her fingers scrambled through her jewellery case in search of her watch, which she had mislaid somewhere.
A sign of distraction in anyone’s book, she mused, feeling Giancarlo’s eyes lazily watching her as he lounged on the bed, dressed and ready to go and just waiting for her to finish getting ready.
It was what he was wearing that was making tonight different, she admitted. The black dinner suit and bow-tie turned him into a different person—a hard, sharp, breath-catchingly sophisticated person she felt very much out of her depth with.
‘Have you seen my watch?’ she asked, trying to sound perfectly normal when in actual fact she was feeling quite strange beneath the wrap she had tied loosely round her.
‘What does this look like?’ he murmured teasingly, reaching into the case to slide a slender wrist-watch out from beneath a thin red silk handkerchief it had been hiding beneath.
‘Oh…’ she gasped…
The strangled little sound sharpened his interest, sending his lazy gaze off to check what it was he was holding casually between finger and thumb—and felt himself floundering on the rocks of a mind-sizzling fury.
‘It—it’s very old,’ she told him shakily, trying for a dry little laugh that didn’t quite make it. ‘It doesn’t even work. It-it’s an heirloom of m-my great-grandmother’s.’
‘Your great-grandmother?’ he repeated, waiting with gritted teeth for her confirming nod. It came, and his inner anger soared to a place it had never visited before.
For he knew this watch. He had even been allowed to handle it very carefully once when Edward had shown it to him years ago—and explained to him that the delicately worked, enamelled diamond-set cabochon wrist-watch had belonged to Edward’s grandmother! It was the only thing of value she had managed to bring with her to England after the fall of Imperial Russia.
And it was a genuine Fabergé, unique and priceless. ‘For my first-born great-granddaughter,’ she had instructed her grandson.
Giancarlo felt as if his skin were being lifted off his flesh by a rash of fury. For in the face of never producing a grandchild of either sex with the death of Marco, Edward, it seemed, had decided to pass the watch on to his mistress! Not even his wife of twenty-five loya
l, faithful years—but his bloody mistress!
And she keeps it stuffed in a box with a load of worthless trinkets, he then added contemptuously. What does that say about the real person she is? he asked himself. If it means so little to her, then why the hell hasn’t she sold it and made herself a tidy profit out of Edward’s love?
‘I’ll have it fixed for you,’ he offered.
‘No!’ she almost shrieked in her urgency. Then tried to calm herself. ‘I t-tried once, but they said it w-would cost too m-much.’
I just bet they did, he thought grimly as he sent her horror leaping when he casually flipped the watch into his pocket. ‘Let me try,’ he offered. ‘I know someone who takes great delight in restoring old watches…’
‘I’d rather keep it exactly as it is,’ she said, needing to moisten her lips as she held out her hand. ‘In f-fact it means too much to me to w-want to risk letting it out of my sight.’
‘I’m not going to lose it for you,’ he assured. ‘Just get it—’
‘No, Giancarlo!’ she snapped—in more ways than vocally, he noted cynically as she made a sudden dive towards his pocket in her desperation to get the watch back! ‘Give it to me! Please—!’
His response was to lift her up by the waist and drop her down on the bed, then to follow her. ‘Make me,’ he taunted, feeling anger flip him over into some other place entirely that literally set his teeth on edge. His eyes were hot, his body hard and—God help him, but he wanted her!
Wanted her so badly that it took him by storm.
His only consolation to that, he supposed later when he stood beneath the ice-cold jet of the shower, was that she had been affected as badly as he.
But when he came back into the bedroom, he found his clothes waiting for him on the neatly remade bed—and the watch was no longer in his pocket…
Natalia didn’t know why he had brought them here. Glancing around her, she tried very hard to see what the attraction was in the most fashionable and therefore busiest restaurant in London right now.
After the small, more intimate places he had taken her to before, this place felt brash and noisy and over the top with its trendy decor and its trendy people all greeting each other with trendy kisses wrapped up in super-trendy smiles.
Why? she wanted to know. What is supposed to be so different about tonight, that he decided to bring me to a place like this?
You know why, the mocking little answer came back, sending her stress levels inching up another couple of notches. The man is straining at the leash with boredom while he waits to find out if he’s going to be let off the hook by you.
Suddenly she wanted to be sick…
If she got any paler she would probably pass out! Giancarlo thought grimly as he fielded yet another greeting from someone whose name he didn’t even remember.
They ate fashionable food from fashionable plates, with London’s fashionable set milling all around them, and he hated every minute of it even while he kept his social smile in place, and pretended this was just what he wanted.
But it wasn’t. Hell—he didn’t know what he wanted any more! She tied him in knots, he admitted, glaring at her sitting there across the table from him looking so damn beautiful in her sparkling black dress that made him think of the black underwear she was probably wearing, and with her hair like silk against her shoulders—and that cheap gold watch, which reminded him of another watch, circling her slender wrist.
And he didn’t like the way other men were eyeing her up, he added to his list of grievances, though she didn’t seem to notice, he had to confess.
In fact, she couldn’t look more unimpressed with a place if she tried to be!
Or maybe it was him she was unimpressed with, he pondered with a sting that made him snatch up his wineglass. Did the urbane sophisticate in the bow-tie and the dinner suit, who drew the flattering attention of all the other sophisticates here, not reach her at all?
When was she going to give him the answer? he added on a restless shrug of his black-silk-covered shoulders that showed how Natalia Deyton was beginning to get under his skin in more ways than he wanted to deal with! She gave him nothing and he gave everything! he decided with an arrogance that tried to completely ignore that what he was getting from her was exactly what he’d aimed for!
Edward’s mistress becoming his mistress. Nothing more, nothing less.
On paper he supposed he was a step or two up from a man who was twice her age and married with it, he allowed with a bitter kind of wit.
Though even he couldn’t afford to give out Fabergé heirlooms as payment for services rendered! And—hell, he grimly extended on that theme. If he—Giancarlo—had found it easy enough to take her from Edward, then what was to stop her moving on as easily if a bigger catch came along?
An answer to one specific question, he reminded himself with a burning flash of his eyes in her direction. Yes or no, Natalia? he questioned silently. Surely she had to know something by now…?
He wanted out, she just knew he did. He was feeling so trapped by their situation that he was barely managing to contain his frustration with it any longer. She was going to have to let him off the hook. Yes or no to the question that was burning holes in both their heads. She was going to have to set him free, then disappear. It was the only thing for her to do even if the very idea was making her feel positively nauseous…
Why was she looking so down in the mouth and wan-faced? Giancarlo thought bitterly. As long as she had him over a barrel, she was sitting pretty!
Then it happened. No hint, no warning. She was just coming to her feet with some murmured excuse about going to the cloakroom, then she swayed and her eyes closed, and he saw her face turn deathly pale as her legs began to go from under her.
He was there to catch her. Anger forgotten, frustrations, resentments—everything sluiced away in that single swift move of his body from his chair to her side so he could take her weight for her.
‘Okay?’ he asked roughly.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, but he knew she wasn’t. He could feel her trembling, and she was having to fight the need to lean heavily on him. ‘Do you think we can go now?’ she begged shakily.
‘Of course.’ Without another word, he carefully fed her slender frame beneath his shoulder and began carefully guiding her between tables with curious eyes following them…
Natalia couldn’t really blame them for their curiosity. Giancarlo was holding her so close that she was finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. He continued to hold her like that while he paid the bill, and only released her for as long as it took to help her into her coat. Then she was back beneath the protection of his arm before she had a chance to move a single step.
‘You can let go of me now,’ she told him when they eventually made it outside.
‘No,’ he replied, that was all. It was gruff and it was tight and it declared no room for argument as he herded her down the street to the nearest taxi rank, and helped her inside a black cab.
She wasn’t sure why they had come by taxi tonight, unless it had something to do with the amount of wine Giancarlo had drunk through dinner. She had a horrible feeling he had come out with the specific intention of getting himself drunk. And his mood had been so short and surly she hadn’t known quite how to deal with it.
It didn’t help that she had been feeling under the weather for most of the evening—ever since he’d noticed her watch, in fact.
No, don’t think about that, she told herself with a small shudder.
The shudder made him turn his head to glance at her sharply. ‘I’m okay,’ she assured him, but it wasn’t the truth.
She felt weak and dizzy, and she knew she should have said something sooner. Her own quiet mood had affected his mood. But she had been worried and frightened of saying anything in case it forced the whole wretched problem right out in the open.
Now the problem didn’t need forcing out, because it was sitting here between them like a great lump of ro
ck just waiting to be shattered by one tiny comment—I think I’m pregnant. Or—I think you are pregnant, depending on which one of them decided to say it first.
Yet neither of them said a single word all the way back to the apartment. He was grim-faced and withdrawn and she felt her heart sting every time she dared a quick glance at his profile. Handsome didn’t even begin to cover what made Giancarlo Cardinale the compelling force he was to her. She adored every lean, hard, noble feature, every flicker of his lashes, every twitch of his flat-lined, sensually moulded mouth. She even adored the way he was being very careful to keep his eyes away from her eyes because it showed that he was as aware as she was that the moment of truth was too close for comfort.
And she adored the way his hand was gripping her hand so tightly, even over that imaginary lump of rock which had trouble stamped all over it…
He couldn’t say a word. He didn’t dare. Not until he’d had time to think—though what that meant he had been doing for the last few weeks made it anybody’s guess, he grimly admitted. Because this was thinking, which just went to show how suspicion could fool you where reality could not.
‘Incinta…’ he murmured, feeling a whole new set of powerful emotions grab a tight hold of him by the sheer weight of her condition.
‘What?’ Natalia prompted.
‘Nothing,’ he said, not realising he’d spoken out loud, and glad she didn’t understand his language.
The taxi drew up outside the apartment then, saving either of them the need to speak again while he paid the driver and climbed out himself before helping Natalia down onto the path beside him.
She still looked pale, and her hand gripped his arm with enough force to tell him that she still felt frail. Without a word he folded her back beneath his arm to take her into the building. The concierge was there, they all smiled politely at each other, and the lift waited at the ready to transport them into privacy.
A Sicilian Seduction Page 13