by Lynne Graham
‘I’m here,’ she whispered, suddenly shy of him.
Bending his dark head, he muttered something ferocious in Italian and crushed her lips apart with a savage urgency that took her very much by surprise. His tongue ravished the tender interior of her mouth. She might have been a life-saving draught to a male driven to the edge of madness by thirst. He bruised her lips and drank deep and long until her head swam and she couldn’t breathe. Fire as elemental as he was leapt through her veins.
Her hands found his shoulders. He was burning up as though he had a fever, his skin hot and dry, his long, hard body savagely tense against hers. Lean fingers fumbled with an unusual lack of dexterity at the silk that concealed her from him. With a stifled growl of frustration, he drew back and tore the whisper-fine fabric apart with impatient hands.
‘Luc!’ Catherine surfaced abruptly from a drowning well of passion and fixed shocked eyes on him as he knelt over her, trailing the torn remnants from her and tossing them carelessly aside. As she made an instinctive attempt to cover herself from his devouring scrutiny, he caught at her wrists and flattened them to the bed.
‘Please.’ It was a word he very rarely employed and there was a note in that roughened plea that stabbed at her heart and made her ache.
Brilliant golden eyes ran over her in a look as physical as touch, exploring the burgeoning swell of her breasts, the smoothness of her narrow ribcage, the feminine curve of her hips and the soft curls at the juncture of her thighs.
‘Squisita…perfetta,’ he muttered raggedly as he drew her towards him, and his mouth swooped down to capture a taut nipple.
Her back arched as a whimper of formless sound was torn from her throat. He suckled her tender flesh with an intensely erotic enjoyment that drove her wild. He bit with subtle delicacy, his hand toying with the neglected twin, shaping, tugging, exciting until she was writhing beneath his ministrations. She wanted his weight on her and he denied her, lifting his head only to trail the tip of his tongue teasingly down between her breasts, traversing the pale skin of her ribs and dipping into the hollow of her navel.
Her hands dug into his hair and tightened in immediate protest as he strung a line of wholly determined kisses from the bend of her knee to the smooth inner skin of her thigh, tensing tiny muscles she didn’t know she possessed. And then her neck extended and her head fell back on the pillows. A cry fled her lips, all thought arrested as she sank into the seduction of pure sensation and was lost in the frantic clamour of her own body.
At the peak of an excitement more of agony than pleasure, Catherine cried out his name, and his hands curved hard to her hips as he rose above her, silencing her with the tormenting force of his mouth. Against her most tender flesh, he was hot and insistent. For a split second he stared down at her, desire and demand stamped in his dark, damp features, and then he moved, thrusting deep as a bolt of lightning rending the heavens.
Pain clenched her, unexpected enough to dredge her briefly from the driving, all-enveloping hunger for satisfaction that he had induced. He stilled, dealt her a look in which tenderness and triumph blazed, more blatant than speech, and pressed a fleeting benediction of a kiss to her brow. He muttered something about doubting her and never doubting her again.
She was in no condition to absorb what he was saying. With tiny, subtle, circling movements of his hips, he was inciting her to passion again, accustoming her to his fullness. All conscious thought was suspended. She was lost in the primal rhythm of giving all and taking everything, driven mindless and powerless towards that final shattering release. When it came in wave after wave of unbelievable pleasure, it was sublime.
His harsh groan of masculine satisfaction still echoing in her ears, she let her hands rove possessively over his sweat-dampened skin. Obtrusive questions licked at the corners of her mind. Had it ever been that profound, that overwhelming before? She remembered excitement, but not an excitement that swept her so quickly into oblivion. She remembered his hunger, but not a hunger that threatened to rage out of control in its raw intensity. She remembered the sweet joy of fulfilment, but not a fulfilment that stole her very soul with its fiery potency.
And she also remembered…sadly…that Luc was invariably halfway to the shower by now, shunning with that essential detachment of his the aftermath of passion when she had so desperately wanted him to stay in her arms.
He was holding her now as if at any moment she might make a break for freedom, and the awareness provoked a deep rush of tenderness within her. She rubbed her cheek lovingly against a strong brown shoulder. He shifted languorously like a sleek cat stretching beneath a caress, as unashamedly physical in his enjoyment as any member of the animal kingdom.
‘I had a very strange dream.’ She broke the silence hesitantly, afraid that the magic might escape. ‘I don’t know if it was a memory.’
Tension snaked through his relaxed length. ‘What was it?’
‘You’ll probably laugh.’
‘I promise I won’t. Tell me.’
‘I was writing on a mirror,’ she whispered. ‘Can you imagine that? I never write anything but my name unless I can help it, and there I was, writing on this mirror!’
‘Amazing,’ he murmured softly.
‘It wasn’t. It felt scary,’ she muttered, half under her breath. ‘It probably has nothing to do with my memory at all. What do you think?’
‘I think you’re talking too much.’ Rolling over, he carried her with him on to a cool spot on the bed. ‘And I would much rather make love, bella mia.’ He nipped teasingly at the velvet-soft lobe of her ear and forged an erotic path along the slender arch of her throat as she involuntarily extended it for his pleasure. Her hair splayed out across the pillow and he studied the chopped ends wryly and looked down at her. ‘You’ve been using scissors to hack at your hair again.’
‘I can’t think why,’ she confessed with a slight frown. ‘I’ll go and get it cut tomorrow.’
‘Someone can come here to take care of it,’ he countered.
‘I want to see Rome.’
‘Bumper-to-bumper traffic and unbelievable heat and noise and pollution. Not to mention the tourists.’ He extracted a long lingering kiss before she could protest, and then he started to make love to her again. This time he was incredibly gentle and seductive, utilising every art to enthrall her. Pleasure piled on pleasure in layers of ever-deepening delight. Incredibly, it was even more exciting than the first time.
A single white rose lay on the pillow when she opened her eyes. She discovered it by accident, her hand feeling blindly across the bed in automatic search for Luc. Instead she found a thorn and, with a yelp, she reared up, sucking her pricked finger. And there it was. The rose. She wanted to cry, but that was soppy. The dew still dampened the petals. She tried to picture her supremely elegant Luc clambering through a rosebed and failed utterly. A gardener had undoubtedly done the clambering. Luc wouldn’t be caught dead in a flowerbed. All the same, it was the thought which counted and, for an unromantic guy, he really was trying very hard to please. In the end, it was that reflection rather than the rose that flooded her eyes with tears.
CHAPTER SIX
THE heat had reduced Catherine to a somnolent languor. She heard footsteps, recognised them. The cool of a large parasol blocked out the sun and shadowed her. She turned her head, rested her chin on her elbow and watched Luc sink down on the edge of the lounger beside her. In an open-necked short-sleeved white shirt and fitting black jeans that accentuated slim hips and long, lean thighs, he looked stunning enough to stop an avalanche in its tracks. A sun-dazed smile tilted her soft lips. He also looked distinctly short-tempered.
Since wedding fervour had hit Castelleone, the peace, the privacy and the perfect organisation which Luc took for granted had been swept away by a chattering tidal wave of caterers and florists and constantly shrilling phones. Luc’s enthusiasm had waned with almost comical speed once he’d realised what throwing a reception for several hundred people entailed.
‘You wanted a big splash,’ she reminded him with more truth than tact.
‘I thought it was what you expected!’ he condemned.
‘A couple of witnesses and a bunch of flowers would have done me,’ she confided, feeling too warm and lazy to choose her words.
He threw up expressive hands. ‘Now she tells me!’
The rattle of ice in glasses interrupted them. Luc leapt up and carefully intercepted Bernardo before he could come any closer. Catherine absorbed this defensive exercise with hidden amusement. Anyone would have been forgiven for thinking that her bare back was the equivalent of indecent exposure. Yesterday, a low-flying light plane had provoked an embargo on topless sunbathing and a no doubt fierce complaint to the local airfield. She wondered why it had taken her all this time to notice just how shockingly old-fashioned Luc could be about some things.
He cast her a sardonic glance. ‘I love the way you lie out here as though there’s nothing happening.’
‘Bernardo knows exactly what he’s doing.’ With an excess of tact, she did not add that if Luc stopped wading in to interfere and organise, imbuing everyone with the feeling that their very best wasn’t good enough, the last-minute arrangements would be proceeding a lot more smoothly. Having given the intimidating impression that he intended to supervise and criticise every little detail, he was not receiving a moment’s peace.
Tomorrow, she reflected blissfully. Tomorrow, she would be Luc’s wife. The ‘died and gone to heaven’ sensation embraced her again. Whole days had slid away in a haze of hedonistic pleasure since her arrival in Italy. Never had she enjoyed such utter relaxation and self-indulgence. Her sole contribution to the wedding had been two dress-fittings. Her gown, fashioned of exquisite handmade lace, was gorgeous. It was wonderful what could be achieved at short notice if you had as much money as Luc had.
‘Tomorrow, I’ll be rich,’ she mused absently.
After an arrested pause, Luc flung back his gleaming dark head and roared with laughter. ‘You’re probably the only woman in the world who would dare to say that to me before the wedding.’
She gave him an abstracted smile. Luc? Luc was wonderful, fantastic, beautiful, incredible, divine…With unwittingly expressive eyes pinned to him, she ran out of superlatives, and he sent her a glittering look that made her toes curl. That detachment which had once frozen her out when she got too close was steadily becoming a feature of the past.
Last night, Luc had actually talked about his family. And he never talked about them. The death of his parents and sister in that plane crash had shattered him but he had never actually come close to admitting that fact before. And she was quite certain that he would never admit the guilt he had suppressed when they died. On the rise to the top, Luc had left his family behind.
He had given them luxury, but not the luxury of himself. Business had always come first. He had sent them off on an expensive vacation in apology for yet another cancelled visit and he had never seen them alive again. When he had talked about them last night, it had been one of those confiding conversations that he could only bring himself to share with forced casualness in the cloaking darkness of the bedroom. Until now, she had never understood just how very difficult it was for Luc to express anything which touched him deeply.
Sliding up on her knees, she lifted her bikini top. His dark eyes travelled in exactly the direction she had known they would, lingering on the unbound curves briefly revealed. A heady pink fired her cheeks but, as she arched her back to do up the fastener, the all-male intensity of his appraisal roused an entirely feminine satisfaction as old as Eve within her.
‘You like me looking at you,’ he commented, lazily amused.
She bent her head, losing face and confidence. ‘You’re not supposed to notice that.’
‘I can’t help noticing it when you look so smug.’
Leaning lithely forward, he scooped her bodily across the divide between the loungers with that easy strength of his that melted her somewhere deep down inside. He laced an idle hand into her hair and claimed her mouth in a provocative sensual exploration. The world lurched violently on its axis and went into a spin, leaving her light-headed and weak. It didn’t matter how often he touched her, it was always the same. There had always been this between them, this shatteringly physical bond.
And once it had scared her. In her innocence, she had believed it one-sided, had assumed that Luc could, if he wanted, discover the same pleasure with any other woman. She was not so quick to make that assumption now. In the long passion-drenched hours which had turned night into day and day into night, the depth of Luc’s hunger had driven her again and again to the brink of exhaustion.
He released her mouth with reluctance. ‘You make me insatiable.’ The sexy growl to that lancing confession did nothing to cool her fevered blood and she rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Somehow, I doubt,’ he murmured, ‘that it’ll take that long for you to become pregnant.’
‘Pregnant?’ she squeaked, jerking back from him, her first reaction one of shock and, curiously, fear.
His hands steadied her before she could overbalance and he nuzzled his lips hotly into the hollow of her collarbone where a tiny pulse beat out her tension. ‘Don’t tell me you believed in the stork story,’ he teased. ‘Believe it or not, what we’ve been doing in recent days does have another more basic purpose above and beyond mere pleasure.’
She was trembling. ‘Yes, but—’
‘And we haven’t been taking any steps to forestall such a result,’ he reminded her with complete calm.
That awareness was only hitting Catherine now. It shook her that a matter which had once been shrouded with such importance could have slipped her mind so entirely. There had been no contraceptive pills in her possession. Evidently she was no longer taking them. Remembering to take them had once been the bane of her existence, invoking horrid attacks of panic when she realised that she had forgotten one or two. If Luc realised just how many near misses they had had, he would probably feel very much as she did now.
That background hadn’t prepared her very well for Luc’s smoothly talking about having a baby as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which of course it was…if you were married. In the circumstances, she decided that her initial sense of panic at his comment had been quite understandable. Where reproduction was concerned, she had to learn a whole new way of thinking.
Seemingly impervious to the frantic readjustments he had set in train, Luc ran a caressing hand down her spine and eased her closer. ‘Didn’t you notice that omission?’ he said softly.
‘No,’ she muttered with instinctive guilt.
‘I want children while I’m young enough to enjoy them.’
It crossed her mind that he might just have mentioned that before taking the decision right over her head, as it were. But equally fast came a seductive image of carrying Luc’s baby and she was overcome by the prospect and quite forgot to be annoyed with him. ‘Yes,’ she agreed wistfully.
Engaged on cutting a sensual path across her fine-boned shoulder, Luc murmured huskily, ‘I knew you’d agree with me. Now, instead of rushing to look into every baby carriage that passes by, you can concentrate on your own.’
‘Do I do that?’ she whispered.
‘You do,’ he said wryly.
Once anything to do with babies had left Luc arctic-cold. Naturally she couldn’t help but be surprised that he should want a child with such immediacy. But when she thought about it for a minute or two, it began to make sense. Luc was entering marriage much as he entered a business deal, armed with expectations. He wanted an heir, that was all. You couldn’t empire-build without a dynasty. But still she couldn’t summon a smile to her face and she couldn’t shake off that irrational fear assailing her.
Common sense ought to have reasoned it away. She loved Luc. She loved children. Where was the problem? Yet still the feeling persisted and her templ
es began to throb. When the phone buzzed on the table and Luc reached for it impatiently, she was starting to feel distinctly shaky and sick into the bargain.
Luc was talking in Japanese with the languid cool of someone fluent in a dozen languages. A frown pleating his dark brows, he sighed as he replaced the phone. ‘Business,’ he said. ‘I have to go inside to make a few calls. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Sunlight played blindingly on the surface of the pool several feet away. As a faint breeze sent a glimmering tide of ripples across the water, the effect was almost hynotic. Catherine’s head ached too much to think. She wondered ruefully if she had had too much sun.
A sound jerked her out of an uneasy doze. A child emerged from below the trees. His stubby little legs pumped energetically in pursuit of the ball he was chasing. As it headed directly for the water, Catherine flew upright, consumed by alarm. But he caught the ball before it reached the edge, and as he did so one of the maids came racing down the slope from the castle.
‘Scusi, signorina, scusi!’ she gasped in frantic apology for the intrusion as she scooped the child up into her arms. He gave a wail of protest. As he was hurried away, still clutching his ball, Catherine stopped breathing.
The thumping behind her forehead had for a split second become unbearable, but now it receded. She didn’t even notice the fact. She was in a benumbed state that went beyond shock into incredulous horror. Daniel…Daniel! The sybaritic luxury of the pool with its marble surround vanished as she unfroze.
Snatching up the phone, she pressed the button for the internal house line. A secretary answered. ‘This is Miss Parrish.’ She had to cough to persuade her voice to grow from a thread into comprehensible volume. ‘I want you to get me a number in England and connect me. It’s urgent,’ she stressed, straining to recall Peggy’s maiden name and the address of her home and finally coming up with them.
Shaking like the victim of an accident, she sat down before her legs gave out beneath her. What sort of a mother could forget about her son? Oh, dear God, please let me wake up, please don’t let this nightmare be real, she prayed with fervour.