by Lynne Graham
‘And very quiet,’ Luc continued.
She gulped. ‘I was just thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘Nothing in particular.’ She veiled her troubled eyes in case he did what he had done before and read her mind. Do it now, do it now, she urged herself. You know what you’re like. The longer you leave it, the bigger mess you’ll make of it. ‘What time do we arrive in London?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? The air-traffic controllers in Rome are having a twenty-four-hour stoppage,’ he imparted with the utmost casualness. ‘We fly to London early tomorrow morning.’
‘We’re not going to the airport?’ she gasped.
‘A friend has offered us the use of his villa overnight.’
Her hands clenched convulsively together. Reprieve, the coward in her thought. An opportunity to be alone with him and tell him, her conscience insisted. The limousine was already turning through tall gates.
A housekeeper greeted them on the steps. When Luc refused the offer of supper, they were shown upstairs to a bedroom suite. It was full of mirrors and exotic silks and the most enormous bed. This was her wedding night, she reflected in despair. How could she tell him tonight? It would ruin the whole day, she reasoned weakly.
He came up behind her and buried his mouth hotly against the soft, sensitive spot where her shoulder met her throat, and her knees buckled. ‘We should have supper,’ she managed shakily.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Well—’
‘Supper wouldn’t satisfy my hunger either,’ he breathed approvingly. Slowly, heart-stoppingly, he turned her round. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he enquired, completely without warning.
‘W-wrong?’
‘You have the look of a murderer caught burying the body,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Or is that my imagination?’
‘Your imagination.’ Avoiding his far too perceptive eyes, she tried to sidetrack him by reaching up and starting to undo his tie.
‘My imagination rarely plays tricks on me.’ He watched her struggling with his tie. With an expressive sigh, he covered her small shaking hands with one of his. ‘You don’t trust me, do you? I won’t hurt you ever again, bella mia. I promise you that.’
Unbearably touched and suddenly rent with guilt, her eyes clouded over.
‘I was only twenty-seven when I met you.’ He ran a questing fingertip along the taut curve of her cheek. ‘And I didn’t want to meet someone like you. I set out to get you on my terms and I knew it wasn’t what you wanted or what you deserved. You loved me too much, cara. You let me get away with murder. So, I took you for granted.’ His superb bone-structure was prominent beneath his suntanned skin, his eyes very dark. ‘I thought you would always be there. And then one day you were gone and I realised that even you had your breaking point. I realised that a little too late for it to make any difference.’
‘Luc, I—’
He brushed his fingers in a silencing motion against her lips. ‘I don’t want to talk about the past now. It casts shadows. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, hmm?’ he cajoled. ‘But not tonight.’
She turned her mouth involuntarily into the warm palm of his hand, tears wet on her cheeks. He appealed to her for understanding and Luc was not given to appeals. Strain clenched his dark features. The break with the tradition of keeping his own counsel hurt.
He trailed his tie off, shed his jacket with a lithe twist of his shoulders and pulled her into his arms, emanating now all the raw self-assurance that came so naturally to him. ‘I scarcely slept last night,’ he admitted softly. ‘And I intend to keep you awake all night as punishment.’
His breath warmed her cheek and then his tongue slid between her lips, thrusting them apart to explore the moist interior she so freely offered him. The floor under her feet seemed to fall away, and she clung to him while he took her mouth again and again with a stormy intensity that stirred a dulled ache in the pit of her stomach. Her silk dress pooled on the carpet without her even being aware that he was expertly removing it. Lean fingers slid caressingly over her hip, encountering lace, and, disregarding the fragile barrier, he made her jerk and moan beneath his marauding mouth.
He laughed soft and deep in his throat, ceasing the provocation only to pick her up and carry her over to the bed, following her down in fluid motion, reacquainting her with every sleek line of his lean body. His shirt had come adrift and she ran her hands up over his smooth brown back, feeling every muscle tauten to her reconnaissance. He ground his hips sensuously slowly into hers, and for mindless seconds she was ruled by the hunger he could evoke and completely lost.
He looked down at her, dark eyes aflame with gold satisfaction and desire. ‘Remember that first night in Switzerland?’ he whispered huskily. ‘You were so exquisitely shy.’ He strung a line of kisses across her delicate collarbone. ‘So innocent. I was a bastard, bella mia. It should have been our wedding night.’
‘I pretended it was.’
A faint flush of colour irradiated the high cheekbones that intensified his raw attraction. He captured the fingers lacing into his black silky hair and pressed them to his lips, dense lashes concealing his gaze. ‘I’d never made love to a virgin before. I wanted it to be special for you. That’s why I took you to Switzerland.’
‘It was special,’ she managed unsteadily. ‘Very special.’
‘Grazie…grazie tanto, cara,’ he teased. ‘It was so special for me that I had to keep you all to myself, being of a naturally selfish disposition.’
She had never seen him so relaxed, not this last week, not ever. But for a split second he reminded her so powerfully of Daniel. The same beautiful dark eyes, the same wide mouth that could yank at her heart-strings with the faintest smile. Her breath caught in her throat, but he was brushing aside the lace cups of her bra, letting his tongue and then his mouth circle the taut pink nipples he had uncovered, and her mind became a complete blank, her fingers clenching together as sensation began to build, drawing every tiny muscle tight beneath his ministrations.
There was a mirror above the bed. She blinked bemusedly and then the imagery of his brown hands on her paler skin and his dark head bent so intimately over her took over. ‘There’s a mirror up there,’ she whispered.
‘How shocking.’ His voice was indistinct, abstracted. ‘Tell Christian he has outrageous bad taste next time you see him.’
‘This is his villa?’
Luc eased back from her reluctantly, rolled off the bed and proceeded to strip. She couldn’t take her eyes from him. Wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, lean hips and long, muscular thighs. He was very aroused, superbly male, supremely beautiful.
‘Looking at me like that does nothing for my self-control.’ He came down beside her again, dispensed with the wispy lingerie and curved her into his arms. The dark hair hazing his chest rubbed against her tender breasts, one lean thigh hooking over hers as he stared down at her, so much unashamed hunger in his probing appraisal that she was breathless. ‘You wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Done what?’
‘Walked away at the airport.’ A wry smile challenged her shock. ‘I wouldn’t have let you go. Did you think I didn’t know? Sometimes I know what you think before you think it.’
Having devastated her, he took advantage by ravishing her swollen mouth with a fierce, driving sweetness. Time and thought were banished. She got drunk on the taste of him. The warm masculine scent of him flooded her, making her even more light-headed. She could feel herself sliding out of control. Breathing hurt her lungs. Tiny sounds she was barely conscious of broke from her lips, and when his hand touched her where she most ached for fulfilment, she went wild, writhing with his burning caresses, hungrily searching out for herself the compulsive heat of his mouth.
It was agony and ecstasy but he wouldn’t give her what she sought as she blindly arched her hips in a silent expression of need as old as time. She was twisting in the heat of a fire that demanded assuagement. Her fingernails raked hi
s back in torment and protest. And then, in the shuddering, explosive tension of his body, she felt the flames leap and scorch through him as well. Suddenly he was all aggressor, all savage demand, spreading her out like a sacrifice to some primitive god and falling on her, hands bruising her thighs as he took her with all the strength he possessed in a driving surge of passionate intensity.
It went on and on and on, more and then incredibly more until she was sobbing her pleasure out loud, lost to everything but the remorseless demands of her own body. The release came in a frenzied explosion of exquisite sensation that left her awash with the bliss of satiation.
‘Dio!’ he groaned in harsh satisfaction, shuddering in the possessive circle of her arms, burying his damp face in her hair. ‘Te amo,’ he muttered, almost crushing her beneath his weight. ‘Te amo.’
She stilled. I love you. I love you, he had said.
‘Scusi.’ He rolled over and sprawled back in an indolent tangle of sun-darkened limbs against the white percale sheeting. ‘Now I finally know what it’s like to be a sex object,’ he sighed without particular concern in the winging smile he angled at her. ‘You made me lose control. That’s my department.’
She smiled, a fat-cat-got-the-cream smile. He probably didn’t even know he’d said it. That was fine. The last thing she wanted to do was to make an issue out of it. She had lived off ‘I need you’ for almost two years once. She could manage a good decade on ‘I love you’. Moving over, she scattered a trail of kisses across a sweat-slicked broad shoulder. ‘I love you…I love you…I love you,’ she whispered feverishly.
He caught a hand into her tousled hair. ‘I know, I know, I know,’ he said playfully.
He hadn’t bitten the bait. When did he? She was too impatient. If he had meant it, he would tell her in his own good time. If? It didn’t help to be aware that such a confession at the height of sexual excitement was recorded the world over as a statutory and meaningless phrase. But didn’t she have rather more to worry about right now? Daniel rose like Mount Everest in the back of her mind.
‘Luc…how do you feel about children?’
He tugged her down on top of him, claimed a kiss, clearly not very focused on the concept of dialogue. ‘I never thought of them until recently.’
‘Do…do you like them?’
‘Like them?’ Ebony brows slashed together in a frown. ‘What sort of a question is that? I expect I will like my own. I have no real interest in other people’s.’
It wasn’t very encouraging. She made no demur when his hands started to roam lazily over her again. Indeed, she needed that closeness, that hunger of his to control the fear that was steadily rising inside her. Luc would be furious. But what frightened her most was the unknown quantity of how he would react after the fury.
* * *
‘You can sleep during the flight.’ Luc smiled down into her heavy eyes, satisfaction and amusement mingling in his scrutiny.
They were about to leave the VIP lounge when a small grey-haired man, closely followed by a security guard, came in.
‘Antonio?’ Luc crossed the room to greet him with pleated brows.
The low-pitched exchange of Italian had an odd edge of urgency that made Catherine glance in their direction. The older man gave something to Luc, withdrew a handkerchief to mop his perspiring brow and, by his manner, was clearly apologising. He looked as though he was reporting a death. She stifled a yawn, and her attention slewed away again.
‘Who was that?’ she asked as they boarded the jet.
‘One of my lawyers.’ His intonation was curiously clipped.
She hated take-off; always had. She didn’t open her eyes until they were airborne. Luc wasn’t beside her. On the other side of the cabin, he was scanning a single sheet of paper. As she watched he scrunched it up between his fingers and snatched up the newspaper lying on the desk in front of him. He signalled to the steward with a snap of his fingers. A large whiskey arrived pronto. Draining it in one long, unappreciative gulp, he suddenly sprang up, issuing a terse instruction to the steward who left the cabin at speed.
‘Catherine…come here.’ He moved a hand in an oddly constrained arc.
Releasing her belt, she got up. His set profile was dark, brooding. He indicated the seat opposite. ‘Sit down.’
When she collided with his eyes her heart stopped beating and her mouth ran dry. The suppressed violence that sprang out at her from that hawk-like stare of intimidation was terrifying.
‘I will not lose my head with you,’ he asserted in a controlled undertone. ‘There must be an explanation. I still have faith, but it hangs by a thread.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
He continued to study her, a kind of flagellating stare that threatened to strip the skin from her facial bones. ‘Last week, Rafaella told me something I refused to believe. After your disappearance five years ago, she stayed in the apartment we shared for some weeks. I didn’t want it to be empty if you phoned or chose to return.’
Uncertainly she nodded.
‘And last week she informed me that during her stay a call came from some doctor’s surgery, asking why you hadn’t been back for a check-up.’
She bent her head and studied the desk-top, gooseflesh prickling at the nape of her neck, an impending sense of doom sliding over her.
‘From that call and certain trivia she subsequently uncovered in the apartment,’ Luc continued in the same murderously calm tone, ‘Rafaella deduced that you were pregnant at the time of your departure.’
She flinched, froze, watched the desk-top blur.
‘She assumed—that is, if her story is true—that you had decided on an abortion. She told me that at the time she saw no good reason to share this knowledge with me. So she cultivated a short memory.’
Catherine wanted God to pluck her out of the sky and put her somewhere out of Luc’s reach. Her vocal cords were in arrest. Her brain had stopped functioning.
‘Naturally her assumption was that, if there was a child, it was not mine. Halston figured largely as the culprit,’ he extended, his tone quieter and quieter, every word slow and precise and measured. ‘Perhaps you can now understand why I was so angry with her. After this length of time the story struck me as fantastic and wholly incredible. I didn’t believe a word of it. I defended you.’
The weight of the world’s sins seemed to sit on her bowed shoulders. She was shrinking inwardly and outwardly.
‘This is now your cue to tell me that not a word of her story is true. You see, Rafaella is persistent. When I refused her calls, she communicated with one of my lawyers in Rome, giving him the details of what she apparently discovered in England,’ he spelt out. ‘Antonio spent a most troubled night before rousing the courage to bring those facts to me. He was hastened to a decision when an article purporting to relate to you was printed in an English newspaper.’
‘I…I didn’t think of it coming out like this!’ she burst out strickenly. ‘I intended to tell you when we arrived in England…’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Look at me.’ He ground out the command fiercely. ‘Are you telling me it is true? That you were pregnant? That there is a child?’
Like a puppet she nodded twice, shorn of speech by the violent incredulity splintering from him in waves.
‘And…you…married…me?’ He was rising slowly from behind the desk, having trouble in getting the question past his compressed lips.
‘What did you expect me to do?’ she muttered frantically.
‘What did I expect? What did I expect?’ he roared at her, a hand like a vice closing round her wrist to trail her bodily out of her seat.
‘You’re hurting me!’
‘He’d better not be mine!’ he bit down at her rawly.
The tension broke her and she sobbed, ‘Of course he is. Of course he’s yours. Why would you want anything else?’
He punched a fist into the palm of his other hand with a sickening thud and swung violently away from her. Barbaric fury throbb
ed from every tensed line of his long, taut body. ‘If I touch you, I’ll kill you. Cristo, get out of my sight before I lose control!’
‘Luc, please,’ she said brokenly.
He spun back to her, fluid as a cat on his feet even in rage. ‘If he hadn’t been mine, maybe…just maybe I could have forgiven you, because then at least I could have understood why you ran away. But this!’ He spread brown hands eloquently wide in a slashing movement. ‘This I don’t understand at all!’
‘If you would just calm down,’ she interposed pleadingly.
‘Calm down? I find out I have a son of almost five whom I don’t know and I never even dreamt existed, and you ask me to calm down?’
‘I should have told you last night.’
‘Last night?’ he grated in disbelief. ‘Last night, while you were playing the whore in my arms, I’d definitely have strangled you! I don’t give a damn about last night or last week! I’m talking about five years ago when you were pregnant!’
The brutality of his attack on her behaviour the night before cut with the efficacy of a knife through her heart. ‘S-stop shouting—’
‘If I don’t shout I’ll get physical! And I’ve never struck a woman in my life and I will not start now,’ he shot at her furiously.
It took immense will-power for her to drag her thoughts into order. The sheer force of his rage had shattered her, and his contention that he would have preferred to learn that Daniel was another man’s child was quite incomprehensible to her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me five years ago?’ The repetition scorched back at her.
‘I meant to…I tried to—’
‘I don’t remember you trying,’ he cut in ruthlessly.
She sucked in air convulsively. ‘I was afraid to tell you.’
He uttered a succinct swear-word he had never used in her presence before. It blazed with his derision.