Why with him—why this man? she tried asking herself as her fingers released their grip on the towel so they could leap up to clutch at his shirtfront, her fingernails digging into warm, solid muscle as she gave herself up to his hot, deep, hungry kiss.
One single night spent in his arms six long years ago and her body remembered him with this strength and intensity. He felt so big and strong and so desperately familiar to her—as if she’d never been parted from him at all! Her heart was pounding madly, her head was spinning, her senses surging wildly out of control. It was she who gave in to the overwhelming force of it by abandoning herself to the hardening length of his long body and straining against him.
Sandro was trying to fight it. He should not be doing this, he tried telling himself. It was neither fair nor right. And he still felt really rough, though he had been trying to hide it. He felt as if his nice, tidy world was being ransacked by this beautiful creature called Cassie Janus, and he didn’t need the added invasion of this ravaging race of sexual desire to cause him yet more havoc right now.
He even tried to draw back from it, tried to push her out to a safer distance. But this had been an evening of uncontrolled experiences, he admitted as her fingers stroked along the width of his shoulders then buried themselves in his nape so she could cling more tightly to him. With a throaty growl which did not sound very lover-like he closed his arms more firmly around her and lifted her right off her feet so he could delve deeper into the kiss.
He felt the hard tips of her breasts pierce his chest through his shirt and make an instant hot-wire connection with the burn taking place between his hips. Like that, he turned and carried her out of the bathroom. Like that, he found his way by sheer instinct into his bedroom and rolled them both down on the bed. He’d never experienced anything this powerful with any woman. He’d never wanted one as much as this. As she arched beneath his resting weight he shifted sideways and felt the urgent tremor in his fingers as he reached behind her to deal with the zip on her dress.
The structured bodice slithered down her writhing body, exposing the creamy white thrust of her breasts. Cooler air hit her heated skin and at last Cassie made a wild snatch for sanity, wrenching her pink, bruised, kiss-swollen mouth free so she could push out a trembling protest—
‘Sandro, no, we can’t do this!’
She didn’t think he heard her. There was something almost bemused about the intense blackness in his eyes as he honed in on her exposed breasts. She squirmed beneath him as he folded his long fingers around one smooth, full mound then lowered his mouth to capture its taut, screamingly sensitive peak. Even as she cried out he was driving her so wild with pleasure she could only manage a grateful little whimper when eventually he reclaimed her mouth. Within seconds she was lost in it, drugged by her own uncontrollable desire for more of him—and more.
His shirt fell apart with the aid of her own urgent fingers, her hands feverish and greedy as they made contact with hair-roughened pectoral muscles moulding his powerful frame, and he shuddered, murmuring something hot into her mouth. The strength of her own hunger shocked her even as she sank into it like some sex-mad slave. She stopped trying to fight what she was feeling, she stopped trying to ignore the wild sensations he was creating as he stroked her skin. Desperate to touch him wherever she could do, she just couldn’t keep still, slender limbs tense and restless as they moved against him. She was vaguely stunned to realise that all their clothes had disappeared. When he ran a seeking caress down the taut flatness of her stomach and stroked those long fingers into the hot, moist crevice between her thighs she just lost it altogether, gasping and trembling and urging him on with anxious strokes of her own restless fingers and helpless little words of need he answered in rich, dark Italian breathed like fire onto her receptive skin.
And she knew—still knew she should be stopping this, if only she had the strength of will. But she didn’t have that strength and his sinfully pleasurable caresses were drawing her senses together in a twisting, squirming coil that forced her to whisper, ‘Oh, God, Sandro, please…’
He arrived above her like a dark knight powered by a desire that slammed her hectic breath back down into her lungs. His eyes were burning flames of passion, the flesh covering his face tightly drawn. And his breathing was fast, his heartbeat uneven, the groan he uttered just before he recaptured her mouth more a warning that his control had fled. He drove into her with a single, long, deep stroke that dragged a quivering cry from her and a shuddering groan from him.
‘Per Dio,’ he groaned as her tender muscles stretched then tightened in a sensual ripple along his full length.
Stars began exploding in her head as he started moving. Her fingernails latched on to the solid muscles in his arms as if she had to hold on for dear life. And she could feel each powerful inch of him inside her, his heat, his girth, even his pleasure as it transported each sensation he experienced with each new thrust and she was lost—abandoned to the wildly building fever of it. Her head was thrown back, her hair streaming down onto the pillow, her lips parted to let escape her soft, tense, helpless gasps. It was reckless, mindless, so beyond restraint that when her climax came it drew her taut as a bow beneath him, forcing a muttered oath from his lips when he had to support her slender frame in his arms so she could continue to take her pleasure and his thrusting weight.
Afterwards she lay in a daze of total mind-hazed shock. She didn’t want to think, she didn’t want to come down from where she still floated on a fluffy cloud of after-quivers because she knew that shame and soul-crushing dismay were waiting for her when she did finally drop back down to earth.
Sandro lay heavy on her with his arms still wrapped around her slender body and that feeling of being scraped out from the inside he’d felt earlier this evening, robbing him of the strength to move. They should not have done it and strange, swirling images were floating around his aching head. He’d never been so out of control before, did not know how it had happened or even why it had happened. It was as if someone else had been living inside his body, driving him on.
And those flashes were getting worse now, flinging open doors in his head and slamming them shut with a violence that set his teeth on edge. On an inner groan, he slid his arms from beneath her. ‘Dio,’ he breathed on a thick, husky laugh aimed to lighten the charged atmosphere, ‘did we ever get out of bed once we made it there?’
With Cassie still lying limp-limbed and trembling beneath him, his badly aimed joke brought her alive on a quivering flood of skin-flaying offence that had her pushing him off her before she reared up and swung on him wildly, landing the flat of her hand hard against the side of his face.
Gasping and shaking and dimly horrified by her own outburst of physical violence, ‘Are you referring to the single night we spent there before you upped and left me?’ she sliced into him chokingly. ‘You really like to live up to the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, macho-rat remit, don’t you, Sandro? Two weeks wooing me and one night screwing me. Mission accomplished, so forget that one, leave her pregnant and move on to the next!’
Having collapsed on his back beside her, Sandro took the full blast of her shaking anger the same way he’d taken her slap to his face—with total stillness, nothing showing on his face now except her finger marks standing out on his cheek. And his lack of reaction only made Cassie want to hit him again; she wanted to pummel his chest with her fists!
Instead she scrambled off the bed with a snaking move of trembling limbs and looked wildly around for something with which to cover herself up. She saw Sandro’s shirt lying draped half on and half off the side of the bed and shuddered, spinning away from it. She would rather be flayed alive than wear that next to her now-cringing flesh. How dared he make a joke of what they’d just done here? How had it happened? How had she let him reduce her to this? Grabbing a pillow up off the bed, she hugged it to her front, a well of hot tears building in her throat. Oh, God, she hated herself—she hated him! And her legs could barely hold her
upright, her insides still singing like sinful traitors triumphing over what Sandro had done for them.
On a stinging shot of shamed energy she began urgently gathering up her clothes, refusing to look at him, refusing to notice how he was still lying there, saying nothing, or how the hand was back up at his face, long fingertips pressing into his creased brow.
Clutching the pillow to her front along with her skimpy jumble of clothes now, she turned and headed for the door. She had to get away. She just had to—
‘I cannot believe I did that to you.’
The husky sound of his denial froze Cassie taut and quivering in the doorway. ‘Can’t or don’t want to believe it?’ she shook back.
Without thinking, she spun to look at him in time to watch him roll off the bed to land beside it on his feet. Each beautifully toned inch of him was captured by the light from the single lamp burning golden by the bed, sweat-glossed sleek, powerful muscles that expanded and contracted in a lithe display of masculine potency that turned her ravished muscles to hateful, trembling mush.
Why did he have to be the only man who could do this to her? ‘If you ask me, Sandro, your biggest problem is that you don’t seem to want to know yourself—which in my view makes a complete mockery of your so-called lost memory!’
He flinched, one of his hands sweeping out in a sharp, slicing gesture meant to cut her bitter words to shreds. Shaken by the violence of the action, Cassie just stared as he jerked into movement, striding across the room to disappear through a door, closing it behind him with a quiet thud that left her standing there with her heart writhing around in her chest in self-disgust at what she’d let him do to her—again.
A sob of revulsion broke free from her throat and she dropped the pillow and spun around to leave the bedroom at a wild run, making for the bright white bathroom where her foolish downfall had begun. The harsh lights hurt her burning eyes as she dragged on her flimsy briefs and fumbled feverishly with the zip on her dress. She hadn’t found her stockings but she didn’t care, she told herself as she wriggled her bare toes into her shoes.
All she wanted to do was to just get the heck out of here without having to face him. As she turned towards the door she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and a stinging flood of tears lashed her aching throat. She looked like a plump-lipped, hot-cheeked lush! Her hair was all over the place, its waterfall layers all tangled and mussed, and her eyes were so dark she looked as if she’d been indulging in some kind of drug!
Which she had in a way, she thought helplessly as she wrenched her gaze away from her gut-crawling image. She’d indulged in the drug of irresponsible sex, and coming down from it was the worst feeling she’d ever experienced! Snatching the bathroom door open, she sped across the hallway and into the living room with the intention of retrieving her purse from where Sandro had tossed it and getting the heck out of here!
Only to find herself jerking to a sinking, shuddering standstill when she saw Sandro there in the room.
He was standing beside a cabinet which stood open to reveal a selection of bottles and glasses. He’d pulled his trousers and his shirt back on but half the buttons were left unfastened and his feet were bare, the smooth style of his hair roughed up. He looked pale with strain but hard and grim and he held a glass slotted in his fingers that definitely did not have water in it.
‘Whisky,’ he said, catching the fluttering direction her gaze had taken. ‘I decided I might be better off becoming a drunk before you lay any more shocks on me.’
‘There are no more shocks.’ Cassie struggled to get even those few words past the thick blockage in her throat.
‘You think not?’ He scraped a set of fingers through his hair, oddly managing to smooth it without, Cassie was sure, that being his intention. ‘Try climbing inside my head, cara,’ he invited grimly. ‘It is a minefield of shocks and questions.’
He took a gulp at his drink.
It was yet another change in his personality Cassie found she had to struggle with. She’d seen the ultra-sophisticated businessman and the smooth expert charmer. She’d seen shock completely debilitate him and felt the explosive thrust of his anger scare her almost out of her wits. He’d been weak, he’d been strong, he’d been frighteningly vulnerable and ruthlessly passionate when he’d taken her to his bed. Right now he just looked unbearably cynical and chillingly remote, as if he’d slammed his defences into place.
And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, she decided as she hovered tensely on the threshold of the room, desperately wanting to snatch up her purse and just go, yet held glued to the spot by a bubbling growth of concern because she could see the strain of what was happening to him was really making itself felt now and he looked so dreadfully pale.
‘Sandro, please, don’t drink that,’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Tell me the date you claim we were together,’ he cut in right over her.
‘We were together!’ Cassie instantly flared up.
‘All right,’ with another one of those angry slashes with his hand, ‘tell me when we were together, then!’
Needing to take in a breath of shaky air, Cassie named the date.
Sandro made a jerky movement that was almost a flinch. ‘For how long?’
‘I’ve told you this too—’
‘Then repeat it. How long?’ he bit out rawly.
Pressing her lips together, she had to push herself beyond the shame barrier before she could answer, ‘Two w-weeks.’
‘Two weeks,’ he echoed in a thick, cursing voice. Then he really scared her by dropping like lead into the nearest chair and made that gesture with his fingers, pushing them up against his brow. ‘Are you claiming that we managed to conceive twins in only two weeks?’
‘N-no.’ Having to bite back the desire to object to the way he had put that, Cassie gave in to her own trembling legs and walked over to a chair to sit down. ‘It took you two weeks to get me to go to bed with you and only one n-night to conceive the twins. The next morning you said you had to fly back to Florence. You promised you would be gone for only a few days but you never came back.’
‘I couldn’t come back.’ Lowering his hand from his brow, he continued the story from his point of view. ‘The accident happened and I lost six seemingly vital weeks of my life.’
‘Will you stop this, Sandro?’ A sudden flush of hot anger launched Cassie back to her feet. ‘Your lost weeks have nothing to do with this!’
His head shot up. ‘How the hell do you come to that crazy conclusion?’
‘But I told you this too,’ she cried out. ‘I called you on your mobile. You barely gave me the opportunity to speak before you hit me with, “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Please don’t ring this number again…”’ As he jerked to his feet Cassie shuddered because those harsh words were etched in fire on her brain. ‘It was quite a brush-off,’ she continued with a thin laugh that didn’t even touch base with humour. ‘If I had been in a better frame of mind I m-might have appreciated just how callous you could be. But at the time I was more concerned about myself and the—the twins I’d just found out I was carrying. When I tried to tell you about them you put the phone down on me!’
‘But I do not remember this telephone call!’ he thrust out angrily.
Eyes like green fire leapt into contact with his eyes. ‘That conversation took place eight weeks after you left me, Sandro. Are you now saying that your memory loss scans eight weeks instead of six?’
In the thickening silence that gathered after that piece of blazing sarcasm, Cassie wondered why she was bothering to repeat any of this when once again he gave no reaction, not even a wince.
‘Even if you did not remember m-me,’ she went on unevenly, ‘a less callous man would have hesitated long enough to ask himself if there was a chance I could belong to his lost weeks.’ And she’d been so scared, almost weeping, begging him to listen to her. ‘But you weren’t interested enough to want to bother to do even that, were
you?’
Still he said nothing. And he was emulating a slab of rock now—because he could no longer defend himself against what she’d said?
Probably, Cassie decided as the feelings of bitterness flooded back into play and she turned to walk over to the side-table and picked up her purse. ‘Just do me a favour, and stay right away from me,’ she husked out shakily. ‘If you decide you want contact with my children then you will have to go through my solicitor because I don’t want you anywhere near them.’
And this time she was leaving, Cassie told herself. This time she was not going to look back.
As she walked to the door the sound of something falling shattered that vow almost as soon as she’d fixed it inside her head. She swung around, her blood already running cold because she knew what she was going to see even before her eyes locked on to Sandro lying stretched out on the livingroom floor.
Like an action reply of the last time he’d done this, she was on her knees beside him before she’d realised she’d moved.
‘Sandro…’ she breathed, reaching out to touch her trembling fingers to his cheek. His skin felt horribly cold and clammy and the grey cast to his face sent alarm bells jangling up through her insides.
Getting to her feet again, she raced out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen. A minute later she was back on her knees beside him again with a damp cloth and a glass of water that was pretty useless, she thought wildly when he was still showing no sign of coming round.
‘Come on, Sandro…’ she urged tensely, pressing the dampened cloth to his brow then his mouth then his brow again—touching him because she needed to touch him but without a single clue as to what she should be doing to help him.
Another minute went by and he still wasn’t moving. And like a safety switch built inside her, the more practical side of her nature swung into play. He needed a doctor—maybe even an ambulance. Glancing around for her purse, she saw it lying halfway across the room where she must have dropped it as she’d run. She was about to scramble up and get it, when another phone started ringing and her eyes spun dizzily to look at Sandro’s suit jacket still lying across the back of a chair where he’d draped it.
Marchese's Forgotten Bride Page 6