A Venetian Affair

by Catherine George

He caressed her breasts, pushing her top out of the way so he could move on to her belly, where he teased her by running his fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans. He brushed her lightly between her legs to hear her moan. He could feel her heat, sense her need…Her lips were slightly parted and as he teased her some more she eased her legs apart, inviting more. Reluctantly, he refused the offer. It was far too soon.

  Her pulse leapt when he eased her top over her head and she was already loosening her jeans. He put his hands over hers, stopping her. There was a long way to go before she was ready for that.

  ‘Why?’

  He moved down the bed as she spoke, laving kisses on her breasts, on her belly, licking, nipping, preparing her. ‘Because I’m not ready yet.’

  Her eyes called him a liar, and unfortunately it was true. He was at crisis point, thrusting hard against the opening of his jeans. But he could hold back, and so she would too.

  He ripped off his shirt in one impatient movement, exulting when Nell’s hands went immediately to press against his chest.

  ‘You’re so hard…you’re magnificent.’

  Taking hold of her hands, he kissed each one of her fingertips in turn. ‘And you’re beautiful…the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.’ They had both waited so long for this trial of sensual endurance, he wouldn’t spoil it now by allowing the heat building up inside him to take over. He wanted tenderness and sensuality for both of them, and he would have it, even though her eyes were entreating him, her lips begging him…

  She nearly destroyed his self-will when she nipped each of his hard brown nipples in turn between her thumb and forefinger. And then she writhed against him and he had to grit his teeth and think of everything but how much he wanted her. But even then he just grew harder. Her voice was a seduction, her body a sin…He found the answer in lifting himself out of real time so that he could observe her clinically, telling himself in a mind- if not body-numbing mantra how much better he could make it for her if only she would wait. But how he wanted to express all the feeling welling inside him: caring, cherishing, loving…

  ‘Kiss me, Luca.’

  He needed no encouragement. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her deeply. All the barriers between them broke down and disappeared as he prolonged the kiss, stroking her tongue, sucking it, plundering, moving and thrusting in a shadow of the act she craved so desperately. He moved to her breasts, capturing first one nipple and then the other, heating them with his hot breath until they strained towards him, begging to be sucked, flaunting themselves through a tormenting barrier of flimsy lace.

  He refused to be hurried, and only smiled when she called out to him to try and urge him on. He lingered at the waistband of her briefs, and just when he knew she couldn’t stand any more he moved down the bed again and started massaging her feet.

  She was so frustrated she tried to roll away, but he caught her to him easily. He was still laughing softly when he started licking behind her knees, and thrilled to realise that she’d had no idea she was so sensitive there. How little she knew of love. Reaching up his hands, he began to stroke her thighs, tantalising her by sweeping short of where she needed him to be. He could feel her quivering. Moving up the bed, he let her feel his weight, just for a moment, his hard, toned frame pressing into her. Then, slipping his hand beneath her briefs, he stroked her belly, reaching down to feather a torment between her legs…stretching delicately, tugging a little, then stroking, but always missing the special place where she longed for his attention. She kept adjusting her position in an attempt to outwit him, but he kept her still with one hand while with two fingers of the other hand he began to massage gently.

  ‘Now, now,’ she begged hoarsely, as once again he avoided touching her most sensitive place.

  She was trembling all over, shaking so much she could hardly speak. His answer was to dip his tongue into the hollow at the base of her neck and lick her until she begged for mercy, and only then did he lower the straps of her bra.

  ‘I hate you!’ she told him softly when he looked up.

  ‘I know. But not for long.’

  He weighed her breasts appreciatively as a prelude to laving them with his tongue. Her nipples strained towards him, and her smooth, pale skin was flushed rose-pink after he had rasped his beard against her. Now she was arching against him, calling out for release.

  ‘Do you still hate me?’ he teased. ‘Because if you want more you must lie still and be a good girl…’ He gazed down, frowning, pretending disapproval, as she thrust her hips towards him. ‘What are you doing?’

  The stern tone of his voice made her tremble even more. What did she have to do? ‘You’re impossible!’ she accused him.

  The result of his teasing was clearly defined beneath the cobweb fabric of her briefs; the tone of his voice had aroused her all the more. ‘Please, Luca, no more teasing. I can’t bear this…You’re…’ Her voice faded into a groan as he touched her lightly between the legs. Drawing her knees back, she writhed beneath him.

  ‘Impossible?’ he supplied drily.

  ‘Worse than that…’ was all she could manage. She was sobbing with frustration. As he cupped her buttocks she exhaled raggedly.

  ‘You greedy girl,’ he murmured. ‘Can’t you wait?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, you won’t be needing these.’ Catching hold of the waistband of her briefs, he slipped them off.

  Her eyes slanted like a cat’s as she smiled her satisfaction. ‘Now,’ she commanded in a whisper.

  ‘Maybe I don’t think you’re ready yet—’ He gasped, the words stolen from his lips as she took him firmly in her hands.

  ‘I think I am,’ she said, wrapping her legs around his waist.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SHE might be acting strong, but he was going to take precautions first and then she could do what she liked with him.

  He eased into her, taking care not to hurt her. There was something different between them now, something that demanded all his attention.

  ‘Wait,’ she said abruptly.

  He stopped immediately when she asked him to. She didn’t speak; he just felt her hands pressing against his chest. ‘Am I hurting you?’

  She was panting, tensing, Nell realised. The size of him…how had she forgotten? It had always been fast, animalistic, almost feral before, like two wild beasts without thought or care. But this was different in every way, tender, exquisitely sensitive. Nothing could have prepared her…

  ‘No…I don’t want you to stop. It’s like the first time…’

  ‘For me too.’

  He kissed her deeply, caressing her at the same time, finding her and stroking her while he drove steadily on. His touch was so persuasive, so delicate and intuitive. He waited until she had relaxed completely, and then it was she who made the first move, lifting her hips towards him so that he could inhabit her completely.

  His warm breath raced against her ear, delivering tiny electric shocks throughout her system. She held his gaze, tightening her muscles around him and working her hips so that he was rubbing rhythmically against her, yet making no attempt to withdraw…

  Without warning, she came violently, clinging to him, crying, bucking, gasping, greedily working her body against his to make it last.

  He made it last.

  Luca understood every part of her. He knew how to prolong the pleasure and how to gently persuade her she wanted more. ‘I’m not ready…I can’t be…’

  But he was right. Her innermost muscles were already clenching and relaxing in anticipation as she writhed provocatively beneath him. He took her again, plunging deep, working steadily, only pausing each time she climaxed.

  Maybe he had made her wait too long. She was so frustrated, it was like having to skim the cream off the top of the milk before you could drink it. She was completely abandoned, lying with her knees back, opening herself for him, every inhibition lost in the frantic hunt for pleasure. His muscles were hard and bunched beneath her hands
where she had grabbed his hips to urge him on.

  The light was fading by the time he released her, and only then did he wonder about the desperation he’d sensed in her as they made love. Was she still so unsure of him?

  It was their last night at Chalet Aquila and yet it was their first real night together. Had she become an addiction he couldn’t break? Luca wondered as he soothed Nell with kisses. He had never expected it to be like this when he had taken time to make it special for her. He had never expected her to be so vulnerable. But when she had turned to him with her eyes wide and frightened when he was making love to her, it was almost as if she was anticipating rejection…rejection at the very moment when he had cherished her the most.

  Who had done this to her? Who had hurt her? It had to be Molly’s father. Jake.

  Tipping up her chin so he could look into her eyes, he saw the deep-rooted fear she always tried so hard to hide, and knew then there was still so much she wasn’t telling him. ‘Nell…don’t hold out on me.’

  ‘Hold out on you?’

  She tried the smile, the confident, sensuous curve of her lips that at one time would have been enough for him to forget any question he might have had in mind, but not this time. ‘Nell…’ His look told her he was prepared to wait for however long it took.

  Her smile faded, her eyes flickered and then she turned her head away. Cupping her chin, he gently brought her back again. Why was she still keeping secrets from him? What did he have to do to prove himself to her? Weren’t they close enough yet? Didn’t she know he would never hurt her intentionally? The last thing on earth he wanted to do was to turn her back into the hostile individual he had first encountered on the banks of the canal. His only thought now was to protect her. ‘You demand honesty of me,’ he said gently.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, meeting his gaze.

  ‘Then why can’t you be honest with me?’

  ‘I am honest with you,’ she protested.

  ‘So, tell me about Jake.’

  She froze in his arms. ‘What do you want to know?’ Sitting up, she bunched her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around them.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘I already told you why I couldn’t trust doctors.’ She stopped and glanced up at the ceiling as if she was struggling to hold in her feelings.

  ‘But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there, Nell? It wasn’t just me as a doctor you were hostile towards when we first met. There was a barricade around you a mile wide.’

  ‘When we first met I had a sick child, and you were Molly’s doctor. Do you really think that would have been a good time to start an affair with you?’

  ‘I’m not talking about starting an affair. I’m only interested in the defences you had in place—and why they were there. You still had them when I saw you speaking on the platform in that suit—’

  ‘So, you’re judging me on my clothes?’

  ‘Your armour,’ he argued softly.

  He was right, but it had been a long fight back after Jake’s deception. She couldn’t forget how that lack of judgement had torn her world apart. With sex and men out of the picture she had felt safe, but now she was vulnerable again. And there was Molly to consider. Could she pretend not to have noticed how Molly’s face lit up every time Luca was around? Could she take the risk that, if things went further, he might let them down as Jake had done?

  She took a breath. ‘I was married—I thought happily. I was pregnant with my first child. We had everything to live for. Then a policewoman came to the door one day. She said, “There’s been an accident…”’

  It was as if the colour surrounding her had abruptly turned to black and white. As she told him about her husband’s fatal accident, he understood what had hurt her even more than the sense of helplessness. She had been betrayed. He listened as she told him about the other woman, the woman who had held Jake’s baby in her arms. She couldn’t hate that woman, or her baby, and then he knew that Nell had turned that hatred on herself. She didn’t need to tell him how much it hurt, because he could feel it for her.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she whispered.

  No. She had been vulnerable and alone. And that was why when he met her all those years ago in Venice she had been so angry and frightened. She had believed she was to blame again, but this time for Molly’s illness.

  ‘But why do you still feel guilty?’ he prompted gently.

  She didn’t speak for a while and then she tipped her chin up to face him. ‘Because everything that happened came from me wanting something I couldn’t have. Jake was so wild, so exciting, and I was…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t you see?’

  ‘No, I can’t see.’ A sudden surge of anger blinded him. He was angry with himself, with Nell. What was she trying to say? Did she still love her dead husband?

  ‘I wasn’t enough for Jake,’ she said starkly. ‘That was why he needed someone else. It hurt to find that out. And if I’m still hiding behind those defences you were talking about, it’s because I don’t want to be hurt again.’

  ‘You don’t need to hide to achieve that. You simply need to know your lover would not betray you.’

  She didn’t respond to that, staring at her hands, and Luca felt a wave of sheer, painful rage as he realised what her silence meant.

  ‘So you think all men are the same as Jake? That we would all break our vows so lightly?’

  She hesitated too long. ‘Thank you,’ he said tensely.

  ‘Thank you for what?’ She glanced at him warily.

  ‘You’re too fond of pigeon-holing people, Nell. Doctors, nurses, men in general, Latin men in particular…all of us neatly labelled and filed away in your head.’ Holding her gaze firm, he saw he was right. He swung out of bed and started throwing on his clothes. ‘Do you have any more insults up your sleeve? Please, don’t hold back—or shall I try to guess? The Latin lover who lies and cheats his way through countless women? Is that it, Nell? Do you really think you can tar me with the same brush as Jake?’

  ‘No, of course not—’

  ‘Then what?’

  She didn’t know. All she could hold on to was the knowledge that it was she who was inadequate. Why else had Jake made a parallel life with another woman? She couldn’t risk that happening a second time, not with Molly to consider.

  ‘Jake was a weakling, a coward. I hope you’re not suggesting I am too?’

  She flinched from Luca’s tightly controlled anger, but she also felt a shock of surprise. ‘A coward?’ She had always seen Jake as a man who sparkled brighter than a diamond. And Luca was so far from being a coward, his suggestion was risible.

  ‘Yes, a coward,’ he repeated scathingly. ‘What else would you call a man who refuses to live up to his responsibilities, a man who cannot face the woman he married and tell her the truth, a man who lied to two women, both of them bearing his child. Contemptible.’ With a sound of disgust, he shook his head.

  Nell opened her mouth to protest, and shut it again. She had simply never looked at it from that point of view, but suddenly she found it hard to believe that she had shut her mind to Jake’s responsibility for so long.

  ‘But surely it must have been hard for him. With two women, two children…’ She hardly realised she was speaking out loud. She was still trying to make sense of it, trying to look back at her marriage from the new perspective Luca had just given her.

  ‘Are you making excuses for him?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ It had been an automatic response, after years trapped in the web of self-delusion that insisted she was to blame for the breakdown of her marriage.

  Luca was staring at her incredulously. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Luca, don’t look at me like that—’

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  Loving Jake was so far from her mind, Nell’s brain locked. Nothing would come to her lips. She held out he
r hand as Luca started for the door.

  ‘Perhaps it’s as well our time in the mountains is almost at an end,’ he snapped at her. ‘I’ll leave you to shower. Use my bathroom and then go and pack.’

  ‘Pack?’

  ‘There’s no reason why we shouldn’t go back to Venice this evening. I don’t see any point in staying here now. As far as I’m concerned we might as well leave right away, in fact.’ His voice was so cold, so hard.

  Nell’s head was reeling. She couldn’t believe Luca thought she still loved Jake, but in this mood he wouldn’t listen whatever she said. She tried anyway as he stalked away. ‘Luca, it’s not that I love Jake—’

  He paused at the door. ‘Do you really think you have the monopoly on feelings?’

  ‘No, of course not. Luca, please listen—’

  With a contemptuous sound he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him as if he couldn’t wait to put distance between them.

  If she had thought the drive back to Venice in total silence was hard, the arrival was much worse. Molly’s crestfallen face when Nell arrived back early said it all. But what had she thought her reception would be like, when she had returned to the palazzo with red-rimmed eyes and Luca was so tense he could barely speak to anyone?

  What had she allowed Molly to think? Nell felt a shaft of guilt pierce her as she met her daughter’s anxious, enquiring gaze. That there was a romance brewing between her mother and a man Molly clearly adored? If she had done that, it wasn’t merely careless, it was unforgivable.

  ‘Well, you can go back to the hotel if you like, but I’m not coming with you,’ Molly announced mulishly.

  ‘What?’ Nell refocused. ‘Oh, yes, you are, young lady. It’s time for bed.’

  ‘In my pyjamas?’ Molly held out the sides of her baggy trousers. ‘You said you’d be back on Monday, so I got changed ready for bed.’

  ‘Well, you can get changed back again.’

  ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Molly, you can stay over on another occasion.’

  Nell and Molly turned to stare at Luca, with very different expressions on their faces.