by Abby Green
He drew her shirt off until it fell in a pool of black at her feet. Cara’s gaze didn’t waver from him, but her breathing got faster. She watched as Vicenzo’s eyes dropped. His hands went to her jeans, opening them, and he drew them down over her hips and off.
The material of her bra was sheer, and Cara felt her nipples painfully tight against the fabric. Vicenzo cupped one breast before rubbing a thumb back and forth over its hard tip. Pure sensation shot through Cara, and she had to put her hands on his arms to steady herself.
Vicenzo quickly dispensed with her bra, and with a flick of his wrists pushed down her panties. Cara was fast turning into a ball of heat when she saw him impatiently take off his own clothes, until they stood before each other naked. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and she could feel the ends brushing against her breasts.
Vicenzo pulled her in close and bent his head to kiss her again deeply. He couldn’t seem to stop kissing her, and Cara didn’t care. Being kissed by this man was like being sucked down into a whirlpool of pleasure. His erection was thick and hard, pressing against her belly, and she moved enticingly against him.
He had to tense in order not to explode right there. He’d never been so close to coming after so little lovemaking. Every time with this woman was more explosive than the last. He finally broke away from kissing her with a moan. ‘Cara…’
She spoke completely without thinking as she reached up a finger to touch his mouth. ‘Enzo…’
Her eyes were passion glazed and her chest was moving jerkily up and down, fast unravelling Vicenzo’s barely leashed control. And she had called him Enzo…
Vicenzo couldn’t rationalise anything now. All he had strength for was to spread Cara under him and take her. He picked her up and carried her over to the bed, laid her down. Her hair billowed out around her head in a riot of colour. The paler parts of her skin that the sun hadn’t reached, her breasts and between her legs, enticed him to kiss and explore, until Cara was writhing, her hands clutching desperately.
She moaned softly. ‘Enzo…please…’
All Cara knew was that Vicenzo had to enter her now, or she would die from waiting, from being held on this knife-edge of sensation. He had kissed her down there, his tongue had probed intimately, and she’d nearly fallen over the edge.
He moved his sleek, strong body up the bed. She felt the weight of him between her legs and she spread her own in anticipation, arching herself into him. His huge shoulders were above her as, resting on his hands, he penetrated her slowly, his eyes holding hers, looking into hers with such intensity that Cara felt tears threaten. He was killing her with sensuality and tenderness and she didn’t know if she could survive.
Vicenzo looked down into those unbelievably beautiful eyes. At that moment she arched her hips up and into him, causing him to slide in deeper…all the way. And with a fractured moan of total capitulation Vicenzo lost himself in the fragrant world of the woman beneath him, until they both fell over the edge and into the bliss of healing oblivion.
The next morning when Vicenzo woke he enjoyed the novel situation of allowing the lingering pleasures of the night to be felt in his body. With his eyes closed he could remember in every detail how Cara had moved and bewitched and beguiled him to take her, again and again. His body was already hardening in anticipation of reaching out a hand and finding her soft and silky smooth skin. Her rose scent…
He put out a hand, expecting to find that body close by, and felt nothing. His eyes flew open and he sat up. The bed was empty. Cold. She’d been gone a long time. Anger and something else rushed through Vicenzo as he got up and pulled on his jeans. He went out into the corridor and with no ceremony went straight into her room. The bed had been slept in. He frowned. She had come back to her own bed? The thought made him feel almost incandescent—and where the hell was she now? The sun was barely up outside.
With irrational anger mounting, Vicenzo strode through the house, looking into the dining room, kitchen, living room, out onto the terrace and by the pool, until finally he found himself outside his study door.
Feeling a tightness in his chest, he pushed the door open silently and walked in. The tightness intensified when he saw Cara, her back to him, sitting cross-legged on the floor in jeans and a loose shirt, hair pulled back, with Doppo, as ever, beside her and all the papers they’d been working on strewn about her. Déjà vu smacked him right between the eyes.
Cara had known the minute he came into the room. She’d even, much to her chagrin, sensed somehow when he got up. He walked in barefoot and stood in front of her. She looked up, and a flame raced through her body. He towered above her, six feet something of potent masculine male, bare-chested and with his jeans button open, drawing her eye to the line of dark silky hair that led down… Cara swallowed past a dry throat.
When he’d fallen asleep holding her she’d been so tempted just to give in and sleep too. But the awful acrid fear had risen up that she would wake and find him sitting in a chair across the room, looking at her with that same stony visage she’d woken to in London. She couldn’t cope with that again—ever. That was what had driven her from his bed last night, and also in Rome, the night of the marriage.
‘What’s going on, Cara?’ he asked equably, but she could hear the thread of impatience in his voice.
She looked back down to the papers. ‘I’m working on this.’
He bent down and extended a hand. Cara had no choice but to take it or appear silly. She took it, and ignored the dart of pleasure as their skin connected.
She pulled her hand from his and moved back, ignoring the flash of something dark across his face. Cara took a deep breath and waited, tense.
‘Cara, I don’t expect you to keep working on it. It’s under control now.’ His mouth twisted and he looked slightly shamefaced. It threw her. ‘I let you help that night to test you—to see how much you knew of Cormac’s dealings…’
That was nothing new to Cara. She crossed her arms. ‘But the fact is, Vicenzo…’ Cara stalled for a second. She had a vivid flashback of calling him Enzo last night, and how she’d entreated him. And the fact that she had done that… Her insides roiled. If he touched her again he’d know exactly how awfully vulnerable she was to him.
Vicenzo arched a brow. ‘The fact is?’
She recovered herself and forced her mind away from what it had meant to call him Enzo. ‘The fact is that I’m still responsible for my brother’s actions—’
He made a slashing movement of his hand. Utter rejection of her claim rose up within Vicenzo, surprising him with its force when only days ago he would have agreed. ‘Don’t be silly, Cara. Your brother did this, not you.’
‘Yes. But I’m ashamed of what he did. I’m not going to let you deal with this. Not while I’m here.’ She hitched up her chin. ‘And there’s also the debt that’s still to be paid. If I can start with this, perhaps at some point we can come to some arrangement where I look for work again so that I can pay you back properly. If you could give me a reference based on my work here, it would help me to find a job.’
Vicenzo ran a hand through his hair. Why was she being so contrary? He’d caught a glimpse of another woman last night. The woman he’d seen in London. The woman he wanted to see more of. Sweet, innocent, sexy, open… But now it was as if last night hadn’t happened. He vacillated between wanting to shake her and kiss her.
Vicenzo didn’t believe in any way any more that Cara was responsible for Cormac’s debt, but something goaded him to say, ‘That debt would take years to pay off.’
He saw how Cara paled in an instant. ‘I know,’ she said quietly, avoiding his eye. ‘That’s all that lies between us, and between me and my freedom.’ She looked at him then. ‘While you’re keeping me here I want to work on untangling what Cormac did. It’s the least I can do.’
Galvanised by an anger Vicenzo didn’t understand at her words, at the explicit implication that she was no more than his prisoner, he bridged the gap between them, stepping
carelessly on papers as he did so. ‘The debt isn’t the only thing between us, Cara.’
Her head reared back, and he could see the pupils of her eyes dilate even as she said, ‘I won’t be sleeping with you again, Vicenzo.’
‘Oh, no?’ And with devastating precision he pulled her in close, ignoring her hands against his chest that tried to push him away. He kissed her. She tried to twist her head away, but in the end it was no use. When she wouldn’t offer him her lips he just feathered light, tantalising kisses along her rigid jaw, and then at the corners of hers eyes and temples. Finally, undone with the effort it was taking to deny him, she parted her lips…
As Vicenzo kissed her, stoking the flames of their lust higher and higher, Cara knew the worst had happened. Without the cushion of Vicenzo’s misconceptions and prejudices keeping him from touching her, she was laid bare in her desire for him. He would know exactly how badly she hungered for him. And that would give him a power more potent over her than the debt, or the fact that she was still his virtual prisoner. The fact was she’d always been a prisoner—except her prison didn’t have walls or a lock and key.
Two weeks later Cara breathed easy for the first time since she and Vicenzo had started sleeping together again. And the only reason for that was because he’d gone to Rome for an emergency meeting at his head office. She was trying so hard to resist him on every level, but when he touched her…she just couldn’t. During the days she ensured they maintained a distance. But at night it was as if all the distance and excessive politeness during the day exploded around them and they became insatiable in their desire.
As soon as Vicenzo went to sleep Cara would get up and leave, go back to her own bed. She knew it angered him. She’d seen it in the line of his jaw in the morning, seen the challenge in his eyes. And last night, when she’d thought he was sleeping, as she’d tried to leave he’d snaked out a hard arm and pulled her back, whispering huskily, ‘No escape tonight.’
Cara had lain there for a long time, but just as the dawn had been rising in the sky outside she’d managed to wriggle free without waking him. It was a hollow victory, but his face before he’d left for Rome, the look in his eyes, had told her she wouldn’t escape again—and that was why she had to persuade him to let her leave now.
She was determined that when Vicenzo came back she would make him see that he couldn’t keep her here. With each day that went by she was falling more and more in love with the place—Silvio…Doppo. Vicenzo.
Silvio had been giving her lessons in Italian, and Lucia had been showing her some traditional Italian recipes. Her heart ached at the seductive pull to slip into a ready-made family, and it was far too dangerous for her to indulge in any more. Her life wasn’t about that. Vicenzo’s life wasn’t about that. That white villa came back to her in all its cold glory.
She needed to move on and get her life back together. And while, thanks to Cormac’s debt, she’d never really have the absolute freedom she craved, perhaps once this farcical marriage was over and she was home again and had found a job she’d feel a measure of peace. Ultimately what had brought them together was loss, misunderstanding and grief. And debt. All she had to do now was convince Vicenzo to let her go.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE tiredness Vicenzo had been feeling since he’d got on the plane from Rome back to Sardinia magically melted away when he drove in through the gates of the villa. He was already anticipating seeing Cara. Perhaps she was by the pool…or messing about in the sea with Doppo.
Or maybe she was taking a siesta from the heat. That thought made the heat from the sun fade as his own body heat zoomed up. He looked at his watch as he strode to the front door, yanking his tie free as he went, feeling constricted. But when he walked in something told him she wasn’t there. Some sixth sense.
Just then the nurse looking after his father came into the hall. She was a maternal woman in her fifties. Vicenzo had to quell his irritation that she wasn’t Cara. ‘Ah, Signore Valentini, if you’re looking for your wife she went out…’ She gave a little laugh. ‘It was quite dramatic, actually.’
Panic siezed Vicenzo’s innards, turning him cold in an instant. ‘What do you mean?’
The nurse put out a hand, clearly seeing something on his face and making him feel exposed. ‘Oh, no—it’s nothing wrong with Cara. It’s the dog… We were all out in the garden and he just seemed to…suddenly collapse… Lucia and Tommaso had gone shopping, and I couldn’t leave your father, so Cara has taken him to the vet.’
Relief rushed through Vicenzo, making him dizzy. It was just the damn dog. But then the panic returned. ‘You say she took him to the vet?’
‘Yes,’ the nurse said, and looked at her watch, frowning. ‘But it was over three hours ago, so unless she’s still there… I would have thought she’d be back by now.’
Panic was back, and full blown. ‘How did she go there?’
‘I told her she could take my car. I’m in no rush—my shift isn’t over until—’
Vicenzo didn’t wait to hear the rest of her words. He dropped everything and raced out of the villa, jumping onto his motorbike. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the terror on Cara’s face that day in Dublin, when she’d thought they were going to hit that car. Even sitting in the back of vehicles since then he’d always been aware of the tension in her form, of her visible relaxation once she’d get out.
He roared out of the villa and made straight for the vet. When he got there he went in—to find that Cara had been and gone. The vet was launching into an explanation of how Doppo had just been dehydrated, and how he’d told Cara to come back and get him in a couple of days. Vicenzo had to restrain an urge to slam the vet up against a wall as he cut through his words and said, ‘When did my wife leave?’
The vet gulped and said, ‘Not long ago… She did look a little pale, actually. I asked her if she wanted me to call anyone but she said she’d be fine…’
Vicenzo forced himself to calm down. Blanking his mind of anything but finding her, he finally did—and the relief that rushed through him was nothing short of huge. A small car was pulled in at a skewed angle at the side of the road and Cara was kneeling on the grass beside the open door, clearly having been sick.
He jumped off the bike and went straight to her, gathering her up into his arms. She was weak and shaking all over, her face so pale that it made a shard of pure fear go through him. He’d taken a bottle of water from the vet in a moment of clarity, and now made her drink some.
She seemed to come to a little with the water, but her shaking intensified. ‘Vicenzo…’
‘Shh. Don’t talk. I’m taking you home now. You’re safe.’
Even as he lifted her into his arms and stood up he felt her hands clutching at his shirt. She said weakly, ‘The car…it’s the nurse’s car. I don’t think I crashed it, did I?’ The fear in her voice made his insides clench.
‘No, sweetheart, the car is fine. And Doppo is fine.’ He silently cursed the dog again. He got onto the bike, still holding her, and settled her into the cradle of his lap in front of him. He told her to hold on and she did, unquestioningly.
Once back at the villa, Cara felt stronger already. And she also felt like a prize fool. She hadn’t even been able to manage a simple car journey. Her concern for Doppo had got her to the vet, but without him in the car she’d fallen apart, the fatal crash coming back in lurid detail.
She managed to get off the bike without help, and said shakily, ‘I thought I’d be fine. It’s so silly, I wasn’t even driving that night, but I couldn’t…’
‘Evidently not.’ Vicenzo was grim as he followed her off the bike. ‘What the hell were you thinking? Why didn’t you call me, or wait till Tommaso and Lucia had come home?’
Cara looked up at Vicenzo and could feel the colour drain from her face. ‘You’re angry because I left the villa?’
He took her arm. ‘No, you little fool, I’m angry because you almost risked your life for a dog.’
; Confusion and an awful deep yearning made Cara feel dizzy. She was glad Vicenzo was holding onto her. ‘But he’d collapsed, Vicenzo, I wasn’t sure if he was breathing… And after everything that’s happened I wasn’t going to let Doppo die just because I was too scared to drive.’
Vicenzo muttered something unintelligible and led her inside, straight to the living room, where he sat her down and went to the drinks cabinet. He came back with a measure of whisky in a glass and handed it to her.
Cara wrinkled up her nose. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Fine.’ Vicenzo downed it himself.
Cara noticed that he looked slightly pale beneath his tan, and something flared in her chest.
He came and sat down beside her. ‘I think it’s time you told me how you ended up in the car with them that night.’
Cara immediately stood up, in a reflex action to reject what he’d just said. The terror that had been so recent surged back. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She turned round and said, a little wildly, ‘What’s the point? It won’t being your sister back.’
The awful debilitating guilt was back, never far from the surface.
‘No, it won’t, Cara. But I think you’ve been punishing yourself long enough for something that wasn’t even your fault.’
Cara lashed out in an effort to avoid articulating the horror. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that you were happy to blame me—’
Vicenzo stood, colour surging into his cheeks. ‘Yes, I did. But I was wrong. And I did so because I was grief stricken and because I thought you were just like your brother.’
Cara blanched, all the fight draining out of her.
Vicenzo came and took her hands and led her back to the couch. ‘Cara, if you don’t tell someone what happened that night then you’ll never be free of it.’
‘But don’t you see?’ She could feel a sob rising. ‘I won’t ever be free of it… If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t felt like I had to be watching out for your sister and my brother…’