by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
‘So, the kitten has claws after all,’ he drawled softly. ‘And that is just the way I would have wanted it. I wouldn’t have wanted you to fall straight into my fingers like a ripe plum—where is the pleasure in that?’
‘Wha—what do you mean?’
‘In matters of the heart, innamorata, the chase can be every bit as exciting as the actual moment of possession. The delay only whets the appetite, strengthens the desire. So fight me all you can, bella mia, but you’re only fighting the inevitable. You will have to give in sometime, and your surrender will be all the sweeter for the waiting.’
‘Never!’ Amy managed to gasp, her blood curdling at the sound of his laughter.
‘Never is a delusion, my sweet Amy. You know it and so do I. We were made to be together. The one hot night we shared—our wedding night—was enough to tell me that.’
But that one night was all he was ever going to know, Amy resolved in the privacy of her own thoughts. Their marriage had ended less than twenty-four hours later, and she was determined to finish it now—once and for all.
But first she would have a little private satisfaction. She would take this arrogant, self-confident pig and play him at his own game for a while.
Then, and only then, would she tell him the truth.
She reckoned it would go some way towards avenging the anguish that he had put her through four years ago.
Chapter Two
‘YOU offered me a drink…’
Amy eased herself from Vincenzo’s restraining arms with as much coolness as she could muster and moved away, deliberately putting a distance that was as much emotional as physical between them.
‘I really am very thirsty,’ she said, automatically smoothing down the dark silk of her hair where his strong fingers had tousled it. ‘And tired…’
His smile told her that he knew exactly what she was doing but, to her relief, he simply nodded.
‘What would you like? Tea? Mineral water? I’ll have it brought to your room, shall I?’
‘My room?’ Amy questioned sharply and met another of those fiendishly knowing glances.
‘Of course I have provided you with a separate room, cara mia. Credit me with a little finesse. We both know why you are here, but that does not mean I am not prepared to allow you a little time to adjust. We have been apart many times longer than we ever were together. We need to get to know each other again.’
She knew everything she ever wanted to know about him! What else could she possibly learn other than that his smooth, sophisticated exterior hid an even more cruel and hateful personality than she had ever expected? She had been so bitterly deceived by that veneer of courtesy and gentleness—but never again!
‘Yes, I would like some time in my room,’ she managed, praying that Vincenzo’s sharp, assessing eyes wouldn’t catch the difference in her mood, the change in her expression. ‘I’d like to freshen up—take a rest.’
‘But of course.’
Immediately Vincenzo was all courtesy, the mask of civility quickly back in place.
The room he took her to was magnificent. Decorated in the softest tones of blue, occasionally highlighted with a rich cream, it had a high ceiling and beautifully colourwashed walls. A huge bed, piled high with downy pillows and draped in silk, seemed to whisper sensual promises of soft comfort and deep, relaxing sleep.
To her left, a door stood half-open, revealing a beautifully equipped en suite bathroom. And on the far side, opposite to the door, large, arching windows, draped like the bed, let in the warmth of the Italian spring sunlight that was so very different from the grey clouds and damp days she had left behind in the north of England.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Amy managed because she felt obliged to say something.
‘Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.’ Vincenzo had caught the flat note in her voice that she hadn’t been able to disguise.
‘Well, you know me…’ Amy blustered awkwardly, immediately wishing she hadn’t used precisely those words.
The smile curling Vincenzo’s beautifully shaped mouth, a disturbing light in his eyes made her heart lurch uncomfortably, setting up a heavy, uneven rhythm that brought a rush of unwanted colour to her cheeks.
‘I find all this magnificence a bit impersonal—a showplace, not a home. I prefer something simpler and warmer, like…like…’
‘Like my apartment,’ Vincenzo inserted softly when she floundered, seeing danger in what she had been about to say.
‘As a matter of fact, I meant my mother’s house!’
She didn’t want to think of Vincenzo’s apartment where she had spent the one, glorious, bitterly deluded night of her marriage. She had been delighted by it from the moment he had brought her there after their first meeting at the very beginning of her holiday. It had been full of light and warmth and, she had believed, love. She had thought it would be the home she would share with her husband after they had married.
‘Your mother’s house!’ Vincenzo echoed savagely. ‘The house I was never allowed to set foot inside. The mother I was never allowed to meet.’
‘You were angry—furious!’ Remembered horror darkened Amy’s eyes at the thought. ‘I’d have been a fool to let you anywhere near me.’
She could never tell him that she hadn’t want to let him in because she had feared that if she did, then her home, her life in England, the one place that was free of any connection with the terrible mistake of her marriage, would be touched by his presence. If he once came inside, then she would always picture him there, and be haunted by the memory.
‘And our marriage was over so there was no point in you ever meeting my mother—she was never going to be anything to you, nor you to her.’
‘Our marriage was not over!’
‘You lied to me!’ Her voice was raw with pain that the passage of the intervening years had done nothing to ease. ‘You never meant a word of your marriage vows.’
‘I meant every word,’ Vincenzo told her coldly. ‘Till death do us part. That is why our marriage is not over. Why it will never be over!’
‘What?’
Her head was spinning and she thought longingly of sinking down on the inviting comfort of the bed and closing her eyes. Pride alone kept her upright. Pride forced her to look into the inimical black depths of his eyes and see the molten steel of resolution that burned there, impervious to appeal.
‘Never?’
An arrogant flick of one olive-skinned hand dismissed her shaken question.
‘I am Italian, cara. Our religion forbids divorce. You know this. You knew it when you married me, and it still holds true today. In my book marriage is per sempre—for ever.’
‘I…’
Words danced inside her head, but just out of reach. She couldn’t focus her thoughts to catch any one of them or form them into a coherent sequence. And her confusion was made all the worse by the belated realisation that the arrogant hand Vincenzo had waved under her nose wore a ring on its wedding finger. A plain, broad band of gold that she herself had placed on it with such happiness on the morning of their wedding day.
Her own wedding ring was gone, she had no idea where. In the aftermath of the horror that had closed in around her the day after her marriage, she had flung it wildly at Vincenzo, refusing ever to wear it again. But he still had his. And it seemed that he planned to keep the commitment that went with it, despite the fact that his own actions had reduced that marriage to ashes from the first.
Which meant the sentence of death for all her own hopes of a future, of freedom, the real reason why she was here in the first place.
‘You are my wife,’ Vincenzo pronounced inflexibly. ‘We may have been separated for four years, but nothing has changed that fact. You are back now—’
‘Vincenzo!’ Amy broke in, in desperation, all plans of revenge, of keeping him dangling, evaporating in the blaze of panic that fired in her mind.
She had to tell him. Had to get the truth out into the open. She couldn’t continue this
pretence any longer.
‘Vincenzo, please!’
But even as she looked into his eyes again and saw there the same unyielding resolve as before, her nerve failed her.
‘Please…’ she began again, her voice quavering weakly. ‘I’m tired—I’d really like to rest. Can—can we talk about this another time?’
His smile twisted in her heart like a cruel knife.
‘But of course, innamorata. I told you, I can wait. But do not make me wait too long. I am not a patient man, and when I see how beautiful you have grown—’
‘Oh, but…’
‘Don’t deny the truth,’ Vincenzo growled, misinterpreting the reason for her protest. ‘Four years ago you were a lovely young girl, poised on the edge of womanhood. But now that promise has been fulfilled. You are truly beautiful, Amy, even when you choose to hide that beauty in such unflattering clothes.’
Disdainful fingers flicked over the grey linen dress she wore, silent scorn implicit in the gesture. But even as Amy’s lips formed a protest, he stilled for a moment and when he moved again the touch of his hands had changed, criticism turning to caress, severity to sensuality, in the space of a heartbeat.
‘It is a crime to clothe skin as soft as this in dowdy colours.’
His voice had dropped, becoming warmly smoky, coiling round her senses in soft enchantment.
‘To conceal the shape of your body in garments as stiff and uninviting as a suit of armour.’
Which was precisely why she had chosen this particular dress. But when Amy tried to force her tongue to frame the reply, she found it had frozen in her mouth, caught in the sensuous trap of his honeyed whisper. She wanted to break free from his touch, but, light as it was, it suddenly had all the power of a tempered steel chain.
‘Amy, cara mia, we have already wasted too much time.’
‘No…’
‘Yes.’ Vincenzo insisted, his dark head lowering slowly until his warm lips brushed her forehead. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this. Why should you fight when surrender would be so much sweeter?’
That tormenting mouth moved lower, pausing to caress her temples, her lowered eyelids, the high, slanting line of her cheekbones. Heat flooded her veins in an instant response, melting away the resistance she struggled to feel, weakening her hold on reality, making her head swim so that she swayed on unsteady feet.
Warm hands slid over her skin in the sleeveless dress, tracing the slender lines of her throat with a delicacy that had her arching into his touch like a contented cat responding to the stroke of its owner’s hand. A heavy pulse was beating deep in the pit of her stomach, sending burning waves of response through the rest of her body, sensitising her nerves, dulling her senses of self-preservation and awakening the most primitive, most basic of needs she had ever known.
‘Vincenzo…’ she managed, her voice thick with an echo of the ache she felt inside, and heard his soft laughter in response.
‘I know, cara. This is how it should be. This, and more…’
His mouth took hers in a kiss that seduced with its gentleness, numbing her thoughts and leaving her only capable of reacting. She returned the gentle pressure of his lips, the flare of hunger that seared through her adding an extra urgency to her kiss, her mouth opening under his, allowing the tantalising invasion of his tongue.
She hadn’t felt him move, but suddenly she was enclosed in powerful arms, held close to the heat and hardness of his body, her pelvis crushed against the burning evidence of his fiercely aroused state. The world had contracted into a tiny microcosm in which there was nothing but herself and Vincenzo, no sense of anything but him, the musky scent of his skin in her nostrils, the tantalising play of his mouth on hers, the taste of his lips, the silken dance of his tongue.
In her ears was the crazy thunder of her own heart, the singing race of her blood in her veins. The heat of his palm burned through the fine material of her dress as his hand roughly cupped and caressed the aching swell of one breast, the other tangling in the dark fall of her hair, tilting her head backwards so that he could plunder her mouth further.
With knowing skill, he circled the pad of his thumbs over the hard, tight point of her nipple, and a sensation like the sear of an electric current licked its way along every nerve, centring in a pool of molten heat low down at the juncture of her thighs.
‘Vincenzo…’ she managed again, on a very different note this time. A low, keening, yearning sound that betrayed her soul just to hear it.
‘Amy, bellissima!’
He sounded almost as shaken as she was, his voice rough and raw at the edges.
‘Why did you do this to us? Why did you deny us this? Why did I? I shouldn’t have let you get away from me. Well, never again, moglie mia, never again! This time, when I take you, I will hold you with me for ever. I will never let you go again.’
This time, when I take you…I will never let you go again…
The words slashed through the heated haze that clouded Amy’s thoughts, snapping her back to reality with a speed and shock that made her stomach lurch queasily. Icy panic chilled her blood, killing the blazing heat and making the burning spiral of need tighten into a cold, hard knot of rejection.
‘No-o-o.’ It was a moan of confusion and fear as rational thought fought a nasty, bitter battle with stronger, more primitive instincts.
‘Si!’ Vincenzo’s voice was insistent in her ear, the emphatic note making it plain that she was going to have to fight him as well as herself if she was to have any chance of winning. ‘Yes, my wife.’
‘No!’
That was better, it sounded stronger this time. Strong enough at least to still his wickedly caressing hands, inject a new, watchful tension into the powerful body that was crushed up against her own slender one.
‘Vincenzo, no!’ she tried again, desperately relieved to see that she had got through to him this time.
The hot kisses against her throat ceased and the proud dark head lifted, black eyes staring deep into her clouded blue ones, searching disbelievingly for the reasons for her unexpected reaction.
‘Please—no…’
She didn’t know if it was relief that made her voice wobble revealingly. Or, worse, something deeper and more secret that she didn’t dare give a voice to.
‘Vincenzo—I…I’m not ready for this.’
Thankfully, he accepted her clumsy explanation, taking only a few nerve-twisting seconds to adjust, straighten up, ease his hold on her. It all seemed to be done without the slightest degree of effort, but the way that he drew in his breath sharply, a distinct tremor in the hand he lifted to smooth the ruffled darkness of his hair told their own story. And when he spoke the rough edges still hadn’t been smoothed from his deep tones.
‘I understand. It is too early. The right moment will soon come.’
The right moment will never come! Hell would freeze over first.
The response screamed so loudly in Amy’s thoughts that for one terrible moment she thought she had actually spoken them aloud. Vincenzo was perfectly capable of interpreting them as a challenge and turning on a full-scale charm assault in response.
And right now she was too shaken, too unnerved even to think of fighting back.
So she felt a wave of relief wash over her as Vincenzo let his hands fall to his sides.
‘I will leave you to settle in. The drink you wanted will be sent up at once.’
Amy managed a vague murmur of response but any actual words were beyond her. She barely saw Vincenzo turn and stride from the room, concentrating hard on keeping a grip on herself, staying stiffly upright. But the slam of the door behind him took the last of her strength from her.
Sinking down onto the nearest chair, she let reaction swamp her, her heart pounding, her breathing fast and shallow. But mixed in with the urgent response of her senses was a terrible, aching sense of loss, of yearning for what couldn’t be, what would never be. And the worst thing was that she knew exactly what had happened to her.
Only then, four years before, so much younger and so foolishly naïve, she had blindly called it love. She had believed that the burning physical response she felt for Vincenzo, the forceful passion he made it plain he had for her, had everything to do with emotion and not just the more primitive, basic tug of lust. Now she knew better.
Sex and possession. Because mixed in with Vincenzo’s obvious desire was the need to hold. To keep.
This time, when I take you…I will never let you go again.
She had always known that Vincenzo Ravenelli was a man to whom power and wealth was important. Already destined to inherit his father’s fortune, he had set out to earn himself a second one in his own right. It seemed that everything he touched turned to gold—and everything he touched he kept, whether money, businesses, or people.
It was only after she had fled back home after her short-lived marriage that she had found out just how powerful Vincenzo actually was. Drawn by a masochistic impulse she couldn’t control, she had been driven to read everything about him she could find.
She had learned of his reputation for wanting only the best, whether in his private life, or the things his companies produced. And that ‘only the best’ extended to his choice of the people who worked for him. A job with Ravenelli’s was a job for life, David had told her. Because once Vincenzo got his hands on the ones he wanted, he never let them go.
David. The other man’s name reminded her of the promise she had made to let her boss know where she was. She pulled her bag towards her, snatched out her cell phone and punched in the familiar number.
‘Mr Brooke’s office.’ The crisp tones of David’s temporary secretary, the one he had reluctantly agreed to employ while Amy herself was away, answered immediately.