The Heat Of Passion

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I have the feeling that I have been condemned to Death Row without the right to appeal.'

  "That's w-where you ought to be!' she condemned strickenly. 'It's vile! The two of you waiting like ghouls for him to die... I feel dirty, dear God, I feel soiled and you w-wouldn't believe how dumb and stupid I feel!’

  She loved him. That was the full extent of her stupidity. She deserved everything that had happened to her. She deserved to be used and abused. Her own pride and self-discipline should have protected her.

  Carlo expelled his breath in a hiss and leapt upright again. His lean powerful length was rigid. 'Just g-get me off this island!' Jessica sobbed. 'Isn't life a bitch?1 Carlo breathed. "The woman I don't want is obsessed by me and the woman I do want spends her whole time running in the wrong direction.'

  It was too late. Didn't he see that? Was his estimation of her intelligence so low that he could think he could fool her again?

  'Dio... what sort of bastard do you think I am?’ he demanded with sudden ferocious hostility.

  ‘I suppose if it weren't for the money the two of you would have got together openly a long time ago,’ Jessica mumbled sickly.

  'Would you just listen to me?' he demanded rawly.

  He was about to tell the truth and she didn't want to

  hear it. She did not want to hear how his love for Sunny

  had overcome family loyalty and every decent feeling.

  'I don't want to know!’ she burst out. 'Not any of it!'

  'I could beat you for that,’ Carlo bit out with blatant frustration. "There is nothing between Sunny and me. There never has been. There never will be.'

  That did grab her attention. She lifted her tear-swollen face and stared. Carlo was standing several feet away, the moonlight picking out the grim lines of his darkly handsome features.

  'It didn't sound like that.'

  'Six months ago, I met Sunny for the first time at a

  party in Rome. She knew Lukas was dying. She's been

  chasing me ever since '

  'Chasing you?' Jessica echoed.

  'The first couple of times I ran into her, I took her out to dinner, purely and simply because she's my father's wife,’ Carlo spelt out with sardonic bite. 'But Sunny read that differently. She took it as encouragement. She showed up at my apartment one night in London and asked for a bed for the night, told me this stupid story about being afraid to stay in a hotel alone since some friend of hers was raped. I fell for it... but the only bed Sunny wanted into was mine...'

  Jessica swallowed hard. 'And?'

  'She told me she was in love with me and I had her

  driven to a hotel in the middle of the night. But Sunny's

  very persistent because no man has ever rejected her,’

  Carlo murmured with an expressive grimace. 'Sunny is

  one of the reasons I brought you here. I wanted her kept

  at a distance '

  'So you needed me as a... a buffer '

  'It would be a little difficult for her to get into my bed when it was already occupied,’ Carlo said very drily.

  Bemusedly, she struggled to recall what Carlo had said in that emotional scene she had stumbled on, and she realised that Carlo had said nothing that did not fit the story he had told her. Her head ached at the effort of concentration. She was almost afraid to give way to the intensity of her relief.

  'She's so beautiful,’ she muttered. Carlo said nothing. In the silence, all she could hear was the thunder of her own heart and the soft rushing

  of the surf. 'A storm in a teacup, then,' she said uncomfortably.

  Tm sorry, I assumed——'

  'The worst? Don’t you always?’ Carlo drawled.

  As he extended a lean hand down to her, Jessica allowed him to pull her up. The force of her distress had left her badly shaken. Relieved as she had been by Carlo's confidences, she still felt frighteningly raw and vulnerable. Badly needing to believe that he did not find Sunny desirable, she looked up into his hard features but she could read nothing there, knew that what Carlo did not volunteer, she would never guess. Carlo did not easily reveal his emotions.

  He tugged her back along the beach. She could feel

  the pain in her abused feet now and the sting of the

  scratches on her arms and stomach. At the foot of the

  steps, he surveyed her limping gait and groaned.

  Bending, he hoisted her over one shoulder.

  'You can't carry me up there!' she objected.

  But he did, although by the time they reached the top

  every muscle in his superbly built body was feverishly

  taut and she could feel the dampness of perspiration

  sticking his silk shirt to his skin. 'No more steps,’ he

  muttered raggedly.

  He set her down in the lift that gave his father access to the gardens and sent the doors winging shut. He lounged back fluidly against the stainless steel wall and surveyed her with sudden uninhibited intensity.

  The dark vibrancy of his magnetism was potent Jessica collided with smouldering golden eyes and her heart skipped a beat and began to race instead. A slow, sensual smile curved his handsome mouth. He reached out and deftly flicked open the control panel. He touched

  a button and the lift swooshed to a halt and he hit another before the doors could open.

  Arranged on the wall opposite, Jessica felt a quivering heaviness enter her lower limbs as Carlo closed the distance between them. He braced his hands on either side of her and drove her head back with the force of his mouth, his kiss like a fiery brand of ownership. He unleashed a hunger that was primitive in its intensity, sending a burst of scorching beat shooting through her veins.

  'Somebody might ‘ she gasped as he released her

  reddened lips.

  'If I don't have you now,' Carlo said thickly, 'I'll die.'

  His hands wrenched down the straps of her sleeveless dress and she glanced down, shocked to see her own bared breasts, helplessly shy of him and yet unbearably aroused by his impatience. With a groan, Carlo lifted her and suckled at an erect pink nipple and her hands clenched fiercely into his shoulders, an involuntary moan of excitement torn from her. Her head fell back as his tormenting mouth bit at her sensitive flesh with a knowing eroticism that drove her out of her mind with excitement.

  She was boneless in his grasp, a wanton creature drunk on sensation. A lean hand skimmed beneath the flimsy silken fabric of her gown, following the upward curve of a slender thigh and lingering there with devastating effect.

  'You drive me crazy,' Carlo groaned, sinking to his knees to slowly tug down the scrap of lace that was all that divided him from her. 'You always drove me crazy.'

  He buried his mouth hotly in the triangle of silver curls he had revealed and she started sliding down the wall until he gripped her thighs. 'No...' she mumbled in shock.

  He didn't listen and a split-second later she stopped thinking altogether, thrown into a vortex of extra-

  ordinary excitement by what he was doing. She gasped his name, speared her fingers wildly into his tousled black hair and surrendered absolutely to the pleasure, losing

  all track of time.

  When Carlo drew level with her again, she was inflamed to fever pitch, not a bone or a muscle in her body obedient to even the most confused command. He wound her arms round him and took her swollen mouth in a savage admission of need and then he lifted her, wrapping her thighs round his narrow waist and entered her in one compelling thrust.

  Stilling, he shuddered against her, fighting for control. ‘It’s never been like this for me.. .neverV he rasped.

  ,’ love you... She found it on her lips and kept it there, instinct reining the confession back. Bracing her spine against the steel wall, he began to move again, fast and slow, smooth and rough until she was possessed by the primal rhythm and the explosive, uncontrollable hunger. As she reached an intolerable peak of excitement, she sank her teeth into his shoulder and was
flung over the edge into quivering, whimpering fulfilment at the same

  time as he was.

  His breathing pattern roughly audible, Carlo dealt her a shattered glance and slowly lowered her limp body to the floor again, glittering golden eyes still pinned to her. He dropped a kiss on to her brow and began rearranging her dress with hands that were uncharacteristically

  clumsy.

  •We'd better get out of here.' He indicated the red light flashing behind the open control panel, readjusting whatever he had previously put out of place at speed. 'Security will be on their way.'

  'What?' she moaned in horror.

  The doors opened. Carlo grabbed her while she was still reeling incredulously from what she had allowed him to do. A few feet out of the lift, they were on to a . staircase. Dear heaven, she acknowledged dazedly, that |

  A

  shameless woman in the lift had been her! She was pole-axed, barely functioning on automatic pilot.

  Carlo dragged her into their bedroom, closed the door and slumped back against it. His narrowed gaze swept her hectically flushed features and then he burst out laughing. After a startled moment, she saw the humour of that indecently adolescent flight of theirs from authority and was overcome by helpless giggles.

  'Like guilty teenagers!' Unselfconsciously, Carlo wiped at his damp eyes, fighting to rein back his laughter. 'I've never done anything like that in my life before.'

  All threat of constraint banished, Jessica met his ruefully amused dark eyes and knew she had never loved him more than she loved him at that moment.

  Abruptly, Carlo muttered an imprecation. 'I forgot about your poor feet.'

  'I wasn't thinking about them,' she murmured shyly.

  He took her into his bathroom and produced a medical kit. He made her sit on the edge of the bath and soak her feet. Then he crouched down and patted them dry with a fleecy towel. He was incredibly gentle and she watched him minister to her needs with growing astonishment. What a mixture of opposites he was, she thought painfully. The antiseptic he dabbed on stung tike mad and tears sprang involuntarily to her eyes.

  'You shouldn't swim for a couple of days.' 'Fine.1

  Carlo swept her up and carried her back to the bedroom to deposit her on the bed. He sank down on the edge of the mattress and lifted the phone. 'Are you

  hungry?’

  She discovered that she was. He ordered sandwiches.

  As she stretched out, Carlo noticed the tear on her dress for the first time. Before she could object, he had peeled her out of it and discovered the angry scratch across her stomach. 'Please... not the antiseptic,’ she begged in total cowardice.

  Carlo grinned and pressed his lips tenderly to the abrasion, making her muscles clench suddenly tight with awareness. Lifting his dark head, he scrutinised her with sudden gravity. A tiny muscle pulsing at the corner of his compressed mouth. 'Last night,' he breathed. ‘Last night when I saw that photograph of your late husband, I was insanely jealous.'

  Entrapped by his dark eyes, she was shaken by his

  honesty. 'You knew,' he saw. Tm surprised you didn't throw

  it in my teeth.'

  'In the mood you were in, I might just have ended up out in the corridor.'

  'You chose him over me.' Carlo had shed his sense of humour and would not allow her to lightly flip the subject. 'That is why I felt jealous. If I had not known you then, he would merely be a part of your past.'

  'I didn't choose '

  'You did.. .you chose,' he asserted, allowing her no escape from that fact.

  A knock on the door announced the arrival of supper. Jessica had rarely been so grateful for an interruption. Carlo collected the tray and settled it on the foot of the

  bed.

  'I refuse to accept that I am second best,’ Carlo continued tautly in the throbbing silence. 'For that is what you want me to accept... I cannot do it.'

  All relaxation banished, Jessica slid upright and reached for her robe.

  'You say nothing,' he commented with flaring

  impatience.

  'Maybe I don't want to fight with you '

  'No, you evade my every invitation for you to talk

  about your marriage. You close me out of five years of

  your life! You slam the door shut in my face ‘

  ‘I am not about to run Simon down just to please

  you,' Jessica muttered shakily.

  ‘I do not expect that from you. I am not a child unable

  to face harsh realities. But I find your refusal to discuss

  Turner.. .peculiar,' Carlo selected, reaching for a

  sandwich, entirely at his ease. 'My life is now an open

  book to you '

  Her teeth gritted. 'Only because I stumbled accidentally between the covers.'

  'I did not want my past to come between us,’ Carlo stated levelly. 'You force me to be blunt. OK Your father intimated that your marriage had not been a happy one.'

  Taken by surprise, Jessica froze.

  'And he was not talking about your husband's illness.

  He made that clear '

  ‘He had no right to imply that '

  'You were not blissfully happy with your best friend," Carlo incised with scorn.

  Jessica rolled off the bed, cornered by his persistence. ‘I will not discuss Simon with you.'

  'Why not? He is dead. He cannot be hurt.' Carlo dealt her an expectant stare.

  'You say I made a choice. Why don't you look to your own behaviour during those six weeks?' she demanded. 'You might be surprised at what you see!'

  ‘I behaved like a bastard,' Carlo growled the admission to her back a second before she vanished into the bathroom. 'But you didn't encourage me to be anything else. You made me angry and frustrated and you challenged me. You made it an all-out fight between us and I know only one way to fight... and that is to win!'

  She ran a bath for herself. She needed the space. In full flood, Carlo was a talented interrogator. The water stung her feet like mad but a masochistic part of her rejoiced in the pain. She deserved it. She kept on letting her guard down around Carlo and manipulative swine that he was, he sensed that every time it happened and demanded answers he had no right to expect.

  Once, she had been grossly disloyal to Simon with Carlo. Ultimately that hadn't mattered, except in so far as she had contravened her own high principles. But she could not be disloyal to Simon's memory. How could she tell a male as rawly virile and passionate as Carlo that Simon had failed to consummate their marriage? He would laugh, wouldn't he? He would kill himself laughing. He would be triumphant, possessed of the knowledge that her marriage had been pure farce from start to finish and that he, after all, had become her first lover. She felt that she owed Simon's memory something more than that.

  She emerged to an empty bedroom and instead of being relieved felt deserted. Furious at her own increasing emotional dependency on Carlo, she compressed her lips. She could not afford to look for Carlo when he was not there. Some day not too far in the future, he would not be there at all.

  Unintentionally, she recalled the passion they had shared and reddened fiercely, still barely able to credit that that wanton woman had been her. Carlo touched her and that was that. Nothing else mattered. Sooner or later, she would pay a heavy price for such memories, she acknowledged painfully. The fact that Carlo had finally contrived to fulfil bis fantasy of having sex in a lift was unlikely to be a recollection she cherished with pride... when he was gone.

  'Some day you will come to me on your knees and beg me to take you... and I will break you.' Jessica shivered, suddenly cold and scared. Just a few short days ago, Carlo had still been talking in the same vein. And though he had yet to discover it, he had already won. She loved him. Whatever happened, she was going to be very badly hurt.

  Another knock sounded on the door. It was fresh sandwiches and sweetly fragrant coffee, ordered by Carlo

  on her behalf. The pretty dark-skinned maid passed on the message
that Carlo was with his father.

  'I'm sorry you had to be bothered so late.' It was two in the morning and Jessica felt guilty.

  (But I work the night shift here, ma'am.' The woman smiled. 'This is my job.'

  The night shift, Jessica reflected, slowly shaking her head. A night shift of staff for round-the-clock service. It was like living in a top-flight hotel. Then she wondered if Lukas had taken a turn for the worse and frowned.

  Carlo returned about ten minutes later. 'How is Lukas?' she asked.

  'A consummate insomniac,’ Carlo sighed. 'Problems have arisen over a shipping deal in Athens. He's asked me to fly out there and take care of them. I'll be leaving at seven and I expect to be back the night before the wedding.'

  Disappointment enveloped her and she fought to conceal it.

  'You'll miss me,' Carlo asserted with teeth-clenching conviction.

  He slid into bed beside her and tugged her into his arms with determination. His lean, muscular frame felt surprisingly tense. 'Something occurred to me earlier.' He lifted bis head. 'Are you on the Pill?'

  It was Jessica's turn to tense. 'No.'

  Carlo expelled his breath in a hiss. 'I didn't protect you this time... I'm sorry.'

  She flushed, made some feverish calculations and decided that the risk of pregnancy was so small as to be most unlikely. 'There isn't very much chance—'

  'Russian roulette,' Carlo groaned. ‘I have never been that careless.'

  Jessica was stiffening. 'I really don't think you have anything to worry about.'

  since seeing her with Carlo. Over breakfast the next morning, Marika had informed her that Sunny had flown to Miami on one of her regular shopping trips.

  'Do you want something?' she asked drily, infuriated by the fashion in which Sunny simply walked in without knocking.

  Green eyes glittered coldly over her. Sunny uttered a brittle laugh. 'All of a sudden you're very sure of yourself, aren't you?'

  Jessica looked back at her, refusing to be discomfited. Calmly, she stood up and crossed the room to slide her feet into shoes but behind the cool front, her nervous tension was running at an all-time high. Physically Sunny had an impact that took even Jessica's breath away. Carlo was undeniably aware of this woman's beauty. Could he really be quite untouched by her desire for him?