‘Victoria and I are finished,’ he said.
‘You’re what?’
‘And, to answer your previous question a few minutes ago, yes, I’ve been drinking—but I’m not drunk. Two whiskies—admittedly in rapid succession.’
‘So you’ve come here to carry on drowning your sorrows?’ Megan said with heavy sarcasm.
‘Don’t you want to know why Victoria and I have broken up?’
‘I don’t want to get wrapped up in your personal life, Alessandro.’ She did. Her voice was saying all the right things, but her head was singing a different song. It was telling her that she wanted to sit down and hear every grisly detail of why he had broken up with the perfect woman.
‘Well, you don’t have much choice. Because you need to know.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Sit down.’
Megan looked around her and pulled up the closest chair to the sofa. It was an ancient nursing chair, with a low seat and a buttoned back, covered in the worst possible shade of mustard-yellow. It had been donated to her by an aunt. Unsightly, but very comfortable.
‘That’s better.’ Alessandro looked at her and wondered where to begin and how much he should say. ‘Did you miss me?’ he asked, staring at her and watching the colour climb into her cheeks—watching, too, her pointless efforts to appear in control. ‘After we’d broken up? Did you miss me?’
‘What’s the point of these questions?’
‘Just answer.’
‘What do you think? Yes. I missed you. Is that what you wanted to hear?’
Alessandro gave her one of those smiles that had always been able to make her toes curl.
‘It’ll do. Did you ever imagine that we’d meet again?’
‘No, of course I didn’t.’ The shadows cast by the side light played lovingly on the hard angles of his face, softening them. His eyes were lazy and watchful. Lying there in his old university clothes, Megan could almost believe that time had moved backwards.
‘Nor did I,’ Alessandro admitted roughly. ‘Not that I didn’t wonder what you were up to. I never imagined that you would have come down to England, and definitely not to London.’
‘I know. Because I was a country bumpkin meant to stay in the country.’
‘Because you always made such a big deal about the horrors of city living. If you’d wanted a change, you could have chosen anywhere else—any green and pleasant pasture somewhere on the outskirts of a city. I never imagined you’d dive right in at the deep end.’
‘Blah, blah, blah, Alessandro. I’ve heard it all before. If you came here to offload, then go ahead. Tell me what happened between you and Victoria, and then you’ll have to go. How did you get here anyway? You didn’t drive, did you?’
‘My driver’s gone.’
‘So you mean you came here and got rid of your driver, so that now you’re at the mercy of finding a cab? At this time in the night?’
‘We’re getting off topic.’
He reached out and took hold of her hand, curling his long fingers around hers. It was a simple, spontaneous gesture that made her freeze. His fingers were softly stroking hers and his eyes were on her face, staring at her with unblinking intensity.
‘What are you doing?’ Megan whispered. This indistinct question should have been accompanied by her whipping her hand out of reach, setting out once and for all her basic ground rules, which were that she wanted nothing to do with him. Instead, her hand refused to budge.
‘What does it look like? I’m touching you. Do you like it?’
Megan cleared her throat. ‘I don’t think…’ she began, but her voice trailed off as he began stroking the soft underside of her wrist with one finger. It sent shivers racing up and down her body and threw her already confused mind into even more of a state of flat-out panic.
‘That’s good.’
‘What is…?’
‘Not thinking.’ He lowered his magnificent eyes and watched his finger as it traced tiny circles on her wrist. She was wearing an old pink dressing gown, and he would swear that it was the same one that she’d used to wear at university. Same colour anyway. She had always liked pink. ‘Just going with the flow. I thought a lot. I thought that Victoria was the perfect woman for me. I thought she complemented me in every way possible. And, more importantly, I thought she was eminently suitable because she didn’t stress me out.’
‘So I believe you’ve told me before.’
‘What are you wearing under your dressing gown?’
Megan told herself that she didn’t want to hear these questions, she didn’t want him looking at her like that, and she definitely didn’t want his fingers like a branding iron on her skin. But she wasn’t pulling away, was she? And this wasn’t just about being kind to a fellow human being who was upset. For starters, she couldn’t imagine Alessandro ever being upset, at least not upset in the way most normal people would be. Nor was he just another fellow human being.
‘Will you let me see?’ he continued.
‘See what?’
He didn’t answer that one. Instead he raised his hand to push aside the opening of her dressing gown, and Megan gasped as the flat of his hand came into direct contact with her breast and brushed against the nipple, which stiffened and throbbed and wanted more.
‘Alessandro, no!’ She pulled back and shot to her feet, but she was shaking all over. ‘I’m sorry your relationship with Victoria hasn’t worked out,’ she said shakily, clutching her gown together as though it might open up of its own accord unless forcibly restrained. ‘And now that you’re here I guess I’m willing to hear your sob story. But don’t think that you can come here and expect me to be your consolation prize.’
‘Come back and sit down,’ was all he said.
‘I’m not coming anywhere near you!’
‘I’ll keep my hands to myself.’
Megan looked at him dubiously. He now had his hands behind his head and, God, she couldn’t believe how much she still wanted him. He lay there as beautiful as some classical statue, brought to life by a vengeful God who wanted to mess with her head by dangling temptation in front of her.
‘You’d better,’ she warned him unsteadily. ‘Or else I’ll scream and Charlotte will come rushing down the stairs….’
‘Like a rottweiler on the loose, ready to chew me to bits…? Since when did you ever need a keeper? Okay, okay. I’ll tell you my sob story and we can take it from there.’
Take what from where? Megan tried to fathom out what exactly he meant by that, but her brain wasn’t functioning properly. She gingerly went back to the chair, but pushed it away a couple of surreptitious inches.
‘Victoria,’ he told her heavily, ‘seemed the perfect solution. Intellectually challenging and on the same wavelength as me. I never thought that you would come along and throw everything out of joint. I made it my aim to have a life that yielded to my absolute control. I hadn’t bargained on the element of surprise.’
Megan fought hard to remain indifferent, but that was sweet, sweet music to her ears.
‘Throw everything out of joint?’ she encouraged. ‘Element of surprise? What do you mean?’
Alessandro raised his eyebrows. The look in his eyes told her that he knew exactly where she was going with her apparently concerned question. ‘Fishing?’ he drawled, and Megan flushed. ‘No matter. You want me to explain—I’ll explain. You made me question whether I had overestimated the notion of suitability. I’d forgotten how…stimulating…you could be. I’d also forgotten how good we were together…sexually.’
The music was getting sweeter all the time.
‘Do you like hearing that?’
‘I don’t care much one way or the other,’ Megan lied airily.
‘Don’t lie. You forget how well I know you. I saw you, and it didn’t take me long to realise that there was still something between us. I know you felt it too.’
‘You’re imagining things.’
‘Am I? Why don’t yo
u come and sit a little closer to me, and then you can say that again.’ He sat up so that they were facing one another, and she could hear her treacherous heart beating like a drum inside her. ‘I decided that it was no good pretending that I wasn’t attracted to you, and it was no good being engaged to one woman when I was very busy thinking about another one.’
‘You were thinking about me?’
‘Thinking about you,’ he confirmed. ‘And thinking about what I wanted to do to you.’ He smiled another one of those smiles. ‘The minute I saw you at that school play you got inside my head and I couldn’t get you out. Every time I looked at you, I imagined taking your clothes off and touching you. Everywhere.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Yes, you do—and if you don’t, ask yourself this. Why is it that we’ve managed to meet up so many times since then? I didn’t have to come to that football game you were playing. I didn’t have to come to your drinks party on Christmas Day.’
‘Stop it!’
The silence stretched between them, dangerous and alive.
‘You came to that football game with Dominic and Victoria,’ Megan told him shakily. ‘And you came to the Christmas Day party with Victoria.’
‘But I came. There was no need for me to. I could just as easily have stayed away from both, but I didn’t. The pull to see you was too strong.’
‘If I hadn’t shown up, Alessandro, you would still be happily engaged to Victoria. You would be making plans for your wedding…’ Megan fought to hang on to a bit of sanity.
‘Are you telling me that you didn’t feel the same pull towards me? That you haven’t once thought of me since fate threw us back together?’
‘That’s not the point.’
Alessandro swung his long body off the sofa and began prowling through the room. Megan twisted round to follow him with her eyes. Every nerve in her body was on fire. Faced with a reality she had never envisaged, she literally didn’t know how to respond. She knew, though, that coming here would not have been something he would have undertaken lightly. Alessandro had had his whole life mapped out from the age of twenty-four. He had chosen Victoria because he would have seen her as slotting in with his long-term plans. To have his own predetermined destiny hijacked would have taken a lot, and for that she was prepared to give him credit.
But giving him credit still didn’t tell her what she should do. So she remained silent…watching him as he stopped in front of the bookshelves, idly reached down for a book and leafed through it before slotting it back into its space…looking as he paused to inspect the pictures in their frames, of her and Charlotte, of her and her family, of Charlotte and her family…
Her thoughts were all over the place.
Finally he stopped right in front of her and then leaned forwards, his hands resting on either side of the chair and trapping her so that she had to push herself away.
‘Tell me that’s not the point, Megan, and I’ll walk out of that door and you’ll never see me again.’
Up until that moment she had managed, more or less, to persuade herself that she was much better off without Alessandro in her life—that the cruel trick fate had played on her could be remedied by just walking away from him or at least taking strenuous efforts to ensure that she didn’t bump into him. Then she had told herself that she could do even better than that…she could rise above the situation and be on civil speaking terms with him just in case they did bump into one another in the course of events. It had all made perfect sense.
Now, though, as she faced his ultimatum, the reality that he would once again disappear was like looking into a deep, black, bottomless hole. He was deadly serious as he looked straight into her eyes. All she had to do was tell him to go and he would. For good.
Furthermore, it would be her choice. It had been bad enough when he had finished their relationship the first time, but at least then she had been the wronged party, and even with herself had come out tops with the sympathy vote. In the space of a few heartstopping seconds she had a glimpse of a future filled with never-ending unanswered what if questions.
‘I came here because you need to know that I still want you, but I’ll walk away, Megan, unless you tell me that you feel the same way about me.’
‘I…I…Um…’ I don’t want to be hurt all over again!
‘Fine,’ Alessandro gritted. ‘I get the message loud and clear. Whether you’re attracted to me or not doesn’t matter. You’re still wrapped up in the past and you can’t forget it.’ He pushed himself up while Megan remained frozen in her chair, looking at him as he began dialling into his mobile phone. He would be calling a taxi. Or getting his long-suffering chauffeur back to collect him. Either way, it amounted to him leaving.
‘I’ll keep these clothes,’ he said with a cynical twist to his mouth. ‘You can keep the suit. Or you can just chuck it.’
He turned away from her, heading for the door. Seeing him leave galvanised her into action.
‘Don’t go!’
At that, Alessandro turned slowly around to face her.
‘I…I want you to stay,’ Megan said.
The words had a familiar ring about them, but she shoved that to the back of her mind. She had been nineteen when she had last begged him to stay! She was twenty-six now, and anyway she wasn’t, she told herself, begging him to stay. At least not the way she once had when he had been her entire universe and she had wanted to follow him to the ends of the earth.
‘But on my terms,’ she added, as he began walking towards her.
‘Which are…?’
‘That…that…it’s just about the sex. Okay, I admit I’m still attracted to you, but I don’t want to get involved with you…’ What a joke. She had never not been involved with him, but she had learnt a thing or two about self-defence, and the first rule, she thought now, was to keep that vulnerable side to herself. But somehow, some way, she had to get over this incredible pull of attraction between them. An attraction that was driving her crazy.
‘Sex without involvement…After my mistakes with Victoria, I’m all in favour of those terms…’ He cupped her face with his hands and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. Her skin was soft, like satin, and touching her was hauntingly and erotically familiar. ‘Shall we go up to your bedroom, or is your keeper going to hear us and come out swinging a heavy object?’
‘She’s not that protective!’ Megan felt as though she was on the edge of a precipice, with one foot dangling over the side.
‘We could always stay down here,’ Alessandro murmured. ‘Although the sofa might prove challenging for me, and somehow making love after seven years in front of a radiator instead of an open fire just doesn’t seem…’ for a minute he almost said romantic enough ‘…to fit the bill…’
They went to her bedroom like a couple of teenagers stealthily trying not to wake the adults—although Charlotte wasn’t in the room next door. In fact, the bathroom and airing cupboard separated their rooms, and the house, while small, was old, and hence the walls were thick. Unless they made a great deal of noise, there was no chance that she would wake up.
The minute the bedroom door was shut they faced one another, each absorbing the reality of the decision they had made.
‘Shall I tell you what I want to do?’ Alessandro murmured huskily. ‘I want to rip your clothes off and take you right here, right now, against the wall…But God, Megan, I won’t—because I want to enjoy every inch of your glorious body slowly…’ He stood back, breathing heavily. He had never been so turned on in his life before, and he didn’t dare touch her—not yet, not until his body was ready to behave itself.
He removed the rugby shirt. They had switched on the overhead light, but now Megan went across to her chest of drawers and lit the three scented candles which had permanent residence in her bedroom.
‘I see you still have that bad habit,’ Alessandro admonished, but with a smile in his voice.
She was smiling too when she replied, ‘I know, I know. Fire
hazard. But don’t they smell wonderful?’ She looked at him across the width of the small bedroom. It had seemed all wrong before to look at him, to look at him, but now there were no such limits, and she feasted her eyes greedily on his powerful body, like a starving person suddenly offered the vision of a banquet. When it came to male perfection he had broken the mould. His arms were strong and sinewy, his broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist which led down to…to…
Megan drew in her breath, shuddering, as he began removing the sweatpants and then his boxer shorts.
‘Are we taking turns?’ Alessandro asked, oozing satisfaction as he watched her helpless reaction to his nudity. His very turned-on nudity. Having her look at him was almost as much of a turn-on as having her touch him, and both ranked second place to him touching her.
He strolled towards her double bed and lay down with one hand behind his head enjoying watching her watching him.
‘Okay. Start with the robe. But do it very, very slowly…’
God, this felt so damned good, lying here on her bed, looking at her as she peeled off the pink dressing gown to reveal the pyjamas she still wore. He had never been able to persuade her to abandon the habit, and he was beginning to think that there might well be something in it—because he was certainly getting a massive buzz, watching her as she took off first the striped drawstring bottoms, and then, oh, so slowly, off came the tee shirt top.
Her breasts had always driven him crazy. They were more than a generous handful, with big, rosy nipples that responded to the slightest sensation. Like now. Even though he hadn’t even begun touching her, he could see their nubs, stiff with arousal, as she drew closer to the bed. He knew that if he put his hand where it wanted to go, over the little garter briefs, he would feel her honeyed moistness through the thin cotton, telling him that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
She sat next to him on the bed and he pulled her down, rolling her to her side so that he could position himself over her, all rock-hard, towering male strength. His kiss was like a release and he lost himself in it, covering her mouth with what started as a lazy exploration but rapidly turned into a blazing assault. She was sweetly, wildly irresistible, and he groaned as their tongues entwined. He felt as uncontrolled now as he had the first time he had ever touched her.
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