Triumph glittered in his eyes as he posed for the photographs, as though he was sending a message to Alex’s mother. His manner throughout the supposed celebratory drinks that followed was that of a man who had won the prize of a lifetime. Alex wasn’t quite sure if she was excited or frightened at the prospect of being left alone with her newly acquired husband.
What he was thinking or feeling, she had no idea. It was impossible to tell if he was still acting or not. All she knew with excruciating awareness was the blistering heat that radiated from him. Did he figure she had now played into his hands and he could do whatever he wanted with her? Or was he hiding a furious resentment at feeling trapped into marrying her because she wouldn’t accept anything else?
But she had given him a choice, Alex reasoned, desperately needing to justify what she had done. Was it her fault that he couldn’t believe she would walk away with nothing? Either the sense of debt to her father ran very deep or underneath all the talk of other considerations, she stirred something in Vitali that he didn’t want to walk away from any more than she did.
Alex wanted to believe that. Every valve in her heart pulsed with one wish. That despite his impenetrable steel armour she had found his spot of vulnerability. For true intimacy it was important they both open their hearts, depend on each other and support each other—no matter how raw their wounds. Wasn’t this what had drawn them together, she wondered? Perhaps dreams do come true and fate can lead you to the one person with keys for your locks, and locks that fit your keys.
If she hadn’t believed that she never would have married him. But how the next part of the charade would be played out was critical to their future relationship.
She fingered her necklace apprehensively as Vitali saw Lucrezia and Simon to the lift—any minute now they would be alone. Her nerves were in a state of fine tension as the doors shut. The smooth heaviness of the necklace pressed against her skin as he turned to her, his eyes glittering savagely. Without hesitation he swept her into his arms with the primal urgency of a caveman claiming the woman now branded as his.
The feathers of her dress spayed about her like a captive bird. His fingers tightened their grasp on the soft roundness of her hip and Alex’s heart leapt. Fear left her; in its place an urgent need to have him take her in his arms and kiss her senseless, devouring any doubts about her decision. Yet even as she lifted her gaze to his, fiercely hoping to see the desire that answered what she felt, his swept his hands away, and his eyes met hers with a look of bleak mockery.
‘The show is almost over,’ he drawled. ‘Act Two, “Meet the Parents” is complete. And now we go through to Act Three, “The Wedding Night”. I must congratulate you on a stellar performance thus far. But don’t count your glowing reviews too soon. Act Three will be a game changer.’
He turned back into the lounge-room, pointedly separating himself from her. He headed straight for the table, opened another bottle of champagne and started filling the crystal flute with purposeful deliberation.
Alex did not follow him. She stood in the entranceway fighting the sinking sensation in her stomach. He had been acting. He didn’t love her. He loathed her. He detested her. He hated her for forcing him into a marriage he never wanted.
She recalled the look he had given her in the lift before she had met Simon and Lucrezia—the blazing need to dominate, to reduce her to something that could never again threaten his world. A flash of insight told her that the more Vitali wanted her, the more he would resist her, the more he would deny his feelings to prove that he was in control.
She had to break that control if they were to have the marriage she wanted. And he had let it slip that he found her coolness provocative. Now, more than at any other time in her life, Alex had to be strong. She would not—could not—accept his terms of stoic detachment. Or she would be nothing to him.
He offered the glass of champagne to her with mocking courtesy. ‘Some liquid courage? Act Three may be gruelling. Perhaps this may loosen any inhibitions.’
Every instinct she possessed told her unequivocally that this was the critical moment. If she didn’t handle the situation correctly, he would never respect her again. His kind of strength only respected strength.
He did not see what was coming. Had no way of anticipating it. Alex carefully controlled all expression on her face. Her grey-blue eyes mirrored nothing of her inner churning. The clear serenity that frustrated her mother so much was a well-practiced mask that could not be penetrated. She walked toward him with a slow, deliberate grace that projected absolute confidence.
It held his attention. His eyes were wary. His body had the stillness of a wild animal whose every sense was alert, suspicious and untrusting. He waited for the end-play of her move. When she halted her approach to him a half-arm’s length away, but did not take the glass offered, he waited for her to speak.
‘Never speak to me like that again, Vitali Rossi!’ she commanded frostily. ‘I’m your wife. Not your whore!’
He did not move. The dangerous flare in his eyes neutralized. Emboldened she continued, ‘I’m your equal. I’ve just become your partner—in life, in everything. And you are going to treat me that way. I won’t accept less.’
Alex could feel the intense concentration of his mind as he harnessed every ounce of self-control. Was it amusement or grudging respect that twisted his lips into a semblance of a smile?
‘Very polished!’ he drawled. ‘So refined and civilized one might almost think that lady-like indignation was true. But it’s only a veneer, isn’t it Alexandra? Beneath that facade is a soothsayer who wants vengeance. But let me leave you in no doubt—you won’t win.’
‘Perhaps it’s not vengeance I want, Vitali,’ she retorted. ‘Perhaps it’s something else entirely. But you’re so stubborn, and wilful and determined to hang onto your damming assessment of me I doubt you’ll ever bother to find out.’
‘God damn you!’ he seethed, and the savagery in his eyes was glaring evidence that the wild animal was slipping its civilized leash. His chest heaved as he drew breath as though fighting the urge to explode. ‘I’ll break you Alex, if I have to, so you’d better start bending.’
Something about the rawness of his power excited her. Alex looked up at him with pleading kitten eyes, deliberately submitting to his need to dominate. He must never know that she had led him to tipping point. He must never know that she had used powers she never knew she possessed to rattle her man of steel.
‘Kiss me, you temptress!’ he hissed in fierce command. ‘Kiss me, my bride.’ He brought his lips to within a breath of hers. ‘I’m going to kiss you until I find out what you really are. And then I’m going to take you to places no man has taken you before.’ His voice grew low and dangerous, ‘and then we’ll see how quickly you rush into your filthy sordid divorce.’
Alex barely had time to register the blistering accusation. His lips came down to take possession of hers, she did not kiss him back. Instead she surrendered.
There was no attempt to woo a response with sensuality this time. No intention to explore or seduce. No need to put on a show. His kiss was an avalanche, a landslide of roaring emotions, so sudden and violent that she was caught by surprise. His mouth stormed hers, ravished it, eclipsing all thought with sensations that pummeled through her body. His passionate assault upon her lips triggered a surge of adrenaline that demanded an instant end to any submissiveness.
Something deep, and instinctively primitive stirred inside Alex and clawed the need to reach into him, to stun and invade, take and possess, to wreak as intensive violation on him as he was wreaking on her. She met his second kiss with a blazing passion, causing him to relax his imprisoning embrace. His hands slid down her lower body meeting the desire that flamed beyond their control.
Alex lifted her arms, wound them around his neck, arching her body against his with all the wanton provocation of her feminine sexuality. Their forces of opposition, female and male, sparked within each of them a wild foray of need
that fought for a domination neither would concede.
A low, exultant laugh graveled from Vitali's throat and Alex stared at him with glazed eyes, frantically ordering her mind to come back to earth and anchor her from the chaos of sensation plundering it of any ability to reason. His eyes glittered over the long, snaking coils of her hair.
‘Tentatrice…’ he hissed. ‘Medusa! And a devil’s heart to match. So, let’s rid you of these deceptive trappings.’
Vitali tore her dress from her body, but the madness of his violent impatience to have her naked stirred an equally aggressive pride which insisted that she offer no resistance. There was no sense of humiliation, only a bubbling exultation.
He was breathing hard when he completed the frenzied disrobing of her wedding dress and he looked at her, standing still and tall and proud before him, her hair snaking over her breasts, her only adornment the gold jewellery he had given, her and a fierce satisfaction in her eyes.
‘You’re like some pagan queen from the past,’ he said, and with a wilder laugh than before he scooped her up in his arms and marched off to the bedroom like an ancient God carrying off his conquest.
He spilled Alex on the bed, but with a graceful twist of her body Alex turned herself onto her back, her gaze meeting his with bewitching directness. Her heart was pounding. This was a contest of power. The most ancient of powers—the battle of the sexes. Man against woman. Woman against man. Feminine energy against male energy. If he was going to take her to places she had never been with any other man, she was going to take him to places he hadn’t thought possible with a woman.
‘Sorceress!’ he threw at her, his eyes glittering an acknowledgement of the battle she silently promised as he stripped off his clothes.
Sleekly muscled, firmly fleshed, his body honed to Herculean strength, he was a work of art as though tooled by Michelangelo’s genius. A fever heated her blood she had never known before, a high pitch of awareness that sang through her body, wanting a satiation of every sense until there was nothing more to be experienced.
She couldn’t suppress a smile as he knelt over her. It wasn’t meant to inflame him. It was simply an involuntary expression of glorious anticipation. But it sparked an explosive reaction from Vitali.
‘No!’ he rasped, and snatched her hands, pinning them above her head as he lowered his formidable weight onto her pliant softness. His eyes watched her, gloating with the superior awareness of his male strength. ‘You won’t have your way with me. And you won’t be smiling when I’ve finished.’
She writhed her hips in deliberate provocation, ‘I will.’ She closed her eyes, powerfully aware she had him under her spell. Her body slid over the silk sheets, loving the feel of his nakedness against her body, the vibrant power of his masculinity, the sensual heat of his skin, the silky roughness of his chest hair that raised an electric sensitivity as he crested her.
‘Kiss me, Vitali,’ she invited huskily. ‘Kiss the smile from my lips.’
If there had been any morsel of sanity left before that wanton moment of provocation, there was none after it. Not one vestige of control from either of them. Any thought of contest was forgotten in a mindless need to capture all there could be between them.
To tear the breath from each other, to touch and taste and exult in sensation after sensation. Exquisite, erotic, voluptuous pleasure kept building and building, fuelling the explosive desire to possess all they could of each other to the most intimate depths. Past every barrier, every mask—into the unknown and beyond.
The sheer rapture of the ultimate merging of their bodies was so intense that Vitali paused to catch his breath. Their eyes met, clung, and some wordless indefinable acknowledgement was made, a pure moment of recognition that was reinforced again and again as he went on, driving himself to plunge deeper to the very centre of her being, as she contracted and melted around him.
Fire to fire, force meeting force, man and woman in the age-old rhythm of mating. Body to body, soul to soul— to the final melding that made them complete and bound them as one.
They lay together afterwards, entwined in an embrace that neither made any move to break. No word was spoken. Neither made any concession to the other. But the silence they kept held a sense of peace, a truce against battled personalities, as if an accord had been signed and ratified.
There would be no more fighting. Not over this. In this, if in nothing else they were equals…partners…at one with each other. They were both victorious.
Whether Vitali would remain satisfied with that or not Alex couldn’t tell, but she was content that he showed no inclination to separate. What she had just experienced with him was what she had always dreamed she would feel.
She didn’t fool herself that everything would be perfect between them from this moment on. There were too many hurdles to cross before any mutual understanding could be reached. They were right for each other, in a way that transcended words and all their differences, but it still might not be enough to forge the kind of marriage that would bring them both everlasting happiness.
But Alex had been right to take the gamble. She might never have known this bliss, this closeness, this joy—ever, with anyone else.
When she drifted into sleep a smile was on her lips—not erased as Vitali had originally intended, but a smile of knowledge inked indelibly into her memory.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘God damn you!’ he seethed, and the savagery in his eyes was glaring evidence that the wild animal was slipping its civilized leash. His chest heaved as he drew breath as though fighting the urge to explode. ‘I’ll break you Alex, if I have to, so you’d better start bending.’
Something about the rawness of his power excited her. Alex looked up at him with pleading kitten eyes, deliberately submitting to his need to dominate. He must never know that she had led him to tipping point. He must never know that she had used powers she never knew she possessed to rattle her man of steel.
‘Kiss me, you temptress!’ he hissed in fierce command. ‘Kiss me, my bride.’ He brought his lips to within a breath of hers. ‘I’m going to kiss you until I find out what you really are. And then I’m going to take you to places no man has taken you before.’ His voice grew low and dangerous, ‘and then we’ll see how quickly you rush into your filthy sordid divorce.’
Alex barely had time to register the blistering accusation. His lips came down to take possession of hers, she did not kiss him back. Instead she surrendered.
There was no attempt to woo a response with sensuality this time. No intention to explore or seduce. No need to put on a show. His kiss was an avalanche, a landslide of roaring emotions, so sudden and violent that she was caught by surprise. His mouth stormed hers, ravished it, eclipsing all thought with sensations that pummeled through her body. His passionate assault upon her lips triggered a surge of adrenaline that demanded an instant end to any submissiveness.
Something deep, and instinctively primitive stirred inside Alex and clawed the need to reach into him, to stun and invade, take and possess, to wreak as intensive violation on him as he was wreaking on her. She met his second kiss with a blazing passion, causing him to relax his imprisoning embrace. His hands slid down her lower body meeting the desire that flamed beyond their control.
Alex lifted her arms, wound them around his neck, arching her body against his with all the wanton provocation of her feminine sexuality. Their forces of opposition, female and male, sparked within each of them a wild foray of need that fought for a domination neither would concede.
A low, exultant laugh graveled from Vitali's throat and Alex stared at him with glazed eyes, frantically ordering her mind to come back to earth and anchor her from the chaos of sensation plundering it of any ability to reason. His eyes glittered over the long, snaking coils of her hair.
‘Tentatrice…’ he hissed. ‘Medusa! And a devil’s heart to match. So, let’s rid you of these deceptive trappings.’
Vitali tore her dress from her body, but the
madness of his violent impatience to have her naked stirred an equally aggressive pride which insisted that she offer no resistance. There was no sense of humiliation, only a bubbling exultation.
He was breathing hard when he completed the frenzied disrobing of her wedding dress and he looked at her, standing still and tall and proud before him, her hair snaking over her breasts, her only adornment the gold jewellery he had given, her and a fierce satisfaction in her eyes.
‘You’re like some pagan queen from the past,’ he said, and with a wilder laugh than before he scooped her up in his arms and marched off to the bedroom like an ancient God carrying off his conquest.
He spilled Alex on the bed, but with a graceful twist of her body Alex turned herself onto her back, her gaze meeting his with bewitching directness. Her heart was pounding. This was a contest of power. The most ancient of powers—the battle of the sexes. Man against woman. Woman against man. Feminine energy against male energy. If he was going to take her to places she had never been with any other man, she was going to take him to places he hadn’t thought possible with a woman.
‘Sorceress!’ he threw at her, his eyes glittering an acknowledgement of the battle she silently promised as he stripped off his clothes.
Sleekly muscled, firmly fleshed, his body honed to Herculean strength, he was a work of art as though tooled by Michelangelo’s genius. A fever heated her blood she had never known before, a high pitch of awareness that sang through her body, wanting a satiation of every sense until there was nothing more to be experienced.
She couldn’t suppress a smile as he knelt over her. It wasn’t meant to inflame him. It was simply an involuntary expression of glorious anticipation. But it sparked an explosive reaction from Vitali.
‘No!’ he rasped, and snatched her hands, pinning them above her head as he lowered his formidable weight onto her pliant softness. His eyes watched her, gloating with the superior awareness of his male strength. ‘You won’t have your way with me. And you won’t be smiling when I’ve finished.’
The Italian Billionaire’s Scandalous Marriage: An Italian Billionaire Romance (Italian Billionaire Christmas Brides Book 2) Page 12