by Julia James
Like the last time, just when she thought she couldn’t possibly take any more, he moved up her body and lifted her on to the bed more fully. She looked up at him with big eyes. A fine sheen of sweat covered her body and Dante smoothed his hand over the curve of one breast.
‘I can’t … again, Dante, it’s too much …’ Please!
She couldn’t deny it any more—the reason why she succumbed so readily. Her experience with Raul Carro hadn’t come close to what this man made her feel with just a look, and that scared her witless. She was literally a naked quivering mass of vulnerability and this man was going to devastate her beyond anything she’d endured before.
‘No, cara.’ He bent his head to hers, taking her mouth, one hand possessively splayed across her breast, fingers trapping a nipple. He pulled back for a moment. ‘We haven’t even begun; when I leave this morning, you’re never, ever going to forget this.’
Or me …
And, with ruthless and remorseless precision, he was true to his word; he entered her and took her soul soaring high above to a place she’d never been before—again and again. First he was slow and languorous, the second time was urgent, passion consuming them as he took her with an intensity that left her boneless. And the third time, in the shower, she wrapped her legs around his waist and cried out as he clenched his buttocks, driving up into her hard. She had to cling on to him as weak as a kitten afterwards, too afraid to stand because she knew she’d fall down.
Then he deposited her on the bed in an exhausted naked sprawl, calmly dressed and informed her that he’d see her for dinner that evening at seven.
When the door shut behind him, Alicia welcomed the fog of exhaustion, pulled the cover over her and sank into a mind-numbingly blank sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT WAS only when Dante had closed the door and was walking away that his composure faltered slightly. He remembered the shower, how she’d felt around him as he’d thrust into her again and again. How the little moans had become cries as her orgasm had broken at the same moment as his. The feeling of his flesh encased in hers. At that moment he’d not been able to imagine anyone else in the world driving him to such heights of pleasure.
And had she really pressed a kiss to his cheek and whispered brokenly into his ear, as he’d thrust deeply, that she was sorry for slapping him? He stared at himself in the mirror of the lift. He looked the same. But he didn’t feel the same. He felt as if somehow a protective layer had been stripped from his epidermis. He touched his cheek where she had kissed him and knew it had happened, knew she’d said the words, but why?
And when she’d been unable to stand afterwards, she’d clung on to him so weakly that he’d had to carry her, and even as he’d laid her, exhausted, on the bed, his own body had been ready to take her again … and he couldn’t help a dart of self recrimination—she was so small; he knew that very likely she’d be sore.
‘You look pale, dear; are you all right?’
Alicia forced herself to smile and nodded at Patricia. She’d persuaded the other woman to meet her out on the decking overlooking the beach for aperitifs before dinner, leaving a note for Dante in the room. It was a pretty pathetic way of trying to prolong the inevitable—seeing him again. Humiliation still burned through her when she thought of the morning and how ruthlessly he’d made her his, he might as well have branded her with a cattle iron.
And when she thought of how she’d felt compelled to kiss his cheek and whisper, ‘Sorry’ in his ear, she cringed.
‘Ah, here he is now.’
Alicia froze. She stood slowly. She was still sore, muscles aching all over and especially between her legs. She turned with extreme reluctance to face her nemesis and everything flew out of the window.
An emotion so strong rushed through her as she watched him walk towards her with that innate animalistic grace that she had to grip the chair back behind her. His dark eyes were unreadable and flickered down her body as he came close and leant in to kiss her on the lips. Ever the act. Pain skewered through her. His kiss was swift and hard and she couldn’t avoid it. A blush stained her cheeks as a tingle started up between her legs, treacherously banishing the aches and tenderness.
Dante greeted Patricia too and engaged in banal conversation as he sat down and ordered a drink but he was supremely aware of Alicia. Her hair was down, around her shoulders in curly tendrils. She was dressed in a simple black jersey dress. With long sleeves it looked almost demure but for the deep V at the front, which showed tantalizing glimpses of her cleavage. His hand clenched around his glass; he didn’t want anyone else looking at her, imagining sliding their hands under the material to cup and caress her breast.
Both women were looking at him expectantly, Alicia with an unmistakable wariness in her eyes. Again, he had the uncomfortable sensation that perhaps this morning he’d been too demanding … and yet she’d been so responsive, with him every step of the way, with those soft breathy moans.
‘I’m sorry, I was miles away.’ With a witch …
He shot her an irritated look and she blanched. And just then he saw the slightly bruised looking shadows under her eyes. An uneasy prickling assailed him for a second before he quashed it. He forced himself to concentrate on Patricia’s chatter until Derek joined them.
As they walked out of the hotel and down the road to the restaurant they’d booked for dinner Dante took Alicia’s hand and noticed something—on her feet were black flip-flops. She noticed him looking and grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think, if they won’t let me in without …’ She stopped. ‘Look, I’ll just run back and get proper shoes.’
He could see the red weals on the backs of her heels; they still looked sore and angry.
‘No,’ he said gruffly, vowing then that if anyone so much as looked at her strangely for wearing flip-flops that they’d go somewhere else. ‘It’s fine. They obviously need to heal.’
The relief on her face made him feel very strange, even as the unsavoury events of the day warred for supremacy in his chest. This woman was making a serious habit of turning his life upside down. And he was letting her.
‘They should be better by tomorrow; I’ve been putting cream on them all day. It’s my own fault; I’m not used to wearing those kind of shoes.’
He looked away from her huge brown eyes and hardened his heart. He cursed himself for the umpteenth time that day for letting her and her complications into his life. The woman was like a sledgehammer between his eyes; he couldn’t see straight or think straight with her around.
* * *
In the restaurant, once they’d ordered, Alicia forced herself to relax and looked around. She caught Derek’s eye and smiled but he blushed a little and then looked away guiltily. This was so far removed from the genial joky man she knew that she reached over without thinking. Dante and Patricia were deep in conversation beside them.
‘Derek? What is it—is something wrong?’
He looked at her again and now looked unbelievably guilty and worried. The conversation stopped beside them and Alicia caught Patricia nudging Derek, as if to tell him to behave. Now she looked guilty too when she caught Alicia’s look. Alicia felt sick to her stomach.
‘What is it? Please.’
Even Dante beside her couldn’t distract her from this.
Eventually he was the one who bit out, ‘You may as well tell her; we already spoke about it this morning.’
Her insides froze. And she beseeched Patricia with her eyes.
With extreme reluctance and a very apologetic smile, she spoke. ‘Alicia, dear, I’m afraid there’s a very nasty rumour going around … about you.’
Her chest felt tight and hard. ‘Let me guess. Serena Gore-Black.’
Patricia nodded. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s nobody’s business what your history is, but there is the fear that the paparazzi will get a hold of the story. Gossip will always flourish where money, power and the media are prevalent …’ Her voice trailed away and now Alicia felt doubly
sick.
‘My goodness, I never thought—’
‘That your misdeeds would catch up with you?’ Dante asked harshly.
Patricia jumped to her defence. ‘Dante, that’s no way to talk—’
Alicia put out a shaky hand, her head pounding with the implications of this hitting her like a truck. ‘Patricia, please. The truth is … the truth is … it is true.’
Alicia knew she couldn’t act the martyr—didn’t want to. Dante would believe the worst of her in connection with Melanie until that baby was born, but this. she could try and do something about.
‘In one way,’ she said, her voice strong.
Everyone looked at her and she decided to focus on Patricia, her ally.
‘The truth is yes, I did have an affair with a married man, Dr Raul Carro. But the other side of it—’ her voice became bitter ‘—is that I had no idea he was married.’
She felt Dante go still beside her and couldn’t bear to look and see blatant disbelief on his face. She continued, faltering. ‘He came over for just a couple of months from Spain. No wedding ring, no mention of a wife and family …’
She shrugged minutely, bitterly aware of the glaring parallels between that situation and now this one when she said, ‘He was tall, dark and handsome. In grim and grey January, in a bleak part of Oxford, he seemed like some kind of god, and when he asked me out …’
‘You couldn’t resist …’ Patricia smiled with innate feminine understanding and she reached for Alicia’s hand. ‘Oh, my dear, you must have been devastated when you found out.’
Alicia sent a quick glance to Dante but he was staring into his drink.
‘It was pretty horrendous.’ She forced a hard smile. ‘Especially when it turned out that he’d been seeing not only me, but half of the hospital staff, it seemed. I only found out at the very end. Serena Cox, as she was then, was one of his casualties and the first one to find out he was married. She made the phone call to his wife … but was very careful to absolve herself of any crime. She always denied her affair with him.’
Alicia felt icy-cold. It became actually potentially even worse. She continued faintly, avoiding Dante’s eyes, ‘Serena even leaked the story to a local rag and named people in an effort to deflect attention from herself.’
Alicia didn’t have to remind herself that she had been one of those most prominently named and shamed. ‘It didn’t make the nationals … but …’ In her mind’s eye she could still see the lurid headline:
Dirty Doc does it with half the hospital while poor wifey waits at home …
Dante muttered caustically, ‘This just gets better and better.’
For the first time, Alicia thought of how this would affect Derek too, with the welfare of his own company hinging on this merger, and had an image of their four children. She felt as if she were going to vomit.
Derek’s voice boomed and he gasped with comic affront, ‘And now that cow is trying to make you look bad!’
Alicia shrugged, barely keeping her panic contained. She could feel an icy wind coming from Dante’s direction—no doubt he didn’t believe a word of this. ‘We’d never got on working together; it was obviously too good an opportunity for her to miss.’
Derek mopped his sweaty brow with a napkin and said forcibly, ‘I don’t have a problem with Gore-Black; he’s a good man, just married to an unfortunate wife. She’ll have to go home, of course. We do not need people here who want to distract and disrupt proceedings with foul play, do we, Dante?’
Dante looked at Alicia and his eyes were hard. She barely registered Derek’s words. After a long moment he said, ‘No. No, we don’t.’
He was obviously regretting his decision to bring her after all and, as much as she would have welcomed a scenario which would have given her an out, Alicia was sickened to be the cause of creating a scandal within the negotiations—the very kind of scandal that could cause their collapse.
Later, as they said goodnight to the other couple, Patricia said, ‘Alicia, don’t worry, Derek is so angry that I wouldn’t be surprised if that woman will be on a plane home tomorrow.’
Alicia grasped her hand, her face going pale. ‘Oh, no, please; that’ll just made things ten times worse.’
But Patricia just patted her cheek and said goodnight, telling her not to worry.
Later, when Alicia emerged into the bedroom after having a bath, the room was empty. Wrapping the towel tight around herself, she walked to the glass doors and found Dante sitting on the balcony, a glass of wine in his hand. He looked so cold and remote that she felt scared.
Did he think she’d made it all up? She couldn’t bear for him to think that. She came out hesitantly. ‘Dante …’
His head came up and his look sliced through her, telling her exactly what he thought of her. This was the lowest point she’d hit. She knew that.
‘Go to bed, Alicia. I’m not in the mood for any more lies and revelations.’
Mute and stung and heartsore, Alicia turned around and went back inside. She curled up into a tight ball and only fell asleep when she heard Dante come in a long time later. He got in beside her but made no move to pull her close or make love to her.
Feigning sleep the following morning, Alicia only got up when she was sure Dante had gone. She got dressed and paced the room. She hated this—not only was her own private humiliation now public knowledge but it was putting Dante in a very awkward position.
She would have to go. Leave. That was it, there was no other recourse. She couldn’t stay and give that vindictive cow, Serena Gore-Black, a reason to undermine Dante and Derek. She couldn’t feel angry; even she could see how her story might look. Derek and Patricia were lovely people who had had no reason to mistrust her on sight, as Dante had, so of course they would give her the benefit of the doubt. And she loved them for that.
Ignoring the ache in her heart—in every limb—she packed her bag and then thought, what was the point? She didn’t even own these clothes anyway. She dressed in the shabbiest clothes she could find, which, of course, were a pair of exquisite linen trousers and a beautiful white shirt. She dug out her phone and her credit card. She should have enough to get her home, with any luck.
She sat down and wrote a note to Dante, telling him that she was sorry she’d caused his own reputation to come into disrepute when he’d needed to be so careful about appearances. She wished him luck with the rest of the meetings, saying that she hoped that there wouldn’t be any adverse effects. She didn’t have any doubt that he’d be only too happy to see the back of her, after seeing the way he’d looked at her last night, when he believed she’d lied … she shivered.
Alicia used the last of her cash getting to the airport. She’d managed to evade the ever present paparazzi outside the hotel by getting a lift with one of the hotel workers from the back entrance to the main road in town. When she finally got to the ticket desk to ask for a one way fare to the UK, she could have wept with relief when the card was accepted. It was surely maxed to the hilt by now.
She made her way, following a long queue to the security desks and boarding gates. She caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of her eye and looked around. Her mouth dropped open when she saw Serena and her husband Jeremy with a mountain of luggage and about three people helping them. Her husband looked very red in the face and Serena was sulky, and then she looked over and saw Alicia.
Alicia had to blink. Surely she was seeing things? But no, Serena was stalking over in her high heels, venom in her blue eyes, spittle coming out of her mouth as she shrieked at Alicia, ‘Are you happy now? Now that everyone knows that I was duped as well?’ She flung a hand back to her embarrassed looking husband. ‘I’ve been sent packing like a naughty child—’
And like something from a cartoon, suddenly Serena was gone, moved bodily out of the way, and Dante stood in front of her. She looked up and up. The queue was now snaking around Alicia, people looking at her and the little drama avidly.
He arched a brow. �
�Going somewhere?’
‘Home,’ she said faintly. Someone jostled her and Dante took her arm and, picking up her bag, he walked her away from the line of people. She stopped in her tracks. ‘Hang on a second. What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my note?’
‘I got your note and threw it out.’
‘But why? I’m going home.’ She crossed her arms and looked at him mutinously. ‘I’m not going back there to be the cause of your embarrassment.’
‘Don’t you get it?’ he asked, as if talking to a small child.
She shook her head.
‘Serena is going home.’
‘But that’s just going to make things worse,’ she wailed, her arms going down by her sides. ‘What’s to stop her going to the press at home?’
Dante shook his head, the light in his eyes making her breath stop. ‘She won’t be doing anything of the sort. Her husband is so mortified that he’s threatened to cut her off and divorce her if she so much as breathes a further word of this. Derek went to them this morning. Of course her husband knew the full real story; she would have had to defend herself to him in case he ever found out about it. It didn’t take much to get her to make a confession that she had maliciously twisted the truth to make you look bad. She deliberately caused the rumour but luckily it hasn’t reached Buchanen’s ears.’
Alicia’s mouth dropped open again, her eyes wide. ‘But how on earth …?’
Dante shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for doubting you, Alicia.’
She just looked at him. The way he was looking at her now was making her blood melt and flow like molten liquid.