by Lynne Graham
He stretched up and pulled her down to him, dipping his tongue in a hungry, sexy forage into the tender interior of her mouth. Again and again he penetrated between her lips until she had both arms wound round him tight to trade kiss for kiss. Her heart was hammering so hard she could only breathe in fevered snatches.
He rolled her half under him and discovered the damp liquid heat between her slender thighs.
‘You need me, cara…’ With a husky laugh of male appreciation, he explored the slick, silken depths of her with expert fingers. The pleasure was a torment that made her twist and turn and moan. She was lost in passion, overwhelmed by the frantic hunger of her own body.
‘Lucca, please…’ she heard herself plead and she didn’t care. The wanting inside her had reached such a peak she was utterly controlled by it and helpless.
He flipped her back and plunged into her with an earthy groan. Her slight frame jerked in sexual shock from the power of that invasion and the hot glide of his rigid shaft as he penetrated her. He pushed her legs high, ground deeper into her. Her excitement flared to fever pitch. In the midst of that wildness that she had never known with him before, she dimly recognised the difference in him, but the raw, helpless pleasure taking her by storm wiped out every other awareness. Sensation sent her rushing to an explosive peak and the shattering release of joyous abandonment rippled through her in wave after wave of delight.
In the aftermath of that sensual storm, Vivien was weak and in shock. She wrapped her arms tight round Lucca while he was struggling to recapture his breath. She felt incredibly happy. They were together again, Vivien thought, weak with relief and gratitude for the opportunity. Yes, lots of things still had to be ironed out, but essentially their separation was over and they were at the outset of a new beginning in their marriage.
‘Life just wasn’t life without you,’ she mumbled in the grip of her emotions and trying very hard not to get weepy, but it was difficult because she was on a high.
‘Is that a fact, cara?’ Lucca stretched with the slumberous grace of a panther and dropped a kiss to her brow.
He tried not to laugh at the way she was clutching him while secretly enjoying the power of being so indispensable. For just those few seconds it was as if he were inhabiting a time slip and then crash, bang the curtain whipped up again on his recollection of the past two years and the cold and the steel and the darkness entered back into his soul. He gazed down at her, brooding dark golden eyes semi-concealed by lush black lashes.
She spread appreciative fingers across the hard contours of bone and sinew that lay below the smooth bronzed skin of his shoulders and stared up at his lean, darkly handsome face. She breathed in deep. ‘I…I still love you.’
‘I’m honoured.’ Lucca lifted a hand and indicated a tiny space. ‘Do you love me this much? Or this much…?’ He stretched lean brown fingers wider apart.
Her shy smile crept across her reddened mouth for she believed he was teasing her. ‘Oh, at least two hand spans…’
‘But I didn’t ask for love…I only wanted sex.’
Eyes veiling, Vivien went pink and winced. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’
‘If you love me enough, you’ll forgive me,’ Lucca declared with sardonic bite.
Vivien stilled, only then recognising the jarring note in his dark deep accented drawl and grasping that something was wrong. He rolled her off him and sprang out of bed. He was all sleek power and strong muscles, a virile male in the very peak of condition. She stared, a hollow feeling in the pit of her tummy. It was as though he had cut her in two. She had given herself in trust and offered her love and he had taken one and discarded the other. I only wanted sex. Was he serious? She trembled, feeling sick with humiliation.
The phone by the bed buzzed loudly. With a muttered imprecation in his own language, Lucca swept up the phone. Suddenly he fell still, his hard jaw line squaring. ‘Yes, I am Lucca Saracino. What has happened?’
The gravity of his voice made her push herself up in the bed and stare. His natural colour had leeched from below his olive skin. ‘Which hospital? How is he?’ he demanded flatly. ‘How did this occur?’
While he listened, his lean, powerful face clenched hard and shadowed. ‘Thank you,’ he breathed gruffly. ‘I will get to the hospital as soon as possible.’
Tossing the phone aside, Lucca shot Vivien a chilling look of fierce condemnation. ‘That was the police. An hour ago they took Marco to hospital. He has cuts and bruises. He was found on the street on his own.’
Vivien could not credit what he was telling her. ‘I beg your pardon…?’
‘Your sister tried to reclaim him but was considered too drunk to be entrusted with his care a second time. Apparently, she took him to a party and he wandered out of the house without anyone even noticing that he was missing!’ Lucca framed between clenched teeth.
‘Oh, dear heaven, no!’ Gripped by fear on her son’s behalf, Vivien fought through her welter of horrified disbelief that such an event could have taken place and concentrated on what was important. ‘Hospital? Marco’s in hospital? Has he been hurt?’
Scorching golden eyes challenged her. ‘How the hell could you leave my infant son in that selfish bitch’s care?’
‘Please tell me how Marco is…is he all right?’ Vivien pressed strickenly.
‘Dannazione! What do you call “all right”? He has cuts and bruises and he’s terrified. He could have been kidnapped, killed, anything! I thank God that He was merciful and that we still have a son,’ Lucca launched at her in a black seething fury, hauling on clothes as he spoke. ‘Someone’s going to answer for this outrage!’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SOMEONE’S going to answer for this outrage.’ That threat still echoing in her ears, Vivien sat silent and rigid in the rear of Lucca’s limousine. The buck stops here, she thought wretchedly. She was responsible for Marco and she had placed him in Bernice’s care. Out in a street without an adult looking out for him, Marco might so easily have been run over by a car. The son she adored might have died because she had utilised poor judgement.
But how could she have guessed that Bernice would lie to her? Her sister had lied to cover up the fact that she’d not been at home where she’d been pretending to be, but actually out socialising in the company of other people. How could she have known that Bernice would act in such an irresponsible way? Taking Marco from his bed to go to a party and then imbibing so much alcohol that she could not be trusted to watch over her nephew. Vivien felt sick to the stomach with guilt and the horror of what might have been. She did not feel that she could fault Lucca for the ferocious anger that had darkened his gaze to a hard black onslaught.
‘Why didn’t you arrange proper care for Marco?’ Lucca enquired coldly.
Desperate to reach her son’s side so that she could soothe his fear and his hurts, Vivien had to struggle to think straight and answer. ‘Blame Jasmine Bailey and that newspaper article—’
‘I’m blaming you,’ Lucca slotted in harshly.
Vivien knotted her hands tightly together. ‘Rosa, Marco’s nanny, only works for me part-time and she doesn’t do evenings. I used to have a student who babysat for me occasionally but she’s graduated now. This arrangement with Bernice was a last-minute thing. Rosa was to put Marco to bed for her. I didn’t expect to be so late coming back…but I’ve got to be honest,’ she muttered tightly. ‘I didn’t think that I would be taking a risk either. I trusted my sister—’
‘Inferno! You trusted Bernice?’ Brilliant black eyes struck merciless sparks off her anxious face. ‘She’s too spoilt and self-centred to put a child’s needs ahead of her own desires. How could you possibly have trusted her?’
‘I never thought for one moment that Bernice would do anything that might put Marco in jeopardy,’ Vivien countered with driven sincerity. ‘Obviously I was wrong and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that—’
A sardonic black brow lifted. ‘I’ll never forgive this,’ Lu
cca stated with chilling cool.
Vivien flinched. She was in total turmoil. It was a torment for her to think of Marco suffering without her comforting presence. It was an agony to deal with her own guilt and the depth of her sibling’s betrayal. It was also excruciating to acknowledge that just over an hour ago, Lucca, having made passionate love to her again, had then rejected her and her love in the most painful and humiliating manner.
One minute she had naively believed that they were on the threshold of a new beginning and a few seconds later all her hopes had been brutally destroyed. At that instant there was no part of Vivien that was not feeling mental anguish. Why had she never faced just how cruel Lucca could be? She had always preferred to overlook or excuse the darker side of his strong character. He had never compromised, never conceded his own mistakes and now he denied forgiveness and compassion for human error as well.
‘Once I forgave you for a lot more…’ Vivien breathed shakily.
His dark as midnight eyes narrowed and challenged. ‘I did nothing that required forgiveness.’
It was the proverbial last straw and all that was required to break the last strand of her tenuous control. Her fine bone structure was tautly delineated by the strain etched in her delicate features but her green eyes were bright as jewels in their angry conviction. ‘Didn’t you? You may love Marco now, but when I fell pregnant you acted like a teenager trapped into a shotgun marriage!’
Lucca was transfixed by that offensive accusation. Taken entirely by surprise, he could not immediately credit that so quiet and peaceful a woman could suddenly turn so belligerent. ‘Come—?’
‘Don’t you dare deny it!’ Vivien snapped at him like a small spitting cat.
Lucca made a fast recovery. ‘I’ve no intention of denying that I was annoyed when you chose to become pregnant regardless of my reservations—’
‘I did not choose to become pregnant!’
Lucca ignored her interruption. ‘We were newly married. I wanted to wait for a few years before we became a family and you were well aware of that fact. When you decided to disregard my wishes—’
‘Stop right there!’ Vivien was reduced to holding up two dissenting hands. ‘You’re not listening to me. I don’t believe what I’m hearing either. It never once crossed my mind that you suspected me of having planned my pregnancy…why didn’t you tell me that at the time?’
‘Oh, you know…’ Lucca murmured, smoother than the finest silk. ‘I was doing that teenage-boy thing…being mature about the shotgun marriage sensation for the baby’s sake!’
Her face flamed with embarrassment. ‘You still think you can be smart at my expense. Well, I don’t like arguing but I have to speak up in my own defence—’
‘The suspense is killing me,’ Lucca interposed lethally.
Both her hands knotted into fists. ‘Why the heck would you believe that I would deliberately have opted for a pregnancy that you didn’t want?’
‘I worked long hours and you didn’t like it. I suspect that you hoped that the baby would act like a dutiful ball and chain on the domestic front and bring me home more often.’ Formidable dark golden eyes assessed her in search of a single sign of betraying guilt. ‘You faced me with a fait accompli. I was very angry with you but there was nothing I could reasonably do or say. Honour demanded I accept that you were carrying my child and make the best of it.’
‘So you worked longer hours than ever, practically stopped speaking to me and decided to conduct business on your yacht to ensure that I saw even less of you,’ Vivien cut in tightly, unimpressed. ‘Honour did not demand any great acceptance or sacrifice from you!’
The faintest colour now demarcated the fabulous high cheekbones that lent his dark features such magnetism. ‘I disagree—’
‘Well, you can disagree all you like!’ Vivien launched at him with vehemence. ‘But I’m telling you now and I am not lying…I didn’t set out to have Marco. I was very shocked when I realised I’d conceived.’
Lucca regarded her without any visible reaction at all.
‘For goodness’ sake, I’m not the sneaky type,’ she pointed out in blunt additional protest. ‘I wasn’t careless when I was taking the contraceptive pill either. Why didn’t you make allowances for the fact that there is a known failure rate?’
His strong mouth compressed. ‘I don’t remember thinking about that.’
‘It was my doctor’s belief that my pregnancy fell into a small per cent category of risk. But when I tried to discuss that with you, you’d leave the room or start talking on the phone—’
‘So I’m a guy…not up for the touchy-feely girlie chats,’ Lucca pronounced in cool justification of his blocking tactics.
‘You should know by now that I’m not deceitful,’ Vivien told him in stressed reproach for what she saw as a most unjust suspicion. ‘I conceived because my birth control failed me. I’m shocked that you could have thought anything else.’
By that stage, the limousine was pulling up outside the well-lit exterior of the hospital. It took less than a second for Vivien to forget the argument. She leapt up, wrenched open the passenger door and surged out of the limo on a wave of fevered determination to fill her empty arms with her son.
Lucca steered her in the direction of the reception desk. As they identified themselves an older man approached and introduced himself as a policeman. Blind and apparently deaf to the necessity of the explanations to be made, Vivien began walking away until Lucca closed a restraining hand to her elbow.
They learned that Marco had wandered out of a rear door in the house where the party was being held. A neighbour climbing out of her car had seen Marco and had intercepted him before he could make it out on to the busy road. Having no idea where the child had come from, the woman had contacted the authorities. By the time that Bernice had realised that Marco was missing, the police had arrived. Presented with a distressed child, who had been bleeding from an apparent fall, they had refused to hand him over to Bernice. Instead the police had insisted that Marco be checked out at a hospital and that his mother be contacted. However, when Vivien had failed to answer her mobile phone official channels had been used to track down Lucca’s phone number.
Vivien requested the name and address of the kindly neighbour who had rescued Marco earlier that evening. She wanted to write a letter thanking the woman whose timely intervention might well have saved her son from far worse injury. As she moved away, overwhelmingly eager to be reunited with her child, Bernice approached her. ‘I bet you’re blaming me for this nightmare!’
Although that provocative greeting struck a very wrong note in the circumstances, Vivien did note that her sister’s eyes were swollen and distraught. Her compassionate heart softened. She knew that Bernice had already had to endure a stern warning from the police for her carelessness and for the amount of alcohol she had taken while she was supposed to be looking after a young child. ‘I just wish you hadn’t lied to me about where you were when I phoned you earlier—’
‘I was certain you’d make a big fuss if you knew I’d gone out. It was only a little white lie. If everything hadn’t all gone wrong, you’d never have found out. I didn’t think there could be any harm in my taking Marco out with me!’ Bernice instantly began to argue in her own defence. ‘He was perfectly happy. I put him in a cot in my friend’s house and he was fine. How was I to know he would climb out of the cot?’
‘If only you had told me when I phoned that you needed me to come back immediately, so that you could go out.’ Vivien sighed. ‘I’m not blaming you—’
‘But I am blaming you, Bernice,’ Lucca slotted in with chilling coldness, banding an arm to Vivien’s taut spine. ‘Nor will we discuss this further. Right now, Marco’s need for us is of greater importance.’
‘I’ll be staying with friends tonight,’ Bernice snapped with a defiant toss of her head and she stalked off in a temper before her sister could intervene.
Lucca had arranged a private room for Marco’s use
and it was there that Marco was finally reunited with his parents. Impervious to the efforts of the nurse attempting to comfort him, Marco was hunched in the corner of a metal cot sobbing his heart out. At the sound of his mother’s soft voice, he clawed himself upright, huge dark eyes telegraphing hope. His brow was scraped, his nose cut and there was a purplish bruise on the side of one chubby cheek. In tears herself and striving to repress all pointless conjecture about the further evils that might have befallen the child she adored, Vivien scooped his solid little body up and hugged him tightly to her. At that instant she didn’t ever want to let go of him again.
Finally raising his curly dark head from his mother’s shoulder, Marco stared in wide-eyed astonishment at his tall darkly handsome father. ‘Papà…?’ he questioned doubtfully.
For the very first time, Vivien watched her son hold out his arms to Lucca. But no sooner had Marco made that apparent choice between them than he changed his mind again, clung fearfully to his mother and burst back into floods of tears.
‘He’s not used to seeing us together. It’s very confusing for him and he’s not in the mood to be upset.’ Lucca proffered that opinion half under his breath and his intonation was grim.
Vivien was very pale. The unfamiliar sight of his parents together distressed their child and whose fault was that? It was an issue that cut like a knife to the very heart of her already burdened conscience. She had ended their marriage. She was responsible for the reality that Marco was growing up with a father who could only feature in his life as an occasional visitor. Biting her lip and tasting blood in her dry mouth, she fought back the welling tears and promised herself there and then that, no matter what the personal cost, she would make sure that Lucca had every possible opportunity to make up for that lost time with his son. That was not something that should hinge on Lucca’s lack of response to her intensely personal attempt to put their broken marriage back together again, she told herself staunchly. Never again would she allow her anguish and hurt pride to interfere with Lucca’s relationship with Marco.