This Christmas and Forever: A heartwarming anthology of billionaire holiday romances...

by Clare Connelly

  “Perfection,” he mused, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Stay right here.”

  Elizabeth’s smile was shy, but blissfully content. “I don’t think I have the strength to move anyway,” she promised huskily.

  His throaty laugh chased him from the room.

  Elizabeth’s breath hadn’t returned to normal by the time he returned; he must have only been thirty seconds, but he held a box of condoms in the palm of his hand. As he walked, he slipped one from its plastic and rolled it over his arousal. Elizabeth couldn’t look away. Though he had just blown her mind with a truly amazing orgasm, she was by no means ready for this to be finished.

  “Are you sure about this?” He asked, one last time, and he was secretly proud that he’d had the strength, as he had never wanted a woman more.

  “Absolutely,” she said, and just to be sure, she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him lower, so that the tip of his erection connected with her core. Antonio’s eyes widened, first with surprise and then with pleasure, as he took her lead and drove inside her, hard and fast.

  Elizabeth cried out at the long-forgotten sensation of a man entering her tore through her body.

  “Okay?” He breathed, pressing a kiss against her forehead as he felt her muscles squeeze around him.

  “Yes,” she agreed breathlessly, arching her legs and pulling him deeper.

  His chuckle was throaty as he moved inside her, letting his body carry them both on a wave of feeling. And though Antonio was an experienced lover, he felt a total lack of control with the woman beneath him. She was so beautiful, but he had been right – in his bed, in his arms, there was not a hint of the cool, regally possessed woman he had first met. Now, she was pure, writhing sensation, and he felt his own control slipping. He waited until she was on the cusp of coming, her body wracked with small cries of need, and then, he tipped her over the edge, chasing after her, exploding in a fevered cry of release.

  Afterwards, he lay down on top of her, supporting his weight on his arm, but making sure as much of his body was in contact with hers as possible.

  “That surpassed my expectations,” he said honestly.

  She surprised him by laughing. “Mine too, I assure you.” She lifted her eyes to his face, and though her body was still awash with the sensual completion he’d given her, other thoughts were threatening to crowd her mind. Steadfastly, she ignored them. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.” She lifted her hand to his chest and ran a finger down the middle of his muscular ridges. “Not since Al.”

  The mention of her late husband had a strange effect on Antonio. He was glad that he had broken through her reserves; that she had chosen him to be with. But he acknowledged that the force of the other man’s attraction must have been great indeed, if it had taken her so long to betray his memory.

  Elizabeth flopped back onto the bed, turning her head towards the thick, dark drapes that covered the window. Antonio looked down at her face, and the emotions that were so obvious on her features, and wondered how someone so young came to be so troubled. “I didn’t intend that to happen. Yet.”

  She didn’t turn back to face him. “But you did intend it to happen?”

  “Yes.” He nodded firmly. “From that first afternoon, when I saw you, waiting for me in the entrance, I knew I wanted you.”

  She turned around to look up at him. “And I suppose you always get what you want?”

  His expression was carefully guarded. “Yes.”

  He was an exceptional lover. Gorgeous, sexy, wealthy, and out of nowhere, Elizabeth wondered how many women he’d wanted in that way. Because he would undoubtedly have been able to have any woman he desired.

  Jealousy over this man sat uneasily on her shoulders and she squirmed, pulling away from beneath him. It wasn’t the emotion that upset her though, so much as it was the first thing she felt. When what she should have been feeling was remorse over having slept with someone after Alastair. It was a betrayal to everything she had felt for her husband.

  The thoughts she’d been steadfastly ignoring punched through her mind, and now, she saw Alastair’s face, his lips tilted in his sweet way as he thought of something amusing, and guilt, strong and real, ran through her where desire had recently been.

  Oh, God. She had to get out of there. What had she done?

  “My dress is downstairs,” she mumbled, shifting further away from him in the bed.

  “So it is,” he drawled, reaching across and snaking an arm around her waist. “You shall just have to remain naked, I suppose.”

  Elizabeth fixed him with a gaze that she hoped was cool, and in control. “Antonio, I don’t blame you.” She dropped her eyes. “I mean, this was my fault.”

  Antonio’s eyes narrowed. “Fault implies a problem. Do you feel there was something wrong with what we just did?”

  She pretended a fascination with the intricate threading on top of the duvet. “Yes. I can’t just… have… sex with someone I hardly know. That’s not me. It never has been. I don’t think sex has any place between two people who aren’t in love.”

  He laughed, and it was like warm honey running down her spine. “Come on, bella. You’re an adult woman. What is wrong with allowing yourself the pleasure we just shared?”

  She glared across at him. “Would you stop? This isn’t funny.” And although it wasn’t true, she wanted to hurt him, and so she said, “I used you because I miss my husband. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  She could see from the way his expression changed that her words had hit their ill-conceived mark, but he quickly concealed it. “I don’t believe you were thinking about anyone other than me for one second.”

  “That’s because you’re an arrogant egomaniac,” she snapped, slipping out of the bed and scanning the room. Her underwear was on the floor, at the foot of the bed, and she walked to it and scooped it up.

  His lips twisted in a derisive curl. “And?”

  She let out a groan of frustration. “Will you go get my dress, please? I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  Antonio ran his fingers through his hair, and just the sight of her body, and the way her chest was heaving with inexplicable anger, was making him want a repeat of what they’d shared. “You could always join me back in bed?”

  “Would you stop it? It was a mistake. Like I said, not your fault, I don’t mean that. But I certainly don’t want to do it again.” She flushed at the conversation she was stuck in the middle of, and her blush deepened as he dragged his eyes to her taut nipples. She had always been a terrible liar and she was lying through her teeth now.

  “Don’t you?”

  “No,” she intoned flatly. “Are you going to go and get my dress, or keep me here as some kind of naked hostage?”

  He smothered a smile at the appealing idea she’d just suggested. She was clearly not in the mood to hear how much he would enjoy having her as a naked hostage in his bed.

  Elizabeth fanned her hot face, and waves of nausea spread through her, as the realization of what she’d just done became fully apparent. “Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God,” she mumbled, waving a hand in front of her face and jerkily pacing backwards and forwards.

  Antonio languidly rose from the bed and moved to intercept her panicked walk of shame. “Stop it, Elizabeth. You are being hysterical. Your husband died years ago. Your devotion to him is admirable. But you are a woman, with normal impulses. Why are you beating yourself up for having acted on them?”

  She narrowed her eyes and stopped walking. “So falling into bed with you is just a normal female impulse, I suppose? Tell me, how many other women have obeyed that impulse?”

  He frowned in confusion. “Are you asking me how many women I’ve had sex with?”

  “Yes.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t care. Just go and get my dress. I need to go.”

  “Go?”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “Oh, this is a mess. I can’t believe it.”

  Antonio turned and left the room w
ithout another word. When he returned, moments later, dressed in a pair of jeans and a shirt, Elizabeth was sitting on the edge of the bed, head in her hands. She was as beautiful as ever. If anything, her state of extreme panic was making him want to protect her. Something that he swore he would never feel for a woman. After all, he believed all women capable of doing whatever was necessary to manipulate a man’s emotions.

  “Here is your dress.” He held it in his hands but made no move to close the gap between them. Instead he waited until she’d stood, with a grace he had come to expect from Elizabeth Sanderson, and crossed the room. She stood right in front of him, apparently uncaring that she was naked except for a pair of silky underpants.

  “My dress?” She asked, her voice not quite steady.

  “Allow me.” Antonio surprised her then by kneeling in front of her and holding the dress for her to step into. Elizabeth did, but it brought her within millimeters of the gorgeous, sexy man she’d just had passionate, ill-thought-out sex with. Antonio, so close to the apex of her thighs, was not going to let her go without a fight.

  Slowly, as he eased the dress up her body, he let his lips lead the way, pressing his mouth against her sensitive, goose bumped flesh. Her smooth stomach, her round, pert breasts, which he lovingly took into his mouth and tasted, before standing and easing the dress over her shoulders.

  Elizabeth’s face was frozen with confusion as he came eye to eye with her. “Neither of us wants more than this, Elizabeth. This isn’t about love. This isn’t about guilt. This isn’t about emotion.”

  He kissed her on the lips, hard and fast, while his hands lifted the hem of the dress he’d just put on her, so that he could slide his hands between her thighs and feel her warm core. “This is just about sex. You need it. I want it. There is nothing wrong with that.”

  “I can’t,” she said, but as she moved her head slowly from side to side, she collapsed her body against him, and her own hands moved up to wrap around his neck. “I shouldn’t.”

  “You are wrong. Sex can exist when there is no love. It can even exist when there is dislike, or mistrust. And the sex you and I are capable of sharing is the best kind. No strings attached, excellent, mind-blowing sex.”

  “I… I don’t… I don’t believe in that,” she said, but her mind was becoming thick with a fog of confused lust, as he eased her underpants down her legs and lifted her easily around his waist.

  Before, they had taken the time to enjoy one another’s bodies, but now, a fierce need had overtaken them both. Antonio pressed her backwards into the bed at the same time as undoing his jeans. He didn’t remove them completely, just unsheathed himself so that he could slide back into her ready, accommodating heart. And she was ready for him.

  As soon as he’d entered her, with her dress rumpled around her middle, she began to explode around him. He pumped inside of her, lost in a wave of sensation, and rode the wave with her, until they were both panting and spent in a tangle of sheets and limbs and clothes on the bed that probably hadn’t been used in years.

  “You don’t believe in that?” He asked silkily, pulling just far enough away from her so that he could prop on his elbow and look her squarely in the eye.

  Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut, awash with confusion. Because she had always believed sex needed to be something borne from love and trust, and commitment, and yet she’d never known sex could be like that.

  He ran the tip of his index finger down her nose, over her sensitive lips, and the jut of her chin. “Because I have to tell you, carissima, that was pretty damned special to me.”

  Her eyes flew open and over to his face. She sucked in a breath as she was forced to remember just how damned gorgeous he was. “I would never have guessed you weren’t fully Italian,” she said the first thing that popped into her head. It was a mistake. She saw the thunderclouds roll across his expression.

  “Meaning?”

  She swallowed back the regret at being so thoughtless. After all, he’d said enough insulting things to her. What was that goose and gander expression? “Meaning only that you look as Mediterranean as anyone I’ve ever known. And you’re certainly red-blooded…”

  His smile was derisive. “I must take after my mother. More than I would like.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know how to rewind the insult. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, anyway. Her head was swimming with a tidal flow of feelings and she needed to unravel them. In private. “I… I should go.”

  “Yes.” Antonio stood up and re-fastened his pants without looking at her. He moved to the door of the room and waited in brooding silence for her to join him. His mood had undergone a complete transformation. He was back to being brooding and angry. What had he said to her earlier? He hadn’t come to England to make friends, or be nice.

  And she’d gone ahead and fallen straight into his arms anyway.

  Uncertainty tore through her. She’d only slept with one man, Alastair, and even then, not very often. After all, he had been in a decline for as long as she had known and loved him. So the etiquette of just how to conclude a session such as they’d just shared was lost on her.

  You’re Lady Elizabeth Sanderson. Pull yourself together. Grateful for the small voice reminding her of her go-to defense shield, she assumed her most cool and haughty expression. No mean feat given that she hadn’t put her bra back on, and her jacket was somewhere in the ballroom. “I will have the contracts emailed to you.” Then, realizing she didn’t have his email address, she cringed. “Do you have a business card?”

  Antonio’s stare was direct. “I’ll have my assistant contact you tomorrow.”

  “Fine.” She breathed out a sigh of relief. It was almost over. She moved past him, and to her relief, he didn’t say nor do anything to stop her.

  Only the house was not familiar to her, and as she came out of the guest room, she looked left and then right, and realized she’d been so caught up in the moment of passion that she hadn’t paid attention to how they had come to be in the guest room.

  “This way,” Antonio said, definitely impatient now.

  Elizabeth fought the wave of desolation that was inside of her. After all, he meant nothing to her, so why should it be so upsetting that she clearly meant less than that to him?

  She wasn’t sure, but it was. Very upsetting, and it took all of her effort to keep her emotions at bay until she’d driven out of the imposing gates of Ravens Manor. Then, and only then, did she let the tears of confusion, pain, regret and sadness fall down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Al. What have I done?”

  Chapter 6

  “No, mummy!” Rosie’s sweet laugh filled the living room, and despite the fog she’d been in for the two days since leaving Ravens Manor, Elizabeth couldn’t help smiling.

  “What do you mean no, angel?”

  “You just said Daddy had brown hair. That’s not right.”

  Elizabeth froze, the Christmas bauble she’d been in the process of hanging on the tree suspended from her fingertip. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember just what she’d been saying. When I first met your daddy, with his dark brown hair and wide-set eyes. Oh, yes, she’d said it all right. Because she hadn’t been thinking about Alastair. She’d been telling Rosie the well-worn story of how she met and fell in love with Lord Sanderson, but her mind had been going somewhere else entirely.

  In fact, all she’d been thinking about since that fateful day at Ravens Manor was Antonio Casacelli. Her body physically ached with the longing he had stirred inside of her.

  “I was just testing, sweetie, to make sure you were listening,” she recovered quickly. At four, Rosie was perceptive and interested in everything. She would not be able to fob her off so easily for much longer.

  “Well, I always listen, mummy. So start again.”

  Elizabeth slipped the bauble onto the tree and lifted another one carefully from the box. They were a mix of the decorations her parents had given her as a child, and the heirlooms that Marianne had insisted sh
e take care of.

  On autopilot, she began her story again, this time paying a little more attention and being sure not to skip any of the parts Rose loved most of all.

  “And so, on our first date, when we already knew that daddy was sick, he arrived with one hundred red roses for me.”

  “That’s why I’m called Rose,” the young girl interjected, as she always did.

  Elizabeth nodded, her voice thick with emotion at the special memory. “Precisely. And he gave me one hundred roses because he said…”

  “That you wouldn’t have time to go on as many dates as he wanted, so he had to give you all the roses in the world then and there.”

  “Yes, exactly.” Elizabeth smiled wistfully at the recollection. What chance had she had when presented with such dramatic romance? She sighed now. She looped the star onto the branch, then picked another decoration from the box. “Are you going to help me, dear one?”

  “Oh yes. I’m helping by keeping you company.”

  Elizabeth grinned. “I see.”

  “Did you know you have a big cloud of flour on your tummy?”

  Elizabeth looked down her front and saw that, sure enough, she had a huge wisp of white fluff on the front of her expensive black cashmere jumper. “Oh dear,” she said with a laugh. “That’s what I get for cooking our Christmas cake without an apron, hmmm?”

  “It’s not your fault, mummy. You don’t cook very often. I should have reminded you.”

  It was comments like that which made Elizabeth adore her daughter all the more. She was observant and empathetic, always looking for how to put her mummy at ease.

  “I should have remembered,” she corrected. “It doesn’t matter. Mr. Jackson will know how to fix it.” Their local dry cleaner was a miracle worker and had never failed to return Elizabeth’s clothes to mint condition, regardless of what accidents – generally toddler inflicted – had befallen them.