Bartering Her Innocence Page 9

  He filled that vacuum with the more solid press of his lips upon hers. He filled it with the taste of him in her mouth.

  Coffee and wine and heat combined in a knee-trembling cocktail that threatened to bring her undone, and only his arms around her kept her standing. And as his lips made magic against her mouth, it occurred to her that she’d been right to worry, because a girl could not only get lost, but drown in a kiss like that.

  She was already drowning—in sensation. There was nothing between them but silk and cloth and the knowledge that when they came together it would be explosive.

  His hands moved over her like both a caress and a demand. His kiss promised her his soul while it wrenched free her own.

  She could not afford to let go of her soul.

  She turned her head away and pushed against his chest, determined to show him she was unmoved while she still could, before she got lost for ever in his kiss. Before she believed its promise.

  He let her go and she spun away, grabbing hold of the railing like a lifeline. ‘I wish you hadn’t done that,’ she hissed.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes! Because this whole thing still makes no sense, when you could have your pick of any woman in Venice. Any woman anywhere for that matter and without having to blackmail them into the deal.’

  ‘But I didn’t want any other woman,’ he said, peeling her away from the railing and back in his arms. ‘I wanted you and you alone.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  He laughed. ‘And would you have come to me if I hadn’t blackmailed you into my bed?’

  ‘No,’ she said breathlessly, still trying to grapple with the sense of it all. ‘I wouldn’t have come to you if you were the last man left on earth.’

  ‘Then there you have it,’ he said with another of those deadly smiles, his lips pressing to her forehead. ‘You gave me no choice. Your not wanting it makes having you all the more satisfying.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANGER was good. Anger she could harness and mould and shape into something to sling right back at him. And it would not be simpering submission, but forged in hatred, and it would be slung back at him on her terms.

  Anger coloured desire and turned it into a weapon. Anger shaped passion and turned it into something much more dangerous, much more lethal.

  So that by the time the water taxi arrived back at the palazzo she didn’t feel fearful or afraid or vulnerable.

  Instead she felt stronger than she had ever done. She had survived his kiss, she had suffered his taunts, and if he thought he was going to take and take freely of her, he was very much mistaken.

  Because she’d make damn sure she would take more than she would give. No, there was nothing to fear from Luca Barbarigo.

  Aldo greeted them discreetly at the water door, just as discreetly evaporating as Luca ushered her upstairs, every slight caress of the hand at her back a siren’s call to her senses while ratcheting up her simmering resentment; every silken whisper of his presence both a caress and a curse.

  And it didn’t matter any more that she didn’t understand whatever game Luca was playing. Because she knew what was expected of her as they climbed the stairs.

  And what was expected of her was the easy bit.

  It was just sex, after all, whatever he wanted her to believe. It wasn’t as if she needed to put on a special performance. All she had to do was take off her clothes and get into bed with him. Nothing to it.

  * * *

  Dinner had been interminable. He’d wanted to be seen. He’d planned to give time for his dinner companion to have been photographed and image searched and found to be someone with links to him. But still it had taken too long—far too long when what he most wanted was to have her in his bed. But it had been necessary.

  It shouldn’t take anyone curious too long to work out.

  His uncle’s widowed wife’s daughter.

  She wouldn’t be hard to trace, not with today’s search technology. Soon there would be articles in newspapers and magazines. Soon the world would know she was living in his palazzo and that they were an item.

  A few more outings and the papers would blow it out of all proportion and wedding bells would be predicted and gambled upon.

  And she would start believing it herself.

  That was when she would be the most vulnerable.

  That was when she would be starting to believe the fairy tale. And she would. Even now, for all her protests of hating him, she melted in his arms like wax.

  She was his.

  She’d made that plain last night with her impromptu striptease, when she’d offered herself to him on his desk. She’d made that plain the way she’d stunned herself with the force of her orgasm.

  Soon she would forget all about hating him and start believing in dreams.

  And that was when he would unceremoniously dump her.

  But that was later.

  First there were more carnal pleasures to be enjoyed.

  Starting now.

  The bedroom lighting was low, the air body temperature, the wide bed turned down on both sides. He smiled as he closed the door to the suite behind him, watching the seductive sway of her hips as she headed across the room, liking the way the dress clung to her curves. He liked her in that dress. It would be such a shame to tear it off.

  Then again...

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She stopped, looked over her shoulder at him. ‘My dressing room. I’m guessing you expect me naked for tonight’s performance.’

  ‘What? No impromptu striptease tonight?’ he asked, flicking open the top button of his shirt, tugging at his tie. ‘No office antics?’

  She blinked, golden eyes glinting and hard, watching him remove the cufflinks from his shirtsleeves. She made a move to walk away.

  ‘Come here.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from you.’

  ‘Come here,’ he repeated, his voice velvet over steel.

  ‘Why? So you can rip this dress off like you would...like the caveman you like to keep dressed up under those fancy Italian suits of yours? Nobody’s fooled, Luca, least of all me.’

  ‘Maybe you should come here and find out.’

  Fire flared in her eyes, shooting flames straight to his groin.

  ‘I like this dress, I don’t want it ruined.’

  ‘I like it too, as it happens. Maybe I just want the pleasure of peeling it from your body.’

  ‘Fine,’ she snapped, ‘have it your way.’ But there was a husky edge to her grudging agreement that signalled she wasn’t as in control as she made out, even as she crossed the room and spun around in front of him, presenting her back.

  Not so fast, he thought. Instead of reaching for the zip, he put his hands on her shoulders and dipped his mouth to the place where her throat met her shoulder. Her gasp was his reward, her tremor was his vindication.

  ‘You see,’ he murmured against her throat, ‘even the caveman can play nice.’ And she trembled again.

  He ran his hands down her arms, taking his time to drink in the feel of her smooth, toned limbs, curling his fingers possessively around hers before starting the long road up. There was plenty to enjoy. There was plenty of time. Last night’s lovemaking had been so rushed, he’d missed a lot.

  And there was so much more to explore. His fingers found the catch of her zip and he slid it slowly down, letting just one fingertip trail a line down the skin beneath. Another involuntary gasp from his reluctant playmate and the temptation to slide his hands underneath the fabric and ease it over her shoulders and be done with it was almost too much.

  Almost.

  Instead he spun her around and cradled her jaw in his hands, lifting her face towards his. Her lips were parted, her breathing shallow and fast and h
er amber eyes swirled with confusion. There was resentment there and heated anger, but there was a flicker of vulnerability too in those amber depths, a flicker that was almost endearing.

  ‘Where is your caveman now, Valentina?’ he asked, searching her face, watching her mouth and those lips, parted and panting and just begging to be kissed. He wasn’t about to disappoint them. He dipped his head and brushed her lips with his and sighed with the simple, exquisite pleasure.

  Just sex, she told herself. It was just sex. His kisses meant nothing, the tenderness meant nothing.

  It was just sex.

  It meant nothing.

  So why did it feel so very good?

  His lips moved over hers like a piece of music, a symphony that built and grew and slowed to tender lows and soared to great heights and everywhere in between.

  His hands traced a path down her throat. She felt the brush of silken straps over her shoulders and the slip of her dress as it fell to the floor. She felt air that cooled and caressed her naked breasts and turned her nipples even harder.

  She felt his hands slide down her bare back and pull her against him.

  She felt him, long and hard against her belly. Felt the aching need for him between her thighs and her hand moved of its own volition, unable to resist the temptation to curl her fingers over that rigid column.

  Breath hissed through his teeth. He lifted her from the circle of her dress and into his arms, took three long strides and tossed her into the centre of the waiting bed. Chest heaving as if he’d run a marathon, he looked down at her on the bed, eyes raking down over a body clad in nothing but gossamer-thin shreds of silken underwear, a pair of killer heels and a pair of earrings, while his hands were busy pulling off his shirt, his shoes, his trousers.

  She could not take her eyes from him, from the lean and sculpted perfection of his body, from the heart-stopping size of his erection as it sprang free. Looking at him made her blood fizz and her flesh ache.

  And then he kneeled alongside her on the bed and slipped off first one shoe and then the other, kissing the soles of her feet, sliding his hands up her legs to catch the scrap of silk that was her underwear, sliding it down and tossing it over his shoulder.

  ‘Did anyone ever tell you,’ he said, his voice thick with need as he gazed down upon her naked form, ‘that you look amazing in sapphires?’

  She was sure she would have remembered if someone had, but right now there was no space for raking up memories, no room for anything that might have happened in the past. This moment was all about what was happening now.

  He lowered his head and put his mouth to her breast, drawing it in, rolling his tongue around her nipple while one hand swept down her body from neck to breast to thigh to knee, his long fingers spread wide, missing nothing, leaving no part of her untouched, leaving no part of her to his imagination. Through his scorching touch, he drank her in until she felt more liquid than solid, her senses flowing, eddying.

  She shuddered under the heated assault, her senses alive, her need building like a whirlpool; spinning as he rained hot kisses down her belly; spinning as he spread her legs wide and dipped his head between her aching thighs.

  The first touch of his tongue was electric, sending her arching against the mattress. She cried out, something incomprehensible—meaningless—other than as a reflection of the exquisite agony of his hot tongue circling her pulsing core, and his clever lips toying with that screamingly tight bud of nerve endings. And all the while the whirlpool built inside her, sucking her deeper, rendering her senseless, her world ever shrinking, until it consisted of nothing more than a spinning sea of sensation.

  She was lost in that sea. Cast adrift. And still it wasn’t enough. Still she needed more.

  ‘Tell me that you want me,’ he murmured, sensing her distress, and she felt his words on her secret flesh.

  Her head thrashed on the pillow. ‘I hate you.’

  He caught her between his lips, suckled harder.

  ‘Tell me that you want me.’

  ‘I want you,’ she half cried, half sobbed, the confession wrenched bodily from her as he continued to work magic with his mouth, as the circling storm inside her wound tighter and inexorably tighter like a coiled spring until she would die with it.

  ‘I want you now!’

  And his mouth was gone and she had one moment of relief, one moment of loss, before she felt him nudge at her core and drive himself home.

  It was the trigger she needed, the trigger that released that achingly tight coiling spring and sent her soaring. She exploded around him as he held her and filled her and completed her.

  ‘You should hate me more often,’ he joked as she came down from the high, her body slick and hot and humming in secret places.

  ‘I do,’ she said, panting, hating him right now for his ability to do that to her, to turn her incendiary with his clever hands and clever mouth.

  ‘Good,’ he said, moving inside her, making her gasp as she realised he was still hard. ‘Keep on hating me.’

  She could do that. But there was no time to tell him, no time to get her breath back. He leaned back, lifted a lifeless leg and flipped her neatly onto her front before she knew what was happening, all the time still buried deep inside her.

  Shock rendered her speechless, not only at his sudden manoeuvre, but at the tightening and dance of muscles she’d thought wasted, muscles that welcomed another chance to play.

  Large hands anchored her hips as he drew back and she hated his leaving almost as much as she hated him.

  Maybe more.

  He took his own sweet time coming back, inch by excruciating inch until she thought she would go mad with want, until he was seated deep inside her, his thighs pressed hard against hers.

  She sighed with the exquisite fullness of it. Oh God, he felt so good this way, so deep.

  And when he moved it was even better. He started slowly, inviting her into the rhythm of his dance, taking her with him. His hands grew hungrier, sliding down her spine, curling around a breast, slipping around a thigh to stroke her sensitive nub. He was everywhere around her. He was inside her. He possessed her.

  The rhythm built, the pace increased, the slide of flesh against flesh set to the sound of the slap of skin against skin and the feverish need for air as he wound her need around him, tighter and tighter than it had been before and left her teetering on the edge of a precipice.

  He paused, leaving her on the brink. She heard a sound like a whimper, needy and desperate, before she realised it had come from her own throat.

  And then it was his turn to cry out—a cry of triumph borne of pain—as he thrust one last desperate time and sent her to that place where hate and want coalesced in a fireball that consumed her.

  He followed her over the edge, pumping his release and catching her to ride the wave together.

  I hate you, she thought, as he collapsed alongside and gathered her close.

  I hate you, she thought, as a single tear rolled down her cheek. I need to be able to hate you.

  But after what they had just shared, the sentiment rang hollow and empty.

  CHAPTER NINE

  LUCA couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept late. Not that he hadn’t woken earlier. But this morning she’d stirred too and she’d been warm and malleable in his arms and it had been inevitable that they’d made love again.

  But then instead of rising like he’d planned, he’d fallen back to sleep. If Aldo hadn’t woken him with a subtle knock at the door, he’d still be sleeping.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked as Aldo placed a tray of coffee and rolls on a table. Beside him Valentina stirred, still sprawled on her stomach, her hair in disarray around her head, testament to the riotous night they’d spent rediscovering each other’s bodies. How many times had they made love? Was
it four? Or five? He’d lost count along with his sleep.

  ‘Ten o’clock,’ the valet said in response to a question Luca had forgotten he’d asked. ‘I wouldn’t have disturbed you but Signore Cressini called and said he needed to talk to you.’

  ‘Matteo called?’ he asked, lashing a gown around himself while Aldo opened the curtains.

  Aldo nodded. ‘He said it was important.’

  He left the room as Valentina lifted her head from the pillow and sniffed. ‘Mmm, coffee,’ she muttered before dropping her head back on the pillow and Luca smiled and reached for the pot, filling them both a cup while he wondered what Matteo wanted.

  Mind you, he owed his cousin a call—he had, after all, put paid to the spending habits of his best customer. Matteo, no doubt, wanted an update.

  He reached for his phone and immediately thought better of it. He was already late for the office and it wasn’t as if there was anything pressing or that there weren’t any number of bright young things who wouldn’t be happy to cover for him for the day. Besides, right now bright autumn sunshine was flooding the room with light. Late September and the weather was still holding. Any time now the storm clouds of a European winter would come sweeping down from the north, and the heavens would turn grey and dark and open up and turn Venice from a watery wonderland into a rain-lashed water world.

  Maybe he should to take a little time out while his guest was here before that happened. A run out to the island of Murano wouldn’t take that long. It would make for more photo opportunities of them together for a start. And then afterwards there’d be time for a late lunch and a long afternoon siesta. He might not be Spanish, but there were plenty of reasons to like the practice. Making love in the middle of the day was one of them. Thirty nights could stretch a little that way.