‘Well, you’ve done as much as you can do for the moment. If I were you I’d simply put it out of your mind until we get back to London.’
Strange how that one small word ‘we’ could mean so very much, Carly thought, as Ricardo drew her back down into his arms.
Ricardo felt the tight coiling of his own stomach muscles as Carly’s nipple responded to the slow stroke of his thumb-pad. He could already see the betraying tightening of the muscles in her belly, and the now familiar way in which that threw into relief the mound of her sex.
Carly closed her eyes and gave in to what she was feeling, hoarding the pleasure to her like a child trying to hold a rainbow. She raised her head and kissed the column of Ricardo’s throat, running the tip of her tongue along it, right up to his ear, then slowly and luxuriously exploring the hard whorls of flesh.
They had already made love once, but once wasn’t going to be enough. She whispered to Ricardo what she wanted, her voice blurred with pleasure and longing, her body shuddering with expectation. The moment he placed his hand on her mound she spread her legs in eager anticipation and invitation, then murmured her appreciation when Ricardo parted the still-swollen lips of her sex with his fingers and started to caress her.
‘What about this?’ he asked thickly, rolling her over on top of him and holding her just off his own body, his mouth at the juncture of her thighs.
Carly’s heart thumped excitedly against her ribs. She had wondered…been tempted…but hadn’t liked to suggest such intimacy.
But now, with him holding her arched over him, his fingers exploring her wetness and then holding her open, so that his tongue could sweep the full length of her eager arousal, she could only shudder in mindless, wanton pleasure. His tongue pressed against her clitoris, caressing it into swollen heat, whilst his fingers stroked into her, finding a new pleasure spot she hadn’t known existed.
Unable to stop herself she reached for him, circling the head with her own tongue, whilst her fingers worked busily on the shaft. Daringly, the fingers of her free hand moved a little lower.
She heard him groan, his whole body stiffening, and his response increased her own arousal. She could feel him lapping fiercely at her, the intimate stroke of his fingers bringing her so quickly to orgasm that she cried out in the immediacy and intensity of it.
Her body was still tingling, still quivering intensely, when he turned her over and entered her.
Immediately her muscles fastened around him, the small shallow ripples growing into violent shuddering contractions of almost unbearable pleasure.
‘I love you so much,’ Carly whispered, as she lay held fast in Ricardo’s arms. ‘I never, ever thought I could feel like this. So loved and loving, and so very, very happy.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
A SMALL tender smile curled Carly’s mouth as she let herself into the house. It was lunchtime, and with the birthday ball taking place in a few hours’ time by rights she should have been at the château, just in case she was needed, but instead she had given in to Ricardo’s whispered suggestion that they snatch a couple of hours alone together.
Ricardo had dropped her off outside before going to park the car, promising her that he wouldn’t be very long.
Any time spent apart from him right now was far, far too long, she reflected as she put the fresh bread they had stopped off to buy on the kitchen table and then, unable to stop herself, walked into the room Ricardo was using to work in.
What was it about loving someone that caused this compulsion to share their personal space, even when they weren’t in it? She had become so sensitive to everything about him that she was sure she could actually feel his body warmth in the air. Half laughing at herself for her foolishness, she paused to smooth her fingers over the chair in which he normally sat. There were some papers on the desk. She glanced absently at them, and then more hungrily as she saw his handwriting.
And then, as she realised what she was looking at, she stiffened, picking up the papers so that she could study them more closely whilst her heart thudded out an uneven, anguished death knell to her love.
Ricardo frowned as the empty silence of the house surrounded him.
Carly heard him call her name, and then come down the hallway, but she waited until he had walked into the small room before she confronted him. The papers were still in her hand, and she held on to them as she might have done a shield as she accused him bitterly, ‘You lied about wanting to give Prêt a Party your business. You don’t want to give us anything. You want to take us over.’
‘I was considering it, yes,’ Ricardo agreed levelly.
‘You used me! You deliberately tricked me with all those questions you asked!’ Her voice was strained and accusatory, her eyes huge in the pale shape of her face.
‘The only questions I asked you were exactly the same ones I, or anyone else, would have asked if they had been intending to give Prêt a Party their business.’
‘You pretended to want me…to love me…because—’
‘No! Carly, no—you mustn’t think that.’ As he stepped towards her she moved back from him. ‘Yes, I had originally planned to find out from you as much as I could about the way the business is run—that’s simple defensive business practice—but—’
‘You accused me of being a gold-digger. But what you are, Ricardo, is far, far worse. You used me. You let me believe that you cared about me, that you loved me, when all the time what you really wanted was the business.’
‘Carly, that is not true. My potential acquisition of Prêt a Party and my love for you are two completely separate issues. Yes, originally I did think I might get an insight into any vulnerabilities the business might have through you, but I promise you that was the last thing on my mind when we became lovers. In fact because of that—because of us—I—’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Carly cut him off flatly. ‘I thought I could trust you. Otherwise I would never have told you what I did about Lucy and Nick. I’ve made it all so easy for you, haven’t I? Because of my stupidity Lucy will lose the company. All the time I was letting myself believe that you were genuine, that you cared about me, what you really wanted was Pret a Party.’
‘It isn’t like that. When you confided in me you were confiding in me as your lover, and I can assure you can trust me—’
‘Trust you? Carly interrupted him furiously. ‘What with? You’ve taken all the trust I had, Ricardo, and you’ve destroyed it. You knew how hard it was for me to allow myself to admit that I loved you—but you didn’t care what you were doing to me, did you? Not so long as it got you what you wanted. And you wanted me vulnerable to you, didn’t you? The only thing that matters to you is making your next billion, nothing else and no one else. I hate you for what you’ve done to me, and I hate you even more for what you’re going to do to Lucy.’
‘Carly, you’ve got it all wrong. I did think about acquiring Prêt a Party, but once I’d met you the only acquisition I cared about was the acquisition of your love.’
Her muscles ached from the tension inside her body, and even though she knew he was lying to her, incredibly she actually wanted to believe him. No wonder she had been so afraid of love if this was what it did to her. How could she still ache for him, knowing what she did?
‘You’re lying, Ricardo,’ she told him. ‘If you weren’t planning to go ahead with the acquisition why were the papers on your desk?
‘I was considering the best way to stop you worrying about Lucy and her trust fund,’ he told her quietly.
Carly gave him a mirthless smile. ‘Of course. And no doubt you’d decided that the best way was for you to acquire the business. You may have taken me for a fool, Ricardo, but that doesn’t mean I intend to go on being one.’
‘You’re getting this all wrong. I can see that right now you’re too upset to listen to reason—’
‘Reason? More lies, you mean! I trusted you, and you betrayed that trust!’ Carly could feel the anguish of her pain leaking into her
voice, betraying to him how badly he had hurt her and how much she loved him.
‘Trust works both ways, Carly. I could say to you that I trusted you, to have faith in me and my love for you. Those papers were on my desk because I was trying to come up with a way of helping Lucy without benefiting that wretched husband of hers, and the reason I was doing that was because of you. Because I love you, and I knew how upset and worried you were.’
Carly stared at him in disbelief.
‘You can’t really expect me to believe that,’ she told him contemptuously.
‘Why not? It’s the truth. And if you loved me you would trust me and accept it as such.’