'No... What was that vulgar term you used about your fortunate friend, Maxie? I'm "loaded",' Luca conceded with a scornful twist of his lips. 'But you will not profit from that reality, I assure you.'
'I don't understand...' Her hand flew up to her pounding temples. 'I'm getting the most awful headache.'
'Retribution hurts,' Luca slotted in softly. 'And by the time I am finished with you, a headache will be the very least of your problems.'
'What's that supposed to mean? For heaven's sake...are you threatening me?' Darcy gasped, releasing her hold on the chair to take an angry step forward.
'No, I believe I am revelling in the extraordinary sense of power I'm experiencing. I've never felt like that around a woman before,' Luca mused thoughtfully. 'But then, where you are concerned, I have no pity.'
'You're trying to scare me...'
'How easily do you scare?' Luca enquired with appalling self-possession.
'You don't behave like the man I met in Venice!' Darcy condemned shakily.
'You're not the woman I met then either. But she'll emerge eventually... I have this wonderful conviction that over the next six months whatever I want, I will receive.' Brilliant dark eyes gleamed with cruel amusement below level black brows. 'My every wish will be your command. Nothing will be too much trouble. I will just snap my fin¬gers and you will jump...'
Darcy tried and failed to swallow. The living nightmare of her own confusion was growing. While one small part of her stood back and believed that he was talking outra¬geous nonsense, all the rest of her was horribly impressed by the lethal edge of cool, collected threat in that rich, dark drawl and the deadly chill in his level gaze. 'What are you trying to say?'
'As a sobering taste of your near future, consider this... depending on my choice of timing, if I walk out on this marriage you will lose everything you possess.' Luca spelt out that reminder with an immovable cool that made what he was saying all the more shocking.
The silence, broken only by the steady tick of the grand¬father clock, hung there between them as breakable as a thin sheet of glass.
'No...no...' Every scrap of remaining colour drained from Darcy's shaken face as she absorbed the full weight of that threat. 'You can't do that to me!'
'I think you'll find that I can do anything I want...' Strolling closer with fluid ease, Luca stretched out a seem¬ingly idle hand and closed it over her clenched fingers. Slowly, relentlessly employing the pressure of his infinitely greater strength, he pulled her towards him.
'Stop it...let go of me!' Darcy cried, totally unprepared for this even more daunting development, heartbeat thun¬dering in panic, breath snarling up in her convulsing throat.
'That is no way to talk to a new husband,' Luca censured indolently as he skimmed a confident hand down to the shallow indentation at the base of her spine and held her there, mere inches from him. He studied her with satisfac¬tion.
'And particularly not one with such high expectations of your future behaviour. All that cutesy tossing of coins and sleeping on the floor like a naive little virgin...it's wasted on a male who has perfect recall of being pushed down on a bed and having his shirt ripped off within hours of meeting you!'
As that rich, dark-timbred voice flailed down her taut spine like a silken whip, Darcy's eyes grew huge and raw with stricken recollection of her own abandon that night in Venice. She trembled, her pallor now laced with hot rib¬bons of pink.
'You were wild,' Luca savoured huskily. 'It may be the most expensive one-night stand I ever had, but the sex was unforgettable.'
Expensive? But she still couldn't concentrate. She gazed up at him, as trapped as a butterfly speared by a cruel pin. Only in her case the pin was the stabbing thrust of intense humiliation piercing her to the heart. Raising one lean brown hand, he rubbed a blunt forefinger over the tremu¬lous line of her full lower lip and she shivered, spooked by the blaze of those brilliant dark golden eyes so close, the shocking effect of that insolent caress on her tender mouth. With stunned disconcertion she felt a spark of heat flame into a smouldering tight little knot that scorched the pit of her tense stomach.
'You burned me alive,' Luca whispered mesmerically. 'And you're going to do that for me again...and again...and again until I don't want you any more...is that understood?'
No, nothing was understood. Too much had happened too fast, and at absolutely the wrong psychological mo¬ment. Darcy had stood at that altar, firmly and exultantly believing that she was in the very act of solving her every problem. Everything had fallen apart when she was least equipped to deal with it. Now she was simply reeling from moment to moment in the suffocating grip of deep, paralysing shock.
'Who are you...why are you doing this to me?' she de¬manded all over again, her incomprehension unconcealed as he released her.