But she could not. She could do nothing. Nothing at all. Could only feel her lips part, helpless, hopeless as, with a rasp deep in his throat, he lowered his mouth to hers, grazing it, taking his fill.
‘I want one last time,’ he said, his voice still a husk, his eyes still burning with that black fire. ‘One last time, Carla. One last time to show you why you should not have agreed to marry another man. Any other man—’
He grazed her mouth with his again, his hand slipping the silk from her shoulder, exposing a single breast.
‘So tell me to go, Carla...or tell me to stay...or tell me nothing at all.’ His hand moved, to cup the lush curve of her breast, so rich and ripe, to feel its crest peak and bloom within his palm,
And then the time for speaking was done. With a surge of his blood, he opened her mouth beneath his, his hand tightening at her breast, kneading the soft, aroused flesh.
A moan escaped her throat. Helpless. Hopeless.
She could not speak, could not protest. She could do only what every part of her body, her being, wanted...craved her to do.
Her hands snaked around his back, hauling him to her, crushing his hips into the cradle of her body, feeling her body surge, his body answer hers.
And then the black fire took them both...
* * *
Carla moved slowly, as if emerging from paralysis. Consciousness seeped through her. For a moment she lay there, motionless. At her side, his limbs heavy upon her, Cesare slept. His face was in repose, and for a long, timeless moment Carla looked upon it.
Behind her eyes, thoughts ran.
There was a sickness inside her.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, she began to move. He did not stir. Weak with gratitude for that one small mercy, she slid from the bed. Silently, desperately, she found clothes, crept from the bedroom, forced unwilling limbs into them, found her handbag, her keys.
The morning light was dim—dawn barely broken. Her heart was pounding...the sickness was overwhelming her. She stepped forward, as if impelled by a power she could not resist.
At the door of the bedroom she halted. Her eyes, stricken, went to the figure lying in her bed, sprawled across it, the strong planes of his muscled back delineated in the dawn light. Emotion, like a wolf, leapt in her throat to devour her. Her hand was pressed to her mouth, and a sound that might have been a sob was stifled before it could be born.
Then, as if it required all the strength in her body, she turned away.
Left the apartment.
Left the city.
Fled for her very life.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SPANISH SUN was warm on Carla’s bare arms and legs as she sat on the terrace of her mother’s huge, newly purchased villa on this most exclusive stretch of the Costas. It seemed a lifetime ago since she had been in Rome. Yet only a handful of months had passed since she’d fled like a wounded creature.
A haunted expression filled her eyes. Then, deliberately, she picked up the newspaper at her side, turning, as she often did now, to the financial pages.
Her expression tensed. Yes, there was another news item—small, but immediately eye-catching to her—about Viscari Hotels. Something about yet another fraught board meeting, now that Nic Falcone was co-owner of the whole company and helping himself to the pick of Viscari Hotels across the world, dismembering Vito’s inheritance piecemeal.
Guilt, familiar and shaming, fused through Carla. Guilt and remorse.
How could I have done that to him? How could I?
But she knew how—knew, even as the hot Spanish sun beat down on her, how her whole being had writhed in the torment of Cesare’s rejection of her, in the humiliation of knowing that she had only been exactly what her mother had feared she was.
Nothing better than his mistress. To be set aside the moment his aristocratic bride beckoned!
She closed her eyes, fighting the emotion that swept up in her. What good was it to remember? Cesare had treated her by his own rules—and it had been she who had been the fool! A fool to fall in love with him—a fool ever to think she could have her happy ending...that Cesare could return her love for him...
She felt her stomach churn again. And the worst fool of all to have let him into her apartment that last, disastrous, fatal night after Vito’s jilting of her. Fool upon fool!