‘What the hell are you playing at, Carla?’ He hadn’t minced his words. ‘You’ve always stone-walled your mother in her insane obsession about us marrying—just as I have! And as for Guido’s shares... I’ve told you that I’m more than willing to pay a generous price for them—’
Carla’s voice had cut in tautly. ‘Well, the price is marriage to me, Vito.’
He’d shot right back at her, his voice icy. ‘Carla, I will not engage in your mother’s demeaning and quite frankly distasteful fantasy about the two of us marrying.’
Two spots of colour had flared in his step-cousin’s cheeks. ‘So you think it demeaning and distasteful to marry me?’
There had been an edge in her voice that had made Vito pause.
‘That isn’t what I said,’ he’d retorted.
He’d taken a breath—a heavy one—staring hard at her, his eyes narrowing.
‘Carla, what’s going on here? The last I heard you were running around with Cesare di Mondave—the two of you were all over each other!’
His eyes had rested on his step-cousin, taken in the sudden paling of her face, the flash of burning emotion in her violet eyes.
Slowly, words had fallen from him as realisation had dawned. ‘So that’s it—he’s finished with you, hasn’t he?’
The two spots of colour in her cheeks had flared again. ‘You are not the only one, Vito, who considers it “demeaning and distasteful” to marry me,’ she said tightly.
Immediately his expression had changed. ‘Oh, Carla, I’m sorry.’ His voice had been sympathetic—genuinely so. ‘Sorry because...well, to speak frankly, it was always going to end that way. The Conte di Mantegna can trace his bloodline back to the ancient Romans! He’s going to marry a woman who can do the same! He might have affairs beforehand, but he’ll never marry a woman who—’
Carla’s voice had sliced across his. ‘A woman, Vito, who is about to announce her engagement to another man!’
There had been viciousness in her tone—clear and knifing.
‘And marrying me is the only way you’re going to get those shares back!’
She’d stormed off, leaving him to feel the pitiless jaws of Marlene’s steel trap biting around his guts. Jaws he still felt now as he stood looking down at Eloise.
Eloise! She could blot out for him the trap that had been sprung.
He lowered himself down upon the bed, sweeping her up into his arms. Her soft, slender body was like swansdown in his embrace, her hair like silk, her skin as soft as velvet. He crushed her to him and she murmured to him. Words that were like balm to his stormy soul.
This was where he wanted to be! Here, with Eloise.
He hugged her again, and as he did so he could feel her breasts peaking against the fine lawn of his dress shirt, feel their crests grazing him...arousing him. His mouth nuzzled into the silken hair, seeking the satin skin beneath, and he glided his lips over her throat, her jaw, soon reaching their goal—the soft, parting lips that sought him, too, clinging to him.
He heard her give the soft little moan that he knew so well was a presage of her growing response to him.
He gloried in it...revelled in it. He deepened the kiss, his hands going to his shirt buttons to free him from all this unnecessary clothing. Free him from the jaws of the trap that had been sprung on him. Free him to find what he sought most.
Eloise in his arms and he in hers, her body welcoming his, her mouth clinging to his, her breasts swelling against him, her thighs parting for him, taking him into her, taking him to the only place he wanted to be—the place only she could take him.
The rest of the world melted away like honey on a heated spoon—melted and flowed and became only and entirely what he was feeling now, what he was doing now. Because there was nothing else. Nothing else mattered and nothing else existed—only this, only now...
Only Eloise.
And when the fire had consumed him, consumed them both, and after a long, long burning died away, leaving only the warm, sweet glow that was their tangled limbs, their clinging bodies, only then did the words form in his head.
I’m not losing this!
* * *
‘Is everything all right?’
Eloise’s voice was rich with concern. She’d asked Vito that question last night but he hadn’t answered, only swept her away to the sensual paradise he always took her to, blotting everything out except the bliss of his possession. Blotting out the unease and disquiet that had nipped at her when he’d come into their bedroom, gazing almost sightlessly down at her with his tense stance, his closed face...shutting her out.