Ciro peeled her dress down, uncovering her breasts. Lara shivered with a mixture of arousal and illicit excitement, aware of the people outside the car on the pavement, where they were stopped at some lights. Only the blacked-out windows and some steel and glass separated her from them and their eyes.
Ciro looked at her and cupped her naked breasts, thumbs moving back and forth over her nipples. ‘So beautiful,’ he breathed.
‘Ciro...’ Lara was almost panting. She stopped talking, afraid of exposing herself even more.
His dark head bent towards her, and when his mouth closed around one tight tingling nipple the spiking pleasure was so intense she speared her hands in his hair. She quickly got lost in the maelstrom Ciro had unleashed in her body, knowing that she was showing her weakness but unable to do anything about it...
* * *
Ciro looked at himself in the mirror of his bathroom and took in his glittering eyes and the still hectic colour on his cheekbones. When they’d returned to the townhouse a short while before Lara had all but fled up the stairs, holding up the t
op of her dress with one hand, her hair in a tangle.
Ciro had let her go, even though he’d wanted to carry her straight to his bedroom and to his bed. The only thing that had stopped him was the awful suspicion that he’d just exposed himself spectacularly.
Just an hour before he’d been talking with one of Europe’s heads of state, and within minutes of getting into a car with Lara he’d been all over her like a hormone-fuelled teenager.
He splashed cold water on his face, as if that might dilute the heat raging in his body. After a moment he went into his bedroom, restless and edgy. He looked at the interconnecting door between his and Lara’s rooms for a long moment before going over and opening it quietly.
She was in bed. Curled up on one side in a curiously childlike pose, her hair spread out on the pillow. Her breaths were deep and even.
Something about the fact that she could find the equilibrium of sleep so easily made him feel even more exposed.
He went back into his bedroom and closed the door. And then he did the only thing he could do to try and dilute the sexual frustration in his body. He headed for the gym.
* * *
As soon as Lara was sure that Ciro had left her room she turned on her back and sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. She looked up at the ceiling.
She was in her underwear under the covers. She’d heard Ciro moving about next door, and after coming so spectacularly undone in the back of his car had felt far too raw to be able to deal with seeing him again. So she’d dived under the covers and feigned sleep even as her body had mocked her, aching for Ciro’s touch. For him to finish what he’d started.
This evening had been a salutary lesson in the reality of how this marriage would work. Ciro had used her with a ruthless and clinical precision to seek out meetings with the various people he was interested in talking to. She had to remember that was the focal point of the marriage—her desire to make amends to Ciro for what her uncle had done to him.
What she had done to him.
And the other stuff? The physical chemistry? The aching desire he’d awoken in her body?
A man of his extensive experience would surely lose interest soon. Wouldn’t he? And when he did she’d have to live with that. She’d lived with far worse, so she would cope. She’d have to.
* * *
The following days brought a reprieve of sorts for Lara. Ciro was out at meetings all day, and each evening he had a business dinner to attend, where she wasn’t required.
Like a coward, she’d taken the opportunity to make sure she was in bed by the time Ciro came home, pretending to be asleep if he came into her room.
She’d got used to her surroundings—just a stone’s throw from the old apartment she’d shared with Henry Winterborne—but she deliberately made sure to avoid that street if she was out of the house, and she knew the security men must think she was mad, taking such a long way round to go to the shops.
Ciro had issued her with a credit card, and Lara had swallowed her pride and taken it. After two years of feeling trapped, due to her lack of personal finances, she was embarrassed at being beholden to someone else. More than ever she wanted to make her own money. Be independent.
And yet there was something about Ciro handing her some economic freedom that made her feel emotional. A man who had a lot less reason to trust her than her previous husband was trusting her with this.
She’d also got to know the staff who worked in the house: the housekeeper was called Dominique, and there was a groundsman/handyman called Nigel. Dominique hired in staff as and when it was required for entertaining or cleaning, she’d told Lara. But as yet Ciro hadn’t actually ever entertained in the house.
Fleetingly Lara wondered again at the coincidence that had Ciro’s new house right around the corner from where she’d been living.
One evening it was Dominique’s night off—she lived close by, so didn’t stay over at the townhouse—and Lara went into the kitchen, feeling restless.
She’d always loved to cook, so when Henry Winterborne had maliciously turned her from wife into housekeeper she’d welcomed it, far preferring to be in the kitchen than to share space in his presence.