With a muffled curse he brought his hand up, trapping hers.
Is this what you want?‘ he growled.
Yes.‘ Her voice was a breathless shivering whisper. I want you.‘ Freeing her hands from beneath his, she reached up and took his face between them, speaking with ferocious longing into his eyes. I want you to remember.‘
For a second they gazed mutely at each other, and then with a sort of moan of surrender he was pulling her against him as his mouth came down on hers. The quiet room was filled with the sound of their breathing, the rustle of satin, and Kate‘s whimper of bliss as his hand slid beneath her skirt to meet the bare flesh of her thigh. Arching her back reflexively, she lifted her knees, bringing them up around his waist, opening herself for him.
The bed was soft and wide, and the black and silver world of moonlight and shadow beyond it had ceased to exist. Their fingers tangled together as they both fumbled with the buckle of Cristiano‘s belt. Kate raised her hips, desperate to be free of the tiny silk knickers Lizzie had insisted on buying, wriggling out of them and spreading herself starfish-like, throbbing with anticipation, on the feather quilt.
Every inch of her skin tingled with the need for his touch. She wanted him—all of him—on her and in her, with an urgency that struck her dumb.
But he understood. His hands moved up the insides of her thighs. Big hands.
Clever, strong, capable hands. Expert hands that left a quivering trail of rapture in their wake. His face was inches from hers. Their mouths opened and clashed again in a searing, devouring kiss before he pulled back again, holding her in his dark, hypnotic gaze as he entered her.
Oh, God, the relief. The screaming, delirious relief and joy and rightness turned her boneless and emptied her head of thought. She grasped a fistful of his silken hair as the rhythm of their movements grew more urgent and the old wooden bed creaked with every hard, hungry thrust.
Bliss opened up in front of her like a chasm. She felt Cristiano falter, heard his indrawn breath as his body tensed, and for a shimmering, breathless moment she teetered on the brink as time stopped and tears rained down her cheeks. And then she was falling, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his back as she hurtled downwards into ecstasy.
Her high cry of pleasure echoed through the dark house, then faded into silence. Downstairs a clock ticked steadily, and the mountains stood around like watchful sentinels, impassive witnesses to her fragile joy.
Chapter Five
DAWN came, painting the sky a translucent and delicate shell-pink. Kate watched the last few diamond stars blur and dissolve, and the moon fade until it was little more than a pale fingerprint.
She had slept little and woken when it was still dark, watching as the room that had been no more than a shadowy background to last night‘s bliss gradually assembled itself into wood-panelled walls, a sloping, heavily beamed roof, solid pieces of furniture. Cristiano‘s arm was hooked around her waist, his hand resting between her breasts, his body hard and delicious at her back.
She felt warm, sated, oddly at peace. It was as if her brain, shocked by an overload of pleasure last night, had simply shut down, leaving nothing but the physical sensations of the moment. The past seemed as distant and unreal as a bad dream, and the future beyond this room, this wooden house surrounded by pine trees and snow-covered mountains, was impossible to contemplate.
She stretched her legs out, twisting carefully onto her back so that she could look into Cristiano‘s sleeping face. He stirred slightly, moving his arm and letting it come to rest again with his palm against her midriff, but his dark lashes barely flickered.
She felt her heart crack open.
Against the white pillow, beside her pale English skin, his was exotically dark, but aside from that, and the shadow of stubble on his jaw, every line of his face reminded her with exquisite poignancy of Alexander. She let her gaze wander over his fine dark brows and perfectly straight nose, downwards to the steep curve of his upper lip, the slight indentation in the lower one, the firm, square chin.
God, he was so beautiful. But, more than that, he was the man who had helped create the little boy she loved so much. The father of her child.
Gently she eased herself out of his arms and slid out of the bed. Taking great care not to wake him, she reached for the shirt he had worn last night and slipped her arms into it, then picked up her velvet evening bag from a red-upholstered armchair and opened it up to get out her phone.
Beside it was the letter. The letter with its bald lines stating the facts of Alexander‘s existence, the address of the sterile solicitor‘s office where any further contact should be directed. She felt a small pulse of pain and quickly snapped the clasp shut again. Dropping the bag back onto the chair, she tiptoed out of the room.
None of the curtains had been closed, so the clear pink light flooded in, making it easy for her to find her way downstairs. It was like a treehouse, Kate thought in wonder as she made her way silently through the smoke-scented living room and into the kitchen. Everything—from the panelled walls and beamed ceilings to the rug-strewn floor and hand-made kitchen cupboards—was made of polished, mellow wood. As she filled the kettle at the huge porcelain sink she felt like Goldilocks, making herself at home in the house of the Three Bears.
Champagne bottles clinked in the door of the fridge as she opened it to look for milk, and she saw that the shelves were stocked with eggs, slender packets of smoked salmon, and paper-wrapped parcels of butter and cheese.
Francine Fournier was a life-saver in more ways than one, she thought wryly.
A Scandinavian long-case clock ticked softly at one end of the low room, and, glancing at it, Kate picked up her phone. It was still very early, and an hour earlier in England, but as both Alexander and Ruby were horribly early risers it was highly likely that Lizzie and Dominic would have been up for a while. Waiting for one of them to answer, Kate looked out of the window at the silent mountains, as pink as marshmal-low in the rising sun, and pictured their familiar big, untidy kitchen. She felt as if she was on another planet, rather than merely in another country.
Hello?‘ The voice on the other end of the line sounded distracted.
Lizzie—it‘s me.‘ In the silent house Kate kept her voice low. Did I wake you?‘
Kate, honey! Of course you didn‘t wake me—we‘re on our second game of Snakes and Ladders here. I just didn‘t expect you to be up this early. You‘re supposed to be either lazing around in bed and making the most of valuable child-free time to sleep, or having wild sex with the gorgeous Signor Maresca.‘
Well…‘ Kate found she was smiling as her insides constricted sharply at the memory of last night.
There was an ear-splitting squeal at the other end of the line. Kate, you didn‘t! Oh. My. God. He recognised you?‘
Kate felt her smile fade again. Not exactly. It‘s a long story. But I‘m with him…‘
He‘s there now?‘ Lizzie dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper. Have you told him about Alexander?‘
No. And no.‘ The kettle had finished boiling and, wedging the phone against her ear, Kate spooned coffee into a glass cafetière and poured on water.
It‘s not that simple.‘
That was an understatement. She didn‘t know where to begin to explain about Cristiano not being able to remember her, but suddenly she realised that that wasn‘t actually the most important thing. She frowned. He‘s not how I remembered him, Lizzie. It‘s not…the same.‘ She paused, a shiver running through her as she remembered the hardness of his face when he‘d looked at her in the Casino, the chips of ice in his eyes. Outside the window the sun had just begun to appear over the top of the mountains, pouring down biblical beams of gold. Kate closed her eyes, feeling its tentative warmth on her cheek.
Well, that‘s not surprising.‘ Lizzie‘s voice, with its familiar, down-to-earth Yorkshire vowels, was reassuringly brisk. Four years is a long time, and a lot has happened to you both. But the main thing is that you‘re with him, and the old chemistry is obviously still there. You just have to come out with it.‘
It‘s not the kind of thing you can just casually drop into conversation.‘
In her head it had been clear-cut, black and white: either he would reject her completely or—and she had hardly allowed herself to go down this route—they would have the kind of emotional reunion people did in films, just before the credits rolled, accompanied by a lot of swelling music and preferably a sunset. Not for a moment had she considered finding herself in this position. Being with him, back in his bed…but a million miles from the place they had been last time. The place he didn‘t even know existed now, to which she somehow had to try to find her way back.
I don‘t want him to feel like I‘ve trapped him,‘ she said softly. I don‘t want to force him into anything.‘
You‘re hardly forcing him—or rushing him, for that matter.‘