Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

He sipped too. She watched with unblinking absorption as he lifted the glass away from her lips to place it against his own. His throat moved as he swallowed, shifting the butterfly collar to his shirt. He held the glass between long brown fingers while her own pale fingers still clutched at her arms, her nails scoring crescents into the icy bare skin.

‘H-how much did you overhear?’ she whispered unsteadily.

For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer, his mouth compressing. Then, ‘Most if it,’ he admitted, and rose to his full height.

She looked away from him—at the logs piled in the grate—on a sinking sense of dismay that robbed a bit more of her ravaged pride. This tall, dark, sophisticated man of Rome had stood there in the background witnessing the brutal murder of everything she cared about.

She felt stripped bare again and flayed this time.

‘Why were you out there?’ No one else had been out there—or at least she hoped no one else had been there!

The laughter came again, echoing around the marble hallway and sounding cruelly mocking to her oversensitised ears. It was then that a sudden thought hit that was so horrible it feathered her breathing. How many of those people out there knew the real motives behind Angelo’s engagement to her? Did they all know? Did all her friends know about Sonya’s affair with Angelo?

Had Carlo Carlucci known it all even before he stepped outside tonight? Her breath feathered again as she shifted her gaze back to his tense profile.

‘You weren’t there by accident, were you?’ she charged shakily. ‘You suspected that something was going to happen so you followed me outside then s-stood there like some—s-sleazy voyeur—’

His dark head turned to lance her an amused look. ‘You see me as sleazy?’

No, she didn’t, but… ‘Don’t laugh at me!’ she bit out painfully. ‘None of this is funny!’

‘You’re right.’ The laughter died. ‘It isn’t.’

The threat of tears came then. She dragged in a deep breath, fighting to stop them, fighting to keep her mind fixed on what had started her travelling along this thread. ‘H-how much of it did you know before you followed me?’

Without answering her he turned abruptly and walked away, disappearing back into the shadows at the other end of the room as if the darkness could save him from having to offer a reply.

But she needed to know. ‘How much?’ she launched shrilly after him.

‘All of it.’

The answer hit her like a blow. Her breasts heaved behind her crossed arms, and for a moment she felt dizzy again. Then she pulled herself together and asked the next wretched question burning a hole inside her head. ‘And—everyone else out there?’

She heard the fresh chink of glass on glass before the words came, felt the angry tension in him as he poured another drink. ‘Your true identity became an open secret within days of you meeting Angelo,’ he told her. ‘The fact that you were not announcing that you are the heiress to the huge Gianni fortune only helped to fuel the fires of intrigue and speculation as to why you wanted to play the ordinary working girl and keep your identity such a closed secret.’

‘I’m not the Gianni heiress,’ she denied. ‘There is no fortune to be had.’

He laughed like a cynic. ‘You are worth so much money, Francesca, cara, that the figure can make Rome’s wealthiest blanch.’

Which was all so much rubbish her brows snapped together. ‘Stupid rumour and speculation,’ she dismissed. ‘Bruno Gianni lives in a ruin. He has no money to leave to anyone, never mind a great-niece he won’t even see!’

‘Well, you’re right about Bruno’s money,’ Carlo drawled as he strode back into view. ‘But we’re not talking about Bruno Gianni’s money. We are talking about Rinaldo Gianni’s money. Your grandfather,’ he extended as if she needed that clarified, and bent to prise a set of cold fingers away from her arm so he could slot a fresh glass of brandy between them. ‘The fortune is his,’ he continued. ‘Rinaldo left everything to you. Bruno only lives in the palazzo at your behest because it, like everything else, belongs to you—or it will do when you marry,’ he then amended, ‘a man from a good Italian family, I think is near as damn it to the official working of his will. The lot to be held in a trust to be solely administered by his surviving brother until you comply. Angelo thought he’d hit gold when he seduced you into falling in love with him,’ he added. ‘He’s the real hero of the party tonight, cara. The man who pulled off the perfect coup.’

She was beginning to think she was dreaming all of this. ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘I know.’ He used that laugh again. ‘And that is the real irony of it.’

He went to lean a shoulder against the mantel, pushed his hands into his trouser pockets then studied her ashen face as he continued.

‘While everyone else thinks you’re being intriguingly clever and infuriatingly devious, you are merely oblivious to it all. It took me weeks to suss you out,’ he confessed as if that was some kind of shock in itself. ‘You are not pretending to be the wide-eyed and beautiful, naïve innocent—you are her. And Bruno Gianni has a lot to answer for—which he will do when I get my hands round his wicked old throat.’

‘You won’t go near my uncle Bruno,’ she muttered dimly, feeling swamped by words that didn’t make any sense.

‘What—protecting the hand that robs you, Francesca?’ he mocked. ‘What were you—ten years old when your grandfather died? For the last fourteen years he’s been sitting on your inheritance and probably praying that you never show your face in Rome.’

‘Stop it,’ she jerked out. ‘There’s just been a dreadful misunderstanding, that’s all!’ she cried. ‘Angelo knows the truth. He knows I’m—’

His hiss of impatience snapped her lips shut. ‘Get real, Francesca,’ he derided. ‘You heard what that mercenary bastard said out there! To start trying to defend him is bloody pathetic! He wants your money,’ he lanced down at her. ‘He needs your money! Get that into your lovesick head and deal with it!’

He was angry—why was he angry? That was her prerogative! She was the one being used and abused and talked about as if she was some kind of juicy commodity!

‘There is no money!’ She launched herself to her feet to spit the denial at him. ‘And what makes you any better than Angelo when you actually believe all that stuff you just threw at me?’

There was a glinting flash behind narrowed eyelids, a glimpse of angry white teeth. A hand snaked out and she released a choked cry as he clamped his fingers round her wrist.

‘Don’t compare me with Batiste—ever,’ he bit out from between those white teeth.

‘I w-wasn’t…’ The confused words disintegrated when she began trembling all over again, shocked by the sudden eruption of violence in him. His dark face had changed out of all recognition, the clenched bones, the narrowed eyes glinting with a danger she could actually taste. Her heart was pounding, her wrist hurting where he held it in a vice-like grip.

He hated Angelo, she realised—despised him with a ferocity that had turned him primitive.

She tugged at her wrist. He held it fast. The next thing she was drawing in a sharp breath when the other hand came up. She thought he was going to slap her. Her eyes widened as the cold sweat of fear broke out on her skin. ‘No…’ she husked.

And was dragged even deeper into the mud of confusion when he began carefully easing the brandy glass she had forgotten she was holding out of her clenched fingers and she realised with new horror that it was aimed to empty its contents into his face.

Not just his violence but her violence. Her head began to swim. She wasn’t a violent person, so how had she reached the point of wanting to throw brandy into someone’s face?

The glass was removed. The wrist released. She took it in her other hand and began absently rubbing it while her insides were so shaken up she had the hysterical impression she was going to fall into little pieces any minute.

‘There is no money,’ she repeated, trying desperately to cling to this one safe thread.

The hard angles in his face didn’t soften, the eyes still glittered in the chiselled set of his face. And his voice when it came was like cold steel slicing through silk. ‘Whether there is or there isn’t money, is not actually the important issue—not when you manage to remember what your friend and Batiste were doing out there, that is…’

And just like that she was devastated, the steel-like thrust of his point cutting right to the core of everything because she had been concentrating on the money thing instead of what really mattered here.

She’d been used and betrayed by two people she loved most. Duped like a fool because she’d been too blinded by trust to see what was happening beneath her nose.

It all came crashing down again, coiling like a tight band around her aching chest, and fresh tears began to build in her throat.

The rows, the passion it required to generate so much hostility. Sonya’s guilty looks, the lies that had tripped so defiantly from her tongue. Money had nothing to do with Sonya’s part in her betrayal. She’d just wanted Angelo with a fever that had raged out of control. So she’d had him, because the wanting had been more powerful than her loyalty to a close friend!

And the money had nothing to do with the sexual part of Angelo’s betrayal because he must have known he was putting everything at risk when he gave in to his desire for Sonya. For who else was more likely to confess all in a fit of conscience than the closest friend to his future wife?

His future wife. The one he would take to bed only when he had to.

Oh, dear God… ‘I’ve got to get away from here,’ she whispered on a sudden burst of panic and reeled away to take a couple of shaky steps towards the terrace doors.

Everything happened so fast then that she was thrown into shock. There was a muttered curse followed by two hands arriving at her waist and she was being lifted bodily off the floor, turned and dumped unceremoniously back to the floor then clamped to a hard male chest.

‘What are you—?’

‘Shut up,’ he ground out furiously. ‘Someone is coming.’

And she froze like a statue as she heard the sound of Angelo’s voice calling her name from the terrace just outside their door. The door handle rattled. Her heart withered in her chest and her fingers went up to clutch at the lapels to Carlo Carlucci’s dinner jacket.

‘I don’t want to see him,’ she choked. And she didn’t. She never wanted to set eyes on Angelo again!

‘I locked the door,’ his grim voice reminded her.

‘He will see us through the glass.’ She moved even closer to his superior framework as if trying to blend right into him.

His arms accommodated her, a hand gently curving round her slender nape, the other splaying across the low part of her back. ‘He can’t see you,’ he murmured in husky reassurance. ‘It’s dark in here. I am wearing black and my back is to the window. If he sees anything it will be the dark outline of one of his male guests enjoying a snatched moment in his father’s study with one of his female guests.’

‘M-me,’ she pointed out.

There was a short silence. Then he said cynically, ‘Did you tell him about our two meetings, cara? How very loyal of you.’

The cold taunt brought her eyes up to clash with his. The guilty flush that mounted her cheeks said all she needed to say.

‘Well—well,’ he murmured. ‘It seems to me that your whole life is built on dangerous secrets, mi amore.’

‘I don’t have any secrets,’ she snapped. ‘And there was nothing dangerous about our two brief meetings!’ she added, frowning at the sudden quickening she felt in her pulse.

‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘We connected sexually. I don’t know how you kept your hands off me.’

‘How did you ever get to be so arrogant?’ she gasped, staring at him.

‘It took practice,’ he replied, and the weird thing about this conversation was that it was so deadly serious without a hint of mockery to be heard! In fact she could see that frightening anger simmering in his eyes. ‘You want to be thankful that I am attracted to you or you would be languishing somewhere in the Batiste garden, slowly dying from a broken heart by now.’

It was like being kicked when she was already lying in a battered heap on the ground. On a stifled choke she went to step away from him. Once again he showed his superior strength to keep her still.

‘I hate you,’ she choked.

He didn’t bother to answer. She could feel the strength in his fingers where they pressed into her lower back and the very disturbing presence of his thumbs slowly circling against her stomach wall. Tiny senses began to stir in places she didn’t want them to, low in her abdomen and in the tips of her breasts. It was mad; the whole crazy evening was turning her quietly insane. She hardly knew him, she certainly didn’t like him yet here she was, standing in his arms, letting him tell her that she fancied going to bed with him!

The door handle rattled again. ‘Who is in there?’ Angelo’s glass-muffled voice questioned impatiently.

‘Persistent devil,’ Carlo said. ‘Perhaps we should give him a taste of his own medicine.’

Alarm stiffened her backbone. ‘No!’ was all she could get out before he lowered his dark head.

It was the sheer, heart-stopping shock of it that held her immobile, the unfamiliar touch of his mouth against hers. He was taller than Angelo, darker than Angelo, harder and stronger and more forceful than Angelo had ever been with her. Her startled lips were ruthlessly parted, and his tongue darted through the gap. A tight rush of sensation shot from her mouth to her breasts to low in her abdomen then poured like quicksilver down her legs.

She had never experienced anything like it. A shocked, disorientated whimper clawed at her throat as she was suddenly flung into alien territory, the heat, the intrusion, the flagrant intimacy of that invading tongue exploring the inner tissue of her mouth trapping her inside butterfly tremors of bemused response.

He pulled his head back, glinting her a dark-eyed puzzled frown, saw her wide-eyed startlement, the revealingly shocked tremor of her lips. ‘Did Angelo sexually starve you into submission?’ he uttered with an oddly strained laugh.

She just continued to stare at him, too befuddled to take in the question, and his eyes took on a hard light. He hissed something unrepeatable about Angelo then lowered his head again to return to where he’d left off. Only this time with more heat, more sensual purpose, and his hands joined in, lifting and crushing her into closer contact with his body and holding her there while he ravaged her mouth. She felt the burgeoning power of his passion pressing against her then her own body responded as that place between her thighs began to pulse then grow damp. Sensation was slithering everywhere, in her bloodstream, coiling round muscles to make them writhe into greater contact.

It was shocking, so basic and—and physical! Her crushed breasts swelling and stinging painfully as her nipples grew tight.

The door handle rattled. She jerked her head back against his restraining hand and their lips parted with a disconcerting pop. Electric wires had been attached to every extremity. She was breathless yet panting. Her tongue and lips felt swollen and hot. He was staring down at her with glinting black fixed eyes and a perfect stillness, his expression peculiarly…

She didn’t know what his face was telling her. She only knew she’d just been somewhere very perilous and that she did not like it—but she did.

Sex, she called it. Lust said it better. She’d been kissed with hot and driving passion for the first time in her life by a man who was very good at it.

Heat hit her pale cheeks. She dragged her eyes away from him and became aware of the way the flat of her hands braced painfully against the solid wall of chest. Everything about him was solid, his shoulders, his arms, the bowl of his hips where she could feel the solid column of his—

‘Let me go,’ she demanded hazily.

He did the opposite, pressing her closer then lowering his head again to flick his tongue across her burning lips. She almost detonated on a ball of hot static. A helpless cry keened in her throat.

Footsteps sounded as Angelo moved away from the window, bringing Carlo alive with a jolt. His eyes lost that frightening expression, his brows pushing together on a frown. His grip on her tightened and Francesca found herself being lifted again, swung around then unceremoniously dumped in the chair she had used before.

The wretched brandy glass was slotted back between her fingers. ‘Drink it this time,’ she was tersely instructed as he turned away.

‘I’m dizzy enough,’ she thought and didn’t realise she’d said it out loud until his grim response came back.

‘Think how you’re going to feel in about five minutes. Because that is how long it will take Angelo to walk through the other door.’

Feeling as if she’d been tossed from a storm into a maelstrom, she stared at the solid wooden door which lead out to the main hallway as if it were some brooding dark monster. ‘You locked it,’ she breathed shakily.

He was already striding over there. To her utter consternation he turned the key to unlock the door.

‘What did you do that for?’ she cried out in protest.

Ignoring her, he reached up to flick the light switch next. It was like being bombarded with hot shards of glass. She screwed her eyes shut on a shrill little whimper of agony then dragged them open again almost immediately because she needed to know what he was going to do next. He was already halfway back across the room and bending down to pick something up off the floor. She’d never seen such a change in anyone. His energy levels had shot from virtually somnolent to the other extreme.

The black dinner suit barely rippled as he straightened up again, the butterfly collar to his white dress shirt still looked as crisp as it probably had when he’d first put it on. His skin wore a warm olive sheen and his satiny black hair had the merest hint of a wave that she hadn’t noticed before. His head was bent slightly, eyes hooded, those thick lashes hovering a breath away from his chiselled cheekbones. He was breathtakingly attractive and his mouth wore the bloom of their recent kiss.

Fire pooled between her thighs again and she wrenched her eyes away from him. Everything about him was suddenly so physical, so—sexual!

Oh, dear, she groaned inwardly. What’s happening to me?

Lifting up the glass, she took a large gulp at the brandy. Why not get drunk? she decided wildly. It had to be a better option to feeling like this.

He arrived in front of her, making her jump nervously when he bent to use one hand to take the glass from her so he could take his turn with the drink, while the other hand pulled her to her feet. She felt like a puppet—this man’s puppet! He kept pulling and pushing her, picking her up, putting her down and kissing her.

Oh, dear, she thought again as her insides went haywire. ‘No,’ she husked in muffled protest.

‘No what?’ he asked, discarding the glass.

But she’d already forgotten what when he proceeded to hook long fingers beneath the lip of her bodice as if he had every right to touch her like this!

‘What are you doing?’ she choked out in protest as she felt the smooth backs of his nails stroke her flesh.

His answer was a demonstration. Coolly and very proficiently he gave a tug that resettled the dark fabric across the thrust of her breasts. Glancing down, she gave a gasp of horror when she realised how close she must have been to revealing too much flesh.

Like Sonya.

Like Sonya… Her eyes closed on the next dizzying wave to hit her as reality came crashing back.

He moved his attention elsewhere then, throwing her into a deeper state of confusion when he proceeded to tidy her tumbled hair. She hadn’t even realised the knot had come undone.

‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got much time for this so you are going to have to make some quick decisions as to what happens next,’ he said quietly, deciding to organise her wrecked life for her now, she noted dully.

‘Lock the door again.’ That was a decision.

She watched as his mouth compressed. ‘The way I see it, you have several choices. You can turn a blind eye to what you saw and continue with tonight as if nothing has happened…’ She winced at the word blind. ‘Or you can brave it out and go out there of your own volition to announce that you’re calling off the engagement and why you are.’

Either way she looked the fool. ‘Great choices,’ she muttered.

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he chided. ‘If you really feel you can’t bear to face him then we can leave through the French windows right now, before he gets here, climb into my car and just disappear.’

She glared at his chest and grimly added coward to fool and shrew.

He was using her hair comb to tame the thick silken swathe into some semblance of tidiness, surprising her with the efficiency he used to secure her hair in yet another neat twist. And her scalp was beginning to tingle—with pleasure. She couldn’t bear it. It was all just too much.

‘Please stop it, Carlo,’ she breathed out anxiously.

‘You do know my name, then,’ he said lightly and she lifted her eyelids to show him dark pools of agony.

‘Please lock the door again,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m not ready to cope with him!’

His fingers dropped to cup her shoulders, his eyes suddenly sober and dark. ‘It is midnight, Francesca,’ he informed her very gently.

Midnight. The witching hour. The time her engagement to Angelo was to be formally announced. Her gaze flicked the room as if a hundred glossy people were already standing here watching and waiting to bear witness as Angelo claimed his mighty prize.

She shuddered in dismay as the full weight of his betrayal returned like a flood. The hands on her shoulders moved in reflex response. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said brusquely. ‘He doesn’t deserve your tears.’

She knew that, but it didn’t stop what was beginning to break up inside. ‘What am I going to do?’ she whispered tragically.

His hands moved again, coming to frame her face so he could tilt it up to receive his next warm kiss. When she responded with a small sob he caught the sound with the lick of his tongue. Each stifled sob after it was gently robbed from her; in between he placed words, low, dark, seductive words that made her want to cling.

‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘I will deal with it. Trust me to get you through this.’

‘But why should you want to?’ she asked, realising it was a question she should have asked a whole lot sooner than this. ‘Why should it interest you at all?’

His answering smile was the cynical one. ‘Come on, Francesca, the answer to that one must be perfectly clear,’ he mocked as he moved one of his long thumbs to send it on a sweep of her now pulsing not quivering mouth. ‘I want you for myself,’ he told her grimly. ‘Therefore I will do what it takes to get you.’

Then he was lowering his mouth again to show how much he wanted her with yet another full-blooded mind-blowing kiss.

Everything he did now was laced with intimacy. Every touch, every look, every small gesture was staking claim. And the worst of it was that she let him. She felt so vulnerable and weak and drawn to his passion that she had a terrible suspicion he could spread her out on the desk across the room and have his way with her and she wouldn’t try to stop him.

It was a dreadful admission. It shocked and appalled her but didn’t make her pull away from him. Where was her pride, her dignity?

Not where her mouth was anyway. It clung and encouraged, like her fingers where they lifted and clung to his nape, smoothing, stroking, and her hips as they arched into the masculine bowl of his. And the whole hot, sensuous embrace was so slow and deep and intoxicatingly rousing, she moved with it, soaked in it, and didn’t even hear the door flying open until a stunned voice rasped, ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’