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He caught a glimpse of his neck and shoulder in the mirror, shocked at first at the marks of her teeth standing out bright and red. He smiled as he fingered them, the skin tender where she had left her brand. He remembered her biting him, but nowhere near this many times. Foremost in his mind had been the ecstasy. She was a tigress all right. Wild and untamed, and as unexpected as her surprise arrival tonight.
But then not entirely a surprise. Clearly he’d hit on the one thing that she held dear.
She’d surprised him with her vehemence. She’d been so prepared to walk away from her mother—to let her face the consequences of her overspending and be thrown out onto the streets if it came to that. He’d misjudged the relationship between mother and daughter badly. But then he’d only really had Lily’s side of it to go by and in Lily’s world, it was all about Lily.
But suggesting Lily ask her first husband to help, that had been a stroke of genius. Finally he’d found the one person Valentina did care about—the one she would do anything to rescue—even if it meant sacrificing herself to his bed.
Everyone had their price, it was said. He had just found Valentina’s.
He padded back from the bathroom to find her curled kitten-like into a ball in the centre of his bed, her breathing even and deep and fast, fast asleep.
So much for round two.
Bemused, he climbed in alongside. She stirred and murmured something in her sleep and he wasn’t planning on holding her but she curled herself against him and settled back into her dreams on a sigh.
It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He wasn’t used to holding anyone when he slept. He wasn’t used to anyone sleeping on him. Certainly not a woman he wasn’t done with yet. He willed away an erection that was more wishful thinking than opportunity and tried to relax. She was warm and languid and, for all her muscled leanness, she was soft too, and in all the right places.
Relax? Fat chance.
But at least he could think about what might happen when she woke up.
One month she’d agreed to stay.
It had seemed more than ample when she’d suggested it. He’d only ever planned to keep her long enough that she thought she was safe, that maybe he might provide the answer to all her needs. Long enough to feel secure and so comfortable in her position as Venice’s first lady that she wouldn’t see it coming. Her public humiliation.
And then he remembered what had happened in his study and how she had turned the tables on him and milked him for all he was worth. And the thought of thirty nights of Valentina hating him and proving it every night in his bed—or on his desk for that matter—seemed nowhere near long enough.
* * *
She came to gently, slowly, with the strange feeling she was still moving, and for some vague period of half-sleep, she believed herself back on the plane.
Until logic interceded and she realised that last-minute bargain economy seats on passenger planes did not come complete with sublime mattresses and pillows big enough to land that plane on.
Venice.
She sat up in bed, realising she was hearing the chug of a passing vaporetto rather than the constant hum of jet engines, and she remembered the argument with her mother, and an explosive session on Luca’s desk. And then—nothing.
She dropped her head into her hands.
What had she done?
She lifted the covers. Of course she would be naked. And of course it had been no dream. She’d performed some kind of amateur striptease in front of him. She’d offered herself as a conscientious objector instead of him taking her as an unwilling sacrifice. And she remembered a desk and the feel of him inside her.
How could she ever forget the feel of him inside her, the sense of fullness and completion and the exquisite side effects of friction?
In three years she hadn’t forgotten and nothing, it seemed, had changed. Her memories were true.
But she couldn’t for the life of her remember a bed. Luca’s bed, she recognised, not only by his lingering scent and the presence of a jet-black hair on the pillow, but the sheer masculinity of the room, as if he’d stamped his personality on it by the sheer force of it. She’d slept in his bed and he’d slept alongside her and, surprisingly, that act seemed even more intimate than the one they’d shared on the desk.
But where was he now?
A robe lay on the coverlet. Silky and jade-coloured. She snatched it up and wrapped it around her in case he suddenly appeared. Strange, to feel shy after what she’d done last night, but she wasn’t practised in negotiating a deal while taking off her clothes. She’d never expected to seal one in such a way. But last night fury had given her courage to do what she had done; rage had given her purpose. This morning she was still angry with both her mother and with Luca, but now there was wonderment too at her brazen behaviour. Not to mention a little fear, for what she might have let herself in for.
