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One month of sleeping with Luca Barbarigo. Thirty nights of sex with a man who knew how to blow every fuse in her body and then some. Thirty whole nights after three years of abstinence—she shivered—it was almost too much to think about. It was almost, so very almost, delicious.
The silken robe whispered against her breasts. Her nipples tightened into buds. She could not let him see her like this. He’d think she was primed and ready for a second course. He might even be right to think that.
But Luca didn’t arrive and the only sounds she heard were the sounds of Venice coming from outside the windows. The only movement she felt seemed to come from the very foundations, the gentle sway of time and tide.
And only then did she notice the clock on a mantelpiece. Three o’clock?
She’d slept the entire day?
She padded from the bed and located the bathroom, and then found the study through another door with no sign of her pack and no trace of anything that had happened last night, the floor cleared of abandoned clothing, the desk restacked with pens and phones and files and so neat that she wondered for a moment if she’d dreamed it all. But no, there was no dreaming the tenderness of muscles rarely used. No dreaming the sense of utter disbelief—wonderment—at what had occurred.
For her hastily concocted plan—a plan made in fury and rage—a plan that in the cold light of day seemed impossible and unimaginable—had come off.
She’d come to Luca Barbarigo not as his victim, but as his seducer. Laying before him her own terms, not being forced blindly to accept his. And she seemed to recall it working. Or so she’d thought before sleep had claimed her. Some seductress she’d turned out to be.
She was still searching when there was a knock on the door, and Luca’s manservant swept in a few seconds later, bearing a steaming tray laden with both coffee and tea, together with an assortment of rolls and pastries. If he was unfamiliar with finding women in his master’s bedroom, it didn’t show.
She clutched the sides of her robe more tightly around her. She needn’t have bothered. His eyes avoided landing anywhere near her. She shoved aside the niggling thought that this wasn’t the first time, but there was no point dwelling on it. Her deal was for one month. She didn’t care who filled his bed all the other nights of the year.
‘Would the signorina like anything else?’ he asked, putting down the tray and moving towards the window. ‘Signore Barbarigo said you would be hungry.’
It’s so long since I’ve eaten, she wanted to add. ‘That looks perfect,’ she said, because the contents of the tray looked more than adequate, but also because clearly somewhere along the line she’d been promoted to something a little higher than something that the cat had dragged in.
‘Where is the signore—Luca, I mean?’ as the man swept rich vermillion curtain after rich vermillion curtain open, splashing light into the room with every broad sweep of his hands.
‘Signore Barbarigo is of course, at his offices at the Banca d’Barbarigo.’
‘Of course,’ she said, but the sound came out wrong. She hadn’t meant to sound disappointed. She’d meant to sound relieved. Hadn’t she? It wasn’t as if she expected him to hang around and wait until she woke up. After all, he’d got what he wanted, hadn’t he? And he knew she wasn’t going anywhere for at least a month. He knew where to find her when he wanted her.
The thought rankled, even though she’d known what she was letting herself in for.
‘If there is nothing else?’
The valet was standing at the door, ready to take his leave. ‘Actually there is.’ She felt herself colour when she remembered where she’d left them. ‘I can’t seem to find my clothes.’
‘The clothes you were wearing last night?’
And left scattered indecorously across the study floor? He didn’t have to finish the sentence so she chose to answer it with another question. ‘And my bag. I couldn’t find it.’
He showed her into an adjoining dressing room and pushed against a panel in a stuccoed wall that she’d assumed was just a wall, revealing a closet secreted behind. And there, tucked away, was her pack, with yesterday’s clothes folded neatly on a shelf. ‘Your clothes have been laundered and pressed. Unfortunately the brassiere could not be saved.’
‘Never mind,’ she said too brightly, secretly mortified as she remembered the snap and tear when Luca had all but wrenched it from her, while Luca’s valet seemed not to blink an eyelid at the carnage.
