Sins of the Past (16 page)

‘Such as?’

‘Such as his education,’ he enlarged. ‘I want him to have the best.’

Turning her head, she tossed up at him, ‘Don’t you think I don’t want that too?’

‘I want him to feel settled.’

‘He
is
settled,’ she argued.

‘He might have been, Riva—after a fashion.’ Those fingers had slipped beneath the side strings of her bikini briefs, sensuously working in the cool lotion. ‘But I know for a fact that ever since we became involved he hasn’t been sleeping. You intimated that much yourself. How settled is he going to be now—torn between the two of us?’

‘He won’t be torn! You can see him as often as you like.’

‘As long as it’s on your terms?’

She sucked in a breath as his thumbs lightly skimmed the tight curve of her buttocks. ‘I
am
his mother!’ She didn’t want to be having this conversation with him. She wanted him to do what he had suggested just now and.

‘I want you both to come and live with me.’

‘Live with you?’ Shock made it come out on a squeak.

‘Sì.’

‘As your kept woman?’ Shrugging off his hands, she brought herself round to face him, leaning back on her elbows, her small breasts thrust tantalisingly upwards. ‘What are you proposing, Damiano? A life of luxury for the little upstart …’ she couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice ‘… in exchange for custody of Ben? With the odd sexual favour thrown in?’

His face was a chiselled rock against the hard blue of the sky. ‘May I remind you that he’s my son too?’ He sounded quietly angry. ‘And, no.
Santo cielo!
That isn’t what I’m proposing.’

‘What, then?’

A particularly strong wave, forced up by the heavy swell of the ocean, crashed over the rocks at the edge of the pool, drenching the tiles beneath the granite boulders on its far side, making her gasp.

‘I think we should marry,’ he said.

She gazed up at him, bemused, her breasts rising and falling sharply. Yet even while she was left reeling from his unexpected proposal she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the hard, amazing structure of his features.

He looked incredible, with his ebony hair gleaming, his forehead and nose proud above a mouth that paid homage to everything that was passionate and sensual. A god of eroticism, as beautiful as the angry ocean—and as cruel.

‘I can’t.’

A frown knitted his thick eyebrows. ‘Why not?’

Because you don’t love me!
She couldn’t say that, of course, because then he would know how hopelessly she had fallen for him again, when she should have learned her lesson the first time; she had suffered so much—been so shattered and disillusioned by his brutal betrayal five years ago.

‘There’s too much between us,’ she parried.

‘Like this?’ Leaning over her, he very gently touched his lips to the sensitive area of her ear.

‘No, Damiano.’ His breath against her skin sent shudders
of sensation along her spine, and her hands flew up to hold him off—which was a mistake, she realised hopelessly, when just the feel of that hair-feathered chest had her drowning in her need of him. ‘Don’t!’

‘It’s what we both want.’

‘It’s not what
I
want.’

‘No?’ He laughed softly, dipping his head lower, his lips unbelievably erotic against the heated gold of her throat.

‘Damiano, please …’ Her hands were moving of their own volition in powerful response to his warm, muscular strength, making nonsense of her verbal attempts to resist him—to distance herself from all that she was feeling—as he pressed her back against the pillow.

The earth seemed to be tilting on its axis as his mouth descended, covering hers in a kiss that demanded as much as it gave. And against all her efforts to stay immune she was kissing him back, her hands coming up into his hair to hold him fast to her as she responded with a need born out of her longing and frustration.

‘Carissima …’
His voice was as caressing as the warm wind that stirred the palm trees, sighing across her skin with those Latin phrases that turned her blood to molten gold.

She couldn’t understand what he was saying—knew only that his voice, when he was making love, to her was the most powerful aphrodisiac she had ever known.

With uninhibited desire her eager hands measured the satin-sheathed musculature of his back and the thrilling contours of his biceps, exploring with unashamed luxury the lean line of his flanks and waist and the more intimate contours of his tight buttocks, glorying in the knowledge of her own power as she heard him draw in a sharp breath.

Without her even being aware of him doing so he had untied the strings of her top, and removing it was now tossing the scrap of material away like unwanted wrapping.

An involuntary little groan of self-consciousness escaped
her when he drew back to admire the small, perfectly shaped mounds he had uncovered.

‘You are beautiful,
amore.’

His lashes were drawn down over his devastating eyes, his mouth full and sensual as he regarded her, and Riva thought that she could never compete with the classical male beauty that made him so desirable to her right then.

‘So are you,’ she whispered, lying like an abandoned nymph under his smouldering gaze, nipples hard and erect, her abdomen taut from the need that was throbbing down through her pelvis, her flushed face racked with desire.

‘Can you deny it now,
carissima?’
His voice was hoarse, those sexily murmured words trembling from the heat of his arousal.

No, she couldn’t, she thought, closing her eyes against the electrifying sensations that were pulsing through her veins. She wanted to see him topple. To see him as helpless for her as she was for him. To rip down the last shreds of his iron control.

‘Can you not at least admit to yourself that you want me?’

‘I want you.’ It came out as a soft plea on the scented air.

There. She had said it. Admitted that she had no more immunity to this powerful pull he had on her senses than the tides had to the pull of the moon. And in that admission she knew a heightened excitement from the knowledge that she had just given him licence to do
anything.

The hands on her ribcage slid automatically to her breasts, and a mind-blowing sensation galvanised her into a gasping creature of mindless wanting as those hands moulded and massaged their aching fullness, his palms hot and slick from the sunscreen he had applied.

Desire held her captive as his mouth rained kisses down her throat, over her shoulders and breasts, before he cupped one of the small white mounds and took the excruciatingly taut peak between his lips.

She cried out from the ecstasy of what he was doing to her, her nails sinking into the cushioned strength of his muscular arms.

‘Mmm … You taste good,
mia cara.’

‘That’s the cream,’ she murmured, still remarkably shy, yet still able to find some humour in the situation.

‘Then perhaps I should sample what you really taste like.’ His heavy-lidded eyes glittered with sensual promise.

Excitement escalated through her as he tugged at the side strings of her briefs, dispensing with them as easily as he had dispensed with the top, exposing her femininity to his heated gaze.

Shyness and anticipation closed her eyes and yet opened her mind to how still the air was—oppressive, almost, as if the very earth was on Pause, waiting for something to happen. Then she became conscious of the humming insects, the rustle of leaves in the shrubs behind them as a lizard darted for cover, the sea pounding relentlessly against the rocks. She was as fundamental, she realised, as the earth and the sea—a child of nature, designed to do this, designed only for this man’s loving.

Very gently he put his hands under her buttocks to lift her, and then did exactly as he had promised, his tongue finding and blending with the sweet nectar of her body until she started to move restlessly against him.

‘I could give you what you want now—here—but I promise you,
amore,
I can give you so much more inside.’ He smiled indulgently at her soft moan of disappointment as he got to his feet, the evidence of how much he wanted her too raw to hide. ‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured, catching her hand and pulling her up, before wrapping her in a soft white fluffy towel that had been folded on one of the other sunbeds. ‘We’re going to make this last. Heaven knows!’ His breath seemed to shudder through him as his arm went round her and he lifted her off her feet. ‘I’ve waited for you long enough!’

Have you?

What was he saying? That he had craved to hold her in his arms? Ached for her the way she had ached for him? Woken—as she had so often since they had met again—from erotic dreams needing her, his body burning with unfulfilled desire, defying the crucifying self-chastisement going on in his mind?

It was cooler inside as he crossed the hall of the empty house and mounted the sweeping staircase, covering each step with swift, effortless strides.

The blinds were drawn in his room, which overlooked the beach, a cool, sensuous haven with a massive bed dominating the luxurious space.

A sultan’s loving chamber for the pick of his harem, Riva couldn’t help fantasising, and an elusive thought flitted across her mind as to how many women might have shared his bed, and whether she was to be just another moment’s glory for this very virile man with whom she was about to share the most intimate of experiences—despite his proposal. But she had wanted him far too much and for far too long to care.

When he laid her down on the cool sensuality of the coverlet she watched like the sultry concubine she had imagined a few moments ago as he peeled off his swimming briefs, revealing every last inch of his hard and pulsing masculinity.

Even the act of him sheathing himself was a turn on, she discovered, unable to look away, held in thrall by the bronze perfection of his body.

Neither of them spoke, their locked gazes conveying their mutual hunger for each other which was the only communication that either of them needed now.

When he came down to her she took his weight with a small gasp.

‘Am I hurting you?’ Supporting himself on his elbows, he looked and sounded worried.

Riva smiled and shook her head.

She had dreamed about this for so long! How warm and solid his body would feel covering hers, as it had the first time.

How deliciously his hair-furred chest and limbs would rasp against her softness. And the reality was oh, so much better than she remembered!

‘Are you sure?’ He still didn’t sound convinced. ‘Your body is so slender and fragile compared with mine.’

He looked so concerned still that she lifted a hand to his face, tracing with her finger the curve of his high cheekbone, the shape of his jaw, the hard, thrusting prominence of his Adam’s apple.

‘I promise you won’t hurt me,’ she breathed.

She was wet for him—so ready—her body molten liquid from the unsurpassable technique of his experienced foreplay.

When he slid into her she let out a shuddering cry of pleasure, moving her body instinctively to accommodate his length.

Hot as the day, she felt rather than saw the first earth-defying flash of electricity against her eyelids, felt the deafening crash of thunder roll across the sky.

They were moving as one, locked to each other as the thickening air and the darkening sky closed in around them, binding them in a world where only scent and sound and unbearably sweet sensation existed.

Lightning ripped across the sky with all the power that was driving them—a power that couldn’t be contained or tamed any more than they could contain the storm or tame the turbulent sea.

She was up there with it, Riva felt headily, as sensation piled upon sensation. Flying on the wind, burning brighter than the lightning, riding on the wild power of the storm. And then the climax came, and it was like heaven being opened up to her. The powerful outpouring of his seed drove her into a mindless rhythm of sobbing pleasure only matched by the ferocity of the driving rain.

As the last throbs of her orgasm started to ebb away, and she came back down to reality, she became aware of the
deluge—heard it cascading like a thousand waterfalls through the trees, over the boulders, on the roof and into the gullies around the house.

It was as if the earth were crying, she thought, after a build up of all that pressure which, like the tension that had been building between her and Damiano over the past few weeks, had now released itself in an electrifying and explosive crescendo.

Lying there in the crook of Damiano’s arm, listening to the rain, she thought of what had transpired outside earlier, and wondered with shameless abandon what André or Françoise would make of the two scraps of discarded bikini lying on the ground if they returned before she could get downstairs to retrieve them.

Saying as much to Damiano, she felt the rumble of contentment in his chest as he pulled her warm, damp body closer to his and replied, ‘They will simply know you are exactly where you belong.’

‘And where’s that?’ Her voice trembled as she recalled how easily and sensually he had silenced her after she had refused his proposal of marriage. ‘In the master’s bed?’

‘"In the master’s bed?"’ he echoed lightly, those hands that were casually caressing her making that flame of wanting leap in her again with surprising rapidity. ‘Satisfying the master. As she will be doing from now on, I think.’ He was idly massaging her breast, seemingly oblivious to the way it responded to him as he sat up and kissed her lightly on the mouth. ‘As the master’s wife.’

His arrogant assumption cut through the chains of ecstasy that bound her. ‘This doesn’t change anything, Damiano.’ She was struggling to break free.

‘No?’ He paused to look at her, lying there with her hair damp and ruffled, her mouth still swollen, emerald eyes still glazed in the aftermath of their torrid lovemaking. ‘Are you sure about that,
cara?
I’d say things have changed beyond all recognition. Of course if you need any more convincing …’

Before she could stop him his mouth had swooped to suck on one silently begging breast.