The Playboy's Fugitive Bride (29 page)

He couldn’t trust her.  Not just yet.

Perhaps when he was certain she’d given up all hope of ever escaping him, he’d tell her about the secret passage from her closet into the main house—one she could escape through if dire need ever arose.  The one he could have used to sneak into her bed the night she’d locked him out of the bedroom.

Until then, he would dedicate himself to showing her how much he desired her.  He wanted to be closer to her than he’d ever been with any other woman.  He wanted to show her how special she was to him.

Massimo eased his body down on the edge of the divan near Nia’s feet, being careful not to disturb her.  She was a quiet and deep sleeper.  He was grateful for that.  It had given him the chance to shower and change while he slowly came to terms with the fact that his wife had a perfectly sound reason to hate him.  The thought of the life she’d been living for the past five years made his stomach cramp up in pain.

She was Shaina Norwood
.  The child he’d been looking for for five years.  The virgin who’d offered to sell herself to him for four million dollars.  The woman he’d married last night.

Massimo shook his head slowly and his eyes misted with emotion as he grappled with the truth of his discovery, the way their paths had crossed, their lives interwoven with each other.  Those innocent brown eyes he’d been unable to place had stared out at him from a silver picture frame on Ambrose Norwood’s office desk at West Gate Mills.  He’d been unable to remember his encounter with Nia because it had taken place just weeks after his father’s death and shortly before his accident in Kenya.

In the middle of their negotiations, Massimo remembered stopping to ask Mr. Norwood about the eyes behind the
khimar
.  He remembered how his heart had stopped beating for a second and how his breath had caught in his throat when he’d first encountered those eyes.  Even then, they had mesmerized him.  Upon learning they were his daughter’s, who’d been dressed in costume for a play, Massimo had voiced his desire to meet her.  He was so dumb and narcissistic back then.  A real pompous ass to assume that a protective father would appreciate him enquiring about his daughter—who Massimo didn’t know was only seventeen at the time.  How was he to know from gazing at an image of her eyes?  She could have been forty for all he knew.

Massimo had been approached by several mothers and fathers who’d offered to introduce him to their young daughters—some of them barely legal—despite the fact that he had a notorious reputation with women.  All they saw were the monetary benefits at the end of his affairs.

Ambrose Norwood was not one of those kinds.  His daughter meant more to him than money, than saving his failing paper mill.  Their meeting had been recorded, and last night after he’d discovered Nia’s true identity, Massimo had headed to Andretti Industries to find the tape.  He’d listened to it over and over again until he’d memorized the segment of Mr. Norwood’s response to his interest in his daughter.  Massimo remembered his brown eyes, bold and imperious, as he’d quite diplomatically put him in his place.

“Excuse my candor, Mr. Andretti, but you’re not the kind of man I want pursuing my daughter.  You have an unsavory reputation with women.  My Shaina is way too young for you—in age and experience.  She’s still innocent and I want her to stay that way for as long as possible.  My daughter is not part of the deal I made with your father, and if you’re thinking about adding her as an addendum, we might as well void this contract right now.  Shaina is not for sale,”
he’d finished attempting to rip the contract into two.

Massimo had developed a fierce respect for Ambrose Norwood that day.

And here he was five years later about to make love to the man’s daughter.

But in his defense, she’d come looking for him, and ironically had offered to sell herself to him.  She wasn’t a young innocent girl anymore.  She was a woman who’d already allowed him to do things to her.  Indecent things she’d enjoyed.

Those facts didn’t seem to clear Massimo’s memory of the threat in Ambrose Norwood’s voice and eyes when he’d told him to stay away from his daughter.  The man had been ready to punch his face in, merely for asking.  Life couldn’t be this cruel, Massimo thought—sending him the one woman in this world whom he wanted more than he’d ever wanted another, but whom his conscience was telling him he couldn’t have—shouldn’t have—out of respect for her father.

“Mass...”

Massimo went rigid at the soft sound of his name.  It was a whisper—barely.  A husky murmur.  She’d never called him Mass before.  He liked the dreamy sound of it.  He opened his mouth to respond to her call when he realized that her eyes were still closed, even though she’d shifted again and her hand had moved lower down on her belly.  She did have a tendency to talk in her sleep, albeit unintelligible, as he’d discovered the first time they’d slept together.

It was her mumbling in the limo last night that had jarred him into full recollection.  She’d been muttering about going to ‘the mill’ with her daddy on one particular day.  Her one-sided conversation indicated that they might have been having an argument.

Why can’t I go?  Because he’ll be there?  Why can’t I meet him?

Shocked to his core, Massimo had fitted the pieces together as he’d held her securely in his arms.  With his gut in knots, he’d dared to ask her who was going to be at the mill.  He’d known the answer even before she’d whispered, “Massimo.  Massimo Andretti.”

Shaina and her father had been arguing on the day he’d given the speech in the cafeteria.  It was the second time he’d visited the mill.  Ambrose Norwood had been desperate to keep his daughter away from him.  Massimo didn’t blame him.  He would have reacted the same way if some rich arrogant hound had shown interest in his young innocent daughter.

All thoughts, all desire to make love to her had vanished, leaving him with an empty hollow feeling in his chest.  Marrying the man whom her father had been trying to protect her from must have triggered her memory of that day and brought on her dream.

After settling Nia into bed, he’d gone to Andretti Industries to find the taped meeting with her father.  He’d been paralyzed with the realization that Nia’s eyes had been the ones he’d seen while he was drifting in and out of his coma in Kenya.  Her eyes had kept him clinging to hope and life—a life that he’d now pledged to share with her.

It had also dawned on Massimo that his marriage to Nia might not be legal since she’d married him under an assumed name.  He’d immediately called Steven, and had been somewhat relieved when the attorney said they could work around it.  If her name had been changed legally there was no problem, but if not, it was best he told Nia what he knew and remarried her by next Saturday, the day he turned thirty-four.  Steven had also warned him that Nia could be accused of fraud for not producing an ID with her true identity when she signed the marriage license.

Just another problem he had to fix for her.

Before he’d fallen asleep at his desk, Massimo had come to the conclusion that he didn’t care about his inheritance that much anymore.  He was more concerned with taking care of Nia or Shaina.  He didn’t want to lose her, and revealing the reason he’d married her would definitely cause her to run again.  He wasn’t taking that risk.

The moon was still high in the sky when Massimo opened his eyes again and immediately began wondering how to approach Nia with his discovery.  Had she disobeyed her father and snuck into the mill, anyway?  Massimo smiled as his eyes caressed her.  Knowing how persistent she could be when she set her mind on something, he would bet his prized orange Lamborghini that she’d been in the cafeteria the day he’d promised her father and his employees that the contract was solid and that the mill would remain open.

As far as Nia was concerned, he’d lied to her father, to his employees, and to her and her brother.  In her eyes he was a lying bastard.  Aching with the knowledge, Massimo stared out the glass as snowflakes swirled around the tops of the evergreen trees.  Fire and ice flowed through his veins.

On his way back to the mansion, Massimo had called Azi and asked her to prepare Nia a breakfast and take it to the master suite.  Nia was still asleep when he got there.  He’d written her a note and left to find more answers.

He hadn’t been able to save Ambrose Norwood.  After losing everything, the poor man had had to resort to cleaning snow off roofs in the winter to feed his children, and had slid to his death from one of them.  Massimo had managed to save his business once Maurice’s treachery had been exposed.  He was now determined to save his children and restore their family legacy.  He would try to make up for all the pain they’d suffered, no matter how long it took.  Whether they liked it or not, the Andrettis and the Norwoods were bound to each other for the rest of their lives.  He would turn them into one big happy family, or die trying.  Massimo felt honored at the thought of Ambrose Norwood’s blood flowing through the veins of Andretti heirs.

“Yes…  yes...  Mass… Massimo…”

Massimo stilled as Nia spoke his name again.  This time there was no misinterpreting it.  Nia was dreaming—about him.  He held his breath as he turned to see her left hand sliding slowly to the V of her thighs, and her right over the mounds of her breasts.  Blood pounded against his temples when she began to caress the curves of her hips and the soft flesh of her inner thighs while she undulated the lower half of her body on the divan.  His mouth opened in silent awe when her fingers spread over her sex and she began to stroke herself through her panties.  Soon a damp spot appeared in the crotch.

Massimo’s erection stood at attention making a huge tent under his silk robe. He was hotter and harder than he’d ever been in his entire life.  Unable to help himself, he placed his left hand on his shaft and began to stroke it beneath the thin fabric of his robe as he watched Nia caress herself.

This was quintessential eroticism.

Her soft sighs sent his gaze riveting to her face.  Her little pink tongue darted erratically in and out of her mouth, moistening her lips, making them shimmer in the afternoon light.  She moaned softly as her head thrashed back and forth on the pillow, her right hand earnestly kneading her swollen breasts, her palm opening occasionally to glide across her taut nipples before closing to knead again.

So that was how she liked to be caressed.

The increased thrusting of her hips brought his attention back south where her hand had found its way inside her panties.  From the movement beneath the lace, Massimo knew that his wife had inserted one of her fingers inside herself.  Perhaps two.  He couldn’t tell.

He toyed with the idea of pulling her panties down to her knees and licking her clit as she strummed herself, but decided that he liked watching her more—for now.

“Mass…”

Unable to resist the stimulating effects the live erotic scene was having on him, not to mention Barry White’s deep baritone chanting
I Get Off On You
through the surround sound system, Massimo opened his robe and clasped his hand around his shaft.  It was hot, hard, and hurting with need.  With fire spiraling through him, he leaned back against the foot of the divan and stretching out his legs on each side of Nia, he began to stroke himself, trying to match his rhythm to that of his wife stroking herself.

Pleasure hummed through Massimo.  He’d jerked off many times in his lifetime, and a lot more recently in the last couple months, and even more in the last four days, but no pleasure compared to the waves of ecstasy that now rolled through him, that threatened to drown him in bliss.  Being inside Nia would be his ultimate undoing.  His heart might stop beating, but what a way to die, tangled up in bliss.

Massimo sucked air into his lungs when he felt the heel of Nia’s foot brush against his belly.  She’d shifted again in the throes of passion and her fingers were still working magic between her thighs.  Her breath was coming in hard gasps and the tightening of her body warned Massimo that she was on the verge of an orgasm. 

The thought of her bringing herself to a climax in front of him ripped a groan from his throat.

The sound must have startled her, because her hands stilled.  Her lashes fluttered up and her eyes widened in both surprise and a bit of confusion.  Their gazes locked for a few tense moments and Massimo felt a fierce sensuous flame pass between them.  It was a flame of acceptance, submission, promise, and expectation.

His body shuddered as her gaze skidded down his bare chest, past his stomach to where his hand was wrapped around his pulsing shaft.  He felt no shame.  He heard her quick intake of air as her eyes widened even more.  He’d gotten that kind of reaction from women in the past who’d been amazed by his length and girth.

“Impressive set of family jewels,” she murmured appreciation evident in her sexy eyes.  “What big stones you have.”

There was no trace of the contempt he’s seen when she’d said her vows to him last night.  Perhaps she’d accepted him, willing to give them a chance.  “I’m glad you like,” he responded, loving her uninhibited remark.

“Do you know how to handle such a powerful tool?”  She licked her lips.

His gut contracted painfully.  “Question is, will you be able to handle such a powerful tool?”  He was guessing that he was the first naked man she’d seen up close and personal.  He wasn’t kidding himself into believing that she’d never peeked at pictures or even watched sex tapes.  He knew a lot of women who did, although some would never admit it.

But the fact that his nakedness was the first his wife had ever seen brought him a sense of joy and gratification he never knew possible.  His eyes shifted to the junction of her thighs where her hand, though now motionless, was still pushed inside her panties, her finger still buried inside her woman’s heat, he supposed.

“Only one way to find out,” she said, attempting to pull her hand from inside her panties.

“Leave it there,” he commanded, his eyes holding hers captive as his hand tightened around his shaft.  “I want to savor the vision of you pleasuring yourself.”