The Undoing of de Luca (9 page)

She tilted her head upwards, her eyes still closed, and found Larenz’s lips with her own. Her kiss was no more than a brush, but it served as an answer to the question Larenz’s silence had posed.

Yes.

His arms came around her and he pulled her against him; Ellery went unresisting, without trepidation or fear.

‘Come with me.’

Chapter Five

E
LLERY
followed him back downstairs, his fingers laced with hers as he led her through her own house, walking with the confidence of a man who knew exactly where he was going. And Ellery followed without needing to know where, or why. Now that she’d made her decision, she felt strangely, surprisingly at peace; she was content to rest in the moment, in being with Larenz, without jumping ahead to the what-ifs or why-nots.

He led her to the drawing room with its huge marble fireplace, now lost in shadow, the only light a gleam of lambent silver from the moon high above, visible through the gap in the heavy curtains at the windows.

‘I assume this fireplace works?’ Larenz said. He’d slipped his hand from hers and now crouched in front of the hearth.

‘Yes, although I usually just use the electric—’

‘This?’ Larenz unplugged the three-bar electric fire she’d placed in the great old hearth with obvious contempt. Ellery found herself smiling. The electric fire had been sensible, or so she’d thought; she kept the firewood for guests. Yet now she found she was pleased as Larenz reached for the birch logs piled up next to the fireplace and began, quite expertly, to lay and then light a fire.

Within a few minutes a comfortable, friendly blaze was crackling away, the flames casting long orange shadows around the room and over Larenz’s face, making him look a little devilish. A little dangerous.

‘Things getting cool again?’ Larenz teased softly, and Ellery couldn’t help but laugh, in spite of her lingering nerves, for he’d read her perfectly.

He knows me so well.
The thought was ridiculous, absurd, for of course Larenz de Luca didn’t know her at all. She’d only met him yesterday. Yet Ellery couldn’t keep herself from thinking it—and perhaps even believing it.

‘Come here,’ Larenz said.

He was kneeling in front of the fireplace, his face half in light, half in shadow, and his voice sounded both teasing and a little raw.

Ellery went to him.

She stood in front of him, a little uncertain, a little breathless. Larenz tugged at her hand, and she dropped to her knees in front of him. The logs crackled and shifted, scattering some sparks across the carpet. Larenz brushed it with his fingers.

‘We can’t ruin another rug of yours,’ he murmured, and Ellery tried to smile. She felt so nervous.

‘At least this one’s not an Aubusson.’

‘You know all the antiques in this house of yours?’ Larenz asked. His hand slipped along the nape of her neck, his fingers rubbing her tense muscles.

‘Yes…my mother catalogued everything in this house.’ Ellery’s breath hitched. She was finding it difficult to concentrate with Larenz’s deft fingers on her. ‘She left a list…I went over it when I first came back.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Six months. My mother was going to sell this place and I couldn’t—’ She stopped suddenly, her throat tight. Larenz finished the thought for her.

‘Couldn’t imagine life without Maddock Manor in it somewhere?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Where is your mother now?’

‘In Cornwall.’ Ellery managed a smile. ‘She lives in a lovely little thatched cottage and is happier than she’s ever been.’ Happier than she’d ever been with her father, Ellery added silently. She was glad her mother had found her place, her peace. She just needed to find hers.

She didn’t want to talk any more, not about her house or her history, and Larenz must have sensed that for he smiled and reached to take the clip from her hair.

‘I’ve been wanting to see your hair down ever since I first met you.’

‘All of twenty-four hours ago?’ Ellery joked, but it came out a bit flat.

‘It’s been a very long twenty-four hours,’ Larenz replied and he released her hair.

Ellery almost always wore her hair pulled up any which way; it was more practical and there was never anyone to impress. Now she felt surprised by her own sensual response to the fall of her hair as it shimmered about her face and shoulders in a pale cloud. She shivered when Larenz threaded his fingers through it, his thumb brushing her cheek and the fullness of her lip.

‘Beautiful…just as I imagined. Or perhaps better. You look like The Lady of Shalott.’

‘You know that poem?’ Ellery asked in surprise, for Tennyson’s ballad was one of her favourite poems.

‘You know it was based on an Italian story?
Donna di Scalotta.
I like the English version better, though.’ He quoted softly, “‘There she weaves by night and day, A magic web…’” He brushed his lips against her jaw. ‘You’ve certainly woven some kind of magic around me.’

Ellery thrilled to his words, even as another more logical part of her was insisting that surely she was not like that doomed lady, isolated and imprisoned in her island castle, pining for the handsome Lancelot. Surely, unlike the sorrowful Lady of Shalott, she had a surer hand in her own destiny—and a happier fate.

Then all thoughts fled Ellery’s dazed mind for Larenz was kissing her again, his lips moving slowly over hers, exploring every contour as he pulled her closer, and closer still, and she surrendered herself completely to the caress.

She wanted to forget. She wanted to feel. To feel and not to think.

Larenz’s hands slid along her nightgown, deftly undoing the row of buttons down the back. ‘I dreamed of you wearing something like this,’ he murmured into her neck. ‘Yards and yards of white flannel…I can hardly wait to unwrap you.’

Ellery gave a shaky laugh. ‘It keeps me warm.’

‘Good thing I lit a fire,’ Larenz replied and gently pushed the nightgown off her shoulders. The garment slid from her body, landing in a heap of cloth, which Larenz kicked aside. All Ellery wore was a pair of thick woollen socks. She was uncomfortably conscious of her own nakedness, even though in the dim light, her body bent, her hair hanging down, Larenz could hardly see her. Yet she couldn’t help but notice that he still wore all his clothes.

‘This feels a little uneven,’ she said, trying for a teasing note, and Larenz cocked his head, his eyes gleaming in the half-light.

‘So it does. How should we remedy the situation?’

And Ellery knew exactly how. Smiling a little bit, emboldened by her own desire—and Larenz’s—she reached for his T-shirt. ‘I think I can help.’ She pulled the T-shirt from his torso while Larenz obediently raised his arms, watching her with a sleepy half-smile. His chest gleamed bronze in the firelight and Ellery sucked in her breath. He was a beautiful man. And tonight he was hers.

Cautiously, she reached out and touched the taut muscle of his chest, letting her hand drift down to the waistband of his jeans. And there she stopped.

She glanced back at his face and saw him watching her with a knowing—and almost gentle—little smile. Her fingers played with the button of his jeans. She let out a little ragged laugh.

‘Shall I help?’

‘I’m a bit…new…to this.’ It was as close as she was willing to admit to just how new she was.

Larenz’s hand covered her own and, emboldened once more, Ellery undid the button.

Just a few seconds later he’d been divested of all his clothes—and Ellery of her socks—and they were both naked, stretched out in front of the fire, the flames casting dancing amber shadows over their bodies.

Larenz ran a hand along her calf, to her thigh and then her hip, before cupping the fullness of her breast. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said with such sincerity that Ellery felt tears come to her eyes.

She didn’t believe him. Couldn’t. She was nothing special—blonde hair and odd-coloured eyes and an average body. She didn’t want Larenz’s platitudes or sentiments aimed at seduction; she couldn’t stand lies.

She turned, covering his mouth with her own to keep him from speaking, her arms twining around his body as she pressed closer to him and felt her own feminine softness come up against his hard chest and thighs. Larenz responded, deepening Ellery’s desperate kiss, his hands roaming over her nakedness and, as Ellery closed her eyes, she let pleasure take over, stealing through her veins like a drug, blotting out all remembrance and regret.

It was all too easy to give herself up to the moment, to let her body’s need take precedence over her mind’s fear, and as Larenz caressed her, kissing and touching and loving every inch of her body, Ellery writhed and moaned and cried out his name, her fingernails snagging on the worn carpet, her mind blissfully blank.

A moment came when Larenz hesitated, his body poised over hers. ‘Are you protected?’

‘Nnn…no,’ Ellery stammered, thinking of her heart. Her heart was all too dangerously exposed, and yet of course Larenz meant her body. He rolled off her, rifling through his clothes, and Ellery felt a pang of something that was halfway between hurt and disappointment.

‘You were prepared.’

‘Let’s say hopeful,’ he murmured, slipping on the condom he’d taken from the pocket of his jeans. Ellery pushed all her thoughts away and gave herself up to pleasure once more.

She experienced a brief flicker of pain as Larenz pushed past her innocence, and she heard his own sucked-in breath of surprise. She closed her eyes and pushed back, opening herself up to him, and after a tiny second’s pause Larenz embedded himself deeply inside her, groaning against her lips in both need and satisfaction. Ellery felt the flickers of pleasure blunt the pain in both her body and heart, and then the flickers turned to waves that crashed over in a tide of satiation and the pain was—for the moment—utterly obliterated.

Afterwards, they lay in a tangle of limbs, their skin golden in the light of the few dying embers left in the grate. Larenz traced circles on her skin with his fingertips as Ellery laid her head against his shoulder.

‘You should have told me you were a virgin,’ he said. Although he spoke in a lazy, sensual tone, Ellery sensed a different undercurrent. Disappointment, perhaps. She tried not to tense. Had she not been a good enough lover?

‘I didn’t think it was important,’ she said with a little shrug. Her virginity, strangely perhaps, had not even crossed her mind when she’d considered whether to give herself to Larenz. It had been her heart and soul’s safety and innocence she’d been more concerned about, rather than her body’s.

Larenz’s fingers stilled on her skin. ‘A woman’s first time is always important. If I’d known—’

Ellery propped herself up on one elbow, daring to look down at Larenz’s brooding face. ‘You would have taken more care? Or perhaps you wouldn’t have bothered in the first place?’

He let out a sigh that wasn’t an answer at all. ‘I just wish I’d known.’ Gently, he pushed Ellery’s head back down on his shoulder and, as she resettled herself, his fingers stroked her temples. Ellery closed her eyes. She suddenly felt almost sleepy.

‘I didn’t think it really mattered,’ she said after a moment. ‘I decided I wanted you, and that was it.’

‘Oh, was it?’ Larenz teased, sounding amused. ‘And here I was thinking I was the one who decided I wanted you.’

‘Well,’ Ellery said, barely suppressing a yawn, ‘I suppose it was mutual.’

‘Yes, indeed,
dormigliona.
’

She laughed a bit and snuggled deeper into the silken warmth of his shoulder, content to lie there for ever in Larenz’s half-embrace.

Yet they remained like that for a moment, no more, and then in one deft movement he rose, scooping her up and taking her with him. Ellery was too sleepy and sated to do anything but curl into him and let him take her where he would.

Larenz strode through the darkened empty rooms of the Manor, naked and magnificent, and upstairs to the master bedroom, which Ellery had laid with fresh sheets only that afternoon. He peeled back the satin duvet and laid her on the bed. In the darkness she could not read his expression or even see his face, but Ellery smiled up at him, waiting, expecting him to slide into the bed next to her and take her in his arms once more.

He didn’t.

He hesitated, or seemed to, although in the darkness Ellery couldn’t be sure. Then he bent and brushed a kiss on her forehead. As his lips grazed her skin, he whispered, ‘Sweet dreams, my Lady of Shalott.’ And then, before Ellery could even draw a breath, he was gone. She heard the click of the door closing and then the sound of Larenz’s footsteps down the hall.

Alone in the darkness Ellery was conscious of the cold slippery sheets against her naked limbs and, far worse, the coldness creeping inside her, stealing straight to her heart. Why had Larenz left so suddenly?

Yet, even as she asked herself that question, Ellery knew the grim answer. Tonight had been simply that: a night. And now it was over.

She never should have expected a single thing—or a single moment—more.

Minutes before, she had been content to drift into a satisfied sleep but now, lying there, she felt cold and unhappy and most definitely awake. She rose from the bed, grabbing one of the complimentary dressing gowns she’d hung in the wardrobe herself, a rather cheap attempt to make Maddock Manor more upmarket than it was or ever could be.

Enveloped in thick, rough terrycloth, she stole downstairs, not wanting to alert Larenz to her presence. Yet he wasn’t downstairs; he seemed to have disappeared completely. Ellery half-wondered if he’d actually left the Manor itself, and that brief kiss had been her only goodbye.

She forced the thoughts away, keeping her mind determinedly blank. Yet, as she entered the drawing room and saw their scattered clothes and the ashes of the fire Larenz had laid, she heard the raw tearing gasp of her own pain. Wrapping her arms around herself, she took several steadying breaths and then turned to go to the kitchen.

She needed that cup of tea.

Yet the abandoned mess in the kitchen told its own sorrowful story; the scattered peas and shattered glass glared at Ellery as she stood there, silent condemnations of her own folly. She drew another breath; it sounded like a shudder, halfway to a sob.