‘Don’t be disgusting!’ Ashley made another feeble attempt to dislodge herself from his hold so that she could rearrange her disordered clothing. Little tremors of physical after-shock were still quaking through her, nor was she yet in any fit state to deal with the ramifications of her own failure to maintain control of the situation.
‘And what a relief it is to be with a woman who believes she can treat sex as casually as a man, who expects none of the traditional touches of courtship and romance and who would certainly never dream of demanding that I do something as boringly conventional as wait until after the wedding,’ Vito continued smoothly.
Something perilously close to naked panic assailed her in the wake of that most enlightening speech. ‘Something wrong?’ Lustrous dark eyes were tracking her every change of expression with the efficiency of a scanner tuning in to easily read airwaves.
An awful lot of somethings. So many that she couldn’t put them all together at once. Without the smallest preparation she was being confronted with all the false images she had put up for Vito’s benefit four years ago, when it had seemed so desperately important that he did not wring an admission of undying love from her. Being loved gave immense power to the loved one. Her father had wielded that power over her mother throughout their marriage. Ashley had been determined that Vito would never receive that weapon from her.
It’s chemistry, it’s my age, it’s infatuation, she had told herself then. I do not love him, I do not need him, I will not look for him when he is not there. That had been her mantra of self-defence. And she had behaved accordingly, refusing verbally to grant him the exclusive commitment he demanded and loudly disclaiming the double standards which made sexual experimentation acceptable for a man but not for a woman.
Certainly she had not behaved that way without some justification. And from the outset Vito had had that exclusive commitment whether he had chosen to believe it or not. But Vito had acted as though he owned her. She had played her role with the nervous defiance of someone being beaten back into an increasingly tight corner by an overpoweringly masculine male, who thought liberation was something to do with occupied territories and absolutely nothing to do with the female sex. Looking at Vito now, so cool and so calm, it was hard to recall the furious violence of their arguments and the ferocious jealousy and possessiveness he had demonstrated when she dared to show him that he did not have the right to dictate her every move.
‘Vito… I…’ It occurred to her that all those proud pretences of hers had truly come home to roost with her now. Vito had an utterly mistaken impression of her true character. Vito had always had a most unendearing habit of misinterpreting what she said, especially when she flung things she didn’t mean in a temper. And now, not unnaturally, Vito expected her to practise what she had once so loudly preached.
“‘If you feel like it, go for it,”’ Vito challenged in an accented drawl as smooth as black velvet. ‘And you can’t say that you don’t feel like making love because I already know that you do.’
‘I wish you’d stop throwing every s-stupid thing I ever said back at me!’ she launched and subsided again as a blunt forefinger skimmed across her midriff and lingered just above her waistband.
‘So you admit that some of it was stupid,’ Vito probed mercilessly. ‘Or is it just that you would admit to anything sooner than share this bed with me right now?’
In despair she turned her head away, wondering dully if sharing his bed now was Vito’s callous method of sealing the bargain she had yet to agree to or merely the first in a long line of heartless humiliations, designed to reduce her pride to rubble. Dear God, if her brother’s freedom was to hinge on this, what was she to do? If Vito made that demand now, she felt that she would walk out of this apartment and under the nearest bus, because she would never be able to look either him or herself in the face again.
‘I’ve never been promiscuous,’ she mumbled. Vito dealt her pinched profile a grimly amused smile. Had she seen it, rage would have revived her, but she did not see it. Nor did it occur to her that Vito was being astoundingly patient for a male bent on immediately slaking his lust.
And, without warning, what she was to do was taken care of in the most unwelcome fashion possible. Forty-eight hours of frantic worry, powered by insufficient sleep and food, abruptly took their toll. Ashley burst into floods of tears, shocking herself as much as she shocked him. Her most pressing need then was for privacy but Vito caught her back before she could reel off the bed.
‘Let go!’ she sobbed.
‘How can I’. He tugged her into his arms.
‘I can’t take any more!’ Blinded by the raining gush of tears, sobs wrenched at her throat. ‘I’m… I’m not a c-call girl or something.’
‘No, you have entirely the wrong attitude and far too much class,’ Vito assured her instantly, encouraging her to weep all over his shirt-front while he smoothed her tousled hair back from her brow.
‘I c-can’t cope with you right now and you know it!’ In a surge of mortified frustration, she struck weakly at his solidity with a loosely coiled fist. ‘I n-never cry! I despise w-women who do this!’
He murmured incomprehensibly soothing things in Italian. She cried even harder because, God help her, she liked it. The scent of warm male flesh, so achingly familiar, enveloped her and was as strangely reassuring as the rock-steady beat of his heart. She couldn’t remember when anyone had last put their arms round her… it had probably been him. Something akin to despair engulfed her, adding to her bitter burden of defeat.
A cruising forefinger drifted confidently down over one damp cheek. She didn’t move. She was comfortable, comforted, and as he deftly eased her on to the sofa at the foot of the bed she burrowed unconsciously closer. Physically and mentally drained by complete exhaustion, she refused to question the incongruity of her behaviour.
‘I should apologise.’ Vito hesitated. ‘Sometimes you bring out something in me that I don’t like very much.’ ‘That makes two of us. You must see how utterly hopeless it is to expect me to-‘
Long fingers tipped up her face. A faintly chilling smile slanted his mouth. ‘Don’t fight me.’ Dark eyes held hers by sheer force of will. ‘If you fight me, you’ll get hurt.’
‘Do you always kick people when they’re down?’ ‘You’re not down.’ He stood up. ‘You’re just recharging your batteries. I suggest you move into this apartment while I’m away.’
‘Away?’
‘I’m leaving for Geneva in a couple of hours. I’ll be back next week. Maybe I’ll take you to the opera. You like the opera,’ he reminded her with the attitude of someone presenting a sulky child with a consolation prize.
She gritted her teeth. ‘Tim?’ ‘I will contact the police.’
‘They mightn’t listen.’
‘The entire episode took place on private property. Whether I choose to prosecute or not is my business,’ Vito pointed out with inborn arrogance.
A shuddering spasm of relief slivered through her. He had done this to her, she realised fearfully, encouraged her to dash herself to pieces against that absolute obduracy that was his greatest strength. Four years ago, he had ripped her to shreds by the simple act of walking out. A giant black chasm had opened below her feet and she had drowned. But while she had drowned in the emptiness, the loneliness and the savage agony of loss, Vito had been getting married and moving on coolly to put together the kind of brilliant deals which had made his name in the circles of international finance, his eventual reward that of becoming the youngest ever president of the Cavalieri Mercantile Bank. There was a lesson to be learned in that comparison and it terrified her.