She had not been an abused child. At least she didn’t think so. Slaps, shakings, occasional bruises from too forceful hand grips. Her father was a powerfully built man and she had often told herself consolingly that he didn’t know his own strength when he lost his temper. But it hadn’t been the fleeting physical pain that caused her the most damage… no, it had been the awareness that she was the only one of her family ever to incite that reaction from him. He had never struck her mother, her sister or her brother, was indeed loud in his disgust of other men who used physical force to subdue those weaker than themselves.
No, what had bothered Ashley the most had been the ‘why me?’ sensation. Why only her and not her siblings? And somewhere along the line she had started to realise that in her father’s eyes she was somehow different, presumably different enough not to inspire the love he had for Susan and Tim. For he did love them. He mightn’t show it, and Tim might be his favourite, but he did love them in a way he had never loved his younger daughter. Banishing her from the family circle had cost him nothing… she was painfully aware of that fact. ‘
‘Who did it?’ Vito demanded. Her lashes fluttered and she came back to life again. ‘You’re imagining things,’ she whispered.
‘I thought I might be until I saw your face.’ Long fingers cradled the tender curve of her jawbone. Golden eyes alight with fury were pinned with naked obduracy to her vulnerable features. ‘Who?’ he persisted.
Had she been an innocent, she reflected sadly, she might almost have believed that he really cared. Hot tears pricked her eyelids and she couldn’t understand why his response should make her cry. ‘It…it was a long time ago,’ she muttered. ‘Leave it. Some things are private.’
‘Not between man and wife.’
‘I’m not your wife!’ she rebutted fiercely.
His hand tightened on her shoulder, imprisoning her. ‘You are my wife, and the sooner you accept that fact, the happier you’ll be. And while you’re working on that,’ he advised, ‘accept at the same time that I will never use my superior strength to hurt you.’
A long shudder ran through her. There were worse kinds of pain he could inflict. The sort of pain that left no visible mark. Four years ago he had been remarkably adept at that brand of cruelty. How could she cope with a male so brilliant at penetrating her defences? How could she fight this ridiculous deluding sense that somehow it was a relief?
‘Some day you’re not going to need to fight me any more,’ he told her levelly. ‘Some day you will learn to trust me.’
‘You’re not just ambitious, you’re a megalomaniac.’
‘I just don’t like failure,’ he countered darkly. ‘And somehow at some stage, without even realising that it had happened, I failed with you.’
The admission sent chill sparks of dread down her taut spine. What more did he want from her? Love? The undying devotion he had sought in the past and been denied? Helplessly she shivered, shrinking from an awareness of how complete would be his revenge if she fulfilled that aspiration. And she was vulnerable. Wasn’t it time she faced that truth? He was holding her close and there wasn’t a cell in her body failing to fire
to that proximity. Below her breastbone, her heart was pounding like crazy.
‘Failure,’ he repeated huskily as he drew her unresisting figure down on to the bed. ‘A black spot of dishonour on a perfect record. I can’t live with it.’ With every word he reinforced her deepest fears. Casually he lifted her slender hand. He pressed his his mockingly to the platinum band on her wedding finger. ‘Does it feel like a manacle?’
Breathing rapidly, she said, ‘A stranglehold. A symbol of possession. I’m surprised you don’t want Cavalieri tattooed all over me in case I stray!’
‘You won’t be straying, cara. I’m very careful with my possessions.’
‘Damn you!’ she began, trying to sit up.
He ran the tip of his tongue down the valley between her breasts in an erotic foray only halted by a meeting with the towelling edge of her robe. She fell back again momentarily stunned by the rush of heat fired by that most calculating preliminary.
‘Dio… I almost forgot.’ Reaching behind him, he produced a familiar little box. One-handed, he deftly opened it and extracted a tiny pill. ‘Medical science does have its advantages. I thought about them over dinner and I’m prepared to compromise-‘
Bewildered, she parted her lips. He dropped it in and automatically she swallowed. ‘But you-‘
‘We don’t need it to happen this soon. Success might conclude other pleasures that are for the moment… for me at least,’ he conceded raggedly, ‘far more important.’
An odd little twinge of pain coloured her relief at his change of heart. He could not have told her more clearly that for him pregnancy would be a sexual turn-off, or possibly the final act of the whole charade he had involved her in.
‘Aren’t you pleased?’ he probed.
‘Ecstatic… but you want everything I’ve got to give in return,’ she whispered tightly, understanding that, for this present forbearance on his part, there would be a price.
A questing hand closed over one small firm breast and her eyes slid shut in an involuntary reflex, every tiny muscle tautening beneath her skin in a hot rush of anticipation.
‘And that’s incredibly generous, isn’t it?’ he said thickly. ‘Considering that I could take it without asking.’
His other hand skimmed down the pale length of her thigh and her senses leapt wildly. Her own hands dug like talons into the embroidered bedspread beneath her, so fierce was the temptation to touch him. She would submit, that was all. Nothing more, nothing less.
Laughing softly, he divided the robe, bent his dark head over her quivering stomach and let his mouth roam over her responsive flesh. ‘I’m going to drive you out of your mind,’ he promised.
Shedding the twin of her own robe, he rearranged her on the bed as if she were a doll. She collided with the rapacious hunger glittering in the all-male appraisal devouring her pale body, lingering on the swell of her breasts and the sleek curve of her hips. And she burned all over, self-conscious in one sense but strangely proud in another.
She was breathing very fast as she looked up at him, her tormented green gaze wandering from his broad shoulders down to the rough curling hair defining his muscular chest and beyond to his hard flat stomach. About there, she closed her eyes tightly, willing herself into stillness and silence.
He closed his mouth round a rosy nipple and teased her with his teeth. A whimper of stifled sound escaped her. She felt the erotic pull deep in the pit of her stomach like a key turning in a lock. He leant over her, delving his tongue between her soft lips and plundering the response she could not withhold. She was shaking, alternately hot and cold with the force of her own arousal. It had happened so fast, she couldn’t control it.
His slim hands moved over her with ruthless precision, now hard, now gentle and always, always one agonising step behind where she needed them to be. She couldn’t stay still, she couldn’t stay quiet. He was slowly and inexorably working down her quivering length, leaving no part of her untouched. His teeth nipped playfully at a sensitive spot on her thigh and her back arched, the heat building to a cruel pitch as his fingers toyed with the damp auburn curls crowning her most tender flesh. She moaned out loud, choking back his name, panting for breath.
‘Let go,’ he demanded. ‘Or I’ll make you let go.’ And then he did what she had never allowed him to do before, something so intimate it was unbearable, something so exciting, it drove her right off the edge. Parting her locked thighs, he buried his mouth against that most secret place and tasted her, and after that there was nothing she could do but feel. A primitive avalanche of wild sensation took over and wave upon wave of explosive pleasure shuddered through her in an earth shattering climax of passion that took all else before it.