Page 25 of Marriage Made In Hate

B IANCA SAT AT her dressing table, gazing at her reflection. She could not make out the expression in her face. It seemed like a stranger’s face to her. Her eyes were both troubled…and dazed. Her pulse seemed both quick…and slow. Her breathing shallow…and intense.

She gazed almost blindly at the woman she could see in the glass.

The quietness of the room lapped about her, dimly lit by the bedside lamp she had switched on and the lamp that sat on the dressing table, casting only a soft glow in the darkness.

After the chatter of voices in lively conversation, the music from the band, the clink of crystal glasses, the silence seemed absolute.

She could not even hear her own breathing.

But the click of her door catch she could hear.

She turned. It would be a maid, surely, come to help her divest herself of the beautiful silk gown and put away her jewellery. Surely only that?

But, as at the start of this long, difficult evening, when she had been nerving herself to go down and play the part her uncle had cast her in, it was not the maid.

As she had known since that moment he had taken her into his arms out on the terrace, into that dance…that slow, seductive waltz…it was Luca.

Only Luca…

Luca…

* * *

She was so beautiful. So exquisitely, incredibly beautiful. It took his breath away. For an endless moment he simply stood there, gazing at her, as she turned towards him where she sat at the dressing table.

He did not speak. There was no need to. He knew that she knew why he was here. Why this had been waiting to happen. Not just since they had danced on the terrace, but since she had come back into his life. Uninvited, unthought-of, uncalled-for—but back.

He moved towards her, closing the bedroom door behind him, absently placing the champagne and the glasses on a pier table beside the door. She did not speak, and he did not want her to. Did not want protestations or resistance…

Because there will be none. Not any more. For she wants what I want too.

And he wanted to do only what he was doing now. Reaching out his hand to find hers…drawing her to her feet.

She rose with a soft rustle of silk, her face uplifted to his.

‘Bianca…’

It was all he said. All he needed to say.

His mouth lowered to hers.

* * *

How long ago it had been…how achingly long ago…

since she had given herself to him. For this was a giving of herself—and a taking too.

Slowly, sensuously, as his mouth softly caressed hers, his hands reached to her back.

Slowly, sensuously, he eased down the long zip…

eased open the catch on her strapless bra.

She stepped away, her mouth leaving his, but her eyes never moved from him as she stepped free of the gown. It was far too beautiful and precious to let fall to the floor, so she draped it over a nearby chair, adding her bra to it, slipping off her satin sandals.

Then she turned to Luca. He was gazing at her…just gazing.

‘My most beautiful, exquisite Bianca…’ The words were breathed from him.

He came towards her. Methodically, he started to shed his clothes. Jacket first, deposited on the dressing table stool, then his tie, his shirt. He dropped his cufflinks on the dressing table, added his shirt and tie to the stool.

She watched him, unable to tear her eyes away as his sleek, hard, so well-remembered body came into view.

Not for an instant did he take his eyes from hers. Nor did hers move from him as he revealed his body to her—as hers was revealed to him. Only when his hands went to his waist did she turn away, shy suddenly. It had been so long ago…so very long ago…

But when he came to her, resplendent in his natural state, all shyness dissolved…dissolved completely.

* * *

He drew her into his embrace, her slender body pliant against his.

Gently, so gently, he kissed her. A kiss of sweet desire.

Of homage. Of renewal. Carefully, so carefully, he lowered her to her bed.

All that remained of her clothes was the wisp of her panties.

He eased them from her slowly, sensuously.

Returned to where they had been and just as slowly, as sensuously, made exploration.

He heard her give a sigh, a whisper…no more. And then he silenced her with a kiss as soft and as sensuous as his exploration…his rediscovery.

Thoughts inchoate and insubstantial formed in his mind. How right it was to yield to what had been growing between them since she had come into his life once more. What had once drawn them together was as potent as ever.

More so…

This Bianca—the Bianca of the silvered gown, so elegant, so exquisitely beautiful—was impossible not to desire. Not to claim as he was claiming now.

Softly, sensuously, he eased his hand between her silken thighs.

He felt her give another sigh of pleasure, felt her hands come around the naked column of his back, her fingertips running slowly, exploringly, along the contours of his spine.

Her thighs were slackening, granting him access to where he most desired to be.

His lips were still caressing hers, his tongue lacing with hers.

He could sense her arousal mounting, the liquid glide enticing his slow, questing exploration, revealing her response to him.

And a restlessness was starting up in her—he could feel it, sense it, knew its cause.

He lifted his mouth away, gave a low, husky laugh. ‘Patience, bellissima Bianca. Patience…’

He would not keep her waiting long, for he knew that what was happening to her was happening to him too. But self-control was absolute. This was too exquisite. He would not rush it. It was a feast…a banquet to be savoured slowly.

All the night long…

* * *

His touch at her most intimate places was unbearable…

impossible to endure. He was toying with her…

playing with her. She felt her thighs slacken, her legs splay.

Her hands were running up and down his spine, grazing the muscled contours of his back.

She wanted to reach for him, guide him to her.

But he was holding himself away. She could not bear it—could not endure it.

She lifted her shoulders, wanting, aching to feel the frottage of her crested peaks brushing the hard wall of his chest.

As if it was a signal, his mouth left hers. Found another place. A moan broke from her. His lips and his tongue at her breast were unbearable—impossible to endure.

She wanted more…so much more…

I want everything. Everything that I have yearned for, longed for, for six long years. To have Luca again. To be in his arms…his embrace…

Restlessness filled her again. The arousal he was drawing from her was mounting, but she did not want it to be hers alone. She whispered his name, an imprecation—a plea.

‘Luca…’ she sighed. ‘I want you…only you.’

He lifted his mouth from her aching coral peak. Smiled down at her. Gold glinted in the deep darkness of his eyes in the soft light from her bedside lamp.

‘Then you shall have me, Bianca bellissima. You shall have me…’

He moved across her body, slipping his hands from her. She gave a cry of loss, for she knew her moment was very near, and she ached for his touch…

It came slowly…questing. Teasing…toying. Her hands went to his hips, to draw him fully down, but he was too strong for her. His weight was on his elbows, either side of her. His gaze poured into hers.

‘How much I want you,’ he said.

His voice was low, and what was in it was all she yearned to hear.

‘How very, very much…’

He lowered himself down on her, coming into her waiting body, which was opening to his, fusing to his. And as their bodies fused wave after wave broke through her.

Not pleasure—nothing so mundane.

It was far more than pleasure.

Ecstasy.

Her spine arched, her head falling back, hips lifting, and still wave after wave took her far beyond mere earthly delights. To a realm where time and place did not exist. Only eternity.

She cried out. Heard her own cry. Heard his deep echoing of it. Felt him surge within her, completing their fusion, their absolute union, their coming together after so long…so unbearably long…

It was a gap in time that made her weep with the pity of it.

Or something did.

For her cheeks were wet with tears.

And her heart was full with all she had not dared to desire.

* * *

There was dew on the grass, and long, narrow strips of early sun striped through the gaps in the hedging.

There was the faintest chill in the dawn air.

Birdsong came, nascent as the day began, and the night yielded to it.

Bianca stood barefoot on the lawn, hair tumbling down her back, a thin cotton dressing gown wrapped around her.

She was staring sightlessly, her expression bleak.

She had told Luca that day at his palazzo that the reason she had been so desperate for him six years ago was that she had yearned to belong to someone. She’d thought that now she did belong to someone—to Matteo—she was free of such desperation.

Her throat tightened, anguish filling her. She was facing the truth about herself—the truth revealed in Luca’s arms. There was something she was not free of…never could be free of…

She gave a smothered cry, tightening her arms around her body as if to staunch a wound that could never be healed—not in six years, nor in sixty, or six hundred. A wound that would be there for ever.

How long she stood there she did not know. She knew only that the sun had risen, and pale morning light was filling the garden. Surely Luca would have woken now, found her gone. Would be relieved that she had gone.

Sparing him.

Surely he would go back to his own room, making it safe for her to go indoors.

She caught her breath suddenly.

What was that noise?