Page 14 of Seduced by Her Fake Husband (The Martinelli Wedding #2)

“You never said you knew,” she accused in a whisper, her mind reeling. One hundred and three weeks of marriage, and not once had he even hinted that he knew she’d made a career from her art.

“I didn’t speak of many things but I can say them now – not only are you ravishingly beautiful but you’re a phenomenally talented artist. You always have been.”

She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed as hard as she could, wanting to hurt him as he’d deliberately hurt her. “A phenomenally talented artist you forbade from working.”

“Being my wife was your work. Your art is exquisite but I remember how it took your full concentration and how oblivious you became to the world around you when in the process of creating. I needed your attention on the role I was paying you to perform.”

“You knowingly took my art away from me.”

“Only in a professional capacity and only for a fixed period of time.”

Still holding tightly to the hand on her naked thigh, she shook her head in disbelief. “If you’d bothered getting to know me, you’d have known my art is my life and so my work is my life.”

“I already knew that about you and didn’t want to know more – you were the last woman in the world I wanted to know more than I had to.”

“Because my beauty makes me dangerous?” she challenged tremulously, throwing his words back at him.

“Because how I respond to it makes me dangerous,” he corrected. “I saw you laughing and smiling at that man and wanted to throw him out of a window. Jealousy lives in my veins, jealousy and violence. I am not a good man to get close to.”

“Then why are you getting so close to me now?”

“Because the level of jealousy and violence is controllable and we don’t have the time left together for it to grow stronger.

The danger has passed.” Sensuality blazed from his black eyes.

“We have four days left together and then this marriage will be nothing but an ugly memory…” He brought his mouth to within a feather-distance from hers.

“But we don’t have to say goodbye with only ugly memories.

We can end it all on a high... if that’s what you want, too. ”

She wanted to say no out of spite and pride, but his hot breath soaked into her lips before his lips brushed against hers at the same moment his little finger stretched out and traced the rim of her lace knickers at the juncture of her thighs.

She gasped into his mouth as a bolt of pure, unadulterated desire shot through her.

His nostrils flared. So too did the pupils of his eyes.

A waiter cleared their dessert plates. He didn’t try to come between them.

The position of the table and the volume of material in the skirt of her dress meant it was impossible for him or anyone to see what was happening beneath it, but she was still shocked at her own wantonness.

The spot between her legs was on fire and she was holding Gennaro’s hand so tightly in part to stop herself dragging it even higher.

Turning her head, she tried to catch a breath. Tried. It was impossible to breathe properly when Gennaro’s hand was still on her thigh, his little finger only a swish away from where the spot between her legs burned the brightest.

Oh why had it all turned on its head like this? How was it possible to go from having fewer sexual stirrings than a nun to feeling like a tinder box only a Gennaro away from exploding in just three days?

Swallowing hard, she gazed through dazed eyes around the magnificent ballroom.

They weren’t the only couple sitting so close, and she experienced a pang deep in her chest to know that none of this was real.

The other couples around them were lovers in the true sense of the word, but even if she did give in to her desires, she would never be Gennaro’s true lover and he would never be hers.

Not in a true, meaningful sense. He just wanted to have sex with her before their time together ran out.

Luisa had never just had sex before. She’d had exactly one lover in her life.

Sex with him had never been like that erotic scene from that film of her art school years, but she’d gone along with it because her lover had got so much out of it, and she’d loved him, not with the whistles and bells that came with steamy lust but with a quiet caring.

Even though the relationship hadn’t worked out, while they’d been together she’d wanted to make him happy.

His affection and thoughtfulness had made her feel loved and so she’d willingly shared his bed, always hoping the expression of their love would get better over time.

She wasn’t someone who could just separate her mind from her body…

Except with Gennaro. With him, it was like her body had separated from her mind without her consent, but even as she thought this and released his hand to slide her fingers onto his thigh, a voice in the back of her mind laughed scornfully, a voice that was drowned by the sensations of the heat from his impossibly muscular thigh permeating through his trousers and onto her fingertips and the thrills ravaging her as his fingers responded to her touch by biting a little deeper into her sensitive skin.

The aching spot between her legs was on fire, and it was taking everything she had to stop all her thoughts from being drowned out by sensation.

There would be no affection or thoughtfulness in Gennaro’s lovemaking. That wasn’t what he was offering her. He was offering her hedonism, not love. Sex for sex’s sake, something she’d never considered herself capable of...

Fingers teased themselves beneath the band of her knickers.

The pulse of desire was so strong she reflexively sucked in a breath and dug her nails into his thigh.

Dear God …

Around them, the world continued to turn. Coffee was poured and dainty plates of pretty petit fours served, but she was barely aware of any of it, her senses incapable of focusing on anything but the pulse of fire burning between her legs.

“Look at me,” Gennaro commanded in a hoarse undertone.

Struggling desperately for breath, she obeyed, fixing onto the black eyes barely visible behind the mask.

His features had tightened but his eyes…

His eyes were liquid.

A chocolate petit fours was pinched lightly in the fingers of his right hand. “Open your mouth.”

Her mouth opened in obedience without any input from her brain.

He brought the petit fours to her mouth and as he placed it between her lips, he slid a finger inside the heat between her legs.

The pleasure was so unexpected and intense that all she could do was stare at him in complete astonishment that he would dare go so far... And complete astonishment at herself for letting him .

After a long beat, the corners of his firm lips twitched in the hint of a smile. “You need to eat it.”

Still acting on its own accord, her mouth closed around the chocolate delight. Gennaro slid his finger out of her mouth with the same sensuous fluidity that he drove his finger further inside her slick heat, and, God, the sensation ...

“You like?” he murmured huskily when she’d finally opened her throat enough to swallow it.

Breathing hard, her head reeling, she nodded.

“Another?”

Unable to tear her gaze from his, incapable of speech, she nodded again.

Sliding another finger inside her, he casually… at least with an outward casual appearance… selected a pink treat for her to eat. “Open.”

She obeyed.

A slight adjustment of the hand between her legs allowed his palm to press against her swollen clitoris. A low moan she had no control of escaped from her lips.

God in heaven…

“Don’t forget to swallow,” he whispered, cupping her feminine heat and pressing with more strength against the nub of her pleasure.

She closed her eyes.

“Look at me,” he commanded again.

Her eyes flew back open and landed on his.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he said with quiet intensity as he subtly strengthened the pleasure of all he was doing between her legs.

“That’s it. Just keep looking at me as if we’re engaged in conversation…

and imagine everything we will do to each other when it’s just the two of us…

all the things we’ve spent our marriage denying ourselves… ”

Luisa had never concentrated so hard on keeping herself still in the whole of her life.

It wasn’t possible to forget that they were in a crowded ballroom surrounded by hundreds of people but it had all become a distant blur.

The only clarity she had was Gennaro and the glorious sensations he was evoking in her, stimulating the need for him that had lived beneath her skin for so long she couldn’t remember a time it hadn’t been there.

Unable to move or speak, she was helpless to do anything but silently chase the approaching peak, and she gazed into his hooded eyes, the seductive words he was saying soaking through her skin with the same strength as the hand cupping her and the fingers moving inside her until the sensation exploded and all she could do was dig her nails into his thigh and ride the most powerful climax of her life without crying out or moving in any way.

It seemed like forever passed before the ballroom came back into focus.

All she could hear were the ragged beats of her thundering heart.

Trying her hardest to catch her breath, she swallowed and blinked to clear her vision.

Although her gaze was still trapped in Gennaro’s swirling black stare…

she was incapable of looking anywhere else…

she had a growing awareness of life and movement around her.

The singer who’d performed for them throughout the meal had disappeared, music playing out over the speakers as the live band performing next set themselves up.

Many of the guests had moved from their seats, grouping on the edge of the dancefloor, talking, laughing, drinking.

Their gazes still locked so starkly together, the hand between her legs skimmed down her thigh before bunching the multitude of layers of her dress’s skirt.

His throat extended. “Let’s get out of here,” he said roughly.

“Now?” she whispered dazedly .

He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. The meaning in his eyes was clear. “Now.”

For a man who insisted his private life always be private, Gennaro should be furious with himself for allowing jealousy of a man making his wife laugh spur him into such proprietary behaviour.

He should be furious, too, for daring to go so far as he just had with her, but he defied the most private person on God’s earth to experience what he’d just experienced and feel regret.

He’d never lived as a monk. He’d had his share of private, hedonistic experiences but in all his thirty-seven years, he’d never seen or experienced anything as erotic as Luisa’s still, silent climax.

Her stillness had been entirely external. Internally, she’d melted for him. Only her eyes and the stain of colour where her mask didn’t cover her face would have hinted at what had been happening beneath the table to anyone who happened to be observing them.

He could still feel the mark of her nails in his thigh.

Arousal of a kind he’d never known before coursed through his veins, and he held her hand tightly as they navigated their way out of the ballroom, blanking out the faces of everyone who tried to catch his eye and deafening himself to the voices of those who would try to strike up a conversation.

The only person his senses could focus on was the woman he was abandoning the ball for.