DREAM LOVER (22 page)

Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to block out the pain.  What little time she had left with Nic would only be spent grieving for what they were giving up and prolong the agony for both of them.  There would be tears and heartache and unbearable sorrow, and that was
not
how she wanted this to end.  Right now Nic was probably down in the kitchen throwing something together for breakfast.  He’d be tired from having so little sleep but he’d be thinking about last night and the love they’d shared instead of the morose thoughts she was having. 

He’d remember all the other mornings that had started this way, mornings that began with him serving her breakfast in bed and ended with passionate kisses and a burning need for each other that inevitably led to making love again.  Afterwards they’d shower together then get dressed and go downstairs where Celia would greet them with a knowing smile.  That’s how she wanted it to be, how it should be on their last morning together but she couldn’t see that happening with the dark depression that was already beginning to close in on her.

Rachel turned onto her side, an empty ache stabbing at her heart.  She had the power to save Nic from feeling this God awful pain if she could only summon up the fortitude to be as noble and selfless as he was.  Inching her way onto his side of the bed, she buried her face in his pillow, breathing in his masculine scent and letting the memory of last night fill her heart with his love. 

She knew what she had to do.  Sparing Nic from having to say good-bye was the greatest sacrifice she could make, and it was the last gift she would ever be able to give him.  Rachel closed her eyes, allowing the weariness in her mind and body to lure her back to sleep.

                        ***

Rochelle slipped into Nicolo’s bedroom, her pulse racing when he greeted her with a sexy smile and took her hand, leading her to the bed.  He loosened the tie on her robe, quickly relieving her of both the robe and her nightgown before divesting himself of his own robe and easing her back onto the mattress.  He entered her slowly, stretching her inner muscles and filling her so completely she could feel every throbbing inch of him.

It occurred to her that this was the last time she’d come to Nicolo as his mistress.  Tomorrow they would be married and her new life as Mrs. Nicolo Covelli would begin.  She didn’t think anything could dampen her happiness at that moment, not when he was making love to her with such great tenderness she wanted to cry from the sheer ecstasy of it.  She was hovering on the edge of a climax that had been building from the moment he’d first kissed her when Rochelle’s mind was suddenly flooded with images that were so disturbing it sent a shiver up her spine.

Mistaking the trembling of her body as the beginning of an orgasm, Nicolo drove himself into her, each thrust of his hips harder and faster than the one before.  Rochelle responded to the sudden change in the urgency of his love making with a wild guttural moan.  The uninvited thoughts were buried beneath an avalanche of physical pleasure as the tension coiling inside of her finally snapped, sending her body into a series of violent convulsions that seemed to go on forever. 

It had never been like this before…so frantic, so desperate, as if they needed to make the memory last.  Panicked by the idea someone or something would contrive to separate them when those horrible images began to infiltrate her mind once more, Rochelle clung to his broad shoulders, the salty sting of tears pooling in her eyes.

“Don’t leave me,” she choked out.

Puzzled by her sudden outburst, Nicolo braced himself on one elbow and attempted to wipe away her tears.  “You will flood the bed,” he tried to lighten her mood, but his teasing smile faded when she only cried harder.  “Bella, I am not going to leave you.  What has gotten into that pretty head of yours to make you think I could ever do that?”

“I… I don’t know,” she sobbed.  “I just k-keep seeing these horrible, horrible things happening in my mind.”

“You are letting your imagination run away with you because you are anxious about eloping, that’s all.”

“I
am
anxious,” Rochelle sniffed, “but I’m not letting my imagination run wild.  I’ve been trying to block it out but I can’t.  If you leave me alone tonight something terrible is going happen, I just know it.”

His smile was indulgent.  “You are upsetting yourself for no reason.  I have no intention of leaving you alone, so you see…”

“But you will,” she persisted.  “Damian is going to come to your door and say there is a guest for dinner and you’ll go because the guest is an important businessman.  Your cousins have it all planned out.  They want to keep you occupied so they can…”

Rochelle stopped abruptly when there was a sharp rap on the door.  Her eyes were wild with fear when Nicolo started to pull away from her.  “Don’t answer it.  Please, Nicolo, I’m begging you…” 

“Do not leave,” he whispered as he threw the covers back and reached for his robe.  “I’m coming,” he bellowed as another, more impatient rap sounded at his door. 

Rochelle burrowed beneath the blankets, mortified by the sound of Damian’s lazy drawl because it proved that the ominous visions she’d been having were some sort of premonition of the future.  She’d been afraid to tell Nicolo about the voice in her head, especially since she’d been doing everything she could to ignore it herself, but it kept warning her to stop Nicolo from leaving or the visions would become reality.

Maybe she was losing her mind.  Maybe she really was just overwrought because they were eloping tonight and she was scared to death that something would go wrong and he wouldn’t marry her.  She shook her head as if she could somehow dislodge that nagging voice and make it go away, but it only seemed to get louder and more insistent.  By the time Nicolo closed the door and returned to the bedside, the overwhelming sense of pain and loss and sorrow was so strong, Rochelle was nearly in tears.

“That was Damian,” he said slowly, looking at Rochelle as if she’d sprouted an extra head.  “It seems my mother neglected to tell me there was a dinner party this evening with a man that I have been trying to set…” his voice trailed off when he saw how pale Rochelle’s face had grown.  Nicolo dropped down on the edge of the bed.  “How could you have known Damian would come to the door and tell me about the dinner?  Did you overhear my mother talking about it?”

“No… I saw it… in my mind.”  Still clutching the blanket around her as if it could protect her somehow, Rochelle sat up and tried to explain.  “It was like a dream, except I was awake.  Damian and Renato set it up so you wouldn’t be around to keep them from… from…” her throat constricted as the revolting image of Damian sexually violating her revived itself.

“Keep them from what?”  Nicolo’s expression was unreadable but the lethal tone of his voice told Rochelle he suspected what she was about to say.

“From hurting me.”

“Is that what you saw… in this vision or whatever it was?”  Nicolo’s jaw flexed when she nodded.  “Tell me everything.”

“You believe me?”

He reached out and cupped her chin.  “You’re trembling like a leaf.  It’s obvious you’re terrified of my cousins and I mean to find out if you have reason to be or not.  Now tell me the rest.”

Rochelle told him about Damian and Renato finding her alone in the gardens.  “One of them has a gun and shoots me right here,” she touched her shoulder.  “They take me deeper into the woods and that’s where Damian… attacks me.”

“Attacks you how?”

She turned her head away, too ashamed to look at him.  “He tears my clothes and then he… rapes me.”

“And Renato?”

Rochelle choked back a sob.  “I think he does too.  It gets so hazy after that, as if I’m fading in and out of consciousness.”

“Is that where it ends?”

“No.  I’m not sure where they take me; a cellar maybe because I can feel the cold stone against my cheek.  It’s dark…” she shivered, “dark and so cold.  I can hear them stacking the bricks one by one, and they know… they
know
I’m still alive but they don’t care.”

Nicolo gripped her arms and forced her to look at him.  “Are you telling me they bury you alive?”

She shook her head, tears streaming down her face.  “Not in the ground.  They wall me up in a small room.  Oh, Nicolo,” she cried as he gathered her in his arms, “they murder me!  I pray for a miracle, pray that somehow you’ll find me but you don’t and I d-die in that horrible place.”

“Shhh, you’ll make yourself sick if you keep crying like this.”  He held her close, stroking her hair until she finally calmed down.  “I know it must seem real to you, but it was probably nothing more than a nightmare.” 

“I wasn’t asleep, I know I wasn’t.”  She drew away from him, even more frightened than before.  “You don’t believe me!  You think I was dreaming or hallucinating, or maybe you think I just made the whole thing up because I don’t like your greedy cousins.”  Rochelle could hear the hysteria in her voice but was too upset to care if she sounded like she’d lost her mind.  “Go on,” she shoved at his chest.  “Go to your stupid dinner while I pretty myself up for your cousins.  Just don’t shed any tears for me when you realize everything I’ve said is true.”

Nicolo grabbed her wrist as she made for the far edge of the bed and dragged her back.  Rochelle tried to wrench it free but he managed to capture her other wrist then pushed her back against the mattress.  For a few, brief minutes she struggled to free herself, but Nicolo subdued her with ridiculous ease, pinning her to the bed with the weight of his body.  She was breathing hard, her chest heaving against his and causing a physical reaction despite her effort to ignore the heat pooling in her abdomen.

A low growl rumbled deep in his throat as he lowered his head and kissed her.  Rochelle tried to resist but even through the anger and pain of betrayal she couldn’t keep her heart from surging with love.  Gradually, she began to respond as his hands moved over her body, strong and possessive and so incredibly warm it made her blood boil.  Maybe her imagination
had
been playing tricks on her.  After all, Nicolo hadn’t left her to go to the dinner party as he’d done in the vision so maybe…

“I have to go,” Nicolo murmured, trailing kisses down the side of her neck.  “Do not worry.  I will be back in plenty of time to whisk you away and make you my wife just as we planned.”

It was like getting blasted by an arctic wind.  “You’re leaving me?”  Her voice sounded hollow, and Nicolo picked up on it immediately. 

“I will never leave you,” he said fiercely.  “I don’t know why you’re seeing these things, but I do know that I won’t risk losing you even if it means I make a fool of myself by confronting Damian and Renato.”

“You can’t do that!  I mean… what if I’m wrong?  What if…”

“What if you’re right?  I’m not taking any chances.  Now listen carefully and do exactly what I tell you to.”

                        ***

Rochelle pressed her hand to her stomach but it did little to alleviate the knots that were twisting and turning and making it difficult for her to breathe.  She’d gone back to her room just as Nicolo had instructed her and taken a nice, long bath then put on her favorite dress and brushed her hair until it shined.  The three hour wait had been agonizing but not nearly as brutal as the walk down to the gardens. 

And now that she was in the spot where he’d told her to meet him, Rochelle was terrified something would happen to delay him.  Her heart leapt when she heard the soft rustling from behind her, and it took every ounce of courage she possessed to rise from the stone bench and take those few steps towards the opening of the alcove.

It happened just as she’d seen it in her vision; the flurry of movement behind her and the fear that clawed at her chest as Damian emerged from between the hedges.  But Rochelle didn’t run, and she didn’t need to peer down the pathway to know that Renato was making his way towards them.  She stood her ground until Damian was towering over her, a lecherous grin spreading across his face when she looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes.

“Expecting your lover, Miss Beaumont?”

“My fiancé,” she corrected him.  “Nicolo and I are going to be married tomorrow.”

“There’s been a change of plans,” Renato said as he stepped into the alcove.  “I’m afraid there won’t be a wedding.”

Rochelle arched a brow, proud of herself for affecting such a brave front even though her insides were churning.  “And how do you intend to stop it?”

Damian grabbed her around the waist and pulled her hard up against his body.  “For starters, we intend desecrate cousin Nicolo’s hallowed ground.  By the time we’re finished with you, you’ll be of no use to any man, especially not someone as possessive of his woman as Nicolo is.”

“Maybe he won’t want me anymore, but do you honestly believe he’ll let either of you live when he finds out what you’ve done?”