Far From Perfect (18 page)

What’s the matter? Was I too easy?
Or was it something else? Something that made her blood run cold?

Had she somehow, through actions rather than words, revealed that she loved him? And by doing so committed the most cardinal sin of all—implied that she wanted more than just the convenient sexual relationship he’d envisioned for the duration of their fake engagement? Was that the reason why he was always elsewhere, attending to business, and not keeping her company here at Villa Rosa?

She glanced at her mobile phone where it sat on the small glass-topped table beside her lounger, wanting to ring somebody, anybody, and to pour out the real story of what was happening.

But she couldn’t. She’d already rung her father several times with reports on Carlo, but it was getting harder and harder to maintain the facade for Clive and field his subtle and not so subtle questions about when “the big day” might be.

It was the same with Lydia. Although she sensed her aunt was aware that appearances might be deceiving. But Lydia was too discreet and sensitive to press and pry for the full story.

Picking up the tiny unit, she scrolled through her list of numbers and selected Nick’s. For several long moments, her fingertip hovered over “OK”, wanting to press it but not knowing what she could say to him.

Part of her wanted to know the truth about what he felt for her. But another part already knew it, and was foolishly hoping that he might change. And he might get over his aversion to commitment and to love and all of a sudden say, “Let’s make it real.”

“You don’t need to call me. I’m here.”

The phone fell to the hard stone of the patio flags with an ominous clatter, but miraculously remained in one piece, the LCD still damningly showing Nick’s name. The man himself reached down and swept it up, scanning the unit for damage before clearing the number and handing it back to her.

“Thank you.” Her voice was small, squeezed by the sudden dryness in her mouth and throat.

Nick stood before her almost naked, an abbreviated black Speedo his only garment, and a thick white towel slung over his gleaming, gilded shoulder. Tiny shafts of stray sunlight peeped through the climbing woven greenery of the loggia and glanced off his hair, striking it pure gold like the victory coronet of some Roman god. The same light highlighted the perfection of his body.

“What were you going to call about?”

His voice was low and cautious, almost wary. Tossing his towel onto the lounger beside hers, he continued to loom over her in a challenging exhibition of his breath-catching maleness.

“I just wondered if we were going back to the clinic today, to see Carlo.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Not today. He has more tests scheduled and he begins his physiotherapy. Remember?”

She did. She’d just said the first thing that had come into her head. But she didn’t want Nick to think the aborted call would have been about
him
.

“Yes, now you mention it.”

Nervously, she reached for her glass again, wishing Nick would move and not continue to stand there, menacing her with his body. The drink had lost some of its chill now but she was grateful for it. She would have drunk pond water to loosen the constriction that seemed to grip her vocal chords.

“I…I thought you’d be busy again today.” She set down the glass with rattle as her hand shook uncontrollably.

“All work and no play…you know? Makes Niccolo a dull boy.”

Nick’s voice was softer, the note of accusation gone. He sounded almost playful suddenly, and as he hunkered down beside her lounger there was a flash of glittering light in his eyes. Without warning, he reached out and smoothed a strand of hair away from her brow, his fingertips like a streak of flame where they brushed her skin.

“Apparently, my father’s spies have been telling him I’m not spending enough time with you and I’ve been taken to task for neglecting my fiancée.”

“I’m perfectly okay on my own,” Anna protested, wanting to edge away but unable to. Nick’s fingers had slid to her jaw now, his thumb delicately stroking her chin, and she was paralyzed by the surge of her own hormones. “I mean…it’s not as if this is a real engagement, is it?”

The gliding thumb slid across her lower lip in a slow, sensuous exploration, and like a tiny mammal transfixed by a raptor, she could not look away from his dark, compelling eyes. Fugitive emotions, questions and challenges seemed to move somewhere in their depths and, for a moment, Anna imagined the most preposterous things that he might suddenly say to her. That she longed for him to say.

The moment seemed to prolong, as if time were halted, and as the delicate pressure he was exerting increased infinitesimally, he seemed to be inviting her to take his thumb between her lips in a daring, evocative shadow-play. The suggestion of another more intimate caress.

“No,” he conceded at last, withdrawing his hand, then flicking away another strand of hair from her brow, “But it has to appear real.” His long, strangely dark lashes swept down, masking his eyes for a second. “And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t enjoy the masquerade, is there?”

Anna stiffened, then jerked away from him as his cold words in the car echoed in her head. She got as far as framing her retort, but Nick seemed to second-guess her, his face growing gentler, almost rueful.

“I know. I was an ungrateful boor,” he admitted with a shrug, as if he’d read her mind and heard his own harshness read back to him. “You offered me a beautiful gift and I behaved like a pig. I should have been more appreciative.” In an innately graceful movement, he slid down to sit on the stone beside her lounger, and then reached for her hand.

“But I promise to do better from now on.”

Taking her trembling hand in both of his, he raised it to his lips and kissed the palm. His tongue flicked out and he licked her skin in an evocative caress of his own, as at the same time, the blue of his eyes grew hazed and sultry.

Anna gasped, her body responding as if the evocation were the actual act. Desire seemed to hurtle along her veins like a pinball, rebounding here…then here…then here…

She didn’t know if Nick was telling the truth or whether he was playing some kind of game again. Maybe he was just acting his role for Carlo’s spies—presumably his housekeeper, Gianna, who was a faithful and tyrannical family servant of long standing.

But Anna didn’t care. The touch of Nick’s tongue against her palm was electric. It made her want everything he seemed to be offering and more…and to hell with the consequences.

Her bones felt as if they were melting, and she knew that had he drawn her down onto the stone beside him, she would have surrendered her all to him and parted her legs to invite his pleasure.

Unbidden, she reached out to him and laid her fingers against his shoulder, thrilling to the satin texture of his skin and the feel of the powerful musculature beneath. Nick looked up again, his mouth still against her palm, a wealth of expression and understanding gleaming beneath the veil of his lashes.

He knows I want him
.

The thought was fatalistic, as if some great engine had been set in motion, one that could not be braked in time to stop the inevitable.

He knows that I’ll not say no if he asks. Not even if he merely suggests…

Nick planted one last long, slow kiss, then, in a movement as effortless and athletic as his descent, he got to his feet and urged her to rise beside him.

Bewitched, she did.

“Come,
cara mia
,” he murmured, folding his hand around hers in a grip that was both gentle and commanding. “The sun getting too hot. We should go inside.”

Without waiting for her answer, he began to exert a pull, drawing her behind him as he made for the open door leading to the cooler interior of the villa.

“But wh-what about your swim?” she stammered, glancing down at his swimming trunks, and then blushing furiously at what they couldn’t conceal.

“I don’t want to swim,” was his answer as he paused and turned to study her face, his own intent, somehow both focused but also distracted. “I only want to drown.”

The words were cryptic, but Nick’s meaning unequivocal.

He didn’t stop in the salon. Of course, she hadn’t expected him to. Instead he led her through the hall towards the wide stone steps leading to the upper level. A gentle breeze was blowing through the entire house from the open windows, making curtains everywhere flutter, but it didn’t cool the heat in her blood. The heat that kept her following, following…

It was only when they reached the upper landing that she managed to hesitate before the door to her room.

Here, yes. Here would be better. Not Nick’s own room, where everything that was wrong between them had been triggered four endless years ago.

But Nick shook his head, drew her onwards.

“We have demons to exorcise,
tesoro mio
,” he said softly, raising the hand he’d kissed before momentarily to his lips again before guiding her on, towards his own bedroom.

And then they were there. Back in the place where it had all begun—the real, physical love, the irrational hate, the confusion and separation.

Anna felt a jolt of cold fear as the door swung closed behind them, but it was blasted away by pure heat a moment later when Nick slid down his Speedo, stepped out of it and kicked it away.

Anna gulped.

No matter how many times she saw Nick completely naked, nothing could lessen impact of his beauty.

His lean strength. The harmony of his limbs and torso. The honeyed satin gold of his skin. The primordial magnificence of his aroused maleness.

“Anna.”

His voice was a husky murmur as he stepped forward and pressed his unclothed body against the entire length of her clothed one. She was only wearing shorts, a cotton vest and skimpy underwear, but the contrast between the two of them suddenly seemed breathtakingly exotic. She slid arms around him as he possessed her mouth, her fingers sliding greedily over his warm, smooth back and tight muscularity of his buttocks. He seemed totally untroubled by the disparity between them, and as his tongue plunged and tasted, he roved his hands over her too, caressing her just as comprehensively through her clothes.

The kiss went on for many minutes, and while she felt totally absorbed in it, and in him, a part of her registered her surroundings, his room, so familiar that it was imprinted on her brain forever. Thin drapes fluttered at the windows, the flower-scented air from the garden mingling with the faint but evocative fragrance of Nick’s signature cologne, which came from his own body and from the items of clothing strewn casually across an old carved high-back chair.

The bed was an antique too, its dark headboard adorned with beautifully worked images of vines and fruits. She imagined it might have been a marriage bed at one time, but she shivered with a sudden, bitter melancholy when reminded that it would never be hers.

“What’s wrong,
ragazza mia
?”

The words were a caress against her mouth, soft as breath.

“Nothing,” she whispered in return, suddenly famished for more of him. For total contact. Total possession.

“Come to bed then.” He pressed kiss against her brow. “Don’t be afraid.” His soothing hand moved against her back and then slipped beneath her thin vest to sample the texture of her skin. At the same time he pressed his pelvis against her belly, imprinting his need on her through the fragile barrier of her shorts and panties. “It will be all right.”

But will it?

The question tolled as Anna let herself be led forward. Nick tossed back the old embroidered coverlet and urged her down onto the pristine linen sheets beneath.

Will it ever be all right with you if you don’t really love me?

But as he stripped off her clothes, quickly but gently, nothing mattered. Least of all that.

Four years.

It had been four years since they’d been in this room together, and yet to Nick, it seemed but a moment ago. He remembered the surprise of slowly waking to find her naked in his bed, and then the wonder, the pure wonder of her innocent but impassioned responses.

And there hadn’t been a day or night since when he’d not relived that experience. Making love to her at La Girandole had been pure magic, but this, his own room, was the ambience that had haunted him. He couldn’t remember a time between that first night, and this moment, right now, when he’d not wished for a chance to go back and make right what had gone so spectacularly wrong after that first sweet coupling.

Slowly, with reverence, and exerting every ounce of self-control he could muster, he began to kiss her again, lying beside her exquisite bare body, excited beyond endurance by the sight and scent of her.

He wanted to do things for her and to her that would erase all the pain that had passed between them, and also the pain he knew was surely to come. Anna was beautiful and precious. A woman meant to be worshipped for all time by a devoted lover. A devoted husband.

But he couldn’t be that man, or that husband, because if he attempted it, he’d bring disaster down on both of them, just as Carlo had made his mother’s life a hell.

“Nick, what is it?”

Her soft voice broke the dark spell that had momentarily gripped him and returned him to the moment. It was a moment that they must enjoy and celebrate and set in the preserving amber of their memories to be recalled and cherished later.

For now he must quench the fires that had been burning in his blood for so long.

“
Que bella
…
que bella
,” he murmured, laying his hand against her breast, savoring its perfect curve and the sublime softness of her skin. No other woman had skin as fine and sweet as hers, and with a groan, he lowered his head to suckle the tender bud of her nipple, glorying in her answering impassioned whimpers.

Adoring her with his mouth, he let his hands rove across her flesh, shaping the slender contours of her hips and thighs, the seductive roundness of her buttocks. She was everything a woman should be, and artlessly wonderful. The practiced, knowing, supremely self-aware skills of his former lovers slipped away into insignificance in the face of her near-innocent responses.