The Passionate Italian 11 DECEMBER EPUB (2 page)

He hesitated briefly and she could feel him inhale into her hair once more before he pulled back, his eyes searching hers for some kind of answer. A look of satisfaction spread into his eyes.
 

“You want me still.”

She could hear the huskiness of passion in his voice: the roughness stirring her own desire even further, even as she desperately sought to control it.
 

“You’re wrong. I don’t want you.”

“Then why is your body straining to mine? Why are your breasts tight with need. And why are your lips,” he rubbed his thumb against them, “moist and apart, inviting me to enter them?”

He pulled her hips to his and she closed her eyes as she felt herself surrender to the madness that coursed through her body, dulling her mind with all its fears and confusion.

Then he kissed her. Not like before but with a claiming, a branding that was all about ownership.
 
This was crazy. But it was all that she’d ever wanted. She gave in to his passion and encircled his body with her arms, drawing him closer to her. His hands caressed her back in a feverish dream of touching—an exploration of a blind man desperate to recreate a long-forgotten vision.

She could feel his readiness for her and she wanted him to make her whole again, for her to be as one with him. Just the thought of him inside her set the muscles deep within into a shuddering spasm that emerged in a soft gasp from her mouth.

But then he pulled away. His eyes followed his fingers as they moved around her lips, under her cheekbones and up into her hair. It was the expression in his eyes as they followed the course of his fingers—an almost shocked intensity—that burned away the veil of desire.

He caught her gaze and she saw his expression harden once more. It wasn’t like him. There was a control there she’d never seen before. God knows he’d needed it in the past but now he was a stranger to her.
 

She pulled his hand away.

“No, Giovanni. We must stop this. I need you to let me go. I have my life here and that is all I want.”

“And who ever got what they wanted in life?” She felt his sadness despite his bitter tone.
 

“I won’t give up trying. I won’t give up.”

He smiled a smile totally devoid of humor. “Too late. It’s gone. Your future is with me now.”

She shook her head. “No way Giovanni. I left you and I won’t be coming back. There is no future for us.”

Rose watched Giovanni’s jaw tighten and grind in response.
 

“Haven’t I made myself plain? You have no choice.” The words were still smooth, but Rose could hear the steely undercurrent.

“Everyone has a choice. I made mine two years ago.”

“You will come with me.”

“Have I hurt your male pride Giovanni? Perhaps you should go before I destroy it altogether.”

His lips hardened in a parody of a smile. “I doubt even you could do that, cara. Come, pack your bags and we will go.”

“Stop it, just stop it, for one minute.”

“You have sixty seconds.”

She sat down on the couch, defeated by the physicality of his presence and the dominance of his spirit.
 
There was no way she could fight him. He sat down opposite her, one arm settled along the top of the couch, comfortable in his ownership.

“How did you find me?”

“It was easy. It did not take long.”

“You don’t consider two years to be long?”

“I was not interested in finding you for a while. Why would I be? You had an affair and disappeared.”

She shook her head. She knew that he’d believed that she’d had an affair. She also knew that it would do neither of them any good for her to deny it. She didn’t want him to know the truth and he would never have believed her anyway.

“Besides, I had other matters, other women to occupy me. But things have changed for me and I decided to seek you out again.”

The barbs about the women hit home but she ignored their pain.

“What’s changed?”

“It doesn’t concern you.”

“You’ve bought my company, ruined me, demanded I return with you and say that it doesn’t concern me. I think it does.”

“No more questions. Suffice to say that your work will be helpful to me.”

“So this is purely professional.”

“As professional as doing business with one’s wife can be. Anyway, your work is complementary to mine. It should be. After all, I gave you your first project, did I not?”

“And I gave you the business edge you needed. It was a fair exchange.”

“And will be now.”

“Not now. I can’t work with anyone now.”

“You should have thought of that before you welcomed this man’s, Guy’s, capital into your business.”

She leapt up. “I had no money; I left without a cent. I needed that money to start up again.”

He shrugged. “That was your choice.”

She gritted her teeth. “I had no choice.”

“Yes, of course. Living with me must have been impossible. But, strange, you did not seem to object too strenuously when I showered you with presents, when I gave you everything you could want in your professional life and when, at night, I explored your body to ensure you received maximum satisfaction. Yes, there was obviously no contest. You had to get away.”

“Giovanni. I can’t explain. It’s too hard.”

“You could have tried, Rose.”

His quiet tones cut through her more effectively than any anger.

She jumped up and indicated the front door that still lay open.

“I can’t take any more of this. Giovanni. I didn’t invite you here. I don’t want you here.”

He didn’t move.

“But I am here. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Leave now.”

“No. It’s not an explanation I’m here for. Your feeble explanations, your excuses, are of no interest to me any more. What I want is your services for which I’ve paid. And I intend to receive them—in full.”

“You may have bought my company but you haven’t bought me.”

He withdrew a slim sheath of papers from his pocket and dropped them on the coffee table between them.

“Check the small print. Your business partner has signed away your rights. If you don’t work for me for at least six months then you will be in breach of contract. Your company will be dissolved into nothing and you will be bankrupt.”

She closed her eyes briefly. She knew it but still couldn’t face it. “I don’t believe you.”

“See for yourself.”

She didn’t need to. She knew how ruthless her business partner could be. He’d obviously sold her down the river.
 
And, equally, she knew how single-minded Giovanni could be when he wanted something.
 

“Your company doesn’t need my security system. It could develop its own.”

“Not like yours. You’ve created the best. And I’m only interested in the best.”

“What do I have to do?

“I have a plane ready to take us to Milan. You will work for me there.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Whatever you require will be made available to you.”

“But what about Alberto?”

“What about Alberto?”

She could hear the chill descend into his voice.

“I can’t work with your family around, and your brother in particular.”

“I think you are lying, cara mia. I think you want to see my little brother. However, unfortunately he is otherwise engaged at the moment.”

Rose exhaled a ragged sigh of relief. A vision of what life could be like flashed into her mind. With Alberto gone, anything was possible—until his return of course. One look at Giovanni and she could see that he’d taken her silence as confirmation that she had been hoping to see Alberto. Let him believe what he liked.

“OK. I
will
come with you Giovanni.”

“I never doubted it.”

“Not just because of the blackmail. Sure, I have commitments that I need to meet, but I’d meet them somehow.”

“Your scholarships. Very noble, Rose. If you spent more time looking after the details of your own affairs instead of concerning yourself with girls’ education, you might have succeeded in retaining your anonymity.”

“The scholarships were important to me. But bankruptcy doesn’t worry me. I would make money somehow and I would pay back whatever I owed. I don’t need much to survive.”

“So it would seem.” He looked around the room with disdain. “Your
eclectic
mix of styles is born of necessity I have no doubt. So if it is not money, if it is not Alberto, what is it that makes you agree? Not that you have any other choice.”

Rose could sense unease in his voice.

“Because for the first time in two years, I’m finally free of the fear that you’ll find me. You’re here now and I don’t have to face that fear every minute of every day. I don’t have to hide any more.”

“You really hate me so much.” His words were more of a statement than a question.

She wanted to scream at him that she loved him. She wanted to hold him and heal the hurt she could feel beneath the chill veneer. But how could she tell him she loved him, when she could never live with him again? She couldn’t tell him the secret that could see him follow in his father’s footsteps. It could ruin his life.

“I really hated what you and your family did to me.”

“And what was that? Make you into a wealthy woman?” He paused briefly. “But, you are correct. You can hide from me no longer because I will make sure we will be together, just as your body desires. You have me now. And it is me that you want whether you know it or not.”
 

“You are wrong Giovanni. I need no man. And as soon as those six months are up I’ll return here, to my home, to New Zealand. Free, both of my fears and of you.”

He stepped close enough so that she heard his words only as a whisper. “You will not last one week before you are begging me to be in your bed.”

“Your arrogance does credit to your race. But, rest assured, I won’t be repeating my mistake of following my instincts as I did two years ago: an impressionable girl, swept away by you and anxious to please her new family. I was born with nothing and I was never allowed to forget it. By your own admission I have changed. I won’t be used again.”

“Whatever passed between you and my family is history and has nothing to do with me. I simply want your business skills. If, as I imagine, you can’t keep out of my bed, well, you are my wife and I will take pleasure in giving you what you desire. But, for now, I want you out of here within the hour. My plane will leave this afternoon for Italy and you will be on it.”

CHAPTER TWO

The plane banked steeply out of Wellington airport and Giovanni stabbed his index finger on the delete key of his computer, determined not to succumb to temptation and look across at his wife.

“Doing your own emails now?”

He raised his eyes and looked at her over his laptop. She had her “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” look. But it would. Her mouth could raise the coolest temperature. And his temperature was never cool, despite appearances.

“Obviously.”

He concentrated once more on the screen of emails highlighted in bold that awaited his attention. He normally traveled with assistants who took care of the irritating details of his business.

“I’m surprised your staff let you have a computer.”

“My staff do as I say.”

“They do what’s best for you and, since you threw your laptop out the window, that’s meant keeping computers away from you.”

Giovanni frowned. This was the first time in years that he’d needed a laptop. No wonder he’d had a job finding one.
 

“And where are your assistants anyway? I thought they never left your side.”

“There are some jobs one has to do personally.”

“Like blackmailing your wife.”

He felt the thump of adrenalin hit his veins.
Control
, he thought.

“I prefer to think of it as persuading my wife to return to her home.”

“My home is in New Zealand.”

“Not for the next six months it isn’t. And, after that, we’ll see…”

He left the words hanging in the air and shrugged before returning his attention to the computer.

“I return home, that’s what.”

She crossed her legs and looked out the window. The subject was obviously not up for discussion.

He gave up trying to understand what he was reading. Instead he stabbed his finger on the delete key once more. She was wrong. She had to be. He would keep her because she wouldn’t want to leave. He’d make sure of it.

Feeling the heat of her gaze upon him, he struck the delete key repeatedly. How could such cool blue eyes have this effect on him? It tested the control he was determined to maintain. He had to. Lack of it had cost him dearly.

“Umm.”

The sound reminded him of her soft moan of contentment. But it wasn’t. He sighed.

“What?”

“Interesting.”

He really wasn’t in the mood for such games. He was determined not to respond and continued pressing random keys in an attempt to maintain the fiction that he knew what he was doing.

The silence grew and he pressed one key too many and the program suddenly quit. He looked up, annoyed.

“And
what
is ‘interesting’ supposed to mean?”

One angry glance from him and people usually stopped irritating him. But his manner appeared to have no effect whatsoever on Rose, who remained composed.

“Just that you don’t actually seem to be reading anything before you delete the messages. Hope they’re not important.”

He stopped himself from hitting the delete key once more, despite the fact the program was no longer open. God only knew what would happen if he struck the key again.
 

“And why would that concern you? Worried that I’m missing out on lucrative deals?” He pushed the damn computer away from him, sat back and allowed himself to gaze full and long on his wife.

Her fine features were even finer, if that were possible, and her pale skin was golden from the hot New Zealand sun. On one hand she looked stronger—tanned and lithe—and yet on the other she seemed to possess a strange quality of separateness. It was as if she’d removed herself from the world. It was in her eyes—the cool blue of a winter’s sea—no longer inviting, but always challenging, repulsing now.