Modern Romance February 2016 Editor's Choice

* * *

The master bedroom was a huge airy space with a tiled floor and a bed as big as a football pitch. The bathroom was fitted out like a glossy magazine spread and she revelled in the wet room with the complex jet system. Everything bore Gaetano’s contemporary stamp and the extreme shower facilities were not a surprise. She had been feeling very warm and the cold water gushing over her before she managed to work out how to operate the complicated controls cooled her off wonderfully. Clad in a light cotton sundress, she wandered back downstairs.

Black hair curling and still damp from the shower, Gaetano joined her on the terrace to slot another glass of wine into her hand. ‘From our own award-winning winery,’ he told her wryly. ‘Rodolfo takes a personal interest in the vineyard.’

Poppy surveyed him from below her lashes. He was so beautiful, she found it a challenge to look anywhere else. His spectacular black-lashed eyes were reflective as he leant gracefully up against a stone pillar support to survey the panoramic landscape, his lithe, lean, powerful body indolently relaxed. A faint shadow of black stubble roughened his strong jaw line, accentuating the wide sensual curve of his mouth. A tiny nerve snaked tight somewhere in her pelvis as she thought of how long it had been since he kissed her and whether a kiss could possibly be as unbelievably good as she remembered it being. Likely not, she told herself, for she had always been a dreamer. How else could she have imagined even as a teenager that Gaetano Leonetti would ever be seriously interested in her?

And yet, here she was, a little voice whispered seductively, Gaetano’s wedding ring on her finger, and mortifyingly that awareness went to her head like the strongest alcohol. But their marriage still wasn’t real; it was still a fantasy, the same little voice added. She had been a fake fiancée and a fake bride and now she was a fake wife. In fact just about the only thing that wouldn’t be fake between them was their wedding night.

The very blood in her veins seemed to be coursing slowly, heavily. She finished her wine and set down the glass, insanely aware of the tightening prominence of her nipples. She lifted the tiny handwritten menu displayed on the table, glancing with a sinking heart through the several courses that were to be served.

‘You know, I’m not remotely hungry and I don’t think I could eat anything,’ Poppy confided truthfully. ‘I hope that’s not going to offend Dolores...’

Gaetano glanced at her, eyes flaming golden as a lion’s in the sunset lighting up the sky in an awesome display of crimson and peach. Mouth suddenly dry, she stopped breathing, frowning as he strode back into the house and disappeared from view. A few minutes later she heard a noisy little car start up somewhere and drive away. Gaetano reappeared to close a hand over hers and tug her gently back indoors.

‘Do we have to eat in some stuffy dining room?’ She sighed.

‘No, we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,’ Gaetano told her, bending down to lift her up into his arms. ‘I’ve sent Sean and Dolores home. We’re on our own until tomorrow and I am much hungrier for you than for food.’

‘You can’t possibly carry me up those stairs!’ Poppy exclaimed.

‘Right at this moment I could carry you up ten flights of stairs, bellezza mia,’ Gaetano admitted, darting his mouth across her collarbone so that her head fell back to expose her slender white throat and her bright hair cascaded over his arm. ‘Congratulations on being the only woman smart enough to make me wait...’

‘Wait for what? Oh...’ Poppy registered with a wealth of meaning in her tone while distinctly revelling in being carried as though she were a little dainty thing, which, in her own opinion, she was not.

Gaetano settled her down on the bed. Helpfully she kicked off her shoes and wished she had taken a painkiller for her sore throat and head. But she couldn’t possibly take the gloss off the evening by admitting that she was feeling under par, could she? And she would have to admit it to get medication because she had packed nothing of that nature, indeed had only brought her contraceptive pills with her. She wasn’t about to make a fuss about a stupid cold, was she?

He ran down the zip on her dress but only after kissing a path across her bare shoulders and lingering at the nape of her neck where her skin proved to be incredibly sensitive and she quivered, her insides turning to liquid heat beneath his attention.

‘I have died and gone to heaven...’ Gaetano intoned thickly as the dress dropped unnoticed to the carpet, exposing his bride in her ice-blue satin corset top and matching knickers.

‘This is your wedding present,’ Poppy announced, stretching back against the smooth white bedding with a confidence that she had never known she could possess.

Of course it would be different once he started removing stuff and nudity got involved, she conceded ruefully. For now, however, having guessed that Gaetano would be the type of male who found sexy lingerie that enhanced a woman’s figure appealing, Poppy felt like a million dollars. Why? Simply because somehow Gaetano always contrived to look at her as if she had the most amazing female body ever and that had done wonders for her self-image.

‘No, you are my wedding present,’ Gaetano told her with conviction. ‘I’ve been counting down the hours until we were together.’

Her luminous green eyes widened in surprise and she bit back the tactless retort that anyone would consider that a romantic comment. After all, Gaetano was fully focused on sex and neither romance nor commitment would play any part in their marriage. And wasn’t that all she was focused on as well? As Gaetano came down on the bed beside her, his shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned to display a sleek, bronzed, muscular six-pack, Poppy was entranced by the view. He was stunning and, for now, he was hers. Why look beyond that? Why try to complicate things?

Loosening the corset one hook at a time, Gaetano ran a long finger down over the delicate spine he had exposed and then put his mouth there, tracing the line below her smooth ivory skin. ‘You are so beautiful, gioia mia.’

Poppy hid a blissed-out smile behind her tumbling hair and closed her eyes as he eased off the light corset and lifted his hands to cup her breasts. Her back arched, her straining nipples pushing against his fingers until he tugged on the tender buds and an audible gasp escaped her.

Gaetano lifted her and turned her round to face him. ‘I want to be your first,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘It will be my privilege.’

‘Careful, Gaetano...you’re sounding nice.’ Now outrageously aware of her naked breasts, Poppy crossed her arms to hide them.

‘I may be many things, but nice isn’t one of them,’ Gaetano growled, pulling her down on the bed beside him and covering her pouting mouth hungrily with his own. Unbridled pleasure snaked through her as his tongue merged with hers. An electrifying push of hunger gripped her as his hands shifted to toy with her breasts. He pushed her back against the pillows and lowered his mouth to her pouting nipples.

‘Palest pink like pearls,’ Gaetano mused, stroking a tender tip with appreciation as he gazed down at her.’ I wondered what colour they would be...’

Her green eyes widened. ‘Seriously?’ she prompted.

‘And they’re perfect like the rest of you,’ he groaned, lowering his head to lick a distended crest. ‘You were so worth waiting for at the church.’

Poppy wasn’t quite as pleased as she would have assumed she would be by having that much appreciation directed at her physical attributes. Gaetano was interfering with her fantasy, that fantasy that she had not even acknowledged was playing at the back of her mind, the fantasy in which Gaetano loved her and appreciated her for all sorts of other reasons that went beyond lust.

‘And so were you,’ Poppy told Gaetano, deciding to turn the tables as she sat up to dislodge him and pushed him back against the pillows. He studied her with questioning dark golden eyes semi-veiled by black curling lashes. She spread her fingers across his hard pectoral muscles, stroking down over his sleek ribcage to his flat abdomen.

‘Don’t stop now,’ he husked.

Her fingers were clumsy on his belt buckle and the button on the waistband of his trousers, her knuckles nudging against the little furrow of dark hair that disappeared below his clothing. She reached for the zip. Her lack of expertise was obvious to Gaetano and the oddest sensation of tenderness infiltrated him as he noted the tense self-consciousness etched in her flushed face.

‘Why do I get the feeling this is a first for you?’

‘Everyone is a learner at some stage...’ she framed jerkily.

Gaetano yanked down his zip for himself and then tossed her back flat on the bed again while he divested himself of his trousers and his boxers. ‘If you touched me now, it would all be over far too fast,’ he told her thickly. ‘That’s why I’m going to do most of the touching and you will lie back and let me do the work.’

‘If you think of it as work, I don’t think you should bother.’

‘Nothing would stop me now. I can hardly wait to be inside you.’ Gaetano leant over her, his urgent erection pushing against her hip. ‘Having you in my bed has been my fantasy for weeks.’

‘Fantasy never lives up to reality,’ Poppy said nervously. ‘I don’t want to be a fantasy.’

‘Sorry, it’s my fantasy,’ Gaetano traded, stroking a wondering hand down over the slender curve of her hip to the hot, damp secret at the heart of her.

Her hips jerked and her eyes shut as he traced between her thighs. Her breath snarled in her throat. She was so sensitised that she shuddered when he circled her clitoris with his fingertip. Her whole body was climbing of its own volition into a tight, tense spiral of growing need. Even the brush of a finger against her tight entrance was almost too much to bear. Her hips pushed against the mattress, her heart thumping like thunder inside her chest as he shimmied down the bed, fingertips delicately caressing her inner thighs as he pushed her legs back, opening her.

‘No, you can’t do that!’ she gasped in consternation.

‘Stai zitto...’ he told her softly. ‘You don’t get to tell me what to do in bed.’

The flick of his tongue across torturously tender nerve endings deprived her of voice and then of thought. Her head shifted back and forth on the pillows, the thrum of hunger building up through her body to a siren’s scream of need. She gasped, she cried his name, she moaned, she lost control so completely and utterly that when the explosive release of orgasm claimed her it took her by storm. And the world stopped turning for long minutes, her body still quaking with wondrous aftershocks while Gaetano looked down at her with satisfaction.

As Gaetano tilted her back she felt the smooth steel push of him against her still-throbbing core. The tight knot low in her pelvis made its presence felt again, the hollow ache of hunger stirring afresh. He slid against her, easing into her by degrees, straining her delicate sheath.

‘You’re so tight,’ he groaned, pulling back again and then angling his hips for another, more forceful entrance.

The sharp stinging pain made Poppy flinch for a millisecond and then her body was pushing on past that fleeting discomfort to linger on the satisfying stretch and fullness of his invasion. A little moan broke low in her throat and she moved her hips to luxuriate in the throbbing hardness of his bold masculinity.

Gaetano swore in Italian. ‘You feel like heaven,’ he growled in her ear. ‘Am I hurting you now?’

‘Oh, no,’ she told him truthfully.

And then he moved again, withdrawing and spearing deep enough to wring a cry of startled enjoyment from her. From that moment on her eagerness climbed in tune with Gaetano’s every measured thrust. Her heart raced, her legs clamping round his lean hips as she lifted to him, matching his driving rhythm while the electrifying excitement continued to build. And when she reached that peak for the second time she plunged over it in a fevered delirium of intense quivering release and lay adrift in pleasure.

‘That was amazing,’ Gaetano muttered thickly, rolling over onto his back while curving an arm round her trembling body. ‘You were amazing, bella mia.’

Poppy felt totally exhausted and she was content to lie there in the circle of his arms and marvel at the sublime sense of peace she was experiencing. Belatedly, she acknowledged that her throat and head had now become seriously sore. She hoped that Gaetano wouldn’t catch her cold and felt guilty for not warning him.

In fact she was just about to mention her affliction when Gaetano sat up to say quietly, ‘Possibly part of the reason it felt so amazing was that it was the very first time I’ve had sex bareback.’

‘Bareback?’ she queried.

‘I didn’t use protection. I had a health check a couple of weeks ago to ensure that I’m clean and you’re guarded against pregnancy,’ he reminded her. ‘I couldn’t resist the temptation to try it.’

Poppy made no comment because she knew that he would be ultra-careful with her in the protection stakes because to be careless and risk a pregnancy would come at too high a price for either of them.

‘I’m really hungry now...aren’t you?’ Gaetano admitted, thrusting back the sheet and vacating the bed.

‘Not really, no.’ Indeed the thought of forcing food past her aching throat made her wince. ‘But I could murder a cup of tea.’

‘You’ll have to make it for yourself,’ he warned her. ‘I sent the staff home.’

‘I’ve been making tea for myself since I was a child,’ she told him wryly.

‘I forgot.’ Faint colour enhancing the exotic slant of his cheekbones, Gaetano frowned. ‘Your voice sounds funny...’

‘I’m getting a cold.’ Poppy sighed. ‘I hope you don’t get it too.’

‘I never catch colds.’ Gaetano vanished into the bathroom and a moment later she heard the shower running.

Poppy was so exhausted that she really didn’t want to move, but exhaustion was something she had become practised at shaking off and working through in recent months when she had spent all day cleaning Woodfield Hall and then had stood at the bar serving drinks all evening. Sliding out of bed, she went into the dressing room to pick an outfit and padded off to find another bathroom to use.

Gaetano hadn’t hurt her much, she thought tiredly as she dressed. He had been considerate. He had made it incredibly enjoyable. Why did the knowledge that he had learned how to make sex enjoyable with other women stab her like a knife? She blinked, feeling hot and more than a little dizzy. Clearly she had caught an absolute doozy of a cold but she didn’t want to be a burden by admitting to Gaetano that she felt awful. A good night’s sleep would make her feel much better.

Casually clad in cotton palazzo pants and a tee shirt, she went downstairs, located the kitchen and put on the kettle. She heard Gaetano talking to someone and her brow pleated as she walked to the doorway to see who it was. She almost groaned out loud when she finally realised that he was talking into his phone in tones that sounded angry. As his brilliant dark golden eyes landed on her she froze at the chilling light in his gaze.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her voice fracturing into roughness.

Gaetano thrust his phone back in the pocket of his jeans and stared at her angrily, almost as if he’d never seen her before. ‘That was Rodolfo calling to warn me about something some tabloid newspaper plans to print tomorrow. One of his old friends in the press tipped him off...’

‘Oh..?’ Poppy heard the kettle switching off behind her and turned away, desperate to ease her sore throat with a hot drink.

Gaetano bit out a sharp, unamused laugh. ‘When were you planning to tell me that you once worked as a nude model?’

Poppy spun back, wide-eyed with astonishment. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘That filthy rag is going to print photos of you naked tomorrow. My wife naked in a newspaper for the world to see!’ Gaetano launched at her in outrage. ‘Madonna diavolo...how could you cheapen yourself like that?’

‘I’ve never worked as a nude model. There couldn’t possibly be photos of me naked anywhere...’ Poppy protested and then she stilled, literally freezing into place, sudden anxiety filling her eyes.

‘Oh, you’ve just remembered doing it, have you?’ Gaetano derided harshly. ‘Well, thanks for warning me. If I’d known I would’ve bought the photos to keep them off the market.’

‘It’s not like you think,’ Poppy began awkwardly, horrified at the idea that illegal shots might have been taken of her at the photographic studio while she was unaware. But what else could she think?

As something akin to an anxiety attack claimed her already overheated body Poppy found it very hard to catch her breath. She dropped dizzily down into the chair by the scrubbed pine table. ‘I’m not feeling well,’ she mumbled apologetically.

‘If you think that feigning illness is likely to get you out of this particular tight corner, it’s not,’ Gaetano asserted in such a temper that he could hardly keep his voice level and his volume under control.

The mere idea of nude photos of Poppy being splashed all over the media provoked a visceral reaction from Gaetano. It offended him deeply. Poppy was his wife and the secrets of her body were his and not for sharing. He wanted to punch walls and tear things apart. He was ablaze with a dark, violent fury that had very little to do with the fact that another scandal around his name would once again drag the proud name of the Leonetti Bank into disrepute. In fact his whole reaction felt disturbingly personal.

‘Not feigning,’ Poppy framed raggedly, pushing her hands down on the table top to rise again.

‘I want the truth. If you had told me about this, I would never have married you,’ Gaetano fired at her without hesitation.

Poppy flopped back down into the seat because her legs refused to support her. She felt really ill and believed she must have caught the flu. He would never have married her had he known about the photo. Who would ever have thought that Gaetano, the notorious womaniser, would be that narrow-minded? And why should she care? And yet she did care. A lone stinging tear trickled from the corner of her eye and once again she tried to get up and leave but she couldn’t catch her breath. It was as though a giant stone were compressing her lungs. In panic at that air deprivation her hands flailed up to her throat, warding off the darkness that was claiming her.

Gaetano gazed in disbelief at Poppy as she virtually slithered off the chair down onto the floor and lay there unconscious, as pale and still as a corpse. And all of a sudden the publication of nude photos of his wife was no longer his most overriding concern...

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘NO, I DON’T think that my wife has an eating disorder,’ Gaetano bit out between gritted teeth in the waiting room.

‘Signora Leonetti is seriously underweight, dehydrated...in generally poor physical condition,’ the doctor outlined disapprovingly. ‘That is why the bacterial infection has gained such a hold on her and why we are still struggling to get her temperature under control. That she contrived to get through a wedding and travel in such a state has to be a miracle.’

‘A miracle...’ Gaetano whispered, sick to his stomach and, for the very first time in his brilliantly successful, high-achieving life, feeling like a failure.

How else could he feel? Poppy had collapsed. His wife was wearing an oxygen mask in the IC unit, having drugs pumped into her. All right, she hadn’t told him how she was feeling but shouldn’t a normal, decent human being have noticed that something was wrong?

Unfortunately he clearly couldn’t claim to be a normal, decent human being. And his analytical mind left him in no doubt of exactly where he had gone wrong. He had been too busy admiring his bride’s tiny waist to register that she was dangerously thin. He had been too busy dragging her off to bed to register that she was unwell. And when she had tried to tell him, what had he done? Porca miseria, he had shouted at her and accused her of feigning illness!

‘May I see her now?’ he asked thickly.

He stood at the foot of the bed looking at Poppy through fresh eyes, rigorously blocking the sexual allure that screwed with his brain. Ironically she had always impressed him as being so lively, energetic and opinionated that he had instinctively endowed her with a glowing health that she did not possess. Now that she was silent and lying there so still, he could see how vulnerable she really was. It was etched in the fine bones of her face, the slenderness of her arms, the exhaustion he could clearly see in the bluish shadows below her eyes.

And what else would she be but exhausted? he asked himself grimly. For months she had worked two jobs, managing the hall and working at the bar. She had been so busy looking after her mother and her brother that she had forgotten to look after herself. He suspected that she had got out of the habit then of taking regular meals and rest. And even when both food and rest had been on offer in London she had still chosen to work every day at that café. In truth she was as much of a workaholic in her proud and stubborn independence as he was, he acknowledged bleakly. He could only hope that he was correct in believing that she did not suffer from an underlying eating disorder.

‘Your grandfather is waiting outside...’ a nurse informed him.

‘There was no need for you to leave your bed,’ Gaetano scolded the older man. ‘I only texted you so that you would know where I was.’

‘How is she?’ Rodolfo asked worriedly.

And Gaetano told him, withholding nothing. ‘I’ve been a pretty lousy husband so far,’ he breathed in grim conclusion, conceding the point before it could be made for him.

‘You have a steep learning curve in front of you.’ His grandfather sighed. ‘But she’s a wonderful girl and well worth the effort. And it’s not where you start out that matters, Gaetano...it’s where you end up.’

Rodolfo could not have been more wrong in that estimate, Gaetano reflected austerely. Where you started out mattered very much if you had previously blocked the road to journey’s end. His marriage was not a marriage and the relationship was already faltering. He had put up a roadblock with the word divorce on it and used that as an excuse to behave badly. He had screwed up. He had been shockingly selfish and with Poppy of all people, Poppy who had trailed round after him and his dog, Dino, on the estate when they were both kids. And what had she been like then?

Like an irritating little kid sister. Kind, madly affectionate, his biggest fan. He exhaled heavily. He had had more compassion as a boy than he had retained as an adult and he had not lived up to Poppy’s high expectations. Worse still, he had taken advantage of her despair over her family’s predicament. He had forced through the terms he wanted, terms she should have denied for her own sake, terms only a complete selfish bastard would have demanded. But it was a little too late to turn that particular clock back.

Was the selfishness a Leonetti trait? His father had been the ultimate egotist and his mother had never in her life, to his knowledge, put anyone’s needs before her own. Had his dysfunctional parents made him the ruthless predator that he was at heart? Or had wealth and success and boundless ambition irrevocably changed him? Gaetano asked himself grimly.

* * *

Poppy surfaced to appreciate that her head had stopped aching. She discovered that she could swallow again and that her breath was no longer trapped in her chest. She opened her eyes on the unfamiliar room, taking in the hospital bed and the drip attached to her arm before focusing on Gaetano, who was hunched in the chair in the corner.

Gaetano looked as if he had been dragged through hell and far removed from the sophisticated, exquisitely groomed image that was the norm for him. His black curls were tousled, his jaw line heavily stubbled. His jacket was missing. His shirt was open at his brown throat and his sleeves were rolled up. As she stared he lifted his head and she collided with glorious dark golden eyes.