One Night In…
Alessandro smiled. ‘Have another bite.’
Obediently, Meghan opened her mouth, and Alessandro slid in another forkful. She could feel a drip of chocolate on the corner of her mouth and, mesmerised, watched as Alessandro wiped it before licking it off his own finger.
‘Mmm.’
She closed her eyes briefly. ‘What’s going on here?’ she whispered.
‘We’re eating dessert.’
‘Alessandro, you know what I mean.’
He shrugged, though his eyes blazed into hers. ‘I want you. You want me.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Meghan shook her head. ‘I wish it were.’ She gazed down at the crumbled remnants of their shared feast, delicious while it lasted but gone so quickly. She’d travelled that route before.
She would not do it again.
She looked up, her eyes wide and bleak. ‘I won’t sleep with you.’
‘So you’ve said.’ Alessandro took a sip of wine, looking amused.
Meghan sighed wearily. ‘I know you think you’ll wear me down eventually, and in truth you might get close. You might even win.’
‘Is this a battle?’ he murmured.
‘You know it is. If I sleep with you I’ll lose my self-respect, my dignity. I’ll have given into desire, and I’ll hate myself for it.’
‘Why couch it in those terms? Why can’t we love each other as two responsible, mature adults?’
Meghan laughed without humour. ‘Because it’s not about love.’
‘You said you didn’t believe in love.’
There was no mistaking the look of surprise on Alessandro’s face, the heavy-lidded languor replaced with a wary tension.
‘I don’t. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give myself to every— any—man I’m attracted to. I don’t operate that way. Sorry.’
‘So. You don’t believe in love, but you won’t make love with someone out of simple desire. What are you going to do? Become a nun?’
Meghan gave a shaky laugh. ‘At times that prospect is appealing.’ She twirled her fork between her fingers. ‘I don’t know what is going to happen in the future.’ Her tone and face were bleak as she considered the prospect. The future was something she avoided thinking about. Sometimes it didn’t seem as if she had one at all. ‘I just can’t ever see myself falling in love again. If that means being alone, then I guess I’ll just have to get used to that.’
‘It’s not easy, being alone,’ Alessandro said after a moment.
Meghan glanced at him, surprised by the guarded note in his voice, the vulnerability in his eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s safer.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Safety is important to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘This man you were with—you loved him? And he made you feel unsafe?’
‘Of course he did,’ Meghan replied shortly. ‘Stephen was married. I didn’t know it—’
‘Stephen?’ Alessandro’s eyes darkened. He reached across the table to pluck the fork from her hand. He took her fingers in his, stroking her wrist with soft, tender movements. ‘This Stephen— he was an ass. Even I can see that. But you can’t let one man— one experience—spoil the rest of us for ever.’
‘I’m sure,’ Meghan said with a little smile, struggling to hold onto her composure as the fluttery little movements on her wrist went straight to her heart, ‘you’d like to be the man to break the pattern.’
‘One man, one relationship, is not a pattern.’
‘Well, no.’ Meghan glanced down, her eyes suddenly blurred with tears as memories rushed to the surface—memories she had firmly stamped down when she’d fled Stephen’s apartment, fled the memories and the tears and kept running.
She still hadn’t stopped.
‘Meghan? Gattina?’ Alessandro lifted her chin with his fingertips. ‘What is wrong? What did I say?’
‘Nothing.’ Meghan blinked back the tears and smiled. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, I am sorry. We’ve wasted enough time indoors. We can walk through the town, up to the old fortress. There is a beautiful view from its walls.’
And as easily as that, he dispelled the tension, the sorrow. Meghan let herself be led, her hand in his, out into the Umbrian sunshine.
The last thing she wanted to think about was Stephen, or the night she’d finally had the courage to walk away.
That was a memory she had locked deep into her soul. Something she never, never wanted to talk about. Certainly not to Alessandro. Not to anyone. Ever.
The fortress was built into the hill, overlooking the tumbled buildings of the town, and Meghan could imagine how it had once been formidable, impenetrable.
Now its walls were crumbling, mellow in the sunshine, and children played in the street below. Meghan let Alessandro lead her up the steps onto the top of the crenellated wall, the Umbrian countryside spread out before them in a peaceful patchwork of earthen colours.
A teasing wind blew her hair around her face and she breathed in the clean, pine-scented air, as pure and satisfying as a drink of water.
Alessandro and Meghan silently surveyed the panorama of tumbled hills and olives groves, taking in the majesty of an unchanged landscape.
‘Did you grow up here?’ Meghan asked after a long moment.
‘Yes and no. As I told you, I went to school in England. My parents’ main house of residence is in Milan. And yet …’ He smiled with wry honesty. ‘This was home.’
‘Your brother’s villa?’
‘Yes. It was my father’s before that.’
But not yours, Meghan realised silently, wondering what lay behind his careful choice of words.
‘Well, it’s beautiful,’ she said with a smile. ‘I happened on Spoleto by chance, but I’m glad I came.’
‘So am I,’ Alessandro murmured, and sudden expectant tension thrummed between them, heavy with meaning, with possibility.
Meghan stared out at the countryside, blind now to its charms.
‘I should take you back to Spoleto tonight,’ Alessandro said suddenly. His face looked hard.
Meghan’s stomach plunged icily. She realised she was disappointed. She had expected to stay. She’d expected Alessandro to want her to stay.
‘If that’s what you want,’ she said, only just managing to keep her voice steady.
Alessandro raked a hand through his hair. ‘You know it is not!’ He dropped his hand, tracing her cheek with his fingers. ‘But you are haunted, Meghan, by the past. This man—he is like a shadow. I can almost see him at your shoulder.’
Meghan touched his fingers briefly with her own, her fingers winding around his, clinging. Pleading. ‘I don’t want him there.’
Alessandro smiled sadly. ‘Neither do I.’
He cupped her cheek and she closed her eyes, revelling in the touch, the tenderness. She couldn’t go yet. She couldn’t leave this man—this hold he had on her senses, her soul. Perhaps even her heart. It wasn’t love. She knew that. It was desire; it was need.
‘Don’t take me back yet,’ she whispered.
His hand stilled. ‘Are you sure?’
Meghan opened her eyes, swallowed audibly. Panic was fast setting in. ‘I don’t mean … I’m not …’
Alessandro smiled. His thumb caressed her lips. ‘I know.’
He drew her naturally to him, in an embrace that was gentle rather than passionate. ‘Stay,’ he murmured against her hair. ‘God knows, I don’t want you to go.’
Meghan knew their time had been extended by only a day, perhaps two. Soon she would have to move on, and so would Alessandro. Their lives had never been meant to intertwine.
This was going to end. It was just a matter of when … and what happened beforehand.
The drive back to Tre Querce was quiet, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Meghan gazed out of the window at the fallow fields and bare vineyards, the sky above streaking lavender and gold.
She’d never reacted to any man the way she reacted to Alessandro—even Stephen hadn’t affected her so profoundly, so deeply … as if he were stroking not just her hand or her body, but her soul.
Her whole body—her whole self—yearned towards his touch, his understanding. The two, she realised, were intimately connected.
He didn’t love her.
He made no promises.
And yet … she wanted him.
She wanted him.
More than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life.
More than your self-respect?
Meghan closed her eyes against the setting sun now blazing over the hills and fields.
I don’t know.
As Alessandro turned the car up the twisting drive, Meghan wondered what the night would hold. She turned to look at him, and he sensed her gaze and smiled, reaching over to twine her fingers with his.
‘Don’t be afraid, Meghan. There don’t have to be any shadows.’
Shadows. Meghan thought of Stephen. She could still see his face, hear his words.
I thought this was what you wanted.
How could he have thought that? How could he have twisted everything so horribly, so shamefully?
Alessandro was nothing like him, Meghan told herself. She knew that. He’d proved it to her again and again over this day. No matter how they’d started—what she’d thought—what he’d thought—it was different now.
Everything was different.
Could be different … if she let it.
If she let the shadows fade away.
Alessandro’s hand tightened briefly on her own. ‘Ana has the night off.’
So they would be alone. Meghan swallowed. ‘Alessandro, I want—’
Meghan broke off, her heart still hammering, as Alessandro braked sharply in front of Tre Querce and cursed in Italian under his breath.
There was another car parked in front of the villa, a racy red convertible, and the man leaning against its hood was one Meghan recognised.
It was Alessandro’s companion from lunch at Angelo’s. As the man’s eyes flashed to Meghan her own stomach lurched. There was no mistaking his knowing, lascivious grin or what it meant.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WELL, well, well.’ Richard Harrison pushed himself away from the convertible and strolled towards Alessandro’s car. ‘You sly dog. Keeping her all to yourself.’
Alessandro flicked a cool, contemptuous gaze towards Richard. ‘I don’t recall inviting you here,’ he replied, in a voice of dangerous silkiness.
‘I was bored, and I do believe it’s your job to entertain me.’
‘You’re not a child, Richard, as much as you behave like one.’
Richard’s watery blue eyes blazed for a second. His mouth turned down sulkily. ‘You need my business, di Agnio.’
Alessandro chuckled dryly, although his expression remained diamond-hard. ‘You should realise by now, Richard, that there are very few things I need. You and your string of second-rate department stores is not one of them.’
Richard’s face suffused with colour, turning puce. He clenched his fists, half raised one. ‘You’ll regret that.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Meghan’s hand was slippery on the door handle as she grasped it. She heard the men trading insults, but it sounded like no more than dogs snarling at one another. She couldn’t take it in. The one salient detail that had made its way into her numb mind was Richard’s careless sentence.
Keeping her all to yourself.
They’d discussed her. Talked about her.
Richard’s gaze roved over Meghan with crude, insulting boldness, his eyes lingering on her breasts and thighs, sweeping over her as if he owned her, as if she could be bought. His thin lips turned up in a revolting smirk, and his watery eyes gleamed with lust. ‘She’s just as pretty as I said.’
‘I think you should leave, Richard.’ Alessandro’s voice was calm and dispassionate, but a muscle ticked in his jaw and his eyes were like black ice.
Richard raised his eyebrows. ‘What was it you said? There are better amusements in Spoleto than a two-bit part-time whore? It seems there aren’t, my friend, and I think it’s time you started to share.’ He moved towards her, pale eyes glittering, and Meghan couldn’t move. Couldn’t think except to hear the sickening echo of his words.
Alessandro’s words.
Two-bit part-time whore.
Just as she’d suspected and Alessandro had denied.
Just as she’d known.
She watched, transfixed, trapped, as Richard reached for her, his wet lips parted, his eyes glittering with lecherous intent.
He never managed to touch her. Alessandro moved with swift, calm certainty.
She heard rather than saw the crunch of Alessandro’s fist into Richard’s jaw. He staggered and fell onto the pavement by her feet.
She stared down silently. She still hadn’t moved.
‘I could sue you!’ Richard choked. He clutched at his bleeding mouth, his face contorted with humiliated fury.
Alessandro massaged his knuckles. There was a fierce, primal light of satisfaction burning in his eyes as he gazed down at Richard. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said calmly. ‘Now, you’d better get off my premises before I do something worse to that pathetic baby face of yours.’
Richard glared. ‘You’ve just lost a hell of a lot of business, di Agnio. I know what this deal meant to Di Agnio Enterprises!’
Alessandro’s smile was sardonic. ‘I’ll live.’ He turned his back on Richard in dismissal, and put his arm around Meghan’s shoulders. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ Her voice came out as brittle and sharp as shattered glass. She felt as if she were nothing more than a handful of shattered glass, a fistful of jagged splinters. Shaking off Alessandro’s arm, she moved towards the villa. ‘I’ll just get my things.’
She walked on numb legs to her room, the villa streaming by her blind eyes in a blur of colour.
Almost dispassionately she saw that her haversack had been placed at the foot of her bed. Who had fetched it? she wondered. How many minions worked for Alessandro, in a life she didn’t even understand, with a power she could not begin to fathom? A power abused.
She stuffed her crumpled white shirt and black skirt into the bag. She could return the clothes she was wearing to Alessandro later. There was no time to change.
She was zipping up her bag when Alessandro strode into the room.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
In the distance she heard the roar of the convertible heading down the drive. She spoke through stiff lips. ‘Leaving.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’ Meghan tugged at the zipper of her bag, refusing to meet Alessandro’s eyes. She couldn’t do that and get out of here. She knew she couldn’t.
‘You can’t.’
‘Yes, I can.’ Barely. The zipper had finally closed, and she swung the haversack onto her shoulder. She still hadn’t looked at him.
It was the only way she could keep the desperate shards of self-respect and sanity together.
For surely if she stayed one moment longer than necessary—if she let Alessandro talk to her, touch her—they would be scattered.
Stolen.
‘If you won’t drive me, I’ll walk.’
‘It’s over five kilometres to Spoleto,’ Alessandro warned. His mouth was a thin line of anger, his eyes black, his body tense and ready to spring, although there was a loose-limbed grace to his movements even in his fury.
Meghan shook her head wearily. ‘You can’t keep me prisoner here, Alessandro.’
‘Were you prisoner at the falls? At lunch? With me all day? When you begged me to let you stay? Don’t throw that one at me this time, Meghan. It won’t work.’
‘I enjoyed today,’ Meghan said, with a dispassionate calm she was far from feeling. ‘But I didn’t beg.’ She felt sick, and she prayed she wouldn’t throw up. Prayed she wouldn’t cry. ‘Now I want to leave.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll walk—’
‘No.’ He took her gently by the shoulders, his touch like a promise. Meghan closed her eyes. She didn’t need this. Couldn’t need it.
When he spoke his voice was a caress. ‘Look at me, Meghan.’
Damn him. Unwillingly, despite every good intention she’d ever had, she met his eyes.
‘Why are you doing this? Is it because of Richard? He’s a pig—porca—’
‘Two-bit, part-time whore.’ The words came out in a sorry little whisper.
Alessandro stared at her, his eyes blazing, filled with an urgency that almost undid her.
‘You believe what he said?’ he finally demanded hoarsely.
Meghan spoke through numb lips, her voice a rusty whisper. ‘Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t say it.’
Alessandro was silent, his gaze hard and unyielding. Then he released her, running a hand through his hair, and Meghan sagged against the bed. Her haversack fell to the floor.
‘I did say it.’
Tears pricked her lids. She’d begun to think perhaps it wasn’t true. Only now did she realise how much that brief flicker of hope had cost her. Damn him. Damn him for making her feel.
Feel so very much.
‘But I didn’t know you then,’ Alessandro continued in a voice of determined calm.
Meghan tossed her head, blinking back tears. ‘It was yesterday, Alessandro.’
‘A day is a long time.’
‘Not long enough.’ And yet far too long.
One day wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.
And yet it was. It was.
Wearily, every limb leaden, she stooped to pick up her haversack.
‘What do you want from me?’ Alessandro demanded. ‘Complete trust—faith in you before I even know you?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t you see? You judged me then, in the restaurant.’
‘Fine. I admit it. So?’ He stared at her, head tilted with casual instinctive arrogance, eyes blazing blue fire. ‘Harrison liked the look of you. He wanted to invite you here to serve us and see what happened.’
Meghan swallowed painfully. ‘And that’s just what you did.’
‘It is not! I rejected his offer—coldly, in disgust. Yes, I called you a two-bit part-time whore. I admit it, and I will not apologise. I didn’t know you then—hadn’t spoken to you, hadn’t looked into your eyes.’ His own eyes burned now into hers. ‘And when I did I wanted you. I wanted you for myself. Not as a waitress. Not as a whore. As a woman.’
‘Yet when you first invited me here you did think that of me … didn’t you? It wasn’t until later—’
‘What does it matter when it was?’ Alessandro exclaimed. ‘We are arguing about details!’
‘No,’ Meghan said, her voice stronger now. ‘We’re not. All that lovely nonsense about a pretty girl and wanting to get to know her, needing a pretence because of your prestige and wealth—it was just that. Nonsense. Lies. You didn’t mean any of it.’
‘I did.’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ Meghan’s voice rose in frustrated anger. She wanted truth—at least now. She deserved that much. ‘I thought you were honest. I was beginning to believe— But you’re as low and slimy as every other man I’ve known, thinking I’m a slut without even knowing my name! Lying to me to get what you want!’
‘Don’t compare me to that filth who used you,’ Alessandro warned in a dangerous voice. ‘I’ve been very patient with you, Meghan.’
She laughed incredulously, and the sound turned into a sneer. ‘Patient? Waiting twenty-four hours before you demand to be serviced? I don’t think so.’
Alessandro’s face was white with anger. ‘Have I demanded anything from you?’ he asked, in a low voice that still managed to thrum with power.
‘Should I be thankful?’ Meghan snarled back, too hurt to care how she sounded, how her words might hurt. She wanted them to hurt. She wanted, savagely, to bring Alessandro as low as he’d brought her, though she doubted it was possible. He didn’t care what she thought. He didn’t care what she felt. ‘I won’t be your night-time entertainment,’ she declared.
‘As I recall, you haven’t been providing any such entertainment,’ Alessandro retorted, his voice a predatory hiss. ‘Perhaps that’s the problem.’ He moved towards her with slow, purposeful strides, and the sudden intent look in his eyes, the harsh lines of his face softening with deliberate languor, made Meghan step backwards and stumble against the bed.
‘Don’t touch me!’
Alessandro prowled closer, an elegant stalking beast. Meghan pressed further against the bedframe, her heart thudding so hard she could feel the blood rushing in her ears.
She fell backwards onto the mattress, throwing one hand out to keep herself from becoming entirely helpless before him.
‘I’m not going to touch you,’ Alessandro informed her silkily. He stood above her, hands on hips, his whole body radiating lithe power, raw hunger.
His eyes glittered with intent and Meghan lay there, helpless, trapped by her own damning need.
‘I’m not that kind of man. But I am going to tell you how I would touch you if you let me. If you wanted me to.’
Meghan opened her mouth soundlessly, her eyes wide.
‘Do you know how I would touch you, Meghan? No, of course you don’t. I don’t think you’ve ever been touched that way. I imagine the man who took your innocence—because he did, didn’t he?—I imagine he used you for his own pleasure. He didn’t think about your needs—your desires—at all. Am I right?’
She wanted to speak. She would speak. She would tell him to go to hell, and then she would get up and walk away.
Except she didn’t.
‘When I touch you, Meghan,’ Alessandro continued, his voice a caressing whisper, ‘you’ll want me to. You’ll want me to because you’ll know that I want you, and you can want me, and that it can be good. Nothing shameful, nothing sordid.’
‘No …’ It came out as a plea, although whether to stop or continue Meghan didn’t even know. She was mesmerised by his words, by the unabashed hunger in his eyes, the desire he was not afraid to show.
The desire he was not afraid to feel.
‘First I’ll touch your lips. I’ve touched them already … just a taste. I want more now. I want more of you.’ He paused thoughtfully, his eyes glittering. ‘I think I’ll love touching your lips. They’re soft, and they’ll taste of walnut and raisins. Like the attorta we shared. Do you remember? Nutty and moist and so very, very sweet.’ His eyes moved from her mouth to her throat, and Meghan felt the damning blush staining her skin. Giving him evidence.
‘I’ll touch your throat there, where I can see your pulse. It’s beating quite wildly now.’ He smiled, and Meghan saw the desire in his eyes—pure, blazing. Elemental. ‘Then I’ll move lower. I’ll touch your breasts. I wonder what they look like? As golden as the rest of you? I want to feel them in my hands.’ He raised his hands, palms upwards, cupped, and Meghan moved slightly, leaning towards him, craving the thought of his touch.
‘I’ll touch you everywhere,’ Alessandro continued, his voice ragged now. ‘Stroking and kissing and bringing you to heights you’ve never climbed, places you’ve never been. Shattering you into a thousand pieces and then putting you back together again. And then you’ll touch me.’
Meghan shuddered. She couldn’t help it.
‘You’ll touch me, and I’ll want you to touch me. It will be like a gift.’ He closed his eyes briefly, his expression straining, pained. ‘I want that very much, Meghan. I want you to touch me.’
He stood very still, his head thrown back, the column of his throat brown and exposed and clean. Then he lowered his head and opened his eyes. Meghan saw the naked vulnerability there. He’d bared himself to her, she realized.
No other man had given her so much while seeming to promise so little.
He’d given her control. It felt precious.
Slowly, her legs trembling, she stood up. She was so close to him she could feel his breath on her cheek. Still he did not move.
Her hand shook as she lifted it, placed it deliberately on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat race under her palm, the muscles jerk in response, and a little smile stole over her features.
‘You see what you do to me?’ Alessandro’s voice was choked.
Meghan looked up. There was so much in his eyes—so much need, so much pain, so much desire. It stunned her, left her breathless.