you broke my spirit—’
‘You never had a spirit,’ he countered deridingly, taking a deliberate step towards her. ‘You used to jump ten miles high if anyone so much as frowned at you.’
She had to steal herself not to take a defensive step back. ‘Well, not any more,’ she said determinedly. ‘I am a mother now. And I shall fight you to the end of the earth if I have to but you will not separate me from my baby.’
‘This has nothing to do with the baby.’ He dismissed that angle, taking yet another carefully gauged step.
Her breasts heaved on a short, tense pull of air, but she held her ground.
‘This is about you standing there—’ he used his darkened eyes to indicate the defiant pose she had adopted ‘—daring to take me on …’
Another step. She quivered. He saw it and sent her a taunting smile. ‘The coil of wire,’ he suggested, ‘would make an adequate garotte but would require a lot of physical strength for you to succeed with it. I would throw it to one side if I were you, amore,’ he advised, ‘and concentrate on the scissors instead.’
‘Secateurs,’ she corrected him tensely.
His mocking half-nod acknowledged the correction. ‘Now with those you could do me some damage,’ he observed. ‘Not much,’ he added. ‘But some—enough maybe to make this new spirit you talk about feel better.’
‘I have no wish to damage you at all!’ she shakily denied. ‘I just want you to stop trying to bully me all the time!’
‘Then put down the weapons,’ he urged, ‘and we will talk about my—bullying.’
She shook her head in refusal, and the odd thing about it was that she had a feeling he would have been disappointed if she had given in to him. He was enjoying this; she could see the beginnings of amusement gleaming behind the taunt in his eyes.
‘Then make your move, cara,’ he softly advised. ‘Or I will undoubtedly make mine …’
Then he did—without any more warning, her half-second hesitation all he allowed her before his hands were suddenly snaking out to capture her two wrists, fingers closing tightly around them then forcing them up and apart until he had her standing there in front of him with her hands made useless; then his body was taking up the last bit of space separating them, chest against wildly palpitating chest, hips against hips, thighs against thighs.
‘I like it—the spirit,’ he murmured. ‘I used to like the soft clinging vine you used to be but I think I may like this more spirited creature a whole lot more.’
‘I don’t want you to like me,’ she mumbled in protest.
‘No?’ He challenged that. The word challenged it, his eyes challenged it, and the sensual curve of his mouth challenged it. ‘I think,’ he said very softly, ‘you want to be kissed into submission.’
‘I do not!’ she denied.
But it was too late; his mouth covered hers, covered it and moulded it, moulded it and parted it, and, on parting it, brought every sense that she’d been severely containing bursting into quick, clamouring life.
Her wrists he kept up and level with her head; her fingers were still clenched tightly around her ‘weapons’, as he’d called them. His big chest moved against her chest, making her breasts swell and tighten. His tight hips pushed knowingly against her hips, and the terrible, wonderful sinking feeling she experienced inside made her groan in denial. A denial he scorned by doing the same thing again. And again. And again—until the groan changed in timbre, gave her away, just as her breasts gave her away, her breathing, the way she sank powerlessly into the kiss.
Then her fingers slowly opened, the two clattered thuds which echoed on the tiles at either side of them announcing the final surrender, and she was tugging her wrists, urgent to free her fingers so that she could slide them into his hair, hold his mouth down on hers, move closer—even closer because her legs had turned to liquid and she needed his support to remain upright.
He let her have her way, set her wrists free so that her hands could find his head while his own hands lowered to clasp her lightly around her slender ribcage just below the trembling swell of her breasts. She gave a sensually unsteady sigh and wound her arms around his neck, moving her body closer to the source of its pleasure, sighed again as his hands began stroking her body, moving downwards until they found her hips where they closed and lifted her against the steadily growing evidence of his own passion.
It went on and on, and the one word which kept repeating itself over and over in her head was beautiful. This was so beautiful. The man, his touch, his kiss. Beautiful.
When he lifted her into his arms she did not protest. When he carried her through to the bedroom she only groaned in protest when his mouth left hers for the moment it took him to settle them both on the bed.
Then his mouth was back on hers and she was lost—lost in the beauty of deep, drugging kisses, of his hands caressing her body as they slowly stripped her of her clothes. She lost herself in the acute pleasure of helping him to remove his own, lost herself in the burning blackness of his eyes as he came over her and into her, slowly this time and deeply; mouth tense, cheeks taut with desire, he made the connection with a sombre need that brought tears to her eyes.
‘Don’t hate me, Nic,’ she whispered.
He didn’t answer, his long lashes lowering to cover his eyes, and his mouth came down to cover hers, and there in the full brightness of an afternoon sun he lost them both, lost them in the sheer beauty of a slow, slow climb to fulfilment.
When she awoke what seemed like hours later, but was probably only a few blissfully forgetful minutes, he was gone.
Gone hating her? she wondered. Hating himself?
CHAPTER NINE
AND that was it. Sara was trapped. Trapped by necessity. Trapped by her own body, which would respond to the slightest touch from the man who had reawoken it to its pleasures. And did he pleasure her! Night after night, hungrily, devouringly. But she never woke up to him still there beside her, and that trapped her too—trapped her in a tight little world of self-disgust and helplessness because she could not do a single thing to change the status quo, his status quo, where she played the loving wife and he played the ravaging conqueror.
She was trapped by his ruthless determination to appear the master of his own household by making her sleep with him, eat in the dining room with him and his father, where she was polite to Alfredo but that was about all and Alfredo teased her with cleverly chosen words with double meanings that she did not dare react to for fear of bringing Nicolas’s wrath down on her head.
And she was trapped by her daughter, who loved it here and, worse than that, adored Alfredo. A daughter whom Nicolas had managed to avoid at every possible opportunity, so they only came together on very rare occasions, when he would be coolly polite and the little girl would be warily cautious. And Sara would feel her heart break a little more each time she witnessed the guarded manner of both.
Then there was that terrible trapped feeling she experienced when twice a week Nicolas would take himself off to Taormina and not come back until late in the night. Those were the only nights he didn’t touch her. And that trapped her too, because she wanted him to touch her, she wanted him
