had to be. In a minute all of these people were going to start laughing in gruesome mockery, telling her to get out and never come near them again, which was how dreams like these usually finished. It was the only answer she could form to what it was she was looking at.
But it wasn’t a dream. She knew it because she could feel Marco literally vibrating with waiting tension beside her. She tried swallowing and found she couldn’t. She tried turning to look at him, but she couldn’t do that either because her eyes were refusing to move from what they had frozen on.
For right there, hanging on his parents’ wall for everyone to see, were two nudes painted in oils and mounted in matching frames. One was herself, looking slender and sleek and coyly seductive. The other was Marco, looking as bold and arrogant in his nakedness as she’d always perceived him to be.
Heat roared into her cheeks, then faded away again. Her heart began to thunder on the total shock of seeing the two of them so brazenly presented like this. And suddenly the dress began to make sense, the desire to drip her in diamonds. Marco was taking them all on—his parents, his friends, all those mocking doubters who didn’t believe he could love this woman who could expose her body like this.
If you can’t beat them, join them, he was saying. If I can’t make them believe, then—what the heck? Throw these two paintings in their faces and let them think what they like!
‘If you can hack it then I can too,’ Marco murmured beside her, and his voice was soft, layered with warmth and humour and a lazy challenge.
She found the strength to look at him, saw the humour reflecting in his eyes, plus something else—a plea, maybe, for her to understand what it was he had been trying to achieve when he’d decided to do this.
A short laugh rippled from her. It spilled into her eyes and turned his smile into a grin. She looked frontward again—and continued to smile, because she understood. She knew! This was his way of levelling the differences in them. It was him coming down his lofty ladder. It was her climbing up to meet him.
The hand he placed on her lower spine threaded electric sensation across her naked skin as it began drifting up her spine to her slender nape in an act of sensual possession.
‘More to come,’ he warned softly, and urged her into movement again.
Her legs felt like rubber. Her pulse was racing, and her mind was lost in a haze of shock and some dismay and a whole lot of sinfully delicious elation. He took them past smiling faces, past rueful faces, past familiar faces like Franco and Nicola. She saw, through what felt like a misted glaze, Stefan grinning knowingly at her, while the woman at his side looked on curiously. She was tall and dark and so beautiful it made Antonia halt for a second to offer her a warm smile.
‘Tanya.’ She whispered the woman’s name.
‘Later,’ Marco advised, and pressed her into movement again.
At the other end of the room, he finally paused. It was a staged arrival, which placed them exactly in between their naked images. Lights sparkled, diamonds flashed, faces observed curiously as he turned her towards him.
Holding the whole room captive, he looked deep into her eyes, then dropped his gaze to her mouth and allowed it to linger there until the pulse of anticipation became an energy charge all of its own.
‘Right,’ he said huskily, ‘now, this is the deal…’
‘Another one?’ she whispered back, aware that he was deliberately holding her balanced on a pin-head of expectation with the warmth of his eyes and the promise of his kiss, and the touch of his fingers on her—
She glanced down and had to blink several times before she could focus on the ring he was carefully sliding onto her finger. Made of gold and platinum, it was an intricate twist of finely worked metals forming the clasp for a diamond. And not just any old diamond, she realised, as she watched its flawless quality sparkle with a deep yellow lustre which told her instinctively that this was a very rare diamond indeed.
‘What do you think?’ Deep, dark, disturbingly husky, his voice made her senses sparkle like the diamond.
‘It’s—beautiful,’ she breathed.
‘At the risk of sounding really corny, it reminded me of your eyes,’ he drily confessed. ‘But it comes with a price-tag attached to it,’ he then added.
‘Another one of those also?’ she murmured in an attempt to mock. But it didn’t come off, for she was just too filled with the wonder in what he was creating for her.
It was pure romance tied up in bows of spicy sensation. The kind of thing you remembered for ever and relayed to your children and your grandchildren.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured, and it was one of the really sexy murmurs that she loved so much. ‘Because with this ring, mi amore, I am about to commit you to a solemn promise that you will trust me to love you for the rest of your life…’
It was too much. Without a care for who was watching, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him. Not shy and light, or tender and sweet, but with every ounce of love she had in her.
A camera bulb flashed. They were caught for posterity locked in a heated embrace with two oil paintings framing why they were kissing like that…
The villa in Portofino was the ideal setting for their honeymoon, Marco thought with a sense of warm satisfaction. They’d flown in by helicopter direct from their wedding reception at his family estate in Tuscany. And though it was dark outside the air was fresher here, so close to the ocean, so Marco had no problem leaning against the balcony rail while he watched his bride come towards him.
She was naked, of course. But then so was he—if you didn’t count the rich cream-satin waistcoat she had made him put back on before she would allow him to make love to her. It was meant to make a statement, like the fine tulle veil she still had pinned to her beautiful hair, that floated around her exquisite face and shoulders as she moved towards him.
Sexy. Very sexy. He allowed himself a lecherous grin. ‘When are you going to take it off?’ he asked lazily.
‘When I feel married,’ she replied. He arched a brow. ‘And you don’t feel married yet?’
‘No.’ The pout was very spoiled and sumptuously kissable. And, since they’d already made love several times since they’d arrived here, it was also a slight on his virility.
‘Watch it,’ he warned.
She had the audacity to look down. He laughed—what else could he do when he was being bewitched by a teasing little temptress with only one thing on her mind.
Dio, she made him feel good. She made him feel like the only worthy man on this earth.
Her fingers came out, stroked the cream satin lapel up to his shoulders, then made their way back down again. When she reached the open buttons she began to slowly close them. The cutaway edges of the waistcoat suddenly put a whole new meaning on erotic fantasy.
‘If you’re looking so intent because you’re thinking of painting me like this, then take my advice, cara, and change your mind,’ he advised.
Lightly said, lazily delivered, but still he meant every word of it. Her chin came up. The pout had gone; the seductress had switched back on.
