She was still crying out helplessly against his shoulder when Cesare followed, with one final deep thrust which sent him spinning off into a place of unbearable sweetness. It seemed to take him a long time to return to earth.
After it was over he lay back against the bed, staring upwards at the ceiling of a bedroom that wasn’t his, oddly shaken by what had just happened. But that was because he had waited so long, he told himself—and now that the wait was over the hunger and the passion would die a natural death.
He turned to look at Sorcha. Her bright hair was tumbled across his pillow and her skin was rose-pink. But her eyes were closed.
‘Are you sleeping?’ he questioned softly.
Behind the sanctuary of her closed lids, Sorcha composed herself before opening them. Act like you don’t care, she told herself.
‘No.’
His eyes narrowed as he searched her face, but it was blank, like an unpainted canvas—as if she felt nothing. Yet how could that be? Even if she no longer had any great affection for him, he was experienced enough to know that her orgasm had been of the bone-melting variety. Cesare prided himself on giving a woman pleasure—indeed, it often inspired an almost slavish devotion in his lovers. Compliments were his due, and always effusive. Always. But not, it seemed, from Sorcha. He traced a finger along her shoulder and she shivered. ‘You liked that, cara?’
Keep it real, she told herself. Protect yourself. He must know how good he is. ‘It was…’ Sorcha shrugged. ‘It was okay.’
For a moment his face darkened. ‘You mean you were faking it?’ he demanded in disbelief.
Sorcha started laughing. ‘I’m not that good an actress.’
He relaxed. ‘Ah, I see—you are teasing me?’
‘Aren’t you used to being teased, then, Cesare?’
He pulled her closer. ‘Not,’ he said silkily, ‘at moments like these.’ Women tended to idolise him. His ego was vast, but it was not self-delusion which made him sometimes feel like a trophy—not when he knew that women sometimes boasted of having been his lover. Lately he had found the very obvious conquests a bore. He looked down at Sorcha’s bright hair. Yet she had been the easiest conquest of all. Or had she? He felt a twist of inexplicable pain.
‘You have had many other lovers?’ he demanded.
She turned her face towards him and her green eyes were serious. ‘Do you ask every woman that?’
‘Of course I do not. But it is different with you.’
‘Why?’ she whispered.
Because I wish I’d been the first. Because I cannot bear the thought of another man doing to you what I have just done. ‘Just curiosity.’
‘But it’s none of your business, is it?’ she asked sweetly. ‘I haven’t asked you how many women you’ve had.’
Cesare felt wrong-footed. ‘That is different,’ he said stubbornly.
‘Another thing that’s different? My, my, Cesare—where were you when women got the vote?’
He could feel a mixture of exasperation and frustration, because she still hadn’t answered his question. ‘You were right,’ he said suddenly. ‘We could never have been married. For I could never have tolerated a woman with strong opinions such as yours, which often do not coincide with my own.’
‘Then everything has turned out for the best, hasn’t it? Of course if we’d married my opinions would have been different,’ she said. ‘Because you would have helped form them.’
‘And you think that would have been such a terrible thing?’ he demanded, even though deep-down he admired her independence of thought.
There was a pause. She knew that there was an easy answer to give—but what would be the point? This—whatever it was they had between them—was not destined to last, so why not be honest at least? ‘Well, yes—I do. Because then all I would have been was an extension of you—with no intellectual freedom of my own.’
It was one of the things he now found so exhilarating about her company—this feisty and challenging mind she had developed. But surely to admit that—even to himself—would represent a loss of face? ‘And that is why you will never find a husband!’ he stormed.
Sorcha stared at him, and then started laughing. ‘I can’t believe that a sophisticated man of the world just came out with something as crass as that!’ But her laughter died when she saw the sudden dark look of intent on his face.
‘In the bedroom a man is just a man, cara mia—and his response is rather more…primitive. And that is the double-edged sword—because the kind of man who turns you on is precisely the kind of man who will not tolerate your need for independence and freedom.’
‘Cesare…’ She wanted to say Don’t. But she couldn’t, because her body was craving his once more. And maybe he was right—maybe she was doomed to want what she could never have. An alpha-man who could never accept the woman she really was.
‘Nothing to say, cara?’ Luxuriously, he splayed his hands over the silken globes of her bottom and bent his mouth to her ear. ‘Then let me say it for you…In the end, all the things you claim to want count for nothing, because you cannot resist the demands of your body. And though the spirit is willing, the flesh is very weak. If I had asked you objectively whether you wished to find yourself in my bed, you would have answered no—and yet here you are. It must distress you sometimes to acknowledge that your sexual drive is so strong.’
She stared up at him, the hurt shimmering in her eyes. ‘You think I react like this with every man? That I let anyone do what you did to me in the office this afternoon?’
A slow smile of satisfaction spread over his face. ‘You mean it is just me?’ he murmured.
Sorcha felt as if she’d walked into a silken trap and he had nearly tricked her into giving him the answer he wanted.
Suddenly she wanted to hurt him back—to lash out at him the way he’d been doing ever since he’d come back into her life.
‘You want to slot me in as yet another of your damned stereotypes, don’t you?’ she stormed. ‘Where once I was your precious virgin, now I’m a loose woman. But how loose? That is the question. How many men will you decide I’ve slept with, Cesare? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?’
‘Stop it, Sorcha,’ he said suddenly, as the mental pictures her angry words conjured up became unbearable.
‘Then stop judging me by your archaic standards! Do you want to know how many?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t?’
His eyes glittered. ‘I just want to know if any of them were as good as me.’
She stared at him. ‘You are unbelievable.’
‘So I’m told. I’ll take that as a no.’ He kissed her
