style="font-size:15px;"> There had been a moment out on the terrace, after Lara had said, ‘Please make love to me...’ when for a split second Ciro had been tempted to reject her. As she’d rejected him. And yet even though he might have fantasised about such a moment in the previous two years, when it had been there, right in front of him, he’d been aware of how petty it was.
And also that he didn’t have the strength to reject her. Not when his mouth had been full of her taste and his hands imprinted with the shape of her body.
Madre di Dio.
He heard a noise at that moment.
Lara.
Ciro’s whole body tensed against the inevitable reaction his new bride would precipitate. His new virgin bride.
* * *
Lara tracked Ciro down to a room she hadn’t yet been in. A state-of-the-art modern study with humming computers and shelves full of books and periodicals.
He was standing at a window which looked out over the sea. He’d dressed in low-slung faded jeans and a T-shirt. Bare feet. Messy damp hair. She could see his face reflected in the window. The long white line of his scar. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, which pulled the material of his jeans taut across the perfect globes of his bottom.
Her heart thumped. ‘Ciro...look...’
He turned around and she saw the full extent of his anger on his face. ‘Dio, Lara. How the hell were you still a virgin?’
‘How did you know?’
Even as she asked the question she wanted to kick herself for being so stupid. A man as experienced as Ciro? Of course he’d known. He wasn’t some boorish bully like her first husband had been.
He emitted a harsh-sounding laugh. ‘How did I know? I felt it in your body and there was blood on the sheets.’
A hot wash of humiliation rushed up under Lara’s skin. She hadn’t even noticed the blood. She felt utterly gauche. She pulled the robe around her, tightening it.
Ciro sent her a dark look. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’
Lara noticed a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room. ‘Can I have a drink, please?’ She needed something if this was going to be the tone of their conversation.
Ciro went over and asked tightly, ‘Brandy?’
Lara shook her head. ‘No—anything but that.’
He poured something into a glass, then came and handed it to her. ‘It’s whisky. What do you have against brandy?’
Lara took the glass, relieved that Ciro was distracted from his inevitable questions for a moment. ‘Brandy reminds me of funerals. When my parents and brother died my uncle made me drink some. He said it was for the shock but it made me sick.’
She took a sip of the whisky, wincing at the tart, acrid taste. It slid down her throat and landed in her stomach, sending out a glow of warmth. But she knew it was just illusory and wouldn’t last.
‘How old were you?’
Lara glanced at Ciro warily. ‘Thirteen.’
‘You were close as a family?’
Lara nodded, her hand clasping the glass. ‘The closest. My parents loved each other and they loved me and Alex. We were a very happy family.’
Ciro surprised her by saying, ‘You were lucky to have had that, even if only for a short while. My father loved my mother, but it was a suffocating love and she wasn’t happy to be adored by just one man. After he died she remarried within a month. She’s now on husband number three—or four. I’ve lost count.’
The careless tone in Ciro’s voice didn’t fool Lara. He couldn’t be immune to the fact that his mother had failed to be the kind of mother every child deserved. No wonder he was so cynical.
Ciro sat back against his desk, and folded his arms. The reprieve was over. ‘So. Are you going to explain to me how you were married but still a virgin?’
Lara took another fortifying sip of whisky and sat down on a chair behind her. Her legs didn’t feel steady all of a sudden. She looked up at Ciro and then away. She didn’t want to see his expression.
‘On our wedding night Henry came into my bedroom expecting to—’ She stopped.
‘Go on.’
Lara felt sick. She looked at him. ‘Do we really have to discuss this now?’
Ciro nodded. Grim.
He stood up and pulled over a chair so that he was opposite Lara, sat down. She knew he wouldn’t budge until she’d told him the ugly truth.
‘On our wedding night he came into my bedroom... He...we’d agreed that we wouldn’t share a room. I somehow...obviously naively...assumed that would mean he wouldn’t try to...’ She faltered and stopped.
‘Try to...what? Sleep with his new wife? A natural expectation, I would have thought.’
Lara hated Ciro’s faintly scathing tone. It scraped along all the raw edges of the memories crowding her head. She stood up and went over to where he’d been standing, at the window. She could see dark clouds massing over the sea and the white edges of rough waves. There was a storm approaching.
It was easier to talk when Ciro wasn’t looking at her. ‘He came into the bedroom. He’d been drinking all day so he was very drunk. He grabbed my nightdress and ripped it. Before I could stop him he’d pushed me backwards onto the bed. I was in shock... I couldn’t move for a moment... He was so heavy and I couldn’t breathe...’
Lara didn’t even hear Ciro move. He caught her arm and turned her around to face him. She’d never seen that expression on his face before—disgust mixed with pure anger.
‘He tried to rape you?’
Lara nodded. ‘I thought we had an agreement...that he was just marrying me for appearances. He was old... I didn’t think...’ She trailed off, humiliated by her naivety all over again.
Ciro was grim. ‘Old men’s libidos can be voracious.’ Then he shook his head. ‘Did you really think he wouldn’t demand sex from you?’
Lara pulled her arm free and moved away. Some liquid slopped out of her glass and she looked at the carpet in dismay.
‘Leave it—it’s nothing.’
Ciro took the glass and put it down. Lara flinched minutely at the clatter against the silver tray.
‘But he didn’t rape you?’
Lara looked at Ciro, remembering how thinking of him had given her the strength to deal with Henry Winterborne. ‘No. I managed to kick him off me...somehow. He was unsteady from the drink. He fell backwards. He injured himself badly in the fall...and he was in a wheelchair for the rest of our
