your husband,’ he murmured. ‘I had hoped for something a little more—familiar.’
The way he said the word made it sound like an insult, and yet the lilting Italian accent sent a shiver of graphic remembrance through her in spite of herself. She prayed for the right, dispassionate response. ‘You are my husband in name only,’ she stated. ‘We have been separated for over two years and legally that means I am now free to seek a divorce. Surely you realise that, Stefano?’
She had a reaction at last. There was a spark of anger in the dark, glittering eyes, but it was gone in seconds. ‘I realise it only too well, cara,’ he said, in a voice which was soft with menace. ‘But, as you know, divorce means nothing to me. In the eyes of the church—and in—’ he dropped his voice to a velvety whisper ‘—my eyes, we will always be man and wife, with all the endless and delightful possibilities that the state of matrimony offers.’
He stood, lounging in the narrow doorway, as though he had every right to be there, his stance relaxed, though she knew him well enough to know that the muscles beneath the smooth brown skin were flexed and alert.
Outwardly, she thought, he had changed little. Perhaps the features were slightly more fined down, but not dramatically so. Even as a relatively young man, his face had held none of the softness of youth. The eyes, even then, had been hard, glittering and farseeing, the beautiful mouth always distorted by its habitual cynical smile. She had never been able to imagine him as a happy and carefree little boy—always as the curt, calm man who knew exactly what he wanted. She looked into the implacable brown eyes, searching for some hint of why he was here, but she saw nothing, bar a flash of the only emotion she had allowed herself to remember. Desire.
She forced herself to remain calm. They were, after all, in the middle of a busy English city, in a theatre full of her colleagues. He might have succeeded in making her feel as though she were trapped in some derelict Italian mountain hut, miles away from civilisation, but she patently wasn’t. Why, she had only to raise her voice, and any number of people would come running to her aid. And Stefano was a powerful and successful businessman—it wouldn’t augur well for his professional or personal reputation if she started screaming her head off and the Press got hold of it. She could just imagine the field-day the newspapers would have with something like that.
The only problem being that he hadn’t done anything which wasn’t in any way totally above board. And he knew it. He was regarding her now with a look of infuriating amusement.
‘You look so angry,’ he mused. His tongue curved briefly over the perfect teeth which looked so brilliantly white against the olive skin. ‘I love that look,’ he whispered. ‘Sometimes you used to look just like that before we . . . ’
Her cheeks flared, and it was as much as she could do not to slap her hands over her ears. ‘Shut up!’ she spat at him, terrified that his words would make her picture what he had been about to describe. If she remembered that, she would no longer be in control. ‘Whether or not you consider we are separated is your problem. It’s a fact. We are. By English law.’
She steeled herself to ask him, ‘Why are you here, Stefano?’ She looked at him expectantly, but he said nothing.
The silence grew as the dark eyes swept slowly and deliberately down every inch of her body, at first dispassionately, but then they lingered on her breasts, at the soft swell which was emphasised by the pushed-up wire foundations of the swimsuit. The gaze moved down—she saw it alight with interest on the still flat line of her belly—and further down, dark eyes glinting as they stared very deliberately at the soft curves of her bare thighs.
Her cheeks stung with fire as she registered the insolence of the inspection. She responded with the kind of flip comment she knew he would detest. ‘Seen enough?’ she taunted.
The cynical mouth curved. ‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen nearly enough. But these others . . . these . . . ’ Here he spat out a word in Italian, a word she had never heard before.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry?’ she said haughtily. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Perhaps you would call them voyeurs,’ he hissed.
‘Voyeurs?’ she interrupted scornfully. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘The audience,’ he spat out. ‘The ones who come to feast their eyes on you.’
She laughed aloud. ‘Oh, come, come, Stefano—I’m hardly indecently clad.’
‘Do you like it?’ he asked suddenly, his voice dangerously soft.
Bewildered, she stared at him. ‘Like what?’
‘These men, in the audience—the ones who watch you, who look at you, who want you in their beds at night. Does it excite you? Does it?’
She made as if to turn away, but he stopped her with a light touch of her forearm which didn’t fool her for a moment—she could feel the steely strength behind it.
‘Does it?’ he persisted. ‘Do you like them to look at your . . . breasts?’ She gasped as he reached out and almost idly moved his hand down to encircle and to cup one breast, moving it skilfully over the nipple, knowing through years of experience, and the instinct he had always possessed when it came to touching her body, how to imprison it there through pleasure alone. Her knees sagged, as the spirals of pleasure shot through her body like flames. It had been so long. So long . . .
He was not speaking now, as if he sensed that words would make reality intrude, his fingers speaking for him as they moved with sweet accuracy over the thin material of the swimsuit. He bent his head to kiss her neck, slowly and luxuriously, moving to suck gently and erotically on the lobe of her ear, and then at last possessing her mouth in such a way as to make her fleetingly, incredulously think that his need was as fierce as her own. And even while she despised her weakness, she gave herself up to that kiss, returning it with a long-suppressed hunger as though it were the last true thing in the world.
Even during the bad times—and there had been many of those—even the very worst times, he had always been able to do this to her—to extract this response from her. He had been her teacher, her tutor, her master. He had schooled her in the art of love, and he, only he, could do this to her.
He had begun speaking again. ‘And here.’ He moved his hand down to the soft flesh of her inner thighs. ‘Do you like them looking at you here?’ He moved his mouth to hers, speaking against it, so that she could feel the warm sweetness of his breath. He was deliberately insulting her, and yet he was making her so dizzy with longing that she had to grip on to the taut line of his shoulders, afraid that she might collapse into a heap at his feet. ‘Do you think they would like to do what I am going to do to you? Do you?’ And he slipped his fingers inside the swimsuit, to find her honeyed moistness, and she gave a strangled moan and flung her arms tightly around his neck.
‘Stefano!’ she cried brokenly into his shoulder, every vestige of reason gone, unable to relinquish one second of the sweet joy he was inflicting on her, her lips burying themselves helplessly into the soft shaft of his neck. ‘Stefano—no! We mustn’t. You know we mustn’t.’ It was a pathetic, half-hearted plea, and they both knew it.
He ceased the insistent movement of his hand, she was pushed away with a cool firmness, and she watched in total disbelief as he calmly walked over to the mirror above the washbasin, adjusted his tie, glanced at the expensive gold wristwatch and then at her, his eyes coolly mocking. ‘Most assuredly we
