The Ranieri Bride

He stabbed. She cried out. He picked her up by her clinging hips and backed her up against the nearest wall and took control with a hard, angry thrust that drove her so mindless she cried out his name as she came in a gasping, clenching, pulsing flood all around him.

His name, he thought angrily. His! And then he followed this flowing-haired witch into the drumming, hot space of sensual heaven.

Or hell, he amended a few seconds later when the storm was over.

For where or how with anyone else was he ever going to match that?

When had he ever matched it since she’d gone from his life?

Her head was resting now on his shoulder, her hair splayed over both of them. She was shivering and quivering and as weak as a kitten.

And his own legs were not so steady, especially when he made the grim decision to withdraw.

Her legs slithered down the length of his. If tension had a taste to it, then it would be of the aftermath of sex with a woman you should not have indulged with.

Now it was over he was regretting it to the tips of his tingling, clenched, still-pumping nerve ends.

He took a step back and began straightening his clothing. Freya had to lean weakly back against the wall behind her, eyes tight shut, breathing nearly stopped.

‘Dio,’ Enrico muttered to himself when he saw how badly his fingers were trembling, and strode off to the adjoining bathroom, where he spent a few minutes sluicing his face and trying to calm himself.

He should not have done that. What the hell had he thought he’d been playing at?

Fastening his shirt buttons, he actually felt himself blush when he saw that his dark silk tie was still knotted around his throat.

Good definition of crass, Ranieri, he told himself grimly.

By the time he let himself out of the bathroom, Freya was standing over her discarded clothes with her naked back to him, fumbling with shaking fingers in her efforts to fasten her bra.

So what now? he wondered, and didn’t have an answer. On a low sigh he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and leant a shoulder against the wall while he watched her twist the bra around then shimmy into it. Her skirt had fallen back into place by its own volition but he found himself wondering what her panties were doing beneath it.

Lace bra, panties and lace-topped hold-up stockings. His mouth shifted into a grimace as he watched her stoop to gather up her jacket. It was dragged around her body like a piece of sackcloth. Her hair was caught inside it and his fingers twitched in his pockets with the need to go and set it free.

She did that, yanking out the long, silken swathe with a brutality that made Enrico wince. And the silence between them was so thick now you could barely breathe.

Her bag was lying on the floor by the chair with its contents spilling out from it. She must have forgotten to close the clasp when she’d rushed out of the ladies’ room, Freya realised, and vaguely wondered how she was going to bend down there and scoop it all back in when her stomach was dipping and diving so badly she would probably end up slumped on the floor in a puddle of dizzying shame.

How could she have done that? Let him do that to her?

He’d done it.

Through that same oddly vague haze, she watched Enrico walk to the chair then squat to pick up her overlarge, cheap, imitation-leather bag and begin to gather its contents with long, steady fingers that had just…

She sucked the breath into her lungs like a drowning person suddenly finding air to breathe. He heard it happen, but went on still with what he was doing, his dark head lowered, a bright red toy Ferrari held in his hand.

Nicky’s toy Ferrari.

Her son’s little toy car.

Enrico owned several Ferraris—collectors’ pieces most of them—only they were the man-sized real thing.

‘You want me to say something,’ he gritted.

‘No,’ she responded with a quaver that told her the tears were not far away.

While she had been behaving like a whore, her son was being safely taken care of by specialised staff six floors beneath her guilty, disgusted, trembling feet.

And she didn’t even have a right to be in this building any more. Neither did Nicky.