A Tainted Beauty

‘Why?’

‘Because you drove off in such a rage—for all I knew, you could have had some kind of accident.’

‘And wouldn’t that have made it easier for you?’ he asked, in a flat, deadly voice.

‘E-easier for me? What are you talking about?’

‘Billionaire groom’s car plummets off coastal road,’ he intoned, still in that same flat tone—like a radio commentator making a sombre announcement. ‘Leaving his bride of less than twenty-four hours a widow.’

‘Ciro! That’s a terrible thing—’

‘The operative word being billionaire, of course,’ he mused. ‘The widow takes it all—the money, the houses, the share portfolio. Wouldn’t that be the perfect solution, Lily? After all, you were prepared to pretend to be something you weren’t in order to secure a marriage to a rich man. Maybe you’ve been praying to get my money sooner rather than later?’

‘Stop it,’ she breathed.

He shook his head with an air of disbelief, like a man who had just emerged unscratched from the wreckage of a plane. ‘But I guess I have nobody to blame but myself for what’s happened. For once in my life, I was completely blinkered. So blinkered that I walked straight into your honeyed trap—though if I’d stopped to think about it, it was glaringly obvious what you were trying to do. You were so desperate to secure your house and your future—’

‘And you were so desperate to be the first man to lay claim to my body,’ she flared back, reeling at all the emotional ammunition he was firing at her.

‘Yes. Yes, I was.’ He stared at her, as if trying to make sense of it. ‘I am an experienced man of the world and usually I can see right through any form of deception. But I have to say that you really got me, Lily. You were so … wondering. So unbelievably sweet. Like it was the first time for you.’

‘Because that’s what it felt like!’ she protested, her voice trembling now. ‘It really was like that.’

He leapt on her words, like a hungry dog on a bone. ‘So you didn’t feel anything for the other man you were engaged to?’

She bit her lip. It would have been so easy to say no. That she’d felt nothing at all for Tom—but that would have been a lie. And there weren’t going to be any more lies. No matter how awful the consequences, she could no longer shy away from the truth. ‘Yes, of course I did,’ she whispered.

Ciro stood up as if he’d been struck—the pain nearly as bad as it had been last night when he’d discovered that another man had been the first to give her pleasure. He walked over to the double doors which were open to the spacious terrace, beyond which the dawn-washed bay glittered beneath the rising sun. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They should have been making love now. And when the sun was a little higher they should have been taking breakfast out there on the terrace, against the backdrop of the most beautiful view in the world. Afterwards, he’d been planning to surprise his new bride with a boat-trip for two along the Amalfi coast, where a sleek yacht lay bobbing in the water—ready to take them to any number of paradise destinations.

And now?

Now it all felt so empty.

He turned back to face her, thinking how beautiful she looked, her sapphire eyes glittering wildly in her pale face. He should tell her to get the hell out of his life. To walk out and leave him alone and he would pay her off with a no-fuss divorce.

But the beat of his heart and the heat in his groin were clouding his judgement. Her body was sending out a siren call he’d denied for too long to be strong enough to resist, when it was sitting right there in front of him, on a plate. He began to walk towards the bed and saw her eyes darken as he stood over her, seeing the way that her fingers clutched at the all-enveloping bathrobe.

‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

‘Nothing, at the moment. Why, what do you want me to do?’

She wanted him to stop looking at her like that—as if she were a piece of meat and he were some hungry predator who was about to make a big meal of it. ‘I want you

to leave me alone.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I do, I… oh!’ Lily fell back against the pillows as he sank down on the bed, his mouth finding hers and prising her lips open with the expert play of his tongue. And she was letting him. Letting his fingers splay over her breast as the robe fell open—and the instinctive cry of pleasure she gave in response to his touch felt like a betrayal. There was still time to struggle. Still time to push him away, even as his hand was reaching for his belt. So why was she helping him? Why was she tugging at his trousers and then at the silken boxes which hugged the hard curve of his buttocks? Why the hell didn’t she do something as he reached for a condom, which he was now sliding on with a daunting efficiency?

And then he was ripping the shirt from his shoulders and somehow the robe had been pulled from her body. He was prising open her thighs and she was letting him—wanting him—so on fire and so wet for him that she sucked in a gasped cry of pleasure as he entered her. For a moment he stilled and then he bent his head to whisper in her ear.

‘So why don’t you show me what you can do, baby?’

It was an unforgivingly contemptuous remark to make in the circumstances and Lily closed her eyes as she prayed for strength to tell him to stop, knowing that he would comply in an instant. Because hadn’t he already demonstrated his steely self-control where sex was concerned? But the truth was that she didn’t want him to stop. She couldn’t bear him to stop. When he was deep inside her like this, wasn’t there the sense that they were at one—only if it was in a purely physical sense?

She placed the flat of her hand on his chest and pushed, until he was lying on his back with her on top, still intimately joined. Her hair fell forward as she began to move, tentatively at first and then, as he gave a shuddered moan, with more confidence. Her soft thighs gripped the hard bone and sinew of his hips. She revelled in the erotic contrast of his taut masculinity against her pliant femininity. She felt the hardness of him deep inside her as she rode him with a hunger and an anger she’d never felt before. And when she saw control begin to slip away from him, she lowered her head and began to kiss him—even though at first he tried to turn his head away. But not for long. With a little moan of capitulation he let her deepen the kiss and he caught his hands to her waist as he came to a shuddering orgasm deep inside her.

She felt the ragged warmth of his breath against her neck as the spasms died away into a soft stillness. For a while, they lay there in silence until he carefully withdrew from her and she felt a great pang of disappointment—hating herself for missing the intimate feel of his body so much.