Rival's Challenge

He must have shook his head because she felt a little movement and then he said, ‘I haven’t slept properly for years….’

Their voices were low, soft. Adding to this feeling of being out of the world slightly.

‘The Legion?’ Orla asked, just saying the two words.

Again she felt that movement that must have been Antonio nodding. Her body was heavy against his, heavy with a kind of satisfaction and peace she’d never known before.

Giving into curiosity, she asked him softly, ‘What was it like?’

Antonio’s hand stilled in its hypnotic motion up and down Orla’s back. Her voice had been so low that she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard … but she felt the tension in his body. She started to say, ‘It’s OK—’

But then he was talking and she closed her mouth again.

‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was also intensely exciting and liberating.’

‘Why was it liberating?’ She felt him tense a little more.

He sighed. His chest moving beneath her cheek. ‘Because for the first time in my life I wasn’t a Chatsfield with all the accompanying acres of newsprint. The misconceptions, notoriety and expectations. I was … Marco Rossi.’

Orla lifted her head and rested her chin on her hand on his chest. But she couldn’t see his face in the gloom. ‘Rossi?’

‘My mother’s maiden name.’

Softly she said, ‘It must have been hard to walk away and leave your family behind. Your sister.’

Antonio took a minute to answer, almost long enough for Orla to think he wouldn’t. But then he said, ‘It was. But she told me to go. She knew I needed to get away before I became suffocated.’ His voice sounded bitter. ‘And as my father had helpfully pointed out, I wasn’t their father. He was.’

Orla’s heart clenched. ‘You and your sister shouldn’t have had to take over…. You were so young.’

‘We had no choice. We had a baby sister. We had to keep it together. Keep things running, stable. At least they were in schools most of the time and there was always money….’

Antonio couldn’t believe that he was talking about this to Orla. But there was something different about the way she asked the question that almost every woman inevitably asked. They wanted to hear about the glamour and danger. And Antonio knew instinctively that Orla didn’t. She asked to know about the real reality.

He felt the lightest of touches on one of the circular marks on his chest and he tensed, expecting her to ask about that … but she didn’t. She asked, ‘That tattoo on your arm … is it a coat of arms?’

Antonio relaxed again. ‘It’s the Legion’s coat of arms.’ He found himself smiling. ‘I got it in a tattoo parlour in Marseilles on my first period of leave…. Don’t ask me why. I was so drunk that night they could have tattooed a picture of Britney Spears on my arm and I wouldn’t have noticed.’

He felt Orla huff a little chuckle. ‘I think your street cred is still intact.’

Overcome with a sensation of losing his footing even though he was lying down, Antonio shifted them so that Orla was sprawled across his body, her breasts flattened against his chest.

He felt the hitch in her breathing; his hand became firmer on her back, sweeping up and down the silky skin, cupping her buttocks, squeezing gently and then harder. Telling her of his desire.

Needing no further encouragement, Orla’s head dipped and her mouth met his in a sweet kiss. So sweet that it set something aching inside Antonio, in his chest. In a second though, digging his fingers into her hair, clasping her head, he’d changed it to something much more carnal.

And as Orla groaned her approval and her body started to move against his, seeking for more, Antonio blanked his mind and body of anything but this urgency. Driving away the questions as to what the hell had just passed between them …

The following day, Orla still felt raw after what had happened the previous evening … and night. Between her legs was tender, burning slightly but in a wickedly delicious way. That sense of something having shifted was still strong, too strong for her to deny.

It was taking her mind off work. Making her want to stand and dream about him. About the things he’d revealed to her. She was losing sight of who he was and why he was there in the first place and that made Orla exceedingly nervous. Perhaps he was playing her? Distracting her. Seducing her. So that she’d be left so weak and—

Just then there was a flurry of activity at the doors of the hotel and Orla’s attention snapped back to the lobby. When she saw her mother appear from behind the reception desk to rush forward and greet what appeared to be an army of glamorous older ladies, Orla felt her chest sinking.

Oh, Mother, please, not today, she begged silently.

Antonio watched the interplay between Orla and her mother, who had apparently returned the day before ahead of her husband from where he was still wrapping up business in South-East Asia. It was clear where Orla got her looks from. The older woman was elegance personified, tall and slim with only the slightest hint of middle-aged spread. Her red hair fading slightly with age. But there the similarity ended. Orla’s mother had a look of distinct petulance about her. Unaware of the guests milling around them, when he could see Orla was constantly aware, keeping an eye on everything.

Her face was strained. From where he was seated in the lobby he could hear snippets of their conversation.