Ravelli's Defiant Bride

Funky music kicked off in the background as Olivia took one of three comfortable seats awaiting them while urging Belle to define what Olivia described as ‘her personal style’. Belle had to hinge her jaw closed at the question because she had no idea how to answer it. In any case Olivia had already embarked on a commentary on the first outfit while a brunette model wearing something floaty, purple and weirdly shaped like a lampshade strolled down the catwalk towards them. As a very tall blonde with a shock of almost-white chopped hair appeared in swimwear Olivia endeavoured to determine Belle’s fashion preferences. But Belle had never had the budget to develop a taste for luxury. As a student, she had worn jeans in winter and shorts in summer with only the occasional cheap skirt or dress purchased for nights out. Money had always been in short supply in her life, clothing generally purchased from her part-time earnings as a bartender, and she had only ever shopped in chain stores.

‘Don’t you like any of it?’ Cristo prompted, shooting his bride a questioning glance from his brooding dark eyes when she remained awkwardly silent.

As she connected with his stunning eyes her heart flipped inside her chest and turned a somersault. ‘It’s a bit overwhelming…all this,’ she admitted breathlessly.

‘Then I’ll choose for you.’

And what Cristo chose was highly informative and Belle almost burst out laughing, for without fail every short skirt, backless gown and low neckline received Cristo’s unqualified and enthusiastic vote of approval. On that score he was very predictable, very male and reassuringly human. Amused by the very basic male he was revealing beneath the sophisticated façade, Belle began to regain her confidence and started to quietly voice opinions, shying away from the more spectacular garments in favour of the plainer ones, insisting that she couldn’t possibly wear shocking pink with her hair.

‘I like pink,’ Cristo argued without hesitation. Though as Olivia took up the conversation he suddenly remembered his feelings of horror at the many shades of pink spun throughout the small home back in Ireland. But his wife in pink…that was a different matter.

‘There are only certain shades of pink which you should avoid,’ Olivia, ever the highly accomplished saleswoman, assured her.

At that point the blonde appeared in a ravishing set of ruffled turquoise lingerie and Cristo sprang upright and actually approached the catwalk. ‘I want that,’ he spelt out without an ounce of discomfiture in his bearing.

Belle’s cheeks flamed while she noted the manner in which the very leggy blonde was posing for Cristo like a stripper, loving the attention as her breasts jiggled in the bra with her little dance movements, and she spun round to display her almost bare bottom taut in panties that were little more than a thong. Cristo seemed mesmerised by the spectacle, his dark golden eyes veiled, his sinfully seductive bronzed features taut as if he was struggling to conceal his thoughts.

He was attracted to the blonde, Belle decided with a sinking sick sensation in the pit of her stomach, and he couldn’t hide the fact.

‘Thank you, Sofia,’ the saleswoman said loudly as she stood up and the music stopped mid-note, leaving a sudden uncomfortable silence in its wake. Olivia said her goodbyes and took her leave through the rear door of the ballroom.

‘Well, wasn’t that educational?’ Belle remarked freezingly when Cristo finally wandered back to her side.

His winged ebony brows drew together in bewilderment. ‘How so?’

Her generous mouth compressed. ‘You fancied the blonde,’ she told him bluntly.

Cristo frowned.

‘Oh, don’t bother denying it. I saw you,’ Belle told him thinly. ‘You couldn’t take your eyes off her!’

Cristo moved steadily closer in a slow stalking movement that was quite ridiculously sensual. Belle looked up at him, fearless in her condemnation, and collided with smouldering golden eyes so intense in focus that she was rocked back on her heels. All the oxygen in the atmosphere seemed to have dried up and she parted her lips to snatch in air.

‘I have only one point to make. It wasn’t her I was seeing…it was you,’ he spelt out hoarsely, his brilliant eyes pinned to her with mesmerising force. ‘It was you I was picturing in that get-up.’

Disbelief assailed Belle and she flicked him a scornful upward glance of dismissal. ‘Like I’m going to believe that with a half-naked beauty cavorting in front of you!’ she derided.

‘Believe…’ Cristo urged in a roughened undertone that vibrated with assurance in the stillness. ‘When I’ve got a real woman like you,

why would I want one with fewer curves than a coat hanger?’

Her mouth fell wide at that less than flattering description of the beautiful model. ‘Not your type?’

‘You’re my type,’ Cristo confided huskily. ‘The erotic image of you bountifully filling those little blue scraps of nothing turns me on fast and hard.’

A real woman? Belle almost laughed out loud at that label. After all, the rigorous dieting she had tried in her teen years had failed to hone an inch off the solid bone structure that gave her defiantly curvaceous hips and voluptuous breasts. Back then she would have given her right arm to be one of the more fashionable ‘skinny-minnies’ at school. But she was not fool enough as an adult to instantly dismiss the idea that some men actually preferred curves to more slender proportions. It simply hadn’t entered her head before that Cristo might be one of those men.

He brushed a straying curl from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear with a casual intimacy that unnerved her. It said that he had the right to touch her, a right she had already denied him. An alarm bell shrieked in her brain, warning her to back off and enforce her boundaries yet again. But he was close, so temptingly close that she could smell the evocative scent of cologne and masculine musk that he emanated. He smelt so unbelievably good to her that her senses swam and she felt light-headed. Her knees wobbled beneath her while warmth snaked down from the breasts straining below her camisole to the very core of her, leaving her feeling hot and achy and dissatisfied. Even staying still in that condition was a challenge.

He touched her face, a long tanned forefinger gently tracing the line of her jaw to the cupid’s bow above her upper lip while a thumb stroked the soft fullness of her lower lip. Belle trembled, scarcely able to breathe for the rush of excitement that had come out of nowhere at her. Her body raced up the scale in reaction, temperature rising, heart pounding, pulse hammering. Her lashes lowered to a languorous half-mast as she gazed up at him in helpless silence, for she had no words to describe what he was doing to her. He was so beautiful, so devastatingly beautiful that she hadn’t even blamed the models for concentrating their attention on him while they displayed their wares. Not only was he the buyer, but also a male so handsome that he made women stare while they struggled to comprehend what it was about those lean, darkly dazzling features that exercised such sinful power and magnetism over their sex. Belle didn’t know; she only knew that the minute she stopped looking at him, she needed to look again. It was a compulsion she couldn’t fight.

‘You can put on that blue set just for me,’ Cristo murmured hungrily, stunning dark eyes flaring wicked gold at that prospect.

‘In your dreams,’ Belle warned him without hesitation, thinking he would wait a very long time if he hoped to see her tricked out in provocative underwear for his benefit. Playing the temptress wasn’t her style and in her opinion he didn’t need the encouragement. That conviction in mind, she walked into the drawing room, where at least their conversation would be unheard by the staff.

‘Don’t tell me that you don’t have the same dream,’ Cristo chided, shifting in front of her to clamp his lean hands possessively to her hips.

Belle was about to hit him, push him away, stamp on his foot, loudly lodge a protest to physical contact of any kind. She really was going to do at least one of those things and then his mouth plunged down hungrily on hers and her hands spread against the hard, warm contours of his chest and slowly fisted into the fabric of his shirt as she fought herself and fought the craving he induced.