‘All of them,’ Vitale stressed, but he strode back to the door to douse the strong overhead illumination, plunging them into a much more welcoming and more intimate space only softly lit by the lights below the cupboards.
Her hand slid back to his spine. His skin was hot, faintly damp but it was his eyes she was watching and thinking about, those beautiful black-fringed eyes singing a clear song of stress and bewilderment and the glorious liberating message that he wasn’t any more in charge of what was happening between them than she was.
‘I want you, bellezza mia,’ he growled all soft and rough, sending shimmying awareness right down her taut spine just as he reached down and lifted her tee shirt and whipped it off over her head.
Jazz loosed a startled yelp and almost whipped her hands up to cover her naked body, but in that same split second of dismay she asked herself if she wanted to be a virgin for ever and if she would ever have the chance to have such a skilled lover, as Vitale was almost certain to be, again. And the answer to both questions was no. He wasn’t going to want a shy woman, was he? And he had to know all the right moves to ensure the experience was good for her, hadn’t he?
‘You are so beautiful,’ Vitale almost crooned, his hands rising to cup her delicate little breasts, which were topped with taut rosy tips that he stroked appreciatively with his thumb.
And that fast, Jazz had no desire to either cover up or breathe because the fabulous joy and satisfaction of being deemed beautiful by Vitale overwhelmed her. In gratitude, she stretched up to find his mouth again for herself, nibbling at his lower lip, circling slowly with newly discovered sensuality while all the time he was stroking and rolling and squeezing the peaks of her breasts that she had never known could be so responsive to a man’s touch. Little fiery arrows were travelling down to the heart of her, making her hips shift and squirm on the table as the heat and tightness increased there. And then, with what felt like very little warning to her, a climax shot through her like an electric charge, making her cry out in surprise and pleasure.
‘And as responsive as my most erotic dream,’ Vitale husked, wrenching at the zip of his jeans.
A lean brown hand pried her legs apart while she was still in a sort of blissful cocoon of reaction. Vitale pulled her closer and tipped her back to facilitate his intentions. A long finger traced her entrance and eased inside. He uttered a hungry groan of appreciation because she was very wet and tight and then he froze. ‘I’ll have to take you upstairs to get a condom,’ he bit out in frustration.
‘I’m on birth control,’ Jazz muttered helpfully. ‘But are you...safe?’
‘Yes because I’ve never had sex without a condom,’ Vitale confided, but the temptation to try it without that barrier was huge. He tried to argue with himself but, poised between her legs, craving the welcome her slender, lithe body offered his raging arousal, he realised it was a lost battle for him before it even started.
With strong hands he eased her closer still and she felt him, hard and demanding against her most tender flesh, and both nerves and eagerness assailed her. Her whole body came alive with electrified longing as if that first redemptive taste of pleasure had ignited an unquenchable fire of need inside her. He sank into her by easy degrees, groaning something out loud in Italian as she buried her face against a satin-smooth brown shoulder, barely crediting she was making love with Vitale, every sense she possessed rioting with sensation, the very smell and taste of his skin thrilling her.
And then he slammed right to the heart of her and a stinging pain made her grit her teeth and jerk in reaction. Withdrawing a little, Vitale paused for an instant, pushing up her face and looking down at her with what appeared to be brazen incredulity, and she knew then that at the very least he suspected he had been her first lover and he wasn’t pleased. But she ignored that unwelcome suspicion and wriggled her hips with feminine encouragement, watching him react and groan with a newly learned sense of empowerment.
‘Don’t stop,’ she told him.
And for the very first time ever, Vitale did exactly as she told him. He sank deeper again, stretching the tender walls of her heated core with hungry thoroughness and, that instant of pain forgotten, Jazz craved his contact. He gave her more, picking up speed, hard and fast until he was pounding into her and her excitement climbed with his every fluid, forceful thrust. It was much wilder and infinitely more uninhibited than she had dimly expected from a man as reserved as Vitale; indeed it was passionately explosive. She reached another climax and her body convulsed around his, the whole world, it seemed, erupting around her as he shot her into a deeply erotic and exhilarating release. A faint ache pulled at her as he withdrew and zipped his jeans.
‘Diavolo!’ Vitale exclaimed, stepping back from her while she fumbled for her tee shirt and hurriedly pulled it on over her head with hands that felt clumsy and unable to do her bidding. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?’
Fixing her face to a determined blank, Jazz slid off the table, only just resisting a revealing moan as discomfort travelled through her lower body. ‘We’re not having a post-mortem,’ she parried sharply, mortification engulfing her in an unanticipated tide that threatened to drown her. ‘You’re not entitled to ask nosy questions.’
She had had sex on a kitchen table with Vitale and she couldn’t quite believe it but she certainly knew she didn’t intend to linger to discuss it!
For a split second of frustration, Vitale wanted to strangle her. Her hectically flushed face was mutinous and furious and she was pointedly avoiding looking at him, which annoyed the hell out of him even though he didn’t understand why. After all, he didn’t want a post-mortem either, didn’t have a clue why or how what they had just done had happened and could think of at least ten good reasons why it shouldn’t have happened.
He watched her limp across the tiled floor as if she had had a run-in with a bus instead of her first experience of sex and he felt hellishly guilty and responsible. He experienced a sudden, even more startling desire to scoop her up and sink her into a warm reviving bath...and then have sex with her again? As if that were likely to improve anything, he reflected sardonically, raking unsteady fingers through his tousled black hair. What the hell was wrong with him? His brain was all over the place and he couldn’t think straight but he knew he had just enjoyed the best sex of his life and that was downright terrifying...
* * *
Jazz had informed Vitale that there would be no post-mortem but, seated in a bath at three in the morning, Jazz was unhappily engaged in staging her own. Had she actually thought of what they had done as ‘making love’? Yes, she had and she was so ashamed of herself for that fanciful label because she really wasn’t that naïve. It had been sex, pure and simple, and she knew the difference because she wasn’t a dreamy teenager any longer, she was an adult. Or supposed to be, she thought with tears stinging the backs of her eyes and regret digging wires of steel through her shrinking body.
Of course, they would both pretend it hadn’t happened...a moment of madness, the mistake swiftly buried and forgotten. After all, this was Vitale she was dealing with and he wasn’t going to want to talk about it either. On that front, therefore, she was safe, she assured herself soothingly. It was his fault in any case—he had had no business parading around half-naked in jeans and tempting her into that insanity. She hugged her knees in the warm water and sighed. She had done a stupid, stupid thing and now she had to live with it and with Vitale for weeks and weeks, being all polite and standoffish, lest he think she was up for a repeat encounter. Running away or hiding wasn’t an option.
A knock sounded lightly on the door and she almost reared out of the bath in her horror because she abruptly appreciated that Vitale was not running true to form. In a blind panic she snatched at a towel and wrapped it round her, opening the door the merest chink to say discouragingly, ‘Yes?’
Vitale discovered that he was immediately possessed by an impossibly strong urge to smash the door down and he gr
itted his teeth on yet another unfamiliar prompting to act unreasonably and violently. ‘Will you please come out? You have been in there for ages.’
From that point he wasn’t the only individual valiantly gritting teeth. Her flushed face frozen as he had never seen it before, Jazz emerged from the bathroom, noting that he had put on a black shirt. ‘I didn’t know you were waiting,’ she said dulcetly, leaning heavily on her one and only elocution lesson.
‘Look, don’t go all girlie on me. I don’t expect that from you,’ Vitale countered crushingly. ‘I only want the answer to one question.’
Jazz tried to unfreeze a little and look normal, or as normal as she could feel being confronted by Vitale when she was wearing only a towel. ‘OK.’
‘Why is a virgin on birth control?’ he asked gravely.
‘I don’t really think that’s any of your business. It was for...well, medical reasons,’ she told him obliquely, unwilling to discuss her menstrual cycle with him, her colour heightening until she felt like a beetroot being roasted and wanted to slap him for it.
‘It will be very much my business if you get pregnant,’ Vitale breathed witheringly.
‘It’s so like you to look on the dark side and expect the very worst,’ Jazz replied equally witheringly. ‘It’s not going to happen, Vitale. Relax and go back to bed and please forget this ever happened for both our sakes.’
‘Is that what you want?’ Vitale wanted to rip off the towel and continue even though he knew she was in no condition to satisfy him again. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his brain. It was pretty much as if his body had developed an agenda all of its own and he couldn’t control it.
‘We just had a sleazy encounter on a kitchen table in the middle of the night. What do you think?’ Jazz enquired saccharine sweet.
Vitale was receiving a strong impression that anything he said would be taken down and held against him. Sleazy? That single descriptive word outraged him. He swung on his heel, his lean, powerful body taut, and left the room and just as quickly Jazz wanted to kick him for giving up on her so easily. Her thoughts were a turbulent sea of conflict and confusion and self-loathing, sending her seesawing from one extreme to the other. No sooner was he gone than she wanted him back and she flung off the towel and climbed into bed, hating herself. It was so typical of Vitale to worry about the fact that he hadn’t used contraception. Now he would be waiting on that axe to fall and that was a humiliating prospect, even though it also reminded her that she hadn’t yet taken her daily pill. She dug into her bag and took it before switching off the light.
What was done was done and it had been amazing, she thought ruefully, but it was better not to think about that imprudent sudden intimacy that had changed everything between them. Now she was no longer thinking about Vitale as the boy he had once been, but Vitale, very much a man in the present and that switch in outlook disturbed her, made her fear that somewhere deep down inside her there was still a tiny kernel of the fourteen-year-old who had believed the sun rose and set on Prince Vitale Castiglione...
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WOMEN MY AGE don’t wear clothes like this,’ Jazz was saying by late morning the next day, appalled by the vast collection of garments, all distinguished solely by their lack of personality. ‘I’m not your future wife or one of your relatives. I’m supposed to be only a girlfriend. Why would I be dressed like an older woman?’
‘I want you to be elegant,’ Vitale responded, unimpressed by her reasoning. He wanted every bit of her covered up. He didn’t want her showing off her shapely legs or her fabulous figure for other men to drool over. Recognising Angel’s appreciation of the beauty Jazz had become had been quite sufficient warning on that score. ‘I imagine you would prefer to show more flesh.’
That was the last straw for Jazz after a trying few hours of striving to behave normally when she did see Vitale between coaching sessions. Temper pushed up through her like lava seeking a crack to escape. ‘Where do you get all these prejudices about me from?’ she demanded hotly. ‘I don’t wear revealing clothes. I never have. And as you know I haven’t got much to reveal!’
‘You have more than enough for me, bellezza mia,’ Vitale breathed half under his breath, heat stirring at his groin as he thought about the delectable little swells he had explored the night before.
Jazz flinched and acted studiously deaf in receipt of that tactless reminder. He was no good at pretending, she recognised ruefully. ‘This stuff is all so bland,’ she complained instead, fingering a pair of tailored beige trousers with a curled lip. There was a lot of beige, a lot of navy and a lot of brown. He was even biased against bright colour. ‘If this is your taste, you certainly didn’t miss out on a chance of fame in the fashion industry.’
Vitale reached a decision and signalled the stylist waiting at the far end of the very large room. ‘Miss Dickens is in charge of the selections. By the sound of it, she will be ordering a more adventurous wardrobe,’ he declared, watching the slow smile that lit up Jazz’s piquant little face while smoothly congratulating himself on knowing when to ease up on exerting control. ‘But pick out something here to wear tonight.’
Jazz chose a fitted navy dress and shoes and lingerie as well as a bag.
‘Thanks!’ she called in Vitale’s wake as he left her alone with the stylist to share her own likes and dislikes.
His arrogant dark head turned in acknowledgement, brilliant dark-fringed eyes a fiery gold enticement, and desire punched her so hard in the chest that she paled, stricken that she could have made herself so vulnerable. Putting such pointless thoughts from her mind, she concentrated on choosing clothes and particularly on the necessary selection of a spectacular gown for the royal ball.
After asking for lunch to be served in her room she was free to go home and visit her family for a few hours, and it was a welcome break from the hothouse atmosphere of Vitale’s imposing London home. Her mother and her aunt were baking and Jazz sat down with a cup of tea and tried to feel normal again.
But she didn’t feel normal after she had put on the navy dress over the silk lingerie, her feet shod in hand-stitched leather sandals with smart heels. Although she had never bothered much with make-up she made a special effort with mascara and lipstick, knowing that that was one thing she did need that Vitale probably hadn’t thought about: make-up lessons.
‘No, I like you the way you are,’ Vitale asserted, startling her in the limo on the way out to dinner. ‘Natural, healthy. You have beautiful skin... Why cover it?’
Jazz shifted an uncertain shoulder. ‘Because it’s what women do... They make the most of themselves.’
Vitale studied her from his corner of the limo. She looked stunning, the dark dress throwing her amazing hair into prominence and emphasising her delicate figure and long slender legs. He willed his arousal to subside because he had made decisions earlier that day. He was going to step back, play safe, ensure that there was no more sex, no more blurring of the lines between them, but he only had to look at her to find his resolution wavering.
That had never happened to Vitale before with a woman. He had never succumbed to an infatuation, had always assumed that he simply wasn’t the emotional type. His affairs were always cool and sexual, nothing extra required or needed on either side. Naturally he had been warned since he was a teenager that he would, in all likelihood, have to marry for dynastic reasons rather than love and he had always guarded himself on the emotional front. What he felt for Jazz was desire, irresistible burning desire, and there was no great mystery about that when it was simply hormones, he told himself soothingly.
A current of discreetly turned heads and a low buzz of comment surrounded their passage to their table in the wildly exclusive restaurant where they were to dine. Vitale’s gaze glittered like black diamonds when he saw other men directing lustful looks at Jazz. For the moment, Jazz was his, absolutely his, whether he was having sex with her or otherwise, he reasoned stubbornly.
Jazz sat down, surveying the t
able to become belatedly grateful for Jenkins’s lesson in cutlery clarification. ‘So, tell me what you’ve been doing since you left school?’ she invited him cheerfully. ‘Apart from being a prince and all that.’
They talked about being students. Vitale admitted that banking had been the only viable option for him. He also told her that he had a house in Italy where he planned to take her before the ball.
‘For how long?’ she asked, her lovely face pensive in the candlelight, which picked up every fiery hue in her multi-shaded red mane of hair for his appreciation. ‘I like to see my mother regularly.’
‘A couple of weeks, no more. When this is over, after the ball—’ Vitale shifted a fluid, lean brown hand in emphasis ‘—I will pay for you to finish your degree so that you can work in your chosen field.’
‘That’s a very generous offer but you’re already covering quite enough in the financial line,’ she began in surprise and some embarrassment.
‘No. I tricked you,’ Vitale divulged, disconcerting her even more with that abrupt confession of wrongdoing. ‘My father is settling your mother’s loans. He wanted to. It makes him feel that he has helped her.’
‘You...tricked...me?’ Jazz gasped in disbelief that he could quietly admit that.
‘Being a bastard comes naturally. I needed you to accept the bet and I used your need for money to win your agreement,’ Vitale pointed out levelly. ‘I feel that I owe you that amount of honesty because you have been honest with me.’
‘So, you’re saying your father would always have helped?’ Jazz prodded in even greater surprise because she wasn’t, once she thought about it, that shocked to discover that Vitale could be extremely calculating and shrewd. She didn’t, however, feel that she was in a position to complain or protest because if he had used her to suit his own purposes, she was also most assuredly using him. Having already received a discreet cheque in payment for her supposed salary, she had given it in its entirety to her mother. No, she wasn’t proud that she had accepted money from a man she had also slept with, but she really could not bear to watch her mother scrimp and struggle. Being seriously poor had taught Jazz a lot of tough life lessons.