Mediterranean Tycoons: Untamed & Unleashed: Picture of Innocence / Untamed Italian, Blackmailed Innocent / The Italian's Blackmailed Mistress

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked helplessly. The brush of his fingers in the valley of her breasts as he deftly opened her shirt aroused a pulsating sensation deep inside her that she fought to control. ‘I won’t enjoy it, and you will get no pleasure from me.’

‘Oh, I will, Lucy.’

He stared down at her, reading her reaction as he trailed long fingers over the curve of her breasts, dipping beneath the lace of her bra to graze a nipple. She gasped.

‘You see, sweetheart?’ He mocked her with the endearment as he teased a taut nipple between his long fingers. ‘Your pleasure is my pleasure.’ His mouth lowered to hers. The burning pressure of his kiss ignited her fiercely controlled feelings and she trembled helplessly. ‘I am so going to pleasure you, Lucy,’ he murmured against her mouth. ‘What we had before will seem like a mere taste, and you will be begging me for more.’

‘Never!’ she cried, but her body seemed to have a will of its own, and she had a terrible desire to touch him, to surrender herself to the sweet agony of his kiss, his caress.

He slipped the shirt from her shoulder along with her bra strap, so he could bend his head to kiss the curve of her neck. She swayed, whimpering in protest, but as he lowered his head further, peeling down her bra to tongue her hardening nipples, the whimper changed to a moan of pleasure.

He lifted his head and she stared up at him, her eyes fixed on his hard, irresistible mouth.

‘Still think you won’t enjoy it?’ he prompted and, dropping his hand, he removed her shirt and bra completely. His black eyes flicked over her from her pink lips, swollen from his kisses, over her slender shoulders to her breasts and the pale rose nipples betraying her arousal. ‘Your body is telling me otherwise.’

Naked to the waist, and shamed by her own weakness, Lucy made an attempt to fold her arms in front of her. But he caught her hands and held them at her sides, bent his head, his mouth finding hers again.

The slow, seductive pressure of the kiss coaxing her lips apart was irresistible, and she could feel herself weakening, responding, wanting him—and suddenly she was transported back to the first time they’d made love … the heady excitement … the swirling senses … the exquisite delight of his touch.

Without removing his lips from hers, he swung her up in his arms. With a sense of déjà vu she grasped his shoulder, her hand curving around his neck to touch his hair. Her tongue was curling with his, and any lingering thought of resistance was swept away by the flood of desire raging through her.

He carried her into the bedroom and lowered her on to the bed, removing her shorts and briefs in one deft movement. He straightened up, staring down at her with hot hard eyes as he shed his clothes, letting them fall in a heap on the floor.

Lucy did not move. She was mesmerised at the sight of him. It was still daylight outside, and every muscle, every sinew of his great body was perfectly defined. But his facial muscles were tense, his strong jaw clenched as if to control some strong reaction. She had no time to wonder why as he joined her on the bed. The press of his hard body against her, the heat and the strength of him, made her tremble. Leaning over her, he brushed his lips against her brow, the curve of her cheek, and finally her mouth, to kiss her with an oddly gentle passion that was utterly beguiling.

He moved and laid his head against her breasts, turning his face to nuzzle their creamy fullness, suckling and licking the pouting tips as his hands stroked and caressed the quivering flesh down her hips, her thighs, and between her trembling legs. Every nerve in her body was screaming with tension almost to breaking point. Perspiration broke out on her brow, her body, and her small hands clutched at his biceps, his shoulders, roaming restlessly.

Suddenly Lorenzo rolled over onto his back, lifting her over him, his strong hands grasping the top of her legs. With one mighty thrust he impaled her on the rock-hard length of him, and stilled.

‘I want to watch you fall apart,’ he grated.

Eyes wild, she looked down and saw the molten passion in the black depths of his.

She splayed her hands on his chest and tried to move, his thickness filling her. She needed to move. But a finger slid between the velvet lips where their bodies joined and her head fell back, a long groan escaping her as he delicately massaged the swelling point of pleasure until she shattered into a million pieces. His grip tightened, holding her firm as she convulsed around him in a mind-blowing orgasm.

Only then did he move his hand to her waist and lift her. Rocking his pelvis, he plunged up deeper into her, over and over again, holding her fast until her shaking body trembled on the brink again. Then he spun her beneath him and his mouth covered hers, catching her desperate whimpering moans before he thrust into her with one fierce lunge that seemed to touch her womb and his great body joined hers in a shuddering climax that went on and on in mindless ecstasy.

Lucy fought for breath her internal muscles still quivering in the aftermath of release, her heart pounding. She was conscious of the heavy beat of Lorenzo’s heart against her chest as he lay sprawled across her, his head buried in the pillow over her shoulder. How long she lay in mindless awe at what had happened she had no idea, but finally she lifted an arm to wrap it around him, then stopped and let it fall back on the bed.

In contrast to her body, hot and wet with sweat, her heart was suddenly as cold as ice. This was lust, not love, and she must never forget that. Last time when they had made love—There she was, doing it again. When they had had sex, she amended, Lorenzo had disillusioned her so brutally she had felt ashamed, cheap and dirty.

Well, not any more … It was way past time she toughened up—forgot about love and marriage and being the hopeless romantic Lorenzo had called her at Samantha’s wedding. Equality of the sexes and all that—not that she had seen much of it so far in her life. But if Lorenzo could enjoy sex for sex’s sake then so could she. Her morals were still intact—just in abeyance for a while. The fact that he had none wasn’t her problem. And if it suited the swine to pay for the pleasure, then let him.

Ever the fatalist, she knew she’d have to be an idiot to turn down the deal he was offering. Anyway, she didn’t have a choice—unless she wrecked a host of other people’s lives, and that she could not do. On the plus side, she had no doubt he would soon tire of her, and then she could forget he’d ever existed and get on with her life the way she wanted to.

‘I’m too heavy for you, and I need the bathroom,’ Lorenzo said practically, and disappeared into the bathroom. Of course he never forgot protection—which was good in the circumstances. But then a man like Lorenzo—powerful and a control freak—had had plenty of practice.

He practised a lot more when he came back to join her on the bed, and when he finally slid off the bed and dressed he stared down at her for a moment. ‘Sort out tomorrow when you can take three days off—preferably within the coming month.’

‘I can’t possibly. I have a business to run … ‘

‘Yes, you can. Your friends will be out of work if you don’t.’

‘Only Elaine works for me, and she can’t run the place on her own. Sid and Leon just display their work here, and I get ten percent of their sales.’

‘Ten?’ He shook his head. ‘It should be much more than that.’ And, bending over her, he dropped a kiss on her nose, a sensual gleam in his dark eyes. ‘You have many good points, Lucy, that I am well acquainted with.’ He smiled. ‘But at the risk of sounding repetitive, trust me—business really isn’t one of them.’ He chuckled, and left.

Lucy lay where he’d left her. She knew she should be furious—and she would be later—but right at this moment all she felt was a languorous sense of physical satisfaction, and she fell into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE tourist trade fell off as children returned to school. The summer was virtually over and Lucy was in a plane flying to Italy, trying to come to grips with the course her life had taken. It wasn’t easy. She looked out of the window and below her could see the snow-covered peaks of the Alps, sparkling in the sun. Their beauty was lost on her. She was, for want of a better description, Lorenzo’s mistress. She had become accustomed to travelling in a chauffeured car and a private jet … how bizarre was that.?

Lorenzo, after that fatal night when he had given her no choice but to become his lover, had virtually taken over her life, and the following morning had charmed Elaine into believing he was genuinely interested in Lucy. Obviously she could not deny it, and it had left her playing the part of his girlfriend all day, every day. The strain was beginning to tell.

That first day Lorenzo had whisked her away for dinner at the luxury country house hotel he had stayed at before, and the pattern had been set. Sometimes he would arrive and take her to the hotel—other times he’d send a car to take her to Newquay or Exeter Airport and the short flight to London, where Lorenzo kept a hotel suite when he was working in the city—which he had been doing a lot lately. Though now she had not seen him for five days—the longest they had been apart. Maybe it was not coincidence. He had stipulated at the beginning that she was to visit Italy in a month. It was exactly a month today. She had a growing feeling this visit would be the conclusion of their relationship. He had got what he wanted. As for Lucy, she was not sure what she wanted any more.

Lorenzo was a highly-sexed man, and they rarely got further than the bed—though a desk and the shower and on one memorable occasion a chair outside on the balcony had all figured in their sex-life.

Yet Lucy knew him little better now than she had the first time they’d met. He was for the most part a reserved, emotionless man, who gave little away except in the bedroom, where sometimes, with his dry wit and humour, he made her laugh. Other times he could be incredibly tender, and kiss and caress her as though he adored her. He always called her to arrange their meetings, but occasionally he called just to talk, and she could almost believe they were a normal couple. But maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. Alone in her own bed at night, aching for him deep down, she knew for her it was more than just sex.

One thing she had learned about him and liked best was that he wore gold-rimmed glasses when working. Somehow they made him look younger and even more attractive, softening his hard face.

Well, maybe not best—because she could not deny the sex was fantastic. He had, with skill and eroticism, taught her more about the sensual side of her nature than she had imagined possible. She no longer made any attempt to resist, but welcomed him with open arms, and she knew when it was over between them there would be no other man for her. She could not imagine doing with any man what she did with Lorenzo … didn’t want to.

The flight attendant—a handsome young man about her age—appeared, and offered to fasten her seat belt as they were about to begin their descent to the airport. She refused and fastened it herself, because there was something about the way he looked at her she didn’t like. But then he was probably accustomed to ferrying women around the world to meet up with his boss, so she could hardly blame him for thinking the worst.

Lucy walked down the steps from the plane, blinking in the bright light, and smoothed the skirt of the red suit she wore down over her hips. A suit Lorenzo had bought for her the one day he had taken her out for lunch in London on what could pass for a date. Afterwards he had insisted on taking her shopping in Bond Street. She had tried to refuse, but he’d reminded her he was the boss and he wanted to see her in fine clothes and lingerie.

She looked up to see Lorenzo striding towards her, as immaculately dressed as ever in a grey suit, his hair as black as a raven’s wing gleaming in the midday sun. Her heart turned over. He stopped in front of her and she glanced up through the thick fringe of her lashes, suddenly feeling too warm.

‘Good—you made it,’ he said coolly and, taking her arm, added, ‘This is a private airfield and Customs are a mere formality.’ He led her across the tarmac.

No greeting or kiss, Lucy noted. But then sadly they did not have that kind of relationship.

Ten minutes later she was sitting in the back of another chauffeured car, her nerves jangling as Lorenzo slid in beside her, his muscular thigh lightly brushing hers. She could sense the tension mounting in the close confines of the car as the silence lengthened, and finally found her voice. ‘How long does it take to get to Lake Garda?’

He turned his head, his dark eyes meeting hers. ‘We are going to my apartment in Verona first.’

Lifting a hand, he swept a tendril of hair that had escaped from her severely styled chignon behind her ear, and she felt the touch of his fingers down to her toes, a flush of heat staining her cheeks.

‘I think you need to relax before travelling further. I know I do,’ he said with a predatory smile that left her in no doubt as to what he had in mind.

To her shame, she felt an immediate physical response. Hastily she looked away, and heard him chuckle.

Lorenzo’s apartment was a shock. Lucy stood in the huge living room, eyes wide in surprise. She had expected something formal—and it was. Elegant blue and cream drapes hung at the tall windows of the main reception room, and two huge blue silk-covered sofas flanked a white-veined marble fireplace. The bookshelves either side were stuffed with books—hardback and paperback, shoved in haphazardly—and in front stood a big leather captain chair in scarlet! A large low glass table had papers and magazines scattered all over it. The room was a bit of a mess.

But a fabulously expensive mess, she realised. An antique bureau had a bronze statue of a naked lady—pure Art Deco—standing on it, along with an incredible yellow and blue glass sculpture of a fish and a carved wooden statue of what looked like a Native American Indian. But it was the walls that really captured her attention. She recognised a Picasso from his Blue Period, a Matisse, and what she was sure was a Gauguin, along with some delicate watercolours and a huge Jackson Pollock that almost filled one wall.

She turned to Lorenzo and saw he had shed his jacket and had tugged his tie loose so the knot fell low on his chest. ‘This is nothing like I imagined.’ She waved her hand around, grinning delightedly.

‘I know it looks a bit untidy, but Diego, my houseman, is on holiday, and I am not in the least domesticated,’ he said wryly.

‘I had noticed,’ Lucy quipped, recalling the way he stripped off and dropped his ruinously expensive clothes anywhere, without a second thought, every time they met. ‘But what I meant was I love the room—it is so colourful, and the art work is incredible. Some of it I would never have expected you to like.’

He reached for her then, his dark eyes holding hers and his hands closing over her shoulders ‘Not quite such a staid old banker as you thought?’ he queried, his hands slipping beneath the lapels of her jacket to peel it off her shoulders and drop it on the back of the sofa.

‘I never think of you as old,’ Lucy murmured, and the tension between them thickened the air as a different silent conversation took place. She was braless, and the white camisole she wore suddenly felt like a strait-jacket.

He glanced down at her breasts, knowing he would see her nipples jutting against the silk. He raised his eyes, reaching for her hair and pulling out the pins. ‘I love … your hair.’ He ran his long fingers through the silken length. ‘The colour is incredible—tawny like a lion is as near as I can get,’ he murmured, and closed his arms around her. His dark head bent and the smouldering flame of desire glittered in his eyes as he touched his mouth gently against hers.

It was what Lucy had been waiting for from the moment she had stepped off the plane, if she was honest. The moment she’d set eyes on him he had excited her like no other man ever had or ever would. One look, one touch, and she wanted him—craved him with an intensity of emotion she could not deny. And the more she saw him the worse it got. He filled her every sense until nothing else existed but the consuming need to feel him take her to that magical place where for a few incredible moments they became one explosive entity. However much she tried to pretend it was just sex, deep down she knew she had fallen in love with Lorenzo.

His mouth was like silk, his tongue teasing and easing between her eagerly parted lips, but the gentleness swiftly gave way to a kiss of mutual desperate passion. His hands reached down to the hem of her skirt and tugged it up over her hips. Lucy grasped his shoulders as she felt his long fingers slip between her thighs and rip the lace briefs from her body and she didn’t care. She was lost to everything but her hunger, her need for him.

He lifted his head, his face flushed and his black eyes holding hers as he zipped open his pants. ‘I want you now,’ he grated, and found her mouth again.

Lucy met and matched his demand instantly, totally, pushing her hands beneath his shirt, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back as he gripped her hips and lifted her. Wantonly she gave herself up to the fierce desire driving her, locking her legs around him. His tongue stoked deeper into her mouth and she cried out as he thrust up into the slick, heated centre of her.

The incredible tension tightened as he stretched her, filled her with deep plunging strokes, twisting, thrusting faster, building into an incredible climax that sent her mindless into a shuddering, shimmering wave of endless satisfaction. Then against her mouth Lorenzo groaned her name as he plunged one last time, his heart pounding out of control against hers, his great body shaking.

The silence afterwards was not restful but strained, Lucy slowly realised, shakily dropping her legs from his body, letting her hands fall from his shoulders. He stepped back and zipped up his trousers, and she smoothed her skirt down over her hips. She spied her ripped briefs on the floor. She glanced up at Lorenzo. He was watching her, and had seen the direction of her gaze. Then he spoke.

‘Your briefs are finished, Lucy, and your luggage has already gone on to the house. You will have to go commando for a while—but that is probably nothing new for you,’ he said with the arch of a brow, before adding, ‘I could use a coffee—how about you?’

Lucy nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, and he turned and disappeared through the door to the hall. His ‘commando’ comment told her everything she needed to know. He had no respect for her at all … never had and never would.

She spotted a few pins on the floor and, picking them up, clipped back her hair. She took her jacket off the back of the sofa and slipped it on, fastened it with a slightly unsteady hand. She was still wearing her high-heeled sandals, and wished viciously she had stabbed him in the back with them five minutes ago.

Still trembling inside, she walked across to the window and looked down at the street below, drawing in a few deep, calming breaths. A steady flow of cars drove along the road, and the pavements were full of people of all ages—some single, some couples and families—all chattering and laughing, going about their daily life as she’d used to do.

So what had happened to her? Lorenzo had happened, and she didn’t know herself any more. Worse, she no longer liked herself. She had become one of those weak-willed women she normally pitied—a slave to her senses because of a man. In that moment Lucy knew she could not go on like this. She straightened her slender shoulders and folded her arms across her body, her mind made up. When this visit was over, so was her relationship with Lorenzo—whether he liked it or not. He could do his damnedest, but to save herself she could no longer afford to care.

In trying to be responsible and help other people she had given in to what amounted to blackmail. If she was brutally honest she had not fought very hard to avoid it, and in the process had lost all her self-respect.

She should have known from the start. She had tried before to be responsible for another, to help Damien, and it had ended in tragedy anyway. If Steadman’s closed and the development never took place, so be it—at least the town had the seven acres of land she had donated. As for the family home, she would do as the estate agent had suggested weeks ago, when he’d told her that after twelve years of neglect the house badly needed updating and with the smaller garden the best option now was to put it up for auction and sell it for whatever she could get in the current market. She would, and then hopefully she could keep the gallery—probably still mortgaged, but at least she would own it.

‘Coffee’s ready.’

She turned around. Lorenzo was placing a tray on the glass table and trying to nudge papers out of the way. He sank down on the sofa and, picking up the coffee pot, filled two cups, then glanced across at her. ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’

He didn’t even know that much about her, she thought bitterly, and it simply reinforced her decision to end things.

‘No, thanks. I need the bathroom—where is it?’

‘There is one off my bedroom—I’ll follow you through. Coffee in bed quite appeals,’ he said, with a smile that was a blatant invitation.

‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ Lucy said coolly. ‘Just tell me where the bathroom is. After all, I am here to visit your mother, and it is bad manners to keep her waiting.’ She saw the flash of surprise in his eyes and watched them narrow, and felt a chill go through her.

Lorenzo was not accustomed to being denied, and his expression hardened as he looked at Lucy. She had pinned back her hair, replaced her jacket and fastened it, and was now standing stiffly, her arms folded in front of her, defiance in every line of her seductive body. He could make her do as he wanted—but suddenly he no longer had the stomach for it.

‘In the hall—second on the left.’ He gestured with his hand at the door he had just come through. Lucy was right. It was time they left.

He had shocked himself earlier, taking her without a second thought over the back of the sofa, totally out of control. This could not go on. The ice-cold anger and rage that had consumed him when he’d discovered Lucy had done a deal behind his back had cooled down, and he wasn’t proud of the way he had behaved.

With the benefit of hindsight he should have agreed with Lucy the day she’d come to his office—agreed to support the status quo, leaving the running of Steadman’s in the hands of the employee who had been dealing with it for the last five years. Instead he had let his anger over his brother’s death be stirred up by his lunch with Manuel and reacted badly. He had made his decision in anger instead of with his usual cool control. And getting involved with Lucy was another crazy mistake. In fact, he realised most of the summer had been one of crazy decisions on his part.

He was a normal, intelligent, healthy man, who enjoyed an active sex-life, but with Lucy he was in danger of allowing sex to take over his life to the detriment of his work and his leisure. He could not allow it to continue.

Since the day he had met her he had slept only one single night at his villa in Santa Margherita and only half a day sailing. And it was well over a month since he had been to New York. Instead he had spent most of his time in England, flying back and forth from Italy, and it had to stop. He still lusted after Lucy, but that was all it was—lust. Without conceit he knew that with his power and wealth he could take his pick of women, and occasionally had in the past. He would again.

His decision made, he rose to his feet and buttoned his shirt. The solution was simple: he just needed to get through the next three days, finish things with Lucy, then move on to a woman more his type who would not disturb the smooth running of his life.