Claimed by the Sicilian

Her name was a harsh shout, mingling with her own cry of ecstasy as they reached the peak and fell from it, tumbling into the darkness of oblivion in perfect unison.

Amber had no idea how long it was before the total devastation of her senses started to ease, to ebb away so that she could hear and feel again. She still felt blinded, too numbed to find the energy to open her eyes, to even try to see, and so it was as she lay in total darkness, exhausted, satiated, unable to move, that she felt Guido stir, rolling his heavy body from hers and coming to lie beside her on the bed.

She heard his sigh, deep and satisfied, but blended with a dark thread of rough laughter that pricked at her uncomfortably, sending a quiver of unease right through her body.

‘Never say never,’ Guido muttered softly, his voice still thick with the aftermath of the passion that had shaken him to his core. ‘Oh, cara, cara—never, ever say never.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

THIS was not supposed to have happened.

Guido sighed, low and deep, as he flung his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes again. Raking both hands through his hair, he faced the fact that he had probably just made one of the biggest, most stupid mistakes of his life.

This was damn well not supposed to have happened.

Not here, not now. Not like this. Not yet…

And not, most definitely not, when he was not prepared. When he had no protection with him, and even if he had, would not have had the presence of mind, the control, to even think of using it.

And not just physical protection either.

‘Dannazione…’ The curse and others more violent, much more basic in his own language slipped from him as he looked the facts squarely in the face and acknowledged what a stupid bloody mess he had made of things.

So much for taking things slowly.

So much for waiting and seeing, watching, learning. So much for acting on his thoughts, his intelligence rather than his libido. So much for thinking at all.

At his side, Amber lay, limp with exhaustion, her eyes closed, her limbs splayed over the bed.

Asleep? Dear God, he hoped so. He prayed so.

He needed time to recover; time to get his body and his mind back under control. He needed time to work out just what he’d done by acting without thought, without any consideration of the consequences. Without looking ahead into the future at all.

He needed time to decide just where the hell they went from here.

Forcing his eyes open, he turned his head to one side, looking into Amber’s relaxed face, wondering just what might be going on behind those closed lids.

“I won’t sleep with you!” she had declared so vehemently only a short time before. Not even two hours ago. “I won’t. I’ll never…”

And, “Never say never,” he’d flung back, totally sure of himself—of her. “Never say never.”

Dio! A rush of self-mocking laughter rocked his body and he shook his head in despair at his own foolishness.

So now what did he do?

Staring up at the ceiling, he ruefully reflected on what he had originally planned. How he had meant things to go from the moment he had learned about Amber’s proposed marriage.

It had been Vito who had told him. His younger brother had come back from a business meeting in London in the foulest of moods but when questioned had refused to say exactly why. Instead, and obviously in an effort to distract Guido from his questions, he had announced that Rafe St Clair, a man they knew of only too well, was getting married.

He had had no idea of just how effective his diversionary tactics were.

Guido could still remember—still feel—the remaining embers of the world-rocking combination of shock, disbelief and white-hot rage that had shot through him when his brother had told him of the prospective bride.

‘Her name’s Amber Wellesley,’ Vito had said. ‘Apparently she lives in the same village. Her father was a friend of Rafe’s father but he died before this girl was born.’

Sitting up slightly, Guido looked down into the shuttered face of the woman beside him. Did she know what it had done to him to find out that she was getting married? It had been bad enough when she had declared that she was walking out because he wasn’t what she wanted—he wasn’t good enough for her. She’d met someone else, someone with standing, with a lineage that matched her own.

Hellfire, it was a good thing that he had never, ever told her the truth about his own position, his own wealth. If he had she might have stayed—and he would never have been able to trust her reasoning.

No, he’d told her to go if that was the way she felt. He’d been so savagely furious that he’d damn nearly pushed her out of the door. But in the end, he’d been the one to walk out. At that moment he’d never wanted to see her again.

Besides, he’d been convinced that, given time to calm down, think things through, she’d come back to him. He’d never expected that she would actually go ahead and marry the man she’d left him for. And stopping that marriage had been the main thing on his mind when he’d come to England this time.

After that, he’d planned to take things slowly—check out how the land lay before he made any rash or foolish moves. He was definitely not going to let his libido rush him into things this time.

‘Hah!’

Unable to stay still a moment longer, Guido started to swing his legs off the bed and froze in a moment of total shock.

He had been so out of control, so hot for Amber that he hadn’t even taken his trousers off, for God’s sake! What sort of man was he? What sort of an animal did she turn him into?

He had totally lost control—totally lost his mind. He didn’t like what he became around Amber and that was the truth. What he became was a man who couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t act rationally. And as a man who had prided himself on doing both of those things, he was definitely knocked off balance as a result.

Swallowing down another curse, he sorted out his clothing in a rush, zipping up his trousers and pulling his belt tight with a viciousness that eloquently expressed the way he was feeling, before swinging away to the window and staring down at the hotel grounds, where the evening was now gathering in, turning the sunlight of the day into dusk.

‘Guido?’

The voice—her voice—came from behind him. From the bed where he had thought—hoped—that she lay asleep. His unwary movements must have disturbed her and she was awake, well before he was ready to speak to her.

‘Yes?’

He knew the single word was a bad-tempered snap but didn’t turn to see the effect it had on her. Instead, he kept his back to her, stared determinedly out of the window even though his eyes were so unfocused that he couldn’t see a thing in front of him.

‘What do we do now?’

What do we do now!

She had asked him the question that had been in his mind ever since he’d come round from the frenzy of desire that had scrambled his brain. The question that he’d wanted more time to come up with an answer to.

‘How the hell should I know?’ he growled at the window, not ready to turn round and face her.

‘What?’

His tone had been so low, so rough that she hadn’t caught it.

‘Guido, I wish you’d look…’

Her voice faded as he swung round, hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets, jaw clamped tight over the things that clamoured to be said—the things he wanted to say—didn’t want to say. The things he had no idea how to say.

‘I said, how the hell should I know?’

She was regretting asking him to look at her now, that much was obvious in the way that she flinched back against the pillows.

‘I’m sorry…’

Conscience made him say it, but he knew that it came out far too abruptly and only sounded perfunctory. The truth was that he wished he hadn’t turned round. That was another stupid mistake he’d made.

Just looking at her lying there on top of the rumpled covers of the bed had an effect that was practically sending his brain into meltdown. She was still wearing only the ridiculous corset thing, that and the suspender belt and stockings-and nothing else. Her hair was tumbled all around her face, her green eyes huger than ever in her pale face. Her lips looked swollen from the heat of his kisses and her beautiful breasts were bare and exposed, their rosy nipples still glowing from…

Porca miseria—no! He was not going to think about that! Couldn’t think about it or he would lose what little grip he had on his self-control. Already, just looking at her, he felt the brutal clutch of lust between his legs, and in his concealing pockets his hands clenched into hard, tight fists to stop himself from pulling them out and using them to touch her—to arouse her again—to make her melt underneath him…

‘No!’

His already savagely uneasy mood was made all the worse by the way that Amber was reacting. She was staring at him as if he had suddenly grown a pair of horns. And while her eyes held his, one slender hand was reaching down, trying to find an edge on the covers, to pull them back up around her, covering her nakedness.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he exploded. ‘Isn’t it a little late to go coy on me? It’s not as if there’s anything I haven’t seen and touched—and more—already. And we are man and wife!’

‘Not from any choice of mine!’

She was being deliberately provoking and he knew it. But he also had no idea of just how much truth was actually behind those words and, because he didn’t know, it only added to his already unbalanced mood.

‘That wasn’t what you said the first time—then you couldn’t get to the chapel fast enough. You couldn’t wait. It was “Oh, Guido…can we do it soon? Can we do it here—now—as quickly as possible?” So I arranged a bloody wedding—I married you! And what do you do? You walk out on me as soon as you can to be with someone else.’

‘I told you—I thought it was a fake marriage!’

She’d succeeded in pulling the sheet up now, wrapping it around her and tucking it tightly under her arms, over her breasts. But the truth was that it didn’t make matters any easier. If anything, it made them worse.

He could still see the soft pink of her skin through the fine linen, the pout of her breasts was emphasised by the way she’d clamped her arms around herself underneath them, pushing them upwards, and the swell of her hips was an undulating curve to one side of the bed. Imagination combined with memory to act on the gnawing ache in his groin, driving him almost to distraction.

‘And what the hell made you think that? Amber…’ he insisted dangerously when she didn’t answer and dropped her gaze to where her narrow fingers pleated the sheet in front of her over and over again. ‘I asked you a question.’

Just when he thought she wouldn’t answer and took a hasty step forward, almost on the edge of grabbing hold of her, shaking the response out of her, her chin came up and she met his searching gaze with unexpectedly cool defiance. Which was just as well as he knew that if he touched her now, for whatever reason, then he would never stop. It might begin in anger but as soon as he felt her skin underneath his hands then the mood would change. He would have to kiss her—and caress her—and then he wouldn’t be able to stop.

‘I heard you!’ she declared, bringing his thoughts back to reality with a rush that jarred his brain painfully. ‘You did what?’

‘I heard you paying him—paying the man who’d arranged it all. I heard you thanking him for—for getting everything sorted out so fast.’

‘Because that was how you wanted it!’ Guido put in in exasperation. ‘“Can we get married tomorrow?”’ he quoted her own words at her brutally. ‘“Just find a chapel here and—and do it.”’

But it was obvious that Amber hadn’t heard, or if she had then she was deliberately ignoring him.

‘You—were grateful to him, you said…’ she ploughed on, her face as stiff and cold as if it had been the face of a marble statue, the green eyes blank and opaque. ‘Grateful to him for getting this farce of an event organised.’

Hearing his own words parroted back to him had an effect like being doused in icy water, freezing Guido instantly. His tongue wouldn’t work, wouldn’t let him say anything, particularly when she went on, recalling the conversation with devastating accuracy.

‘You said you could only be thankful that this wasn’t your real wedding as it was nothing like the one you’d imagined you would have if you ever were to be married. Not that you ever wanted to be married.’

‘And that was the absolute truth. I never wanted to marry.’

It was only when the cold, controlled words fell into the silence that followed her words that Amber realised just how much—how desperately—she had been hoping for something else.

Had she really been stupid enough—weak enough—to dream that he might suddenly have recanted all he’d said to the man he was paying off that night in Las Vegas? Was she really that foolish?

A year ago, perhaps she might have been. For a few glorious, wonderfully happy days of her catastrophically brief marriage she’d been totally brainwashed, totally deceived by him. But then the things she had overheard had destroyed the foolish idyll she’d been living in.

She was supposed to have stayed in their hotel room, resting—resting after a particularly long and energetic afternoon of lovemaking—and waiting for him to come back from some meeting he’d had to go to, so that they could make love again. He’d told her that he would only be an hour, and when that hour had turned into two—and then almost another—she had started to worry. Dressing swiftly, she had made her way down into the hotel lobby—and there, hidden behind the large, ornate statue that filled the centre of the hallway, she had overheard Guido paying off the man he had hired to make their wedding look real.

‘It was everything she thought it would be,’ she’d heard him say. He’d even laughed—laughter that went straight through her heart like a brutal sword. ‘But then, she knows no better. Wouldn’t know a real wedding if she was at it.’

At the time she’d just reacted. She hadn’t stopped to think, but had turned and run. By the time Guido had joined her upstairs, she had been almost packed—if flinging clothes haphazardly into a case, not caring which way they fell, could be called packing.

Her mind blanked over at the memory of the huge row that had resulted from that. So now she put all the hurt, all the bitterness of her memories as well as the new misery he’d just inflicted on her into her voice as she rounded on him.

‘Oh, well, I’m glad that you do speak the truth sometimes! Because you certainly didn’t when you married me. When you vowed to be with me for the rest of our lives together. It’s a pity that it wasn’t a fake marriage—then at least I’d really have been free of you when I left. I wouldn’t be surprised if I could actually get an annulment if I could prove just how little you meant those vows, that you were lying—probably even perjuring yourself!’

‘And how would you know?’ Guido flung right back. ‘All you cared about was getting a ring on your finger.’

He’d said the same thing on the day before she’d left him, Amber recalled bitterly. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him what she’d overheard, but she’d accused him of never having loved her, had tried every last desperate trick in the book to get him to say that he did.

‘We never had a marriage!’ she’d screamed at him from the depths of her pain. ‘Not a real one.’

And, ‘You can say that again,’ he’d retaliated. ‘What we have is most definitely not a real marriage—and we never had a real wedding. Not that you would know the difference.’

It was an accusation she couldn’t deny. She had been so nervous at the thought of her wedding, unable to believe that she was actually going ahead with it, that she was really going to marry a man like Guido Corsentino and that he was going to marry her, that she hadn’t even thought about the details, about the legalities. She had left all of that to Guido, let him handle everything, and stayed locked in her own little dream world of happiness, terrified that if she came out of it she might find it had all been a dream.

‘I didn’t want to stop and think about what I was doing! I just wanted it done and over with.’

‘And why was that? Were you worried that Mamma might find out? Or was it just the idea that you were lowering yourself to marry a Sicilian peasant?’

‘I never thought of you like that! I…’

She caught the foolish words back before they could escape her.

I only wanted to hurt you as you’d hurt me, was what she had been going to say, but she couldn’t admit to that. He would see behind it to the truth. And the truth of how much she’d loved him was something she didn’t want him to know. Because the wedding might have been real but Guido’s reasons for marrying her after all had been as cold and calculated as she’d come to realise. He had only wanted to keep her in his bed and he had been prepared to go along with her need for a wedding in order to achieve that end. She might have been married to him but it had never been a marriage of love.

‘No, you only realised how badly I compared to your English aristocrat when he came looking for you and you realised I would never be able to offer you the title of Lady anything.’

When had Guido moved?

She had been so intent on standing up to him, on showing him that he couldn’t just walk all over her, that she hadn’t noticed that he had taken several strides forward, coming so much closer to the bed. Now he towered over her, glaring down into her face, his eyes black as pitch and burning with molten anger.

But it wasn’t the threat in them that dried her mouth, sending her throat into a spasm that killed any chance at all of speaking. It was something as equally primitive as fear but on the opposite end of the scale. It would have helped if he’d troubled to get dressed, but of course he hadn’t. Guido had never given a damn about appearing naked, or semi-clothed, in front of her, his supreme self-confidence driving away any concern for modesty.

So that now, while she still huddled under the crumpled sheet, hiding away from him, he stood tall and proud, the broad expanse of his chest, the bronzed skin lightly hazed with jet-black hair, openly exposed. It was impossible not to remember how it had felt to be held against that chest, how the heat of his skin, the roughness of that hair, had rubbed against her sensitised nipples. Nipples that ached even now with the imprint of his caress, the longing for more.

Her fingers hungered to touch, to stroke over the smooth, satin skin, to feel the strength of muscle and bone. And between her legs heat pooled rapidly, tormenting her senses so that she had to shift uneasily under the light covering of fine white linen.

‘No…’

It was a moan of protest at her own response that escaped her. She’d been burned that way already—burned twice, for God’s sake—so what was she thinking of even being tempted again?

CHAPTER NINE

‘NO?’ GUIDO questioned softly. Too softly.

Amber knew that voice of old. It was the one that he used when he was carefully reining in what he really wanted to say. When he was holding back the rage or the cynicism that in a weaker man would already have escaped, boiling over into dangerous fury.

‘No? If it wasn’t that, then what was it? You hadn’t tired of me. I know it—you know it.’

To Amber’s horror, he lowered himself onto the bed, coming to sit beside her, very close—too close.

Dangerously close.

She didn’t know how to react. She wanted to run but she didn’t dare. It would give too much away about the way she was feeling. She wanted to reach out and touch him, know the sensation of her fingertips on his skin, press her lips to him, taste him. But she didn’t dare to do that either. And so she curled up in a tight little ball, twisting her legs away from him so that they wouldn’t touch. She was afraid that she would feel the heat of him even through the linen of the sheet. That his touch might even burn her skin in spite of its protection.

‘We never tired of each other, did we, Amber?’

‘No…’

It was all that she could manage. She couldn’t deny it after all. He had left her bed to go to that meeting. A bed in which they had just made mad, passionate love.

No! In her mind she corrected herself automatically.

A bed in which they had just had wild, fierce, abandoned sex. Sex that she had believed was making love but that he had seen as cold-blooded passion. A hunger for her that he would do anything to appease.

Even marry her.

‘Why did you do it?’

‘Why did I do what?’

His tone was disturbing, almost frighteningly gentle. Frightening because it sounded real. It sounded believable. And it was too tempting to believe in it. But believing that Guido did anything gently was a big mistake.

‘Why did you marry me?’

‘It was what you wanted. And I wanted you. If I could have had you any other way, I would have done it.’

Well, was that blunt enough for her? The bald, flat statement left no room for discussion or manoeuvre. He had seen something he had wanted and he had made the arrangements necessary to ensure that he got what he wanted. That was Guido Corsentino all over. What he wanted was what he got. No argument; no debate.

‘I still want you.’

If it was possible, there was even less room for debate in that statement.

‘So that answers your next question.’

‘It does? And just what was my next question going to be?’

The sidelong glance that flashed at her from those deep, dark eyes warned against the note of flippancy that had crept into her tone. Don’t challenge me, that look said. Don’t even try!

‘You don’t even have to say it. It’s written clear on your face—you want to know why I came after you, why you’re here.’

‘You came after me because you wanted to break up my marriage to Rafe,’ Amber said slowly.

He might be right about the rest of the question that burned in her thoughts but she didn’t want to risk opening up that particular can of worms. Because it inevitably led to another, more uncomfortable question—the one that went ‘Why did you have sex with me?’ Because there was no way on earth she could ask ‘Why did you make love to me?’

‘And because I still wanted you,’ Guido put in, stilling her nervous tongue when she would have gone on. ‘But it took the prospect of your marrying another man to make me see just how much.’

He was jealous! Amber didn’t quite know why that should rock her world so violently, but it did. So much so that she actually put a hand out onto the surface of the bed to support herself when the room seemed to shudder around her. The movement made the sheet she had been holding to her gape widely at the front and she had to clutch at it frantically to keep it from falling. The resulting tug at her nerves made her voice sharp as she met his black, intent gaze.

‘And is that supposed to flatter me?’

‘I don’t do flattery.’

The lift of Guido’s broad shoulders shrugged off the question as unimportant.

‘I would have come after you anyway—it’s just that the need to stop your illegal marriage made me move rather faster than I’d planned.’

‘You would have come after me?’

Amber couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had been so sure that she had slammed the door on that particular relationship-locked it and thrown away the key. She had never thought that he might actually come after her. But then of course she hadn’t bargained on the fact that their marriage had actually been legal instead of the fake she had believed it to be.

‘I was waiting for you to come to your senses.’

He sounded so confident, so totally sure of himself—and of her—that Amber could only gape stupidly, her eyes wide and glazed, her mouth falling slightly open.

‘And now I suppose you think I should be thankful that you saved me from a bigamous marriage.’