From Venice With Love: Secrets of Castillo del Arco

He listened to her talk, seemingly endlessly, about the books she’d discovered in his library where she explored every day. And he let her joy of discovery wash over him, knowing he must if she was to trust him.

He had been the perfect host. And tonight would be no exception, he decided as he slipped on his jacket. Tomorrow he would take her to the glass-making factories and shops of Murano, but tonight would provide one more piece for the fairy-tale picture she was building up of Venice. And, if tonight’s excursion went as well as expected, they would be shopping tomorrow for more than just glass.

He swallowed back on the now-familiar pang of guilt, that what he was doing might be wrong or unfair, or was somehow taking advantage of her. Because it wasn’t as if he didn’t like her. It wasn’t as if he had to pretend to be attracted to her; it wasn’t as if he had to lie about those things. They were old friends, he told himself, and it wasn’t as though he planned to hurt her. He was protecting her, just as her grandfather had requested.

And Umberto had been right—there would be nothing worse for her than if she fell into the clutches of someone like Garbas.

If marrying her was what it took to prevent that, he would do it.

Gabriella’s body hummed with anticipation as she waited. Raoul had promised her something special tonight, a secret he had refused to reveal, even when she had teased him and begged him to let her in on the secret.

He was different, she decided as she looked down from the balcony at the never-dull vista that greeted her. Could one ever get sick of the sight and sounds of Venice? It was a world unto itself—a place of incredible beauty on the one hand, of secrets and hidden depths on the other.

Just like Raoul himself.

For even lately in these last few days, even when he had played the host role to perfection, there had been times—glimpses, really—when she would turn her head and look at him, catch him unawares and see something lurking in the depths. Something troubled, menacing and sometimes even sinister that made her want to reach out with her hands, smooth his brow, untangle his thoughts—and then he would look up, see her watching him and smile, chasing the shadows away.

Venice suited him, she thought, sighing into the soft breeze and, just like Venice, he was unique. One of a kind. Impossible not to fall in love with.

She stilled at the railing, her heart skipping a beat and then resuming just that slight bit quicker. She couldn’t love him, could she? Not really?

Sure, she had always loved him; he had been almost family.

Except that wasn’t what she was thinking now.

When she had been no more than a child, she had worshipped him as a child worshipped someone she adored like a hero, someone she could look up to.

As an adolescent, her fantasies had been based more on fairy tales and rampant teenage hormones, of a fantasy Raoul that was larger than life that she could only dream about, the product of her own wild imagination.

And now?

Now she was a woman. Surely she did not imagine that tingle every time they touched? Surely she did not imagine the magic of their kiss?

Those things were no fantasy.

Those things were real.

But love? Could she really be falling in love with Raoul? They had been together just a few short days, after all.

She must be crazy even to think it.

She must be.

And yet the magic of the last few days had not simply been all about Venice. Venice delighted her, it was true. But it wasn’t Venice that had her blood pounding or her heartbeat quickening right now, it was the thought of spending the evening with Raoul. Of losing herself in his bottomless gaze and feeling the heat from his body feed into hers, warming her in an endless, sensual glow.

It was more than just Venice.

It was Raoul, and she was falling in love with him.

He found her waiting for him in the living room, standing on the balcony overlooking the canal, her expression pensive. She was more beautiful than ever in a soft pastel-print dress with a cinched waist and full skirt that made the most of her tan skin, chestnut hair and the near-sinful proportions of her figure, the feminine curve from breast through waist to hip.

When had he gone from merely noticing that she had grown up to thinking she had grown into a very desirable woman? When had just a glance at her turned from benevolent approval of the changes time had brought about to something deeper and more fundamental, something that stirred his blood and sent it simmering? Right now, it seemed like he had wanted her for ever.

She turned when she heard him approach, her smile wide, welcoming and totally innocent—and that pang of guilt made itself known again, twisting this time, mercilessly so. He wished there was something about her he did not like, something he could find fault with aside from her unswerving faith in her human companions.

Except that it was that very fault—the trait that made her see the best in the likes of that scum Garbas—that was also making his job so very, very easy.

‘Are you ready, Bella?’ he said, taking her hands in his. ‘For tonight’s adventure?’

Her eyes held so many stars he could not count; her eager smile was infectious and he laughed in spite of his own misgivings and his own endless doubts. ‘Then let’s go.’

Tonight the air was warm and blessed with only the lightest of breezes, the architecture of Venice turning honey gold under the westerning sun.

‘This evening,’ he said as he handed her into the gondola waiting at the sea door, ‘We continue our exploration of Venice from the water.’

Together they sat back on the plushly cushioned reclining seat as the gondolier let the vessel drift away, setting it moving along the canal with long, languid sweeps through the water.

They ventured into the Grand Canal, past St Mark’s Square, still heaving with tourists and its cloud of pigeons, past all of the sights that Raoul had shown her on foot. Only this way showed Venice as it was always meant to be seen—from the sea, where the water offered an unbeatable perspective of the wonders that rose all around them.

He had judged his timing well. Gabriella sat entranced, reclining in the curve of his arm, as comfortably wound against him as a cat, and he sensed that if he asked her this day to fly to the moon she would say yes.

Right on cue, the rich tenor voice of their gondolier rang out in the balmy evening air.

‘Raoul,’ she said, her eyes so bright and brilliant they threatened to rival the moon’s pearlescent glow. ‘Did you plan this?’

He drew her closer to him and smoothed a loose tendril of her hair with his hand. ‘Are you happy, Bella?’

‘I don’t think I have ever been happier.’ And she settled deeper, curving her delicious body against him, making him burn. Tonight, he thought, she was his. All he had to do was ask the question.

The gondola slipped along the canals, gently slicing through the water, taking the route Raoul had instructed the gondolier to take, getting closer and closer to that moment—and to the task he had promised himself he would undertake tonight.

Except, the further the boat ventured, the heavier and darker his gut felt. How was he supposed to keep her safe? What if he couldn’t? What if he failed again? For she was beautiful, too beautiful for him. Too beautiful to be shackled to a man with a dark past and no future, even if he told himself it need only be for a few months, just until he knew she was free from Garbas. Too beautiful to be shackled to a man who could not keep anyone safe, not even his own wife.

‘It’s a beautiful night,’ she said, nestling closer to him. ‘At least we will be safe from your ghosts tonight.’

He stilled, for there were always ghosts. She had been gone ten years and still she would not let him go.

She would never let him go.

He felt Gabriella shift against him, protesting his sudden stiffness. ‘Raoul, is something wrong?’

‘I’m sorry, Bella,’ he said, trying to force himself to relax. Tonight was no time to remember, to think of ghosts, horrors and mistakes that belonged in the past. Tonight there was a job to be done. ‘Look,’ he continued, pointing ahead, wanting to change the subject for his own sake as much as to distract her. ‘The Bridge of Sighs.’

Before them the white limestone bridge arched gracefully over the Rio di Palazzo, connecting the old prison to the interrogation rooms in the Doge’s Palace. ‘I read about that,’ she said. ‘And how Lord Byron gave it that name for the prisoners who would sigh as they took their last view of the city from the windows of the bridge before being taken away to meet their fate.’

He nodded, feeling an uncomfortable tightness constrict his chest. ‘That is indeed one story of the bridge,’ he managed, his heart beating faster, his blood pumping louder in his ears as the moment he had been planning drew nearer. ‘There is another—much more romantic, as it happens. They say that if lovers kiss at sunset under the Bridge of Sighs they will find blissful happiness with each other for the rest of their lives.’

The boat glided along the canal, its companions the gentle slap and whisper of water and the gondolier’s evocative serenade. He looked down at her where he cradled her in his arms, her face close to his, the slanting rays of sunlight warming her brandy-coloured eyes, eyes filled to the brim with expectation as she waited for his kiss.

This was it.

It was time.

CHAPTER SIX

RAOUL looked down into her eyes. Neither the darkness of his past nor the ghosts that plagued him were enough to stop him now.

And, even though he knew it was insane, that he was the last person to deserve her, he wanted her—wanted all of her, at least for tonight. For the promise he had made, he told himself. Only so she might believe it to be true.

The setting sun turned the air molten around them, shimmering with a thousand wishes, a thousand hopes. The first of his wants, he knew was in his control. His lips brushed hers as he sensed the shadow of the bridge move over them while his lips tasted, explored, tested.

Her mouth melded to his willingly as she gave herself up to his kiss, her sweet, sweet lips parting in invitation, an invitation he had no power but to accept as he felt the heat in his body build as her body curled into him, her hot mouth dragging him in.

And it was his turn to go willingly, losing himself in her liquid depths, plundering her mouth, wanting to reach deeper, harder. Needing more.

Their kiss started at the Bridge of Sighs, but it did not end there. It did not end anywhere close to there. For the first time in her life, she felt truly alive, every part of her tingling with hot awareness, as if a switch had been thrown and her body was humming with electricity looking for somewhere to go. Looking for release of a charge that would burn her up if she couldn’t let go.

Until all too soon they were back at the palazzo.

‘We are home,’ Raoul whispered against her sensitive lips, tracing the pad of one finger down her cheek. ‘It is time to go.’

‘Already?’ she asked, too comfortable to move, and he chuckled softly, a satisfying, rumbling sound that said he wasn’t done with her yet either.

‘It does not have to be the end …’

She blinked up at him, sensing the invitation in his words, giving her the choice when there was really no choice at all. ‘Make love with me, Raoul.’

This time he didn’t chuckle. Instead he growled and scooped her up into his arms, not letting the sudden sway of the vessel throw him from his stride as he lifted her bodily from the gondola and through the sea door, his lips once more meshed with hers as he negotiated the route up the stairs and into the apartment.

He found her room, lit in the soft night glow of the city, hesitating momentarily before laying her almost reverently on the wide bed. For the first time she didn’t see the endless orgy going on around her, didn’t envy them, because Raoul was here with her and soon she would be his.

He growled again as he joined her, collecting her into his arms as he pulled her into his kiss.

She was drowning, she decided. She had been drowning all night, finding it impossible to draw air, finding it impossible to breathe or to think or to anything but drown under a torrent of sensation.

And drowning had never felt so good.

His hot mouth was at her throat, his hands moulding her to him, length to delicious length, joining them at breast and thigh and making her gasp when she felt him against her belly, hard, insistent and wanting.

What little air there had been was consumed in a raging heat that started and ended between her thighs.

Her hands tangled in his hair, urgent and busy, sliding the tie from its length. Her fingers luxuriated in its silky weight as he dipped his head and took her breast in his mouth. Even fully clothed she felt his hot breath sear her skin, felt his teeth graze one sensitive nipple until she cried out with the pleasure of sensation and the frustration of the barrier of clothing.

He was already ahead of her, his long fingers working at the buttons of her blouse, peeling it away, dispensing too with her skirt and sliding it down her legs, unwrapping her, opening her up to his gaze. She waited, afraid and tremulous, unable to breathe while he lifted his head, wanting him to like what he saw, needing both his approval and his desire.

In a face built of shadows and darkness, his eyes gleamed in the soft slanting light as his hands traced their way back up her legs, resting flat-palmed on her belly, his fingertips tracing the line of her lace bra. ‘Bella,’ he said. His voice was so low and filled with gravel that it seemed she felt his words through the touch of his fingers rather than heard him speak. ‘You are so perfect.’ He dragged in air, his dark eyes looking suddenly tortured, confused. ‘But I … Bella, I do not deserve …’

‘I want you,’ she said, empowered by the raw admiration she had seen in his eyes, the raw power before whatever doubts had crept into his mind, about whatever sense of wrong he was committing. This was not wrong and it never could be. She raised herself onto one elbow, unclipping her bra with her free hand, coaxing the strap down her arm, letting the scrap of lace fall from her breasts. ‘I want you to make love to me, Raoul. I want to feel you deep inside me.’

He groaned then, a sound that seemed rent from his very soul. It was so very dark and anguished that for a moment she was afraid he might leave her—but then he looked at her, his chest heaving, and his eyes told her he was going nowhere. His fingers worked at his shirt, reefing it off, and she could not resist putting her hand to his skin, drinking in the complexities of his skinscape—the sculpted flesh, the wiry brush of hair, the nuggety nub of a nipple.

He hissed in air when she flicked that nub with the nail of her thumb, already shrugging down his trousers, kicking off his shoes, brushing off his underwear with the sweep of one hand that exposed all of him to her gaze.

She gasped at his size, her body sizzling at the raw, masculine potency, and she saw his eyes glint at her reaction before he tumbled her back on the bed.

‘You’re beautiful,’ she said, awed by the power and beauty of his body under her hands as he rained kisses on her skin, her throat, her belly, her breasts, making her cry out as he rolled his tongue around one sensitive nipple, drawing it into his hot, liquid mouth.

All the time the need inside her coiled tighter and more insistent, so that when his hand scooped down her side and brushed her last scrap of clothing she thought she might explode.

‘Raoul!’ she cried. He shushed her with his kiss, tangling his tongue with hers, pulling her deeper as his fingers slipped under the lace and through her neat curls, parting her with just the tip of one incendiary finger. Never had she felt like this, breathless, overwhelmed and on the cusp of something so magnificent, so momentous. Never had she felt so out of control.

‘I need you,’ she said—yet Raoul showed no mercy, drawing her nipple into his mouth, sliding his fingers deeper into her hot, slick darkness, his thumb circling that exquisitely sensitive nub, where it seemed all her nerve endings coalesced, one finger pushing inside her, almost sending her over the edge.

Her hands flailed on the bed, searching for something—anything. She found him, rock-hard, hot and already beading with moisture, and it was his turn to groan as he pulsed and bucked in her hand.

‘Bella,’ he said, grinding the word out between his teeth as though she was hurting him.

‘I want you,’ she repeated, writhing under him, knowing that if he didn’t make love to her right now she would surely burn up in these desperate, all-consuming flames. ‘Please, I need you!’

This time he showed blessed mercy, whisking off her remaining garment with an efficiency she might have congratulated in other, less urgent circumstances but right now any delay was too long, any time a waste, when all she wanted in the entire world was to be joined with this man.

Then he was back and she mewled with pleasure and surprise to realise one of them had been aware enough to think of protection as she pulled him into her kiss. He eased her legs apart, his clever fingers returning to once again caress, tease and drive her wild with need until she could not bear it a moment longer.

She tilted her hips in invitation, thrashing her head from side to side, driven crazy with longing, need and something like insanity. Just when she could not stand it any more, he was there at her entrance, and everything in her body seemed to concentrate and focus down on that one, tenuous, madness-inducing contact; that one hitched moment in time where the whole world—the satyrs, sirens, gods and goddesses—all waited with bated breath.

And then he entered her, filling her with one long thrust that drove her head back into the pillows and the breath from her lungs as her body stretched to accommodate his fullness.

Nothing, nothing in the world—not the first sun of spring on her skin, the fresh whisper of breeze through her hair after a long summer day or even seeing Raoul appear through the swirling mists that day—had ever felt so good.

Until he shifted inside her and the best got better.

Her eyes found focus, found his dark eyes watching her as he slowly withdrew and waited on the brink only to fill her even deeper, so that she gasped. But she kept her eyes on his, even as the storm inside her built with every slow withdrawal, with every sliding thrust; even as the rhythm between their bodies built, even as the pace became frantic and their breath with it, even as sensation coiled, intensified, built and built.

Built until there was no place higher to build, no place yet to go. With one final, urgent thrust, one cry of triumph, he made the stars and moon collide and sent their tiny sparkling shards raining down all around her, spelling out the words she already knew to be true.

I love you, Raoul.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He collapsed alongside her, dragging in air as if his life depended on it, wondering what the hell had just happened. Make love to her, he had thought. Seduce her. That was what he had planned.

So why did he feel like he was the one who had been seduced? Why did he feel like he had been the one handed a precious gift?

She had told him that she wanted him.

She had told him that she wanted to feel him deep inside.

She had wrapped those hot fingers around him and brought him to the very edge of his control.

And, in the sex-fogged recesses of his mind, he knew only one thing: that, for both their sakes, this marriage could not come soon enough. The call came the next morning. He should have slept, and slept late, given the night of love-making they had had, but Raoul had slipped out of her bed early, unable to rest under the lover’s alcove. He had been feeling claustrophobic, hemmed in by the audience, mocked by the smiling satyrs and pitied by their lovers, as if they knew the truth.

So when the call had come he had been there to take it—to hear the news that Garbas, courtesy of the finest criminal lawyers in Europe, had been granted bail against all odds. Worse still, word from the street was that one of the first places he had visited on his release was Gabriella’s home, looking for her. No doubt needing access to her wealth to fund his defence.

So he had been right to bring her to Venice with him, he acknowledged as he terminated the call. Now he just needed to finish the job he had set himself.

With Garbas on the loose, he would have to do something sooner rather than later—otherwise he would soon track Gabriella down, discover she was in Venice and try to play the friendship card. He could not let that happen.

He glanced at his watch and then back towards the bedroom where Gabriella still lay sleeping and probably would for hours. Half of him yearned to rejoin her in bed, to be there when she woke up, make love to her warm, willing body and blot everything out—the deathbed promise, the past, Garbas. Blot it all out with the glories of her body and the passion of their love-making.

But he could not afford to think that way. Making love to her was a means to an end, nothing more. He could not afford to let it be more.

So he would leave for Paris now, talk to his contacts and find out what had gone wrong with the police case. And meanwhile Natania could take Gabriella on the promised trip to Murano.

She might be disappointed he would not be taking her, but he would make up for it tonight.

‘I don’t know whether to stay in Venice or go home.’

On the other end of the call, Gabriella heard Phillipa’s soft expression of concern. ‘Do you really have a choice?’

That was exactly Gabriella’s problem—she didn’t know. She’d woken deliciously warm cocooned in the bed clothes, wondering if last night’s love-making had been a dream, being told by the protest and creak of unfamilar muscles that it was not. She’d woken with a smile on her face and with joy in her heart.

And if Raoul had been there to hold her close and make love to her again there would have been no question in her mind. There was no place she would rather be.

But she had woken up after the most wondrous night of her life alone.

And Natania’s explanation that Raoul had apologised but had promised to be back in time for dinner went no way to diminishing this overwhelming sense of abandonment.

Hadn’t last night meant anything to him? All night his body had told her he loved her. All night she’d waited for him to say the words, expecting him to say the words she had found herself so close to saying every time she looked at him.

Yet this morning he had gone without a word.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head, trying to clear her muddied thoughts. ‘I guess I really should go home and sort out the estate some time, and then I have to do something about returning to work. And Consuelo finally texted this morning and wants to catch up …’ Then she thought about leaving Raoul, the man who had blown her world apart. ‘But …’

‘But what? Is it Raoul?’

‘He makes me feel so good, Phillipa. He makes me feel so alive.’

‘Ah.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you love him?’

Gabriella breathed out in a rush, ‘I think so.’

‘And does Raoul feel the same way about you?’

That was where Gabriella came unstuck. What did a man feel for you, if he could make love to you all night and then disappear with the morning without so much as a sweet kiss to remember him by—a man who told you nothing of how he felt?

Unless he was deliberately trying to give her the message that their love-making didn’t mean anything. But that made no sense when she thought of how he had almost worshipped her body. Surely he could not be that callous?