Scandals Of The Ruthless: A Shadow of Guilt

For a long time it had been illicit and forbidden, guilty. But from the moment she’d seen him again it had flamed to life. Yet the contradiction had duelled within her: how could she hate him and want him at the same time? But now those questions faded in her head. Hate felt like a much more indefinable thing and the desire was there, stronger than hate, rushing through her blood and making her feel alive.

She lifted a hand and touched Gio’s hard jaw. He clenched it against her hand. Desire thickened the air around them, unmistakable. As if questioning it, Gio looked down at her, a small frown between his eyes. ‘Valentina?’

It was the same look he’d given her the other night when she’d exposed herself and she understood it now. He’d been asking the question then, unsure of what she’d been telling him with her body language. The knowledge was heady. He wanted her.

One of Valentina’s fingers touched Gio’s bottom lip, tracing its full sensuous outline. Words were rising up within her, she couldn’t keep them back. ‘Gio...kiss me.’ She’d wanted this, ached for this, for so long.

It was only after an interminable moment of nothing happening that she looked up into Gio’s eyes and saw something like torture in their dark green depths. He shook his head. ‘This is not a good idea. You don’t want this, not really.’

Gio heard himself say the words and felt his erection straining against his jeans, against her soft curves. He’d never felt harder in his life and it had nothing to do with being celibate for five years. He wanted to kiss and plunder this woman before she changed her mind but he knew he couldn’t. She hated him already; she would despise him for ever for this.

Valentina’s gaze narrowed on his. A light was dawning in her eyes. He braced himself for the moment when she would pull herself free and demand to know what the hell he was doing.

And then she said, ‘Damn you, Gio Corretti, kiss me.’

* * *

Had she really said those words? Valentina looked up at Gio, the question screaming in her head, Why won’t he just kiss me? She could feel his erection, even harder now, and imagined it straining against his jeans, against her. She felt damp heat moisten between her legs. Desperation wasn’t far away and suddenly it hit her: she was a warm female body who had all but thrown herself at him. Few men wouldn’t respond to that.

Horrified to think that she’d so badly misread the situation, very belatedly she tried to move, to get free of Gio’s embrace, but suddenly his hands tightened on her jaw, fingers reaching around to her neck.

Gio had had a moment of doubt when she’d uttered those words. Damn you, Gio Corretti, kiss me. He thought he’d been hallucinating. But then she hadn’t moved away; she’d looked up at him with a distinctive light of determination in her eyes. And more than that, he’d seen the stark need in those amber depths. Unmistakable. The same need he felt right now.

But then he’d seen the flicker of doubt and uncertainty cross her face. Clearly she thought he didn’t want her when such a thought was laughable. Couldn’t she feel his need straining against her? Gio knew a stronger man would take the opportunity to push her back. A more moral man would tell her to go and not take advantage of this heightened moment. But he was not that man. He’d been damned a long time ago and he wanted Valentina.

All he could think of now was of the lovers she must have already had and jealousy burnt up his spine. A woman as beautiful as her, the kind of woman who had just demanded he kiss her—she wasn’t innocent. And he couldn’t bear to think of her with anyone else. He wanted her to want only him. Think of only him.

And she did want him. A fierce exultant force rushed through him and it was so strong that Gio had to control it with effort. She was moving in earnest now, trying to get away and a fierce primitive force surged through him, making his hands tighten. He growled softly, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Valentina’s breath hitched and she looked into his eyes. Gio was responding now; his eyes were slumberous and blazing. His need was laid bare for her to see, as if she hadn’t already felt it in his body, and while one part of her exulted, another part contracted. Suddenly she felt out of her depth.

‘I...I changed my mind,’ she said almost hopefully, even as her treacherous body was responding to the heat in Gio’s eyes, the way his body felt next to hers.

He shook his head slowly and Valentina felt herself being mesmerised. ‘It’s too late for that. You asked to be kissed and so I’m going to kiss you.’

His hands were tight around her jaw, fingers caressing the back of her head. Valentina felt completely exposed and vulnerable as Gio’s head started to descend. Intense flutters of excitement and anticipation shot through her abdomen and she had the stark realisation of how much she’d always longed for this moment. She wasn’t strong enough to pull away and she wasn’t sure Gio would even let her go.

There was a feral intensity in his eyes as his head dipped closer and closer and, like a coward, Valentina let her eyes drift shut. When his mouth finally touched hers, the sensation of those hard sensual contours was so exquisite against her sensitive lips that she had to grab on to his T-shirt to hold on.

His touch was hard, but gentle. Exploratory. Valentina was aware of his hands moving, thumbs trailing across her jaw as his hands went to the back of her head, where he found and pulled out her hairband. She could feel her hair falling around her shoulders, and one of Gio’s big hands cradled the back of her head, angling her so that he could move his mouth on hers with lazy expert sensuality.

Valentina only realised she wasn’t breathing when Gio coaxed her mouth to open to his, his tongue touching the seam of her lips. When she drew in a breath the full reality of kissing Gio Corretti hit her like a steam train. His scent hit her nostrils, even muskier now, laden with the promise of something so carnal that her toes curled.

His hand tightened on her head, and his other hand found its way to her back, pulling her into him, arching her spine. And it wasn’t enough. As their tongues touched, Valentina pressed even closer.

The sensation of tongues touching and tasting, exploring, was so exquisite that Valentina never wanted it to stop. Everything was heightened. Valentina was aware of how hard his arousal felt, pressing into her. Restlessly, her hips moved, and as if in answer Gio’s hand went to her hip, where he flattened it across the small of her back, pressing her in even tighter.

When she felt the faintly calloused skin of the palm of his hand against the bare skin just above the waist of her jeans she only knew that she wanted more.

His hand drifted up to her bra strap and Valentina’s breasts seemed to swell and tighten in response, she broke away from the kiss. She opened her eyes to look up into those dark green depths. Her mouth felt swollen, bruised. Her heart was thundering and she felt dizzy. She realised that she was on her tippy-toes; her arms were tight around Gio’s neck and she was so close to his mouth that their breaths intermingled. If she could have climbed into his skin right then she would have done it without hesitation.

Gio’s hand was spread flat across Valentina’s smooth back; her skin was like silk. Her bra strap was a provocative inducement to just flip it open, slide his hands around and cup those firm swells. His whole body ached with want.

Somehow he managed to get out, ‘Do you want this?’

Valentina was aware of what Gio was asking. This wouldn’t end with just this kiss. If she said yes, it would be everything. All of her. There were voices in her head urging her to stop, think. But they were dim. Stronger was the urgent primal desire she felt. This man and this moment was all she could focus on. She wanted him with a hunger that was completely alien and new to her, and she couldn’t walk away from it. Right then she seriously doubted the ability of her legs to hold her up anyway. Gio was all but holding her up.

Slowly Valentina nodded her head. ‘Yes, I want this.’

Looking slightly tortured Gio just asked, ‘Are you sure?’

He was giving her a chance to go, to think about this. Her heart lurched. She nodded again and said firmly, ‘Yes.’

Valentina was lifted into Gio’s arms against his chest so fast that her head swam. He shouldered his way into the bedroom off the main living area and Valentina could see a huge bed dressed in dark grey linen. The sun was setting outside, bathing the room in a dusky glow.

‘What is this place?’ she asked far too belatedly, a little stunned at how fast everything was moving.

‘It’s mine, sometimes I stay overnight.’

Gio carefully lowered her to stand by the bed. For the first time in what felt like aeons there was space between them and already Valentina felt bereft. It scared her. But not enough to put more space between them.

Gio’s face was flushed and the first indication of stubble darkened his jaw. He opened his mouth and Valentina quickly put her hand up to cover it, afraid he was going to ask her again if she knew what she was doing. She didn’t want to think or rationalise what was happening. She just wanted to feel.

Gio took her hand down and a small smile touched his mouth as if he understood. He held her hand against his chest where she could feel his heartbeat fast but strong, and with his other hand he wrapped it around her neck and pulled her towards him.

This time the kiss was hungry and devouring. It became heated in seconds, and Valentina curled her hand into his shirt, bunching it up. Her other hand went to his hip and found the hot skin underneath his shirt. Emboldened, she slid it around to his back and explored under his jeans, feeling the cleft of his smooth buttocks. Gio broke the kiss and said thickly, ‘I need to see you.’

His hands were on her shirt, undoing her buttons. Valentina shivered with anticipation and looked down. Gio’s hands looked huge and very dark, long fingers grappling with tiny buttons. She heard him curse softly when the buttons eluded his grasp and brought her own hands up to do the job. To be standing here, undressing in front of Gio...it was too huge to think about.

When her shirt fell open to reveal her lacy bra, Valentina blushed hotly. Gio pushed her hands aside and pulled open the shirt even more, until it came off her shoulders and down her arms and fell to the floor.

She couldn’t look up at him. A hand snaked around to her back and undid her bra. He pulled the two straps down her arms and her bra joined her shirt on the floor. Instinctively Valentina went to cover her breasts but Gio stopped her arms. ‘Don’t...’

He tipped up her chin so that she had to look at him and his eyes were molten with heat and need, dissolving Valentina’s inhibitions. ‘You’re beautiful.’

She saw his eyes drop to take in the swells of her breasts and their tips tingled painfully. With two hands he cupped them, and moved his thumbs across the sensitised peaks. Valentina moaned softly, closing her eyes. It was too much to see his hands on her flesh like that.

Somehow Gio manoeuvred them so that he was sitting on the bed and he brought Valentina between his hard thighs, trapping her between them. With one hand on her waist holding her steady, he cupped a breast with his other and brought his mouth forward, and fed that hungry aching tip into the hot cavern of his mouth. Valentina sucked in a tortured breath and her hands went to his shoulders, holding on for dear life as shards of intense pleasure went from her nipple to between her legs.

Gio was remorseless, sucking and teasing the peak into throbbing stiffness. Flicking it with this tongue before sucking fiercely again. Valentina wasn’t even aware of her hand going to the back of his head to hold him there. She cried out when he moved to the other breast and administered the same exquisite torture. Valentina had never known a pleasure like it. It was awakening an even more intense need in her body, down low, where her legs were pressed together by Gio’s thighs.

Suddenly Valentina pulled back from his wicked mouth and looked down. Her eyelids felt heavy. Thickly she muttered, ‘I want to see you too.’ And she bent down to pull Gio’s polo shirt up and over his head. When his magnificent torso was revealed she could only look at it as reverently as he’d looked at her.

He was beautifully muscled, not an ounce of fat. Dark olive skin and a very masculine dusting of hair. Gio’s eyes glittered fiercely and he said, ‘Come here.’

Valentina obeyed without question but this time she straddled Gio’s thighs so that she was sitting on his lap. He brought both arms around her and the sensation of her bare breasts and wet nipples against his chest made her gasp. He pulled her head down to his and covered her mouth, swallowing her gasp. Her arousal levels rose to fever pitch. She’d never known there could be so many kinds of kisses. This was dark and wicked and she could feel the bulge of his erection underneath the apex of her legs. She wriggled, heightening the sensation. Gio’s hand went to the front of her jeans and Valentina broke off the kiss with a gasp when she felt his fingers come between her jeans and skin.

Her hair was falling down her back, making every nerve end stand on edge. Gio’s fingers were hot against her lower belly and as she looked into his eyes he flicked his thumb and opened the top button. With the top button gaping open and the zip pulled down, Gio spread his hand around the back of her waist and delved underneath, cupping one firm buttock.

Valentina arched upwards against him, and Gio took advantage, his mouth and tongue unerringly finding a turgid nipple and sucking fiercely as his hand went deeper and his fingers found the damp cleft of her body.

Valentina cried out, her legs pressing tight against his thighs as if that might assuage the delicious torture, but then suddenly the earth was moving and she was on her back on the bed with Gio looming over her, his shoulders impossibly broad, a lock of dark hair falling messily onto his forehead.

Valentina wanted to reach up to touch that lock, invaded by a dangerous tenderness, and had to clench her hand to a fist to stop it. Thankfully Gio was far too busy distracting her to see anything of this turmoil within her.

With a fast economy of movement he had opened her jeans fully and was pulling them down and off so now she was in nothing but her knickers. This was more naked than she’d ever been in front of anyone apart from her mother and Valentina bit her lip when trepidation and insecurity lanced her.

Something pierced through the heat haze in Gio’s brain when he saw the flicker of trepidation on Valentina’s face, and the full plumpness of her bottom lip caught between small white teeth. Like a cold bucket of water being thrown in his face, something occurred to him. His hands stilled on the button of his jeans and he frowned. ‘Valentina...are you a virgin?’

CHAPTER SIX

GIO SAW VALENTINA’S face flush and a heavy weight settled in his gut. She brought up an arm to cover her breasts and just like that the temperature in the room zoomed down from about a million degrees to minus forty.

Stifling an almost overwhelming urge to smash his fist into the nearest solid object, Gio stepped back from the sinful provocation of Valentina’s practically naked supine body. A body he would have been sinking into right now and discovering for himself just how innocent she was, with scant thought of being gentle.

On stiff legs he went straight to the bathroom and lifted the robe from the back of the door and came back, holding it out to Valentina, who he avoided looking at on the bed. Discovering she was innocent was not something he’d expected in a million years and this changed everything. She could not really want him to be the one to take her innocence, and when the heat of passion died away, she’d realise that and hate him even more.

‘What are you doing?’ Her voice, soft and husky, grated over his exposed and sensitive nerves. The muscles in his arm bunched and he said more curtly than he intended, ‘Take the robe, Valentina, I don’t sleep with virgins.’

* * *

Valentina was sitting up on the bed holding the robe to her naked chest, in shock, for a long minute afterwards. Gio had left the room, pulling on his shirt as he did with just a curt, ‘I’ll wait outside.’

She felt cold all over and yet still hot and tingly inside. The sense of something momentous being ripped out of her grasp was huge. There was an awful sting to his rejection of her because she was a virgin, a sting that cut much deeper than she liked to acknowledge. To avoid looking at that far too controversial subject, Valentina allowed anger to rise into her overheated brain. How dared Gio react like that?

The anger gave her the impetus to move and with stiff arms she pulled on the robe and belted it tightly around her and stalked out to the living area. When she emerged it was to see the rigid lines of Gio’s body as he looked out the window with his back to her. He clearly knew she was there as she saw him tense even more.

Valentina resisted the urge to pick something up and fling it at his head. Instead she said with saccharine sweetness, ‘I’ll just go and divest myself of my virginity and be back so we can continue where we left off, shall I?’

Gio whirled around, arms crossed and muscles bunched. Tension stamped all over his features. He looked wild and uncivilised and it made Valentina feel even hotter.

‘You should have been honest with me.’

Valentina crossed her arms and laughed out loud. ‘You are such a hypocrite! You just told me that you’ve slept with women and not even remembered their names—how do you know that they weren’t virgins?’

Gio winced. Why on earth had he spilled his guts like that? He’d never articulated to anyone how empty and meaningless those two years were. How low he’d sunk.

He tried to ignore how achingly sexy Valentina looked in nothing but the robe with her dark hair spread out across her shoulders. Frustration coursed through his veins, making his body hurt. He bit out, ‘They weren’t. Believe me.’

Valentina taunted, ‘So I should preface every kiss I have with a man with “By the way I’m a virgin”?’

Something dark went into Gio’s gut at the thought of her kissing any other man. ‘Yes, especially if every kiss ends up with you lying half naked on a bed.’

Valentina sucked in a gasp at the injustice of that comment and felt the prickle of humiliating tears. All she could think of right then was how ardently she’d thrown herself at Gio, how she’d begged him to kiss her. Make love to her. She’d been gyrating on his lap like some kind of an exotic dancer. He’d tried to stop her, had asked her twice if she wanted this, and each time she’d said a resounding yes.

As if sensing her turmoil Gio uncrossed his arms and put out a hand. Valentina backed away and fire raced up her spine, obliterating any lingering desire. ‘I hate you, Giacomo Corretti. And I wouldn’t sleep with you now if you were the last man on this earth.’

Valentina whirled around and hated that tears were blurring her vision. She dashed them away and went back into the bedroom where she ripped off the robe and dragged on her clothes, every move she’d made and kiss she’d just given this man running through her head like a bad B-movie.

When she re-emerged she stalked straight to the main door, turned the key and had her hand on the handle before she felt a hand on her other arm. Instantly sensations ran all the way down to her groin and her still-sensitive breasts peaked.

‘Look, Valentina, wait—’

She ripped her arm free and looked up into Gio’s face. The contrition she saw there sent her over the edge. She could handle anything but not this...pity. She lifted a hand and before she was even aware of the impulse, it had connected so hard with his face that his head snapped around. Trembling all over from an overdose of adrenalin and emotion she said, ‘Don’t touch me again. Ever.’

* * *

The first day of the Corretti Cup race meeting was dawning and Gio stood in his study office looking out the window at the hive of activity in every corner of the racetrack. It was usually his favourite time of the year but this year he was impossibly distracted. Distracted by a five-foot-seven chestnut-haired, amber-eyed temptress and a level of sexual frustration he’d never known could exist. Not to mention the ever-simmering cauldron of emotions in his gut—ever since he’d seen her again. Gone was the numb shell that had been encasing him since he’d returned to Sicily.

Valentina.

Her name was on his mind, his lips, every waking moment. He could still feel the sting of her hand across his face. It had been no less than he’d deserved.

When he’d realised she was a virgin he’d reacted viscerally. He could never be the one to take that prize from her. It would be a travesty. Yet she had been ready to give it—in the heat of the moment. Gio knew damn well that in the aftermath Valentina would have realised the magnitude of what she’d just done and with who, and she would have felt nothing but disgust for giving in to such base desires.

Grief for Mario—talking about him had defused something between them, but no way was it strong enough to withstand the bitter and deep anger she undoubtedly still felt towards Gio. The chemistry that sizzled between them had obscured that momentarily.

She might hate him for rejecting her now, but he’d saved him and her from that simmering enmity deepening even more.

Gio knew all this and repeated it over and over again to himself but the truth was that he was lying to himself. Because for all of his lofty assertions to Valentina that he didn’t sleep with virgins, all he wanted to do was close the gates to his racetrack, turn everyone away, find her and put her over his shoulder like a caveman. And then he wanted to take her to a quiet place and make love to her until they were both weak and sated.

Until she was no longer a virgin. Until she was his and no one else’s.

* * *

Valentina should have been focusing on the task at hand—the first day of the Corretti Cup—but her mind kept veering off track back to the other evening and the excruciating humiliation of having Gio reject her because she was a virgin.

Even now, hot tears pricked her eyes and to counteract the weak emotion she stabbed a fork with unnecessary zeal into a piece of pork. She felt so conflicted...the hate she’d always felt for Gio was disturbingly elusive now. She wanted to think of his rejection, hold that to her like a cold justification, but she kept thinking about what he’d told her.

He’d ripped apart a huge part of her defence around him by revealing what he’d gone through after Mario’s death.

And then he’d taken her in his arms...and Valentina had turned into a complete stranger. She’d begged him to kiss her, to make love to her. Self-disgust filled her now. Few men would turn that down...and Gio had merely proved himself as susceptible to a warm willing body as the next man. What he hadn’t counted on was her unwelcome innocence.

The hurt that seized her in the pit of her belly reminded Valentina that his rejection had cut far deeper than she wanted to acknowledge.

Stabbing the pork viciously again, Valentina told herself that he’d done her a favour by not sleeping with her. Her conscience pricked her to think of the emotional fall-out if she had slept with him and for the first time she considered the rogue idea that perhaps he’d done it out of some moral sense of integrity.

One thing was certain: there was no way that Valentina was ever going to allow him to make her feel so vulnerable or exposed again.

‘Val?’

Valentina looked up feeling a little dazed to see her assistant Sara, who was eyeing the very overpierced piece of pork warily.

‘Yes?’

Sara looked up. ‘I, ah, just checked the main buffet tent and it’s all moving like clockwork. No one is waiting for their food.’