Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

She arrived beside him in a state of numbing panic, sights and sounds hitting her senses at the same time as his body did. His arm came round her waist, arching her into full contact with his lean, hard length at the same time that she heard the car door shut behind her and another sound of whirring that had her twisting her head in time to see a pair of huge, thick wrought-iron gates swinging shut beneath a heavy stone arch she hadn’t even been aware that they’d passed beneath.

Dizzy and disorientated, she became aware of uneven cobblestones beneath her thin-soled shoes and turned her head again in an effort to search the darkness for some hint as to where they were. Her mouth brushed his chin as she moved and his hissed sound of his tense response brought her search to a stop on his face. Then she wasn’t seeing anything but the angry flame of desire leaping in his dark eyes, the savage tautening of his skin and flaring nostrils as he took in a swift breath of air. She felt a sudden tightening in his body, sucked in her own shocked gasp when she realised what the tightening meant. Her gaze dipped lower—to his mouth… his hard, tight, angry mouth that was already advertising what was going to come next.

‘No—’ She managed that one breathlessly weak protest before he made full contact. After that she wasn’t capable of saying or doing a single thing as his mouth moulded hers and his tongue made its first stabbing thrust. She was instantly electrified, fierce heat pouring a hot, tight sting of pleasure right down her front to gather in a sense-energising pool at her thighs.

She groaned and clutched at his shoulders, so shocked by her own response that she tried to push away from him, but it was a wasted effort because he only had to use the flat of his hand against the arching base of her spine to bring her in contact with his hard, muscular front for her to go weak at the knees.

He felt them go, felt her whole body quiver as a helpless little moan of pleasure keened in her throat. If this kiss was meant to be a punishment then it had failed in its mission, she found herself thinking dizzily as she went willingly when he pulled her even tighter up against him and she was kissing him back as she’d never kissed anyone, with a wild, deep, urgent hunger that took her over completely.

A powerful light suddenly drenched the two of them. The kiss broke abruptly, and on a curse Carlo twisted with her still wrapped against him while Francesca buried her face in his dinner jacket and quite simply lost the will to live. Her senses had shattered. She’d thought they’d done that earlier tonight when she’d watched Angelo with Sonya. But even that devastating moment could not compare with how she was dealing with the loss of that unbelievable kiss.

‘My apologies, signor,’ a deeply contrite male voice murmured in Italian from somewhere close by. ‘The security lights are not functioning. I had to come myself to see—’

‘Take that damn torch off my face, Lorenzo,’ Carlo commanded in a harsh, rasping growl.

They were thrown into instant darkness again. Francesca managed to unclip her fingers from where they clung to Carlo’s neck. From feeling virtually incandescent with pleasure she was now slowly sinking into horror and shame.

She hated him! How could she have responded like that to a man she absolutely hated?

She tried to stiffen away from him but he was having none of it, his grip only tightening warningly as he held some kind of intelligent discussion with what she presumed was a security guard though she couldn’t be sure of anything right now. Her feet felt strange, as if they didn’t belong to her, her legs were tingling from ankles to hips. And the dragging sensation taking place between her thighs was desperate enough to tug a thick whimper from her aching throat.

Whatever Carlo thought that whimper meant, he reacted to it with another black curse and suddenly she was being thrust beneath the power of one arm and forced to walk.

‘Let me go,’ she choked out. Being this close to him was beginning to take on the properties of a nightmare—the whole evening was!

‘Not in the near future, cara,’ he responded with dry, grim sarcasm that was so thick with sexual reference that she stumbled.

He kept her upright. He kept her moving over uneven cobblestones. He kept her wrapped so closely to him that she had difficulty trying to take in her surroundings though she did manage to note that they were walking across an enclosed courtyard that made her footsteps echo off the surrounding walls. She could also hear the soft sound of a fountain somewhere, saw dark blue paintwork framing long, narrow windows set into burnt-sienna-painted walls.

Then they were stopping in front of a door. Muscles flexed as he leant forward to grasp the handle, the grasp of his long fingers sliding upwards a small inch that was all it required to let her right breast know they were there. She sucked in a sharp gasp as a fresh wave of heat poured in that direction. If it hadn’t been for the denim jacket helping to conceal what was happening to her she would have folded with embarrassment when she felt the nipple grow excruciatingly tight.

The door swung open with a twist of the handle, and she was being propelled through it into a fully lit long, wide hallway with faded blue walls and gold-leaf plasterwork. He didn’t so much as pause as he began hustling her over a stunning blue mosaic floor towards the other end of the hall. They passed by a pair of staircases that sped off at right angles, one on either side of them, passed beautiful pieces of furniture that were in themselves priceless works of art. Everything she set her dizzy eyes on was stunningly tasteful and elegant, nothing bore so much as a vague resemblance to the Batistes’ white villa with its overt grandeur and style.

Another door was flung open and once again she was being ushered firmly through it into a square-shaped room with more gold-leaf plasterwork, chalk-pale terracotta walls and yet another mosaic floor made up of brown and black marble inlaid with gold.

At last he let her go and she swayed a little as she looked for balance, then instantly spun round as the door was slotted into its frame. Eyes wide, control shot, unsure whether she should be terrified or just plain angry after that shocking kiss and the way he’d hustled her in here, ‘W-what is this place?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

His smile had a sinister cut to it. The way he folded his arms across his impressive chest, crossed his elegant black shoes at his ankles then leant those broad shoulders back against the door and even the glitter behind his narrowed eyes were displays of arrogant provocation that brought every nerve-end she had left ringing on full alert.

‘Welcome, to the Palazzo del Carlucci,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘Home to my family for the last four centuries and now, mi amore, the venue for your complete ravishment—in the honourable name of revenge, of course.’

As a calculated heart-stopper he had certainly hit the perfect note, Carlo saw as he watched all colour drain from her face. His sarcastic tone had slid right by her and he was angry enough not to care.

No, he was more than angry—he was bloody furious! He’d put his reputation on the line for her tonight. He’d watched over her, been there to catch her when she’d fallen, found her time and the privacy to come to terms with the reality of what Batiste was really like. He’d protected, sup-ported—smiled in the face of a hundred scandalised stares while he got her out of that situation as fast as he could. And what did she do?

She took the word of a lying tramp like her flatmate and turned him into the enemy!

‘Lay a hand on me and I’ll claw your eyes out,’ she responded shakily to his silk-honed threat.

He sent her a smile that mocked and derided. ‘Since we both know that my laying both hands on you is more likely to make you purr than claw, it was a rather wasted threat, don’t you think?’

It was like feeding candy to a baby, he noted. She grabbed every word and swallowed it whole. In some dark corner of his anger he enjoyed watching her squirm in growing alarm. He even shifted his stance as if to come after her, just to see how she would react.

She took a step back. ‘Stay right where you are!’ she jerked out sharply and put out a hand to ward him off.

Some chance, he thought. The ravishment was becoming more appetising by the second. And that kiss-softened quivering mouth was just begging to be ravished again—and again. If her beautiful eyes went any darker they would be the same colour as his own eyes, which made him very curious as to how dark they were going to go in the throes of some very intense passion.

‘I will be no one else’s victim—especially not yours!’

‘Why not mine? When you don’t think twice about playing the willing victim for anyone who wants to beat you up with their lies?’

‘Whose lies are you referring to?’ She threw a puzzled frown at him. It hit him low in his loins like a kick. He’d never known a simple dusky frown could be so damn sexy, it sent his shoulders shifting tensely inside his dinner jacket.

‘Are you saying that Nicola Mauraux isn’t your stepsister?’

‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I am not saying that.’

‘Then what are you saying? Do you think tonight has been a ball of laughter for me, signor? Do you think I want to be standing here listening to you play stupid word-games just for the fun of it?’

He went to answer but wasn’t given the chance to. ‘I am not the one at fault for whatever Angelo did to your stepsister,’ she told him in trembling self-defence. ‘As far as I knew they’d finished their relationship when Nicola returned to her studies in Paris!’ she cried. ‘I do not steal other women’s men from them. And I will not take the blame because your stepsister was hurt! If you want your revenge look to Angelo—and show a little class by moving away from that door so that I can leave!’

Well, well, Carlo thought curiously, narrowing his eyes on her stiff if trembling stance, and had to acknowledge that his tables had just been turned. It came as a surprise because he hadn’t thought she had it in her to take him on with quite so much ego-shredding venom.

Show a little class, he repeated musingly to himself, and almost smiled at the hit that cutting remark had landed on his pride.

‘And here I was, waiting for you to apologise to me for daring to believe the word of some vamped-up little tramp in really deep trouble, who thought she would stick a few knives in by telling you that I was capable of using you for the purposes of revenge!’

His voice had risen in anger; now she was staring at him through huge shocked eyes. ‘I…’ she began.

‘From there I thought we would continue where we left off in the courtyard,’ he continued ruthlessly without letting her speak. ‘With some really deep, passionate sex—preferably in my very big, comfortable bed, where we would work to help clear away your quite understandable blues.’

Her chin shot up at the very deliberate way he had just casually dismissed the devastation she had to be suffering.

‘After the sex we could then discuss Nicola and how the whole Carlucci clan is in your debt for luring Batiste into believing that the Gianni fortune would be more accessible than hers would be.’

At last she was beginning to realise that this conversation had another edge to it. He could see a slow dawning colouring her eyes.

‘However,’ he went on, ‘if you prefer to leave then by all means do so.’ He even straightened from the door to give her safe passage. ‘There is a phone in the hall and a pad lying next to it with the number of a very good taxi service. If I were you I would get the driver to recommend a hotel for the night and avoid going back to your apart-ment—just in case you walk in on your best friend and your ex-fiancé indulging their lusts on the sitting-room carpet.’

Having watched her blanch at his final cut-throat comment, he strode across the room, arrogantly assured that he had recovered his ego—at the expense of hers.

Did that knowledge sit well on him? No, it didn’t, he admitted with a grimace. But one of them had to climb off their high horse and, since he had no intention of doing it, it had to be Francesca.

He was a full-blooded Carlucci after all. She was only half a Gianni.

And anyway, he was still angry despite his smooth, careless speech. There were a million things he could have been doing out there if he hadn’t been devoting his full and undivided attention to Francesca Bernard and her Cinderella plight!

Cinderella, he scathed as he approached the antique French armoire almost dominating one wall. Well, if that made him her Prince Charming then he wasn’t doing a very good job of it, he conceded as he glared at the armoire his stepmother had brought with her from Paris when she married his father.

As he opened the doors he smelled the age of the solid old wood. Inside had been converted into a comprehensive drinks cabinet, which had always seemed a desecration to him but—he offered another grimace. Nanette had been proud of it and in the end that was all that mattered. This single piece of furniture had been her one and only heirloom and she’d loved to see it sitting here in this great house that groaned beneath centuries of Carlucci statements to wealth and good taste. What else she brought into this house had always been far more valuable.

It was called love and happiness. And for those gifts alone the armoire would remain exactly where it stood for as long as he held power of decision over the house.

Reaching for the bottle of cognac and a deep-bowled glass, he was aware that Francesca still hadn’t made that move towards the door. Placing the bowl of the glass in his palm to warm it while he uncapped the bottle of cognac, he dared a sideways glance at her.

She looked like a pale and bewildered ghost, he observed. Her eyes were too wide and rimmed by the stinging threat of tears that placed a fine quiver on her mouth. She was trying to control it, trying her best to maintain some pride and dignity. But she wasn’t standing where he was standing and seeing what he was seeing. She looked vulnerable, exhausted, so damn shattered he was amazed she was still in one piece.

Her skin looked so strained it was waxen. And her hair was trying its best to escape again, the beaded comb barely clinging to the twisted silken knot.

But not for long, he promised himself as he turned away again. He was going to help the hair out in a minute. He was going to remove the silly comb and let the whole tawny mass tumble free. And he was going to heat that waxen flesh until it melted. He was going to remove that silly denim jacket then that silly dress with its romantic layers of chiffon that did nothing for her and yelled ‘bought to please Angelo Batiste!’.

Anger growled like a snarling dog inside him; his lips bit together to stop the sound from coming out.

He was going to strip her down to her wonderful skin and bin the whole bloody outfit. Then he was going to begin the task of rebuilding her from the inside out. He was going to turn her into what he perceived she would be if she hadn’t had her self-confidence beaten to a pulp by inadequate selfish swines like Bruno Gianni and Batiste.

But for now he was going to have to continue to play it tough here, because she also looked like a trapped bird trying to sum up the courage to make a bolt for escape. If she did then he was going to have to stop her—and cornered, trapped birds had a nasty habit of flying at your face.

He poured a generous splash of cognac into the glass then swirled it around while deftly recapping the bottle with his free hand. By the time he turned back to her he was relieved to find that she’d moved at last and was no longer staring vacantly into space but was looking up at the gilt-framed portrait hanging above the huge stone fireplace, in which his father stood with his arms linked around the slender frame of the beautiful dark-haired Nanette. Nanette was looking up, his father was gazing down, and only a blind idiot would miss the wealth of love and affection that poured from every brushstroke.

‘You look like him,’ she said.

‘Mm,’ he acknowledged with a small wry smile. ‘Nanette Mauraux was my father’s second wife,’ he explained as he walked towards her. ‘My mother died when I was—quite young.’

He offered her the glass. Francesca shook her head, her attention still fixed on the portrait. ‘That could be Nicola standing with him,’ she said.

‘Does Nanette look so young?’ Turning to view the portrait for himself, ‘Yes, she does,’ he answered his own question. ‘My father managed to shock all of Rome when he went to Paris on a business trip and came back with a child bride clinging to his arm…’

He took a sip of the brandy, remembering. Then offered a soft laugh. ‘He was fifty-four and she was twenty-three. Nicola was a tiny replica of her mama and I was a brooding, dark, resentful youth of nineteen who was appalled to be presented with a stepmother I would probably have made a play for if I’d met her first.’

‘Did you?’ she looked at him. ‘Make a play for her, I mean.’

It took him a few seconds to understand why she dared think such a thing of him. Then, ‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘I forgot—I have no scruples.’

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the moment the comment left his sardonic mouth. She stared at him for a second—then on a small choke she turned and ran.

On a thick black curse he went after her, having to pause to divert to the armoire to lose the brandy glass before continuing on. She’d already thrown the door open and was disappearing into the hall. He uttered another terse curse in Italian. His trapped bird had flown but in her eagerness to get away from him she’d turned the wrong way.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FRANCESCA knew what she’d done two flying steps along the hallway but there was no way she was turning around and risking passing that door just as he came out of it.

She’d had enough. She just couldn’t take any more of his cruel sarcasm and anyway, she’d already spied a pair of doors standing shut ahead of her so she just kept going, not caring where those doors led to as long as she managed to put a distance between herself and the hateful Carlo Carlucci before she finally gave in and fell apart.

What she didn’t expect was to drag open those two doors and take two more flying steps, only to come to a perfect standstill, held breathless, feeling as if she’d stepped out of that door and straight into a completely different world.

Lake Alba was floating right in front of her, its smooth surface wearing a moonlit glaze like a sheet of frosted white silk. She had never seen anything quite like it. She forgot she was supposed to be running away from Carlo’s taunting as she stared through a stone archway supported by twin slender pillars that framed the lake like a painting, its base trimmed by a low stone latticework balustrade that seemed to form an edge to the end of the world.

It was the most magical scene she had ever encountered; nothing had prepared her for it on the swift journey here through the winding lanes. Villa Batiste claimed a view of the lake but nothing to compare with this one. They were so close—yet not very close at all. It was a strange very disorientating sensation to stand here and feel as if you could reach out and touch those silver silk waters yet be aware at the same time that acres of layered garden lay in between.

Her feet took her across the wide stone terrace, drawing her like a magnet to stand beneath the arch. She was so enchanted she didn’t notice that she was shivering so badly that her arms had wrapped around her in an instinctive attempt to ward off the cold.

‘The lake changes with every hour,’ a deep voice murmured levelly. ‘She will pull on her shimmering silver cloak in the early morning, a burnished gold one in the late afternoon. In the middle of the day she wears a sensational azure-blue cloak and invites you to come and play…’

‘So you framed it,’ she said softly.

‘One of my ancestors was inspired by that particular vision,’ he replied in a lazy tone that reluctantly refused to take the praise. Then she heard the slow, even pace of his steps bringing him closer as he continued, ‘We are in fact standing in a colonnade of arches, each one carefully placed to form the same framework of the lake whichever door or window you happen to step through in this wing.’

A fleeting glance sideways confirmed that she was indeed standing in the middle of a line of arches that attached to the house by long, gracefully arching ribs on which the moonlight placed more frosted silk.

‘It’s beautiful—the whole thing.’ She turned her head frontward again as he came to a halt directly behind her.

’Gratzi,’ he replied at the same time as his jacket settled across her shoulders and was held there by a pair of hands that curled around her slender upper arms. She shivered compulsively as her chilled flesh grabbed at the warmth the jacket offered. ‘No, cara, don’t prickle.’ He’d misread the shiver. ‘I am not about to renew hostilities.’

Then what does come next—the ravishment? she heard herself thinking. And this time the shiver was a prickle.

‘I’m sorry if I hurt your stepsister,’ she felt compelled to say.

‘You didn’t—he did.’ His grip on her arms altered fractionally so he could turn her round to face him. She found herself staring at the bright white front to his shirt. ‘All I could do was support her through her heartache. While I was doing that I became curious as to who this new woman in his life was, who could make him dare to hurt one of mine.’

‘So whose wounded pride were you out to salve when you went looking for a way to punish him—your stepsister’s or your own?’

This time it was the cleft in his chin that captured her attention when it flexed with his brief, dry smile. ‘Try—both,’ he said and moved his fingers, causing her breathing to feather as he ran them lightly beneath the silk lapel to his jacket, lifting the fabric so it hugged her chilly nape. ‘And you have a novel way of making subtle stabs at a man’s ego, cara,’ he said softly. ‘But I advise you to drop such tactics with me. You see, I like my arrogance. It gives me leave to do anything I want to do even when I know the moment is not appropriate.’

And that was the point when alarm bells began to ring. She managed only to lift wary eyes to his face and note the warning gleam of what was to come before he gave a firm tug on his jacket collar and she was arriving with a breathless gasp against his chest. She felt the heat of him, his sheer physical power, wanted to push away but only found herself raising her chin.

Their eyes connected, almost black consuming anxious hazel with promises that robbed her of the ability to breathe.

‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t…’

And to her hopeless confusion he didn’t do anything but hold her trapped between his body and his jacket and a tense, tingling limbo world between heaven and hell. She couldn’t even tell which the hell belonged to—the kiss or no kiss.

‘Sure?’ he said softly.

She nodded, lips parted and trembling like wicked liars. He was too much—of everything. He overwhelmed in every way there was. ‘I’m out of my depth with you,’ she heard herself whisper and though she wished the words back the moment she’d said them she knew they were telling the utter truth.

His response was one of those sardonic tilts to his mouth. ‘I am wading in pretty deep myself, cara,’ he responded huskily. ‘So don’t let yourself think that those pale cheeks and that frightened expression is going to save you. We will come together sooner or later.’

Then he dropped his head, capturing her lips in a single swift, hard kiss that fused them together with its heat. ‘Again and again and again…’ he murmured with sensual promise as he lifted his mouth away.