Love's Revenge: The Italian's Revenge / A Passionate Marriage / The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride

Enter where? she then thought suddenly, and brought her wayward attention to an abrupt standstill along with her feet, when she realised just where it was she was standing.

A bedroom. Their bedroom. The one she’d used to share with Vito before she ran away.

Her heart began to thud, her throat closing over as she took on board just what she had done while her mind had been elsewhere.

She had walked herself right into the one room in the house she had been meaning to steer well clear of.

Her first instinct was to get out of there again as quickly as she could! Her second instinct had her pausing instead, though, giving in to an irresistible urge to check out the one place where she and Vito had always managed to be in harmony.

The bedroom. The bed, still standing there like a huge snow sleigh, made of the richest mahogany and polished to within an inch of its life. The width of three singles, it still had the same hand-embroidered pure white counterpane covering its fine white linen, still had its mound of fluffy white pillows they’d used to toss to the floor before retiring each night.

Then she recalled why they’d used to toss those pillows away so carelessly, and felt the tight sting of that memory attack the very centre of her sexuality.

Was that all to begin again? she asked herself tensely. All the rowing and fighting, followed by the kind of sexual combat that used to leave them both a little shell-shocked afterwards?

It has already started again, she reminded herself. And on that grim acknowledgement let her eyes drift around the rest of the room to discover that not a single thing had been changed since she’d last stepped into it.

Yet, she had changed. She wasn’t the same person she had been three years ago. In fact, at this precise moment she felt rather like a lost penny that had found itself being tossed back, only to land in the wrong place entirely.

She didn’t want to be here, didn’t think she should be here, even though she knew without a single doubt that this was the room Vito would be expecting her to share with him again.

Not that she’d asked the question, and would not be doing when she knew it would only give Vito the chance to taunt her with the fact that she had been brought back here to provide him with sex.

Sex, lies and pretence—the status quo re-established for Santo’s sake—and to slake Vito’s thirst for revenge. She was about to turn back to the door when—without any warning at all—the bathroom door suddenly flew open and Vito appeared in its aperture. He must have come directly from the shower, because all he had on was a white towel slung around his lean hips and he was rubbing briskly at his wet hair with another towel.

His arrival froze her to the carpet. And seeing her standing there had the same effect on him. So for the next few pulsing seconds neither seemed able to move another muscle as shocked surprise held them utterly transfixed.

CHAPTER SIX

WAS he seeing her like a lost penny that really shouldn’t be where it was standing? she wondered as she watched those lush dark sensual lashes slowly lower over eyes that were determinedly giving nothing away.

The silence between them stretched into tension, and within it Catherine tried to stop her gaze from drifting over him. But it was no use. She had been drawn to this man’s physical attraction from the first moment she ever set eyes on him. And nothing had changed, she realised sadly as, dry-mouthed, she watched crystal droplets of water drip from his hair onto his wide tanned shoulders then begin trailing into the crisp dark hair covering his chest.

He was male beauty personified, his face, his body, the long lean muscular strength in his deeply tanned legs.

‘Have your things arrived yet?’ Deep and dark, and unusually sedate for him in this kind of situation, Vito’s voice held no hint of anything but casual enquiry.

Yet her skin flinched as if he’d reached out and touched it with the end of an electric live wire. ‘I … n-not that I know of,’ she replied, eyelashes fluttering as she dragged her gaze away from him. ‘I’ve been—showing myself around,’ she then added on a failed attempt at sounding casual.

‘No surprises?’ he asked, drawing her eyes back to him as he began to rub at his wet hair with the towel again.

She watched his biceps flex and his pectorals begin to tremble at the vigorous activity. ‘Only Santo’s room,’ she murmured, and wished she knew how to cure herself of wanting this man. ‘It’s nice,’ she tagged on diffidently.

‘Glad you think so.’ There should have been a hint of sarcasm when he said that, but there wasn’t. In fact he was playing this all very casual—as if the last three years had never happened and they shared this kind of conversation in this room all the time.

But then, wasn’t she trying to treat it the same way herself?

The towel was lowered and cast aside. Catherine bit her inner lip and tried desperately to come up with some excuse to leave that wouldn’t make her appear a total coward.

In the end it was Vito who solved the dilemma for her. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised suddenly, and took a step sideways. ‘Did you come here to …?’

He was asking if she needed to use the bathroom. ‘N-No,’ she murmured. Then, ‘Yes!’ she amended that, seeing the bathroom, with the lock it had on its door, as the ideal place to escape to.

But it was only as she pushed her tense body into movement that she realised she was going to have to pass very close by him to gain that escape. And Vito didn’t move another muscle as he watched her come towards him. So her tension grew with each step that she took, and by the time she reached him her heart was thumping, and her breathing was so fragile that it was all she could do to murmur a frail, ‘Thank you,’ as she went to pass by him.

‘Are you going to take a shower?’

Her senses were lost to a medley of tingles, all of which were set on high red alert. ‘Y-Yes,’ she heard herself answer, seeing yes as good as no at this precise moment, when she had absolutely no idea what she was intending to do in there! She didn’t even need to use the bathroom!

‘Then allow me …’ his smooth voice offered.

At which point she found herself freezing yet again as his hands came to rest upon her shoulders. Then his fingers began trailing downwards over her pale skin until they reached the scooped edge of her jade linen dress where the long zip lay.

Gritting her teeth, Catherine prayed for deliverance. He was standing so close she could actually feel his lightly scented dampness eddying in the air surrounding her. It was incredibly alluring, the kind of scent that conjured up evocative pictures of warm, naked bodies tangled in loving.

She shivered delicately when, with a deftness that had always been his, he sent the zip of her dress skimming downwards. By the time the fabric parted her shivers had become tremors, and she had to close her eyes and grit her teeth harder while she waited for the ordeal to be over.

But Vito didn’t stop there. Next his fingers were unclip-ping the catches on her bra and her breasts were suddenly free to swing unsupported. And in all of their long and intimate association she had never felt so wary and unsure of his intentions.

Even the way he ran the back of one long finger down the rigid length of her spine was telling her one thing while his voice, as cool as a mountain spring, was telling her another when he suggested levelly, ‘Make it a long shower, Catherine, you are as tense as a bowstring.’

Make it a long shower, she repeated to herself. Make it a long, cold shower, she helplessly extended.

‘But of course,’ he then added, and suddenly his voice was as silken as his wretched voice ever could be, ‘there are other, much more pleasurable ways to cure your tension.’

And before she could react his mouth landed against the side of her neck and, like a vampire swooping on its chosen prey, he bit sensually into the pulsing nerve there that lay alongside her jugular. At the same time his hands slid inside her dress and took possession of her recently freed breasts.

Sensation went streaking through her. After the day-long build-up of sexual tension, it was like being sprung free from the unbearable restraints that had been binding her, though she did at least try to put up some kind of protest.

‘Vito, no,’ she groaned. ‘I need a shower—’

‘I like you just the way you are,’ he huskily countermanded. ‘Smelling of you, and tasting of you.’

He was already urging her dress to slither down her body, and in seconds she was standing there in just her panties. As those long, knowing fingers moulded her breasts so his thumbpads could begin drawing circles around their tips to encourage them to peak for him, his mouth continued to suck sensually on her neck.

It was all so exquisite, the caress of his hands, the wetness of his mouth, the way he was pressing her back against him. When he stroked one hand down the flat wall of her stomach and beneath the fabric of her briefs she simply gave up trying to fight it. On a shaky little sigh that heralded her complete surrender her eyes drifted shut, and, tilting her head back against his shoulder, she allowed him to arouse her in a way only a deeply familiar lover would arouse a woman.

But not enough—not enough. Her hands reached behind him to rip away the towel so she could press him against her, and her head turned against his shoulder, searching out his mouth so she could join her own with it. ‘Kiss me properly,’ she commanded, no shrinking violet when it came to her body’s pleasures.

On an answering growl he swung her around, lifted her up his body until she was off her feet—then kissed her hard and hot and deeply. The wall not far away was a godsend as he pressed her back against it and let her feet find solid ground again. Catherine parted her thighs and pressed him even closer, then tightened herself around him.

He was very aroused, and with the towel gone it left him free to use other, far more invigorating methods to keep her riding high on the crested wave of pleasure. Dragging her mouth free from his, she tilted her head back and simply let herself concentrate on the stroke of his body.

‘You’re wearing too much,’ he murmured sensually.

‘I’ll never wear panties again,’ she agreed with him.

Vito laughed, but it was a hard, tense, very male laugh, and it set fires alight inside her that did nothing for her self-control as he caught her mouth again and began kissing her greedily.

‘I need the bed,’ she groaned, when things began to get too much for her and her legs threatened to completely give away.

‘I’m way ahead of you, cara,’ he murmured raspingly.

Opening her eyes, Catherine found herself looking directly into two hot, hard golden points of passion that were doing nothing to hide the intensity of what he too was experiencing.

And they were moving. Catherine hadn’t even noticed until that moment that he was actually carrying her. They arrived at the bed. With a complete lack of ceremony he dropped her to her feet, then bent to get rid of her last piece of clothing.

As he buried his mouth into this newly exposed part of her body, she stretched out an arm behind her and began tossing away pillows, raking back bedcovers. It was all very urgent, very hectic, very fevered. No time for lazy foreplay, no hint of romance. She wanted him now, and it was patently obvious that he was the same.

As she lowered herself onto the bed, then began sliding backwards so she could lie down flat, she remembered the door. ‘Lock us in first,’ she whispered.

‘To hell with the door,’ he refused, following her onto the bed as if they were joined at the hip. ‘I’m not stopping this if the whole house walks in to watch.’

With that he entered her, sure and swift, and as she cried out in sheer surprise he laughed again, the same very male laugh, caught her face between his hands then made her look at him.

‘Hi.’ He grinned, as her lashes flickered upwards. ‘Remember me? I am your fantastic lover.’

He wasn’t even moving. He was playing with her, toying with her. He had fired her up until she didn’t know her own name any more. Now he was trying to lighten the whole thing!

With a flash from vengeful green eyes, she tightened the muscles around her abdomen. The motion made him suck in his breath. ‘Want to play, Vito?’ she taunted, and raked her fingernails along his lean flanks where some of this man’s most vulnerable erogenous zones were situated.

The breath left his lungs on a driven hiss. Catherine put out her tongue and licked the sound right off his warm, moist, pulsing lips. He began cursing in Italian, and there was no hint of humour left in him when he began moving on her with a fierceness that sent her reeling away into a pool of hot sensation.

When she shattered her arms flew out, wide, like a swimmer floating on its back. Vito slid his hand beneath her head to her nape, then lifted her towards him. It was a need he’d always had, to capture her desperate little gasps as she went into orgasm, and Catherine didn’t deny him them now as she breathed those helpless little sounds into his mouth and felt his body quicken as he too came nearer to his peak.

After that she remembered nothing. Not his own intense climax, not the swirling aftermath, not even the way he slid away from her, then lay fighting for recovery.

Outside it was still daylight. Inside the air-conditioning was keeping the room temperature at a constant liveable level. But Catherine was bathed in sweat from tingling toes to hairline. And beside her she could see the same film of sweat glistening on Vito’s skin.

She watched him for a little while, enjoying the way he was just lying there, heavy-limbed and utterly spent. Yet, even spent, Vito was physically imposing. A man with the normal potency of ten.

Potent …

Catherine stiffened—then went perfectly still, the sweat slowly chilling her flesh as she lay there, held by a sudden thought so terrible that her mind literally froze rather than dare let her face it. Beside her, sensing the change in her, Vito turned his dark head, then began frowning as he watched her steadily draining pallor.

But before he had a chance to say anything she sat up with a jerk, then began sliding frantically for the edge of the wide bed. Her long legs hit the ground at a run, her hair flying out behind her as she streaked like a sprinter for the bathroom.

Whatever she was looking for wasn’t there, because she appeared again almost immediately. To say she was in shock was an understatement. White-faced, and shaking so badly that her teeth chattered, she looked at Vito, who was only just pulling himself into a sitting position.

‘My things,’ she shot out in a taut staccato. ‘Where are my things?’

Still frowning in complete bewilderment as to what was going on, he shrugged. ‘They have not arrived yet, remember?’

‘Not arrived,’ she repeated, then her eyes went blank, and Vito shot off that bed like a bullet from a gun because he thought she was actually going to pass out where she stood!

‘For goodness’ sake, cara,’ he rasped. ‘What is wrong with you?’

‘M-my bag, then,’ she whispered shakily, and when all he did was come striding towards her without bothering to answer she hit the hysteria button. ‘My handbag, Vito!’ she actually screamed at him. ‘Where is it? My handbag—my handbag!’

It brought him to a stop in sheer astonishment. ‘Catherine—what the hell is this?’ he demanded, beginning to sound shaken himself.

She didn’t answer, instead she suddenly burst into action again. Darting down to snatch up her dress, she began to pull it on. She was trembling so badly she could barely manage the simple task, but when he attempted to help her she slapped him away.

‘I can’t believe I let you do this!’ she launched at him shrilly. ‘I can’t believe I let myself!’

‘Do what, for God’s sake?’ he shouted back angrily. ‘Make love?’ He decided that was the only answer. ‘Well, that’s rich coming from the woman who just ravished me!’

If anything, her face went even whiter, though it didn’t seem possible. And, on a pained whimper that did nothing for his temper, she turned and ran for the bedroom door with her fingers still grappling with the zip on her dress and the rest of her still completely naked.

‘Catherine!’ Vito barked at her in a command meant to stop her leaving the room.

But Catherine was already out of it and running down the stairs. Outside in the late-afternoon sunshine she found her handbag, still lying where she had left it on the floor of the red Mercedes.

By the time Vito had pulled some clothes on and followed her Catherine was just sitting there on the bottom step in front of the house, with the bag and its spilled contents lying beside her.

And there was such an air of fragility about her that he made his approach with extreme caution, walking down the steps to come and squat down in front of her. ‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about now?’ he requested carefully.

She shook her head and there were tears in her eyes. He sighed, his mouth tightening as he began flicking his gaze across the contents of her bag as if the answer would show itself there.

But it didn’t. All he saw was the usual clutter of personal things women tended to carry around with them. Lipstick, wallet, the passport she’d needed to get her into the country. A packet of paper tissues, a couple of spare clips she used to hold back her hair sometimes, and a hair comb. He looked back at Catherine, looked at the way she was staring out at nothing, and automatically looked down, expecting to find the cause of all of this—trauma clutched in her hands. But her hands were empty, their palms pressed together and trapped between her clenched knees.

It was then that he spied it, lying on the ground between her bare feet, and slowly, warily, he reached out and picked it up.

It took him about five seconds after that to realise what was wrong with her. Then the cursing started. Hard words, hoarse words, words that had him lurching to his feet and swinging around to slam his clenched fist into the shiny bodywork of the Mercedes.

After that, he too went perfectly still, frozen by the same sense of numbing horror that was holding Catherine. And the ensuing silence throbbed and punched and kicked at the both of them.

Until a sound in the distance grabbed Vito’s attention. His dark head went up, swinging round on his shoulders so he could scan the furthest corner of the garden, where a gate out onto the road served as a short cut to their nearest neighbours.

Then suddenly he was bursting into action again, spinning back to Catherine and stooping down to gather her into his arms before turning to dump her into the passenger seat of the Mercedes.

‘What—?’ she choked, coming out of her stunned stupor on a gasp of surprise.

‘Stay put,’ he gritted, then turned back to the house and disappeared inside it, only to come back seconds later with a bunch of keys in his hands. On his way past her bag he bent to gather in its contents; it landed on the back seat beside two pairs of sunglasses as he climbed behind the wheel.

The engine fired first time, and with the efficiency of a born driver he turned the car around and took off at speed down the driveway.

‘Santo and my mother are on their way back.’ He grimly explained his odd behaviour. ‘I did not think you would want them to see you looking like this.’

Like this … Catherine repeated to herself, looking down at herself with the kind of blank eyes that said she couldn’t see, as he could see, the changes that had come over her in a few short, devastating minutes.

Stopping at the end of the drive, Vito Giordani looked at this woman who had known more than her fair share of pain, heartache and grief in her life, and felt the air leave his lungs on a constricted hiss.

‘How many have you missed?’ he questioned flatly.

Catherine lifted those wretched dull grey eyes to him and a nerve began ticking along his jawline as he set the car going again, taking them not down the hillside but up it, out into open country.

‘You can count as well as I can,’ she answered dully.

Vito grimaced. ‘I am afraid my eyes glazed over when I noticed that yesterday’s was still there.’

Yesterday’s, the day before—and the day before, Catherine counted out bleakly. A contraceptive pill for each day since Vito had come back into her life, in fact.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been messing up my life since I was twenty-three years old, and here you are, six years on, still messing it up.’

About to remind her that it wasn’t him who’d forgotten to take the damn pills, Vito bit the words back again. ‘Getting embroiled in a fight about whose fault it is is not going to solve the problem,’ he threw at her instead.

‘Nothing can solve it,’ Catherine countered hopelessly. ‘The damage has already been done.’

Mouth set in a straight line, Vito said not another word as he drove them higher and higher, until eventually he pulled the car off the road and onto a piece of scrub land that overlooked the kind of views people paid fortunes to see.

They didn’t see the beauty in it, though. There could have been pitch-blackness out there in front of them for all they knew. And they were surrounded by perfect silence. Not a bird, not a house, not another car, not even a breeze to rustle the dry undergrowth. In fact they could have been the only two people left in the world, which suited exactly how they were both feeling.

Two people alone with the kind of problem that shut out the rest of the world.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vito murmured.

Maybe he felt he needed to say it, but Catherine shrugged. ‘Not your fault,’ she absolved him. ‘It’s me who’s been unforgivably stupid.’

‘Maybe we will get lucky and nothing will come of it,’ he suggested, in an attempt to place a glimmer of light into their darkness.

‘Don’t count on it,’ Catherine replied heavily. ‘Twice before we’ve taken risks, and twice I got pregnant. Why should this time be any different?’

Why indeed? was the echo that came back from the next drumming silence.

‘There has to be something we can do!’ he muttered harshly. And on a sudden flash of inspiration said, ‘We will drive to the doctor’s. Get that—morning-after pill—or whatever it is they call it …’

Catherine flinched as if he had plunged a knife in her. ‘Do you know what they call those pills, Vito?’ she whispered painfully. ‘Little abortions,’ she informed him starkly. ‘Because that’s what they do. They abort the egg whether it is fertilised or not.’

‘But you also know what they told you,’ he reminded her. ‘Another pregnancy like the last one could be dangerous.’

Her tear-washed eyes shimmered in the sunlight. ‘So I abort one life to safeguard my own life?’

The anguish she saw in his eyes was for her; Catherine knew that. But she couldn’t deal with it. And on the dire need to escape from both him and the whole wretched scenario, she opened the car door and climbed out.

Leaving Vito sitting there staring ahead of him, she walked, barefooted, across the dusty ground to a lonely cypress tree and leaned against its dry old trunk.

First she had almost lost Santo, due to mid-term complications. She had managed to hold onto him until he was big enough to cope outside his mother’s womb, and the doctors had assured her that the same condition rarely struck twice in the same woman. But they had been wrong. And the next time it had happened she’d almost lost her own life along with her baby.

‘No more babies,’ they had announced. ‘Your body won’t take the physical trauma.’

No more babies …

A movement beside her made her aware that Vito had come to lean a shoulder on the other side of the tree. For a man who had only had enough time to drag on the first clothes that came to hand he looked remarkably stylish in his light chinos and a plain white tee shirt. But then, that was Vito, she mused hollowly. A man so inherently special that no one in the world would believe that anything in his life would ever go wrong for him.