The Proud Wife (5 page)

‘It's a damn good place to start.'

Pietro's smile, the touch of laughter in his eyes, was temptation itself. He could entice the birds out of the trees and right into his hands when he switched on that charm. She had thought that she had come here knowing just how that charm worked, and fully armoured against it. But the truth was that determination was no shield against the effect he had always had on her.

‘But we're not starting anything, remember?' Marina reminded him pointedly. ‘We're here to
end
our marriage. That was the whole point of this meeting.'

‘That was the point at the beginning,' Pietro agreed, but his tone implied something else entirely, sparking off a new wave of uncertainty.

‘What do you mean “at the beginning”? You can't be thinking of going back on your decision?'

Pietro's shrug dismissed her question without giving away anything of what he was thinking. His face was a total mask, his hooded eyes opaque and hidden.

‘You were the one who changed the terms of agreement,' he said with a sideways, slanted glance towards the table where the bundle of papers she had flung at him still lay in a tumbled mess, tossed every which way. ‘You refused the settlement I had on offer.'

‘Because I didn't want to take anything from you!'

He nodded slowly, eyes never leaving her face. Another step forward, closer. He wasn't dangerous or threatening. Just
there.
So very much there.

‘You changed everything. So now we have to discuss—renegotiate under a very different set of rules.'

This was impossible. If she had been asking for more than he had been prepared to give, she might understand that he would baulk at the thought of agreeing to that. But this…?

She saw her freedom, the hope of a new future, fading away from her—or at the very least receding into the distance instead of coming closer at last.

‘That's ridiculous! You can't want me to take things from you? You can't refuse to go ahead with the divorce because I'm asking for
less
than you originally offered.'

Surely Pietro couldn't possibly be petty enough to refuse the divorce just because she had rejected the terms on which he offered it? No; she knew that with absolute certainty. Pietro D'Inzeo was many things—forceful, domineering, arrogant, cold, uncaring—but petty was not one of them. Which meant that something else had made him change his mind, decide they needed to renegotiate. And it was that
‘something else' that tugged on nerves that were already stretched taut.

Pietro had moved again, coming closer still. Yet somehow she couldn't make herself take the necessary steps back and away from him. Her mind seemed to split in two: one half told her that she was staying right where she was because she didn't want him to think for a moment that she was as scared as he accused her of being.

The other half simply wanted to stay still, to wait for him to come closer, for no other reason than that she
wanted
him close. Wanted what the darkness of his eyes telegraphed. The sensual promise that had no need to be spoken.

She wanted that. She wanted the taste of him, the feel of him. The warmth of his body surrounding her. She wanted it just once more. And she'd wanted it from the moment she'd walked into the room and seen him standing, dark and dangerous, by the window.

The truth was that she needed that danger. Right here, right now, no matter what the consequences. It was what had been missing from her life for the past two years. And, if this was her only chance to know it one last time, then she wasn't going to turn and run from it. She might have admitted that it scared her but the reality was, now that she was back under the influence of that fizzing, burning excitement, the thought of a future without it frightened her even more.

She still wanted Pietro—physically at least. She always had and probably always would. She might not be able to love this man any more, their marriage might be broken beyond repair, but she wanted him so badly.

So she stayed her ground and waited. She looked Pietro straight in the eye and never blinked or backed down, waiting to see just what he had planned.

And frustratingly that had the exact opposite effect of
what she had anticipated. Pietro came to a halt, just out of reach, a frown drawing his black brows together.

‘Are you aware that you are giving off totally mixed messages?' he said slowly, pale eyes searching her face as if trying to probe the answers to the questions that were in his thoughts. ‘One moment you are telling me you want nothing from me—that our marriage is at an end. That you feel nothing. The next…'

His dark head went back, that assessing gaze sweeping over her, from her head to her toes, seeming to take a protective layer of skin where it landed.

‘And I do—want nothing,' she managed, aiming for confidence and missing it by a mile. She knew it from the way one of those brows lifted, challenging her declaration.

‘That's not what your eyes are saying,' Pietro murmured, his voice soft and silky in a way that lifted all the tiny hairs at the back of her neck. ‘Or your mouth.'

‘My…?' Marina tried to question but her throat was too tight, her lips too dry, so that the words died before she could speak them.

Nervously, she slicked her tongue over parched lips, only realising that she had betrayed herself completely when she saw his beautiful mouth curl up in a hint of a smile.

‘So which is it, hmm,
belleza
? What exactly do you want?'

‘I…'

Marina couldn't find any words to answer him. Her head felt as if it was filled with cotton wool, clouding and numbing her thoughts. The ground underneath her feet seemed just as flimsy and insubstantial, shifting and yielding like dangerous quicksand, so that she could barely keep her balance. She closed her eyes against the sickening feeling. She knew what she should tell him, what she had resolved to tell him when she had set out on her journey to Sicily.

She had been so proud of her decision to throw the divorce papers in Pietro's face. She'd been so determined to tell
Il Principe
that she wanted nothing from him, that she was walking out on their marriage and leaving everything behind. That feeling had even taken away the sting of being summoned so autocratically by the man who had destroyed their marriage with his cold and callous behaviour, the dread of seeing him again.

That thought had buoyed her up all the way here. It had carried her through the first dreadful meeting, held her spine straight and her head high as she'd struggled with the desperately painful memories that simply seeing him had revived. She had just been waiting for the moment when she could throw her defiance and his settlement right in his face, and then she would be out of here, free as a bird, escaping to her new life. And, if the scars that her marriage had inflicted on her heart hadn't actually fully healed, well, at least she wasn't going to slash them any deeper.

That had been the plan. But, instead of now being out of here and free, somehow things had been turned upside down. Her carefully planned rebellion had fallen as flat as a deflated balloon. Far from seeing it as the final word in her rejection of him, Pietro seemed to have taken it as some sort of encouragement to begin again. To think about reviving the marriage from which she had been trying to escape.

And which she had been totally convinced he couldn't possibly want at all.

‘Too late.' Pietro's voice was shockingly close, bringing her eyes open in a rush to find that he had closed the distance between them swiftly and silently and was now standing right beside her.

‘I don't…' she began, but he shook his dark head slowly,
blue eyes locking with green holding her gaze effortlessly.

Reaching out a hand, he laid a long finger across her lips to silence her.

‘Too late,' he repeated. ‘You don't need to say anything. Your silence said it for you.'

‘No…' Marina tried and immediately regretted the fact that she'd even opened her mouth. Because just the small movement needed to say the single word had brought her lips, and very briefly her tongue, up against the clean, tanned skin of that strong finger.

And that was just enough to taste him, absorb the slightly salt tang of his flesh. A taste that immediately sparked off such a rush of sensual, intimate images that her head swam as they flooded into her thoughts. Memories of the times that she had kissed him, known the feel, the scent, the flavour of his skin. When the intimate aroma of his body had driven her almost to swoon in pleasure, as she had tried to get nearer, closer, yearning ever closer. Never ever satisfied until their bodies came together, combining the two of them into one.

‘No,' Pietro said in a very different tone from the one she had used.

His hand slid under her chin, tilted it so that her face was lifted towards his. There was no escaping the burn of his eyes, the warm brush of his breath against her skin. If she had hoped to hide her reaction to him, she realised it would be impossible. Surely he must see her response in her face, in the catch of her own breath as she looked up at him? And her pulse was thundering so hard inside her head that she felt sure he must hear it too.

‘You're still dodging away from putting this into words, so I'll do it for you: I want this. You want this. So let's stop wasting time.'

And, before she could catch her breath to give him any sort of response, he lowered his head and took her mouth with his own.

I
T WAS
no good even trying to deny the way she was feeling, Marina told herself as the firm, warm pressure of Pietro's mouth took control of her lips. She wouldn't be fooling anyone—least of all herself.

This had been inevitable from the moment she had first faced Pietro across the table, and known that the time they had been apart had had no impact on the way she felt about this man physically. She had walked into the room convinced that she had armoured herself against him. But she had been lying to herself.

Telling herself anything had no effect. It did nothing to make her senses stop feeling as if they had come home. It couldn't send back into hiding the needs that one single touch of his mouth had brought out, blinking and stumbling into the bright light of day. Needs that only took one moment of exposure to the heat of awakening to grow wild and uncontrollable, destroying any chance of holding on to her sense of self-preservation in the space of a heartbeat.

She was swaying on her feet, leaning up against him in the need to feel the hard strength of his body against her; the power of muscle and bone kept her upright when she felt as if she was melting in the heat of the response that seared through her. She wanted this man. She had always wanted him from the moment they had met, and
the passage of time had done nothing to reduce the yearning sensation his kisses awoke in her. All she had done by keeping away from him was to let the need build, grow stronger and stronger inside her, until all it required was the tiny spark of Pietro's touch, his kiss, to break through the dam she had built around her and flood her senses with aching hunger.

‘Pietro…'

His name was a choking cry from her mouth, the hunger too great to allow her time for anything more. Even the few seconds' break away to gather in a needed breath was too long, too much. She snatched in air and then immediately lost it again under the pressure of his wicked mouth, the tormenting slide of his tongue that enticed her lips to open up to him, to let him deepen and intensify the kiss. And, if her heart had been thundering before then, now it felt as if the pressure of her pounding pulse-rate would explode inside her brain, the primitive rhythm of her blood drowning out all other sound, even that of her own thoughts.

Pietro's hands were in her hair, tugging the covered band that bound her ponytail down and away, sending her burnished locks tumbling about her shoulders where long, powerful fingers tangled in the silky fall, twisting tight to hold her prisoner, keeping her head exactly where he wanted it. He angled it so that he could indulge his sensual hunger to the full.

It had been too long since she had felt like this. Too long since she had known this heated, sensual connection, this rush of pleasure through her blood, flooding every nerve. Too long since she had felt this hunger uncoil in the pit of her stomach.

‘Too long,' she sighed on another much-needed intake of breath, and found that her words were being echoed by Pietro's voice, thick with passion, roughened by need.

‘Far, far too long,' he agreed, hands tightening in her hair, lips coming back to take hers with even more force of passion.

She was being moved, pushed, half-walked, half-carried backwards across the room until her spine hit the wall, Pietro's body crushing her against it. With her head falling back against the hard support, he could find her mouth with even more force, even more passion, and he took full advantage of that fact, plundering her lips with renewed intensity. Marina went with him, yielding one moment by giving him the access he sought, the next kissing him back, tongues tangling together in the dance of passion.

They had forgotten, or were oblivious to, where they were. Awareness of the lawyer's office, the formal boardroom-table and chairs, the rain-lashed windows, faded totally under the force of need that had them in its grip. It was only when a soft, polite tap at the door—one that had to be repeated before it registered, causing them to pause—brought them reluctantly, unsteadily, back to reality.

‘
Principe
… Signor D'Inzeo?'

Matteo Rinaldi would only risk interrupting his important client if he really had to, Marina recognised dazedly, her impression reinforced by the way Pietro's head whipped round. He directed a ferocious question in angry Italian at the man on the other side of the door. The following exchange was too fast, too furious for her to catch it, and the truth was that she was incapable of thinking clearly enough for her limited knowledge of their language to be helpful in following it.

Her head was spinning, her thoughts whirling. But it was not just the abrupt interruption of their passion, the shocking ending to Pietro's kisses, the wrenching of his mouth away from hers that had her reeling so hard she
could only be grateful that the wall was at her back to give her support. She feared that she might actually fall to the floor. What
was
she doing? Had she taken total leave of all her senses to let this happen? Not just
let
it but actually indulge it, share in it,
encourage
Pietro's actions with her own heated and mindless response.

Mindless, indeed! And totally, naively stupid.

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!' she berated herself in a furious whisper under cover of the staccato argument in Italian that was still going on over her head.

Hadn't she known what it would be like? Shouldn't she have already guessed that this was how Pietro operated, the way he won people—women—round to his way of thinking?

But she
did
know, and that was the appalling thing. She had first-hand experience of just how his seductive technique could be used to scramble a woman's brain, reduce her to a mindless mass of quivering jelly—a mindless mass of quivering, sexually molten jelly totally at his mercy. Wasn't that the way he had dealt with her own fears that they were rushing into marriage, that they didn't know each other well enough?

He had laughed at her concern and then, when she had persisted in her anxious questioning, he had soothed her with gentle, seductive words and even more gentle, even more seductive, caresses.

He had distracted her thoughts with his touch, taken over her mind with his kisses, reduced her to a mess of wanton need. Then, when he had finally ‘given in' to her hungry pleadings, he had taken her to bed as an act of forgiveness for the fact that she had ever doubted him. And he had made love to her with such skill, such passionate intensity, that by the time she had come down off the ceiling
again and back to reality she'd no longer even been able to remember what it was that had worried her so much, let alone have enough brain power left to question him any more about it. She hadn't wanted to, anyway. She had loved him, and the truth was that she had wanted to marry him, even if the circumstances of their rush to a wedding hadn't been the very best.

But the fear that he would use those same seductive techniques against her once more had been the reason why, when the later, more devastating fears had assailed her, she had fled the house and her marriage as fast as she could without ever seeing him again. She had been too terrified that he would work his sensual magic on her once more and keep her from facing the reality that there was nothing but sex holding them together once the promise of the baby they had married for had been taken away from them.

And she had almost let him do the same to her all over again. Almost. She had been adrift on a hot, wild sea of burning passion, a hunger so savage that even now her body still throbbed with need. If Pietro's lawyer hadn't had the nerve to knock at the door, bringing his employer's wrath down on his unfortunate head, then she would have…

She didn't dare to think of what she would have done, the way she would have given in to the sexual mastery that Pietro had over her and that she had never ever been able to deny.

‘Everything is fine.' She heard Pietro fling the words towards the still-closed door. Whatever had concerned the lawyer, he wasn't prepared to risk aggravating his employer's fury by actually opening the door and coming in.

‘Correction,' she inserted, loud enough for Pietro to hear but not for the words to be totally distinct from the other
side of the door. ‘Everything will be fine—if you'll just get
off
me.'

She accompanied the words with a forceful push at Pietro's broad chest, catching him unaware with his attention directed towards the conversation with his lawyer. She knew a moment's satisfaction at seeing him knocked off-balance, then a quick, sliding movement had her away from his imprisoning frame and out of reach before he could quite collect himself.

‘What the…?'

If he hadn't seen it happen with his own eyes, Pietro thought he would have found it impossible to believe the change in Marina in what seemed like no more than the space of a couple of heartbeats.

The ardent, responsive siren he had been kissing had turned into a woman of ice. Her face had frozen into the cold distance of a marble statue. Her beautiful green eyes that had been brilliant as emeralds, then dark and soft as moss, were now pale and opaque, completely shut off from him. A few moments before she had been sexily ruffled, burnished hair tumbling around her pale oval face. The restrained, neat secretary's clothing had been messed and rumpled, the cream top pulled out of the waistband of the slim skirt—his doing, of course. While his mouth had been locked to hers, his hands had been busy getting to know the shape of her all over again, the softly feminine contours of her body. And as a result he was hard, hot and hungry, the yearning to bury himself in her a bruising ache deep down. It was all he could think of, all he wanted.

‘What are you playing at?'

He hardly recognised his own voice, it was so raw and husky, sounding as if his throat had been scraped raw. He could barely control the sense of outrage, the feeling of being led on and then dumped hard and fast, as he watched
her busy herself with swift repairs to her appearance. She was calmly smoothing down her clothing, tucking it in here, straightening it there. She even combed her tangled hair through with her fingers, twisting it back so that it hung once again in the long, sleek tail halfway down her back.

How could she do that? How could she switch off so completely, locking herself away as if they had never connected in any way at all? It stung him with memories of how she had done that before at the bitter end of their marriage. The way she had retreated from him, turned her back on him, eventually shutting him out altogether. It had seemed that even the passion that brought them together had died.

But that kiss just now had proved otherwise. It was still there, that wild, fierce, primitive fusion between them, one that still burned its way through his body like some stinging electrical current that couldn't be controlled.

‘I said…' he began, again and at last she looked up, opaque green eyes locking with his probing stare.

‘I know what you said,' she returned, cool and calm as you like. Infuriatingly so. ‘You said that before as well. And my answer is the same.'

When he frowned his confusion, she flashed him a defiant look from under those long, long lashes.

‘I am not playing at anything. In fact, the truth is that I have never been more serious in my life. I came here to end my marriage and that's what I intend to do.'

‘It looks like it.'

That earned him another glare, but this one flashed real fury, total rejection of his comment.

‘Oh, are you assuming that one kiss—one lousy kiss—is all it takes to have me begging to come back to you, into your life, your marriage?'

‘I thought it was
our
marriage,' Pietro inserted with icy precision and watched her eyebrows shoot sky-high in an exaggerated expression of fake surprise. He felt his jaw tighten against the temptation to rise to her provocation of that ‘one lousy kiss'.

‘
Our
implies that we were equal,' she flung at him. ‘And I would say that equal does nothing at all to describe the marriage we had.'

‘You think I forced you into it? Or used some sort of blackmail? You were willing enough at the time, as I recall.'

‘Willing, yes. But then I was half out of my mind with—with wanting you. You were the one who insisted on marriage.'

‘Because you were pregnant.'

It had been unplanned, a mistake, the result of a stomach upset and a missed pill, but still he'd snatched at it as an excuse to rush her into marriage. Back then, he hadn't been able to bear the thought that she might even consider not coming back to Sicily with him when his time in London was up. Just the idea that she might be with anyone else had driven him half insane with jealousy, so he'd used the fact that she was carrying his child as a reason to ensure she became his.

‘Yes—because I was pregnant and you were so insistent on your precious D'Inzeo heir being born legitimate that you didn't give me time to breathe. Or think.'

‘You needed to think about it?'

‘You bet I did—or I really should have done. If I'd been in my right mind at the time, then I would have recognised that there was nothing between us to build a marriage on.'

‘There was a child. I wanted that child. And I wanted you.'

He knew he'd rushed and grabbed at the excuse, but he
had thought that was what she'd wanted too. And he had believed that, like him, she had been happy at the prospect of the baby, that it was wanted even if it hadn't been planned.

‘You wanted the baby, all right. And you wanted me because we came as a pair. But if we hadn't been pushed into things because of my pregnancy we would both have seen that what we had—all we had—was a white-hot fling. A wild, sexual affair. The flames were inevitably going to burn out between us, and sooner rather than later. One or both of us was bound to get tired of things.'

‘As you did.'