Unexpected Pleasures (15 page)

‘Are you sure that is what you really want? Once you begged me for my touch. Remember?’

She couldn’t help it. She shuddered violently.

‘Ah, yes. I see that you do,’ he taunted her as he released her. Her flesh felt cold without his next to it. Cold and bereft. She mustn’t let herself think like that.

‘Let me warn you, Sasha, just in case you have forgotten. I know exactly what you are.’ He studied her body with a contemptuous and knowing sexual inspection that made her want to hit him.

‘I am the twins’ mother, and that is the only way you will ever know me from now on, Gabriel,’ she fired back at him. Were those words for his benefit, or for her own? He released her arm so quickly she almost lost her balance. She looked at him. His back was turned towards her. She shuddered. How could she ever have been so foolish as to have loved him? But she had. Desperately, wholly and completely, hungering for him to return her feelings, believing that she could trade sex for love. What a fool she had been. But she wasn’t that fool any longer.

CHAPTER THREE

S
TILL
GRIPPED
BY
shock,
Sasha watched Gabriel turn towards the boys. She couldn’t get her head around the enormity of what Carlo had done. But they were different from other men, these Sardinian men. They lived by a different code; theirs was a paternalistic society, and the belief in their right to order the lives of their families absolute.

When Carlo had told her about Gabriel’s mother she had seen that he did not share her shock that Gabriel’s father should seek to force his daughter into a marriage of his choosing.

‘No wonder she ran away,’ she had commented.

Carlo had frowned at her and shaken his head. ‘She was fortunate that her father forgave her and that he was powerful enough to persuade Luigi to marry her despite the humiliation she had forced on him.’

‘But to make her marry a man she did not love—’

‘It was his right as her father.’

‘And forcing her to abandon Gabriel, her baby? You can’t believe that was right, Carlo.’

‘Not right, no, but Giorgio was a proud man and the head of our family. The purity of the Calbrini bloodline was a matter of honour to him, and to accept as his grandson a child whose blood—’

‘But in the end he had to accept Gabriel, didn’t he?’

Carlo had inclined his head, as though in acceptance of her argument, but Sasha had known that in his heart he was as old-fashioned and traditional as Gabriel’s grandfather. She suspected that he had only told her the story of Gabriel’s birth because, despite what Gabriel had done to her, Carlo had still felt he had a duty to stand by his second cousin. He might have offered her the protection of his money and his name, but he had still been a Calbrini. And so were her sons. Carlo had never forgotten that, and neither must she—although for very different reasons.

Gabriel was still watching her sons.

‘There isn’t any point in me introducing you to them. After all, you are hardly likely to be playing a hands-on role in their lives, are you?’ she challenged him.

‘On the contrary. I intend to make my duties as their guardian a priority—which is why I am here. Who knows how badly they may have been damaged by the circumstances of their life?’

He had answered without even looking at her.

‘They miss Carlo, but his death has not damaged them...’

Gabriel swung round to face her.

‘The damage to which I refer is not that caused by the death of their father but rather by the life of their mother.’

A terrible cold stillness had her in its grip.

‘You have no right to say that.’

‘I have every right. They are my wards. It is my moral and legal duty to protect them.’

‘From me? I am their
mother
!’ Her hands were curled so tightly her nails bit into her flesh.

He turned slowly to face her, the golden eagle eyes as flat as polished stones.

‘You may be their mother, but you are also a woman who craves the lifestyle only a very rich man can provide. When such a man pays you for the use of your body he will not want his enjoyment of that body to be interrupted by the needs of a pair of nine-year-old boys. In the eyes of most courts such a mother would be considered derelict in her maternal duty and not worthy of the name.’

She could almost feel the acid burn of his bitterness.

‘Just because your own mother abandoned you—’

‘You will not speak of her.’

Sasha had never felt more angry, nor more afraid.

‘I have decided that it is in the best interests of my wards that they remain here, on the island that was their father’s home, while I consider what is best for their future.’

‘That is not your right.’

Sasha was afraid, and fighting hard not to show it, Gabriel recognised. The pulse in her throat was fluttering like a trapped bird struggling to be free. He could almost feel the waves of panic and fear beating up through her body. He could certainly see the shocked outrage in her eyes.

‘They are my sons,’ Sasha insisted fiercely. ‘
My
sons.’

‘And my legal wards now, under traditional Sardinian law. This is a patriarchal society, as you well know.’

Sasha was shaking her head. ‘You can’t do this. I won’t let you.’

‘You can’t stop me.’ He gave her a cold smile. ‘You cannot afford to go to court. You have no money. Carlo is dead, and you need to find another man to support you. A man who, like Carlo, is blind to the reality of what you are. Don’t bother denying it,’ he told her harshly before she could protest. ‘After all, we both know, don’t we, that you are accustomed to selling yourself to whichever man will pay the most? After all, that is why you came to me...and why you left me. Isn’t it?’

He had tossed the question at her almost casually, but Sasha wasn’t deceived. Nothing Gabriel ever did was done casually or without purpose. Even knowing that, she couldn’t stop herself from betraying her own agitation as she told him quickly, ‘That was all a mistake.’

‘Yes—your mistake,’ he agreed.

‘No, that wasn’t...’ she began, and then stopped. ‘It was a long time ago.’ What was she
doing
? She had no need to explain herself to him, and every need to protect herself from the contempt he had always felt for her. Gabriel was dangerous, he always had been and he always would be, and she now had the two best reasons in the world not to re-enact her own past like a moth drawn to the flame that would ultimately destroy it.

‘Not that long ago. It’s only just over ten years ago since I picked you up off the street where your previous lover had left you. Remember? You told me that you’d been offered the starring role in a porno movie mogul’s latest skinflick, but you’d star in a private one for me instead. Your words, not mine!’ He was walking away from her now and heading for her sons. ‘The she-leopard does not change her spots.’

‘Where are you going?’ she demanded frantically, even though she already knew the answer. The smile he gave her made her bite down hard into her bottom lip to stop herself from shuddering in open dread.

‘I am going to introduce myself to my wards,’ Gabriel answered her softly.

For several precious seconds Sasha was too caught up in her own emotions and the past Gabriel had evoked to move, but somehow she managed to break free of them to run after him, calling out fiercely, ‘Leave them alone! Don’t you dare touch my children.’

Entering a new decade had added to her beauty rather than taken from it, Gabriel admitted reluctantly as he watched her speed towards him. Her breasts were rising and falling with emotion and exertion beneath the thin covering of her dress when she finally reached him. It caught him off guard to look at her and feel the familiar hunger grip his body. She had always had good breasts—firm-fleshed and erotically real, warm and pliable to the touch, the skin tasting of woman and sunshine and sex, her dark brown nipples always greedily eager for the attention of his fingers and his lips. In his mind’s eye he could still see her, virtually naked on the private deck of his yacht, her head thrown back so that the sea breeze could tousle her hair, her lips curved into a smile of wanton, intensely sensual pleasure as she offered herself up to him.

Now, as then—although for different reasons—she was standing immediately in front of him, between him and her children in fact, so that it was impossible for him not to look directly at her. Motherhood had given her breasts a softer fullness that suited her, but it didn’t seem to have taken away the narrowness of her waist, nor the sensuality of a body that was made for sexual pleasure. A body he had once known as intimately as he knew his own—perhaps more so. As a lover Sasha had had an incomparable blend of fierce sexual passion and a feminine ability to lose herself and give herself so completely in the act of sex that it had felt as if she was handing every bit of herself over to him for their mutual pleasure. But of course he had been far from the only man to enjoy Sasha’s sexuality, and he certainly hadn’t been the first to pay for it—if not in money, then certainly in kind, with the lifestyle of a rich man’s mistress. She had as good as admitted that to him the night he had picked her up, if not actually out of the gutter, then certainly heading towards it.

He frowned darkly, angered by the power she still had to occupy his thoughts, even though he assured himself it was no longer with the white-hot overwhelming desire for her that had once burned inside his brain as well as his body. She had got under his skin and left an ache he could still feel ten years later, even if the savage heat of the need that had once threatened to consume him had ultimately burned out. Burned itself out, or been ruthlessly stamped out by him? What did it matter which? He had known from the first time he had taken her to bed that the intensity of his hunger for her was not something he wanted in his life. If he had aided in its destruction then he had acted wisely, out of self preservation. What he was feeling now was simply an echo of a long-dead feeling.

But not so dead that the embers didn’t smoulder with the heat of his desire for compensation. It had been bad enough that she had walked out on him for Carlo. But the fact that Carlo had fathered two sons on her and taken pride in them had struck painfully at the carefully guarded wound left by the misery of Gabriel’s own childhood.

For him—a man who had received neither love, compassion nor kindness—to be given the responsibility of protecting the childhood of these children was either an act of great foolhardiness or great trust. It had certainly been an act of moral desperation. Not that Gabriel would ever punish two innocent young lives for the sins of their mother—not after the way he himself had suffered.

He had received word that Carlo had died a matter of hours after he had seen him. Alone, without Sasha at his side, because she had been shopping.

Sasha. He didn’t want to think about the past they had shared, but it refused to be thrust away. Inside his head he could see her clearly as she had been the night he had first seen her. Her hair longer than it was now, inexpertly streaked and slightly tangled in the warm evening breeze. She had been wearing a cheap short skirt and a top that had revealed more of her breasts than it concealed, making her look every inch exactly what she was as she stood on the roadside in St Tropez. He wouldn’t even have contemplated stopping if she hadn’t virtually thrown herself in front of his car. Pretty, available, hungry girls like Sasha were ten a penny in St Tropez in the season, going from lover to lover, climbing upwards while they could towards their ultimate trophy of a man foolish enough and rich enough to offer them more than a night’s sex in return for a thick wad of euros. Sasha, he remembered, had been carrying a large straw basket which, she had told him with a small shrug, contained all her belongings.

‘I had to leave quickly, so I just brought what I could,’ she had told him disarmingly, when she had by some sleight of hand managed to get herself into the passenger seat of his Ferrari without him actually having invited her to do so.

That had been in May. From the little she had told him about herself he’d gathered that the man she had left had been part of the detritus swirling around in the wake of Cannes Film Festival—a ‘producer’ looking for young flesh to satisfy his own jaded appetite and those of the debased human beings he made his skinflicks for. But Gabriel hadn’t wanted to waste time listening to her talk when there were so many far more pleasurable uses for those soft full lips of hers. There was a practical streak to Sasha, as there was to all successful courtesans. She had quickly worked out that having to satisfy only one man would be a far more cost-effective way of using her body than risking being passed hand to hand by the producer and his friends.

Oh, yes, she was very practical. Within a year she had made plans to move onwards and upwards—not just into another man’s bed, but more profitably into his whole life. As his wife. And that man had been his own second cousin Carlo—a man old enough to be
his
father, never mind hers. It had been unthinkable that she would leave Gabriel; he was the one who controlled their relationship, not her. He paid the bills and called the tune; she was his for however long he desired her to be. But she had walked out on him, leaving behind an unpaid debt to his pride.

A debt for which fate was now giving him the opportunity to claim payment in full.

Sasha saw the familiar cruel smile curl down the edges of Gabriel’s mouth. How many times had he taunted her with that smile before giving in to her pleas and satisfying the aching wanting that he himself had aroused within her flesh?

She had thought when she had met Gabriel that she knew all there was to know about sex and her own body. The truth was she had known nothing whatsoever about pleasure, and too much about need.

When Carlo had offered her an escape route from Gabriel and from the life she had lived before him, she had told herself that the only way to save herself was to seize it with both hands and never look back. And that was exactly what she had done.

But, while she might never have consciously looked back, in her dreams she had gone back so many times, and in such dreadful pain. She shuddered, blinking fiercely. In the years since her sons’ conception she had taught herself to walk tall and to be proud for them, and for herself. She would never deny her past, but she believed she had learned from it,
grown
from it, and when the time came and her sons asked she would not lie to them about it.

For now, though, they were too young to be exposed to and tainted by her mistakes, and she would fight with everything she had to protect them from that and to keep them safe. The only way Gabriel would ever take them from her would be by taking her life first and then stepping over her lifeless body to get them, she told herself fiercely.

‘I’m not going anywhere without my sons.’

‘And they will be staying here. With me.’

‘With you? In Sardinia? Where? You don’t live here yourself,’ she reminded him.

‘I didn’t, it’s true, but now that I own the hotel I intend to turn it back into a private home. The boys will live here when they are not at school, so that they can grow up in their father’s culture, his old home.’