Bartering Her Innocence (5 page)

Through a set of timber doors, the valet led her, and yet another reception room until finally they were at another set of sculpted timber doors where he knocked and showed her in, pulling the door closed behind him as he left.

Her heart kicked up a beat when she saw him.

The lion was in.

He sprawled arrogantly in a chair behind an acre of desk across a room that went on for ever and then some. And still he owned the room. It was an extension of him, paying tribute to his inexorable power. She wrenched her eyes from his and studied the desk before him. Antique if she wasn’t mistaken, but masculine and strong and with legs that were solid and built to last whatever the ages would throw at it.

It would do nicely.

‘Valentina,’ he said, without standing, his voice measured, his dark eyes waiting for answers. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘Is it?’ She looked around at the door. ‘Does that lock from the inside?’

He cocked his head, the shadow of a frown pulling his brows closer together. ‘Why do you ask?’

She shrugged the straps of her backpack from her shoulders, hoping no hired help was about to rush in—not with what she had planned—before letting the weight drag it to the ground at her feet, making no move to stop it hitting the floor. She summoned up confidence along with a smile she didn’t feel. ‘It would be a shame to be interrupted.’

‘Would it?’ he asked, as if he didn’t care one way or the other, and she almost panicked and fled while she could. It was so long since she’d last made love. Years since that last unforgettable night with Luca. Was she kidding herself that she could pull this off? She was so unpractised in the arts of the seductress, so unskilled.

And she almost did flee.

Except she noticed the way he’d already eased his body a fraction higher in his seat, his limbs a little less casually positioned.

And so she licked her lips in preparation for the show. Oh God, she was such an amateur! Such a fake! But still she touched a finger to the zip of her jacket and toyed with it a while, teasing it lower—she was way out of her depth and it had to show!—until she was certain he was watching. ‘It’s warm in here. Don’t you think it’s warm in here?’

‘I can open a window,’ he said guardedly, his eyes not leaving her fingers, no part of him looking like it was willing to move far enough to open a window any time soon.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, feeling suddenly empowered, sliding the zip all the slow way down, peeling it from her shoulders lovingly, like a lover would do from behind, sighing a kiss against one bare shoulder. ‘It’s probably just me.’

‘Why are you here?’ The words were short, but his trademark velvet voice was thick and already curdling at the edges from heat.

She smiled and flicked off her sandals, cursing when one needed another kick, feeling clumsy. Inadequate for the task. But he wasn’t looking at her feet and so she pressed on. ‘You offered me a position,’ she said, letting him wait for the rest. She tugged the hem of her singlet free from her belted jeans, waited just a moment to ensure she had his full, undivided attention, before pulling it over her head, letting her hair tumble free over her bare shoulders. She put her hands to the belt at her belly, letting her arms frame her breasts, clad in their white T-shirt bra. It was probably the plainest, dullest bra he had ever seen, but right now it was all she had and it was too late to worry about her underwear. Besides, from the glint in Luca’s eyes, he probably hadn’t even noticed that she was wearing one. That glint gave her the courage she needed if she was going to do this, courage to bare a body nobody had seen for three long years. A body that had been shut away from the world lest it betray her again. Was she asking too much of it now?

She held her breath as she slid the leather of her belt through the buckle and popped the button on her jeans. ‘I’m accepting it.’

She slid the zip down, gave a wiggle of her hips to help push them down and hesitated, leaning forward just enough to turn cotton-clad breasts into a cleavage. He wasn’t looking relaxed any more, she noticed. He was sitting up. Paying attention. ‘Oh. I thought of something,’ she said.

‘What?’ he croaked, his eyes not shifting.

‘Conditions.’

Was that a groan she heard or a growl? It didn’t matter. Either worked for her. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘How long am I supposed to be your mistress? Only you didn’t say.’

‘I hadn’t thought about it. However long it takes.’

‘I thought a month.’

‘A month?’

‘A month would be more than adequate. I mean, I don’t know what the going rate for mistresses is, but I’m thinking high end, late model, low mileage—well, that has to be worth more. Right?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Only I have work to do back home. And I’m sure you have something to be going on with. And it’s not like we want this thing messing with our lives, right?’

‘Right.’

Her hands lingered at her hips. She looked at him, watching her, feeling the power of his need feeding the anger that had been building ever since that phone call from Lily, the anger that had worked itself into a volcano set to erupt today, and smiled knowingly.
You utter bastard
, she thought with satisfaction.
And you thought you were going to have this all your own way.

It was almost too good to be true.
Almost.

‘And you will never contact or threaten my father with anything financial or otherwise. Never again.’

‘Never.’

It wasn’t just too good to be true. It was perfect.

‘You have such a lovely big desk, Luca.’ She edged her jeans a fraction lower, spun around to give him a view from the back as she eased the soft denim lower, making sure her underwear went with it, and looked at him over her shoulder. ‘It would be such a shame to waste all that glorious space on work, don’t you think?’

‘I think,’ he said, standing awkwardly, kicking off his loafers while he attacked the buttons of his own shirt, shrugging it off to expose a chest made in heaven and stolen from the gods. ‘I think you need help getting those jeans off.’

CHAPTER SIX

C
ONTROL
.
It was one of the things Luca prided himself on. He had patience. He had nerve. He had control of his life and his world. It was the way he liked things to be. It was the way things had to be.

But watching a flaxen haired, amber-eyed minx from Australia strip down to her underwear in his study was threatening to bring him undone.

If only she could get those damned jeans off.

She laughed when he picked her up, the sound half-hysterical, half-intoxicated, wild and free, and he was intoxicated as he spun her around and headed for the desk, sweeping it clear with one arm, sending papers and pencils and phones scattering in all directions before he planted her hard upon the desk and ripped off her jeans, tearing the bra from her breasts with a snap in the next testosterone-fuelled action.

That gave him pause. Naked on his desk, her legs parted by his, she was almost too much to take in with his eyes, too much for one hand to drink in as it swept over creamy skin from knee to thigh to belly to cup one perfect breast.

She stopped laughing then, her breath coming fast and furious, her eyes wide as he pulled his belt free, tugged his zip down and kicked off his pants, her eyes so suddenly cold as he freed his aching erection that she looked almost...
angry
.

‘I hate you,’ she said, confirming it, her lips tight around the words, baring her sharp white teeth, and that was fine. That was good, because for a moment she’d blindsided him with that impromptu striptease and he’d felt a glimmer of...
something
...that had hovered and curled around uncomfortably in his gut. But hatred he could work with.

Hatred would make her submission all the more satisfying.

And then he would dump her and she could hate him even more.

‘Excellent,’ he said, slamming open a drawer and rummaging through the contents until he found what he was looking for, shaking a packet free one-handed from the box. He tore it open with his teeth and had it on in record time, spreading her thighs wider to find her centre.

Slick and hot. Oh God.

He calmed himself long enough to stay poised at her entrance, his thumb working at that sensitive nub, watching the hatred in her amber eyes muddy with need, sensing the panting desperation of her breathing.
Oh yes, she hated him all right.

‘I’m so glad we understand each other,’ he said, and he drove into her in one long exquisite thrust.

She cried out, her back arching on the desk like a bow, her hair rioting around her head, her eyes stuttering closed.

Hate was definitely underrated
, he thought, as he braced her hips and drew slowly back, feeling involuntary muscles protest around him, try to keep him, seeing her eyes flicker open, confused and bereft and wanting more.

He gave her more. The second lunge took him deeper. She cried out again and this time when she bowed her back, he scooped her up from the desk so that she was sitting astride him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her legs curled around him and as he lifted her hips and let her fall, it was his turn to groan.

She needed no help to find the rhythm. She damn near set about setting it. She might have looked stunned before, but now she squirmed her bottom in his hands and braced herself on his shoulders, levering herself higher, letting herself take him in, increasing the speed, driving it, while her mouth worked at his throat, sharp teeth finding his flesh, every nip and bite timed to perfection, agony melding with ecstasy.

She was like a wildcat in his arms, untamed and unleashed, and it was all he could do to hang onto her while she used her body against him—all he could do to hang on, full stop.

Until she pumped him one too many times and any vestige of control vanished as he exploded inside her, the fireworks of her own orgasm ricocheting, magnified, through his.

Gasping and sweat-slicked, he hung on, her limbs heavy now, her head low on his chest, carrying her through an adjoining door to his suite. Awkwardly he pulled back the covers and then eased her onto the bed, where she closed her eyes and sighed into the mattress.

No tears, he thought, no recriminations? Half expecting both. That was a bonus. Though there probably wasn’t a whole lot more to say after
I hate you
.

Unless it was
I still hate you
. He smiled as he headed for the bathroom, already contemplating round two. He could think of worse ways to spend the night. That first coupling had been so fast and furious, already he was contemplating the pleasures to be had in other, slower, methods. Next time he would take his time. Explore her body in more delicious detail. Next time he would be the one to set the pace.

He caught a glimpse of his neck and shoulder in the mirror, shocked at first at the marks of her teeth standing out bright and red. He smiled as he fingered them, the skin tender where she had left her brand. He remembered her biting him, but nowhere near this many times. Foremost in his mind had been the ecstasy. She was a tigress all right. Wild and untamed, and as unexpected as her surprise arrival tonight.

But then not entirely a surprise. Clearly he’d hit on the one thing that she held dear.

She’d surprised him with her vehemence. She’d been so prepared to walk away from her mother—to let her face the consequences of her overspending and be thrown out onto the streets if it came to that. He’d misjudged the relationship between mother and daughter badly. But then he’d only really had Lily’s side of it to go by and in Lily’s world, it was all about Lily.

But suggesting Lily ask her first husband to help, that had been a stroke of genius. Finally he’d found the one person Valentina did care about—the one she would do anything to rescue—even if it meant sacrificing herself to his bed.

Everyone had their price, it was said. He had just found Valentina’s.

He padded back from the bathroom to find her curled kitten-like into a ball in the centre of his bed, her breathing even and deep and fast, fast asleep.

So much for round two.

Bemused, he climbed in alongside. She stirred and murmured something in her sleep and he wasn’t planning on holding her but she curled herself against him and settled back into her dreams on a sigh.

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He wasn’t used to holding anyone when he slept. He wasn’t used to anyone sleeping on him. Certainly not a woman he wasn’t done with yet. He willed away an erection that was more wishful thinking than opportunity and tried to relax. She was warm and languid and, for all her muscled leanness, she was soft too, and in all the right places.

Relax? Fat chance.

But at least he could think about what might happen when she woke up.

One month she’d agreed to stay.

It had seemed more than ample when she’d suggested it. He’d only ever planned to keep her long enough that she thought she was safe, that maybe he might provide the answer to all her needs. Long enough to feel secure and so comfortable in her position as Venice’s first lady that she wouldn’t see it coming. Her public humiliation.

And then he remembered what had happened in his study and how she had turned the tables on him and milked him for all he was worth. And the thought of thirty nights of Valentina hating him and proving it every night in his bed—or on his desk for that matter—seemed nowhere near long enough.

* * *

She came to gently, slowly, with the strange feeling she was still moving, and for some vague period of half-sleep, she believed herself back on the plane.

Until logic interceded and she realised that last-minute bargain economy seats on passenger planes did not come complete with sublime mattresses and pillows big enough to land that plane on.

Venice.

She sat up in bed, realising she was hearing the chug of a passing vaporetto rather than the constant hum of jet engines, and she remembered the argument with her mother, and an explosive session on Luca’s desk. And then—
nothing
.

She dropped her head into her hands.

What had she done?

She lifted the covers. Of course she would be naked. And of course it had been no dream. She’d performed some kind of amateur striptease in front of him. She’d offered herself as a conscientious objector instead of him taking her as an unwilling sacrifice. And she remembered a desk and the feel of him inside her.

How could she ever forget the feel of him inside her, the sense of fullness and completion and the exquisite side effects of friction?

In three years she hadn’t forgotten and nothing, it seemed, had changed. Her memories were true.

But she couldn’t for the life of her remember a bed. Luca’s bed, she recognised, not only by his lingering scent and the presence of a jet-black hair on the pillow, but the sheer masculinity of the room, as if he’d stamped his personality on it by the sheer force of it. She’d slept in his bed and he’d slept alongside her and, surprisingly, that act seemed even more intimate than the one they’d shared on the desk.

But where was he now?

A robe lay on the coverlet. Silky and jade-coloured. She snatched it up and wrapped it around her in case he suddenly appeared. Strange, to feel shy after what she’d done last night, but she wasn’t practised in negotiating a deal while taking off her clothes. She’d never expected to seal one in such a way. But last night fury had given her courage to do what she had done; rage had given her purpose. This morning she was still angry with both her mother and with Luca, but now there was wonderment too at her brazen behaviour. Not to mention a little fear, for what she might have let herself in for.

One month of sleeping with Luca Barbarigo. Thirty nights of sex with a man who knew how to blow every fuse in her body and then some. Thirty whole nights after three years of abstinence—she shivered—it was almost too much to think about. It was almost, so very almost,
delicious
.

The silken robe whispered against her breasts. Her nipples tightened into buds. She could not let him see her like this. He’d think she was primed and ready for a second course. He might even be right to think that.

But Luca didn’t arrive and the only sounds she heard were the sounds of Venice coming from outside the windows. The only movement she felt seemed to come from the very foundations, the gentle sway of time and tide.

And only then did she notice the clock on a mantelpiece.
Three o’clock?

She’d slept the entire day?

She padded from the bed and located the bathroom, and then found the study through another door with no sign of her pack and no trace of anything that had happened last night, the floor cleared of abandoned clothing, the desk restacked with pens and phones and files and so neat that she wondered for a moment if she’d dreamed it all. But no, there was no dreaming the tenderness of muscles rarely used. No dreaming the sense of utter disbelief—wonderment—at what had occurred.

For her hastily concocted plan—a plan made in fury and rage—a plan that in the cold light of day seemed impossible and unimaginable—had come off.

She’d come to Luca Barbarigo not as his victim, but as his seducer. Laying before him her own terms, not being forced blindly to accept his. And she seemed to recall it working. Or so she’d thought before sleep had claimed her. Some seductress she’d turned out to be.

She was still searching when there was a knock on the door, and Luca’s manservant swept in a few seconds later, bearing a steaming tray laden with both coffee and tea, together with an assortment of rolls and pastries. If he was unfamiliar with finding women in his master’s bedroom, it didn’t show.

She clutched the sides of her robe more tightly around her. She needn’t have bothered. His eyes avoided landing anywhere near her. She shoved aside the niggling thought that this wasn’t the first time, but there was no point dwelling on it. Her deal was for one month. She didn’t care who filled his bed all the other nights of the year.

‘Would the
signorina
like anything else?’ he asked, putting down the tray and moving towards the window. ‘Signore Barbarigo said you would be hungry.’

It’s so long since I’ve eaten
, she wanted to add. ‘That looks perfect,’ she said, because the contents of the tray looked more than adequate, but also because clearly somewhere along the line she’d been promoted to something a little higher than something that the cat had dragged in.

‘Where is the
signore
—Luca, I mean?’ as the man swept rich vermillion curtain after rich vermillion curtain open, splashing light into the room with every broad sweep of his hands.

‘Signore Barbarigo is of course, at his offices at the Banca d’Barbarigo.’

‘Of course,’ she said, but the sound came out wrong. She hadn’t meant to sound disappointed. She’d meant to sound relieved. Hadn’t she? It wasn’t as if she expected him to hang around and wait until she woke up. After all, he’d got what he wanted, hadn’t he? And he knew she wasn’t going anywhere for at least a month. He knew where to find her when he wanted her.

The thought rankled, even though she’d known what she was letting herself in for.

‘If there is nothing else?’

The valet was standing at the door, ready to take his leave. ‘Actually there is.’ She felt herself colour when she remembered where she’d left them. ‘I can’t seem to find my clothes.’

‘The clothes you were wearing last night?’

And left scattered indecorously across the study floor?
He didn’t have to finish the sentence so she chose to answer it with another question. ‘And my bag. I couldn’t find it.’

He showed her into an adjoining dressing room and pushed against a panel in a stuccoed wall that she’d assumed was just a wall, revealing a closet secreted behind. And there, tucked away, was her pack, with yesterday’s clothes folded neatly on a shelf. ‘Your clothes have been laundered and pressed. Unfortunately the brassiere could not be saved.’

‘Never mind,’ she said too brightly, secretly mortified as she remembered the snap and tear when Luca had all but wrenched it from her, while Luca’s valet seemed not to blink an eyelid at the carnage.