Secrets of Castillo del Arco (10 page)

The boat glided along the canal, its companions the gentle slap and whisper of water and the gondolier’s evocative serenade. He looked down at her where he cradled her in his arms, her face close to his, the slanting rays of sunlight warming her brandy-coloured eyes, eyes filled to the brim with expectation as she waited for his kiss.

This was it.

It was time.

R
AOUL
looked down into her eyes. Neither the darkness of his past nor the ghosts that plagued him were enough to stop him now.

And, even though he knew it was insane, that he was the last person to deserve her, he wanted her—wanted all of her, at least for tonight. For the promise he had made, he told himself. Only so she might believe it to be true.

The setting sun turned the air molten around them, shimmering with a thousand wishes, a thousand hopes. The first of his wants, he knew was in his control. His lips brushed hers as he sensed the shadow of the bridge move over them while his lips tasted, explored, tested.

Her mouth melded to his willingly as she gave herself up to his kiss, her sweet, sweet lips parting in invitation, an invitation he had no power but to accept as he felt the heat in his body build as her body curled into him, her hot mouth dragging him in.

And it was his turn to go willingly, losing himself in her liquid depths, plundering her mouth, wanting to reach deeper, harder. Needing more.

Their kiss started at the Bridge of Sighs, but it did
not end there. It did not end anywhere close to there. For the first time in her life, she felt truly alive, every part of her tingling with hot awareness, as if a switch had been thrown and her body was humming with electricity looking for somewhere to go. Looking for release of a charge that would burn her up if she couldn’t let go.

Until all too soon they were back at the
palazzo
.

‘We are home,’ Raoul whispered against her sensitive lips, tracing the pad of one finger down her cheek. ‘It is time to go.’

‘Already?’ she asked, too comfortable to move, and he chuckled softly, a satisfying, rumbling sound that said he wasn’t done with her yet either.

‘It does not have to be the end …’

She blinked up at him, sensing the invitation in his words, giving her the choice when there was really no choice at all. ‘Make love with me, Raoul.’

This time he didn’t chuckle. Instead he growled and scooped her up into his arms, not letting the sudden sway of the vessel throw him from his stride as he lifted her bodily from the gondola and through the sea door, his lips once more meshed with hers as he negotiated the route up the stairs and into the apartment.

He found her room, lit in the soft night glow of the city, hesitating momentarily before laying her almost reverently on the wide bed. For the first time she didn’t see the endless orgy going on around her, didn’t envy them, because Raoul was here with her and soon she would be his.

He growled again as he joined her, collecting her into his arms as he pulled her into his kiss.

She was drowning, she decided. She had been drowning all night, finding it impossible to draw air, finding it impossible to breathe or to think or to anything but drown under a torrent of sensation.

And drowning had never felt so good.

His hot mouth was at her throat, his hands moulding her to him, length to delicious length, joining them at breast and thigh and making her gasp when she felt him against her belly, hard, insistent and wanting.

What little air there had been was consumed in a raging heat that started and ended between her thighs.

Her hands tangled in his hair, urgent and busy, sliding the tie from its length. Her fingers luxuriated in its silky weight as he dipped his head and took her breast in his mouth. Even fully clothed she felt his hot breath sear her skin, felt his teeth graze one sensitive nipple until she cried out with the pleasure of sensation and the frustration of the barrier of clothing.

He was already ahead of her, his long fingers working at the buttons of her blouse, peeling it away, dispensing too with her skirt and sliding it down her legs, unwrapping her, opening her up to his gaze. She waited, afraid and tremulous, unable to breathe while he lifted his head, wanting him to like what he saw, needing both his approval and his desire.

In a face built of shadows and darkness, his eyes gleamed in the soft slanting light as his hands traced their way back up her legs, resting flat-palmed on her belly, his fingertips tracing the line of her lace bra. ‘Bella,’ he said. His voice was so low and filled with gravel that it seemed she felt his words through the touch
of his fingers rather than heard him speak. ‘You are so perfect.’ He dragged in air, his dark eyes looking suddenly tortured, confused. ‘But I … Bella, I do not deserve …’

‘I want you,’ she said, empowered by the raw admiration she had seen in his eyes, the raw power before whatever doubts had crept into his mind, about whatever sense of wrong he was committing. This was not wrong and it never could be. She raised herself onto one elbow, unclipping her bra with her free hand, coaxing the strap down her arm, letting the scrap of lace fall from her breasts. ‘I want you to make love to me, Raoul. I want to feel you deep inside me.’

He groaned then, a sound that seemed rent from his very soul. It was so very dark and anguished that for a moment she was afraid he might leave her—but then he looked at her, his chest heaving, and his eyes told her he was going nowhere. His fingers worked at his shirt, reefing it off, and she could not resist putting her hand to his skin, drinking in the complexities of his skinscape—the sculpted flesh, the wiry brush of hair, the nuggety nub of a nipple.

He hissed in air when she flicked that nub with the nail of her thumb, already shrugging down his trousers, kicking off his shoes, brushing off his underwear with the sweep of one hand that exposed all of him to her gaze.

She gasped at his size, her body sizzling at the raw, masculine potency, and she saw his eyes glint at her reaction before he tumbled her back on the bed.

‘You’re beautiful,’ she said, awed by the power and
beauty of his body under her hands as he rained kisses on her skin, her throat, her belly, her breasts, making her cry out as he rolled his tongue around one sensitive nipple, drawing it into his hot, liquid mouth.

All the time the need inside her coiled tighter and more insistent, so that when his hand scooped down her side and brushed her last scrap of clothing she thought she might explode.

‘Raoul!’ she cried. He shushed her with his kiss, tangling his tongue with hers, pulling her deeper as his fingers slipped under the lace and through her neat curls, parting her with just the tip of one incendiary finger. Never had she felt like this, breathless, overwhelmed and on the cusp of something so magnificent, so momentous. Never had she felt so out of control.

‘I need you,’ she said—yet Raoul showed no mercy, drawing her nipple into his mouth, sliding his fingers deeper into her hot, slick darkness, his thumb circling that exquisitely sensitive nub, where it seemed all her nerve endings coalesced, one finger pushing inside her, almost sending her over the edge.

Her hands flailed on the bed, searching for something—anything. She found him, rock-hard, hot and already beading with moisture, and it was his turn to groan as he pulsed and bucked in her hand.

‘Bella,’ he said, grinding the word out between his teeth as though she was hurting him.

‘I want you,’ she repeated, writhing under him, knowing that if he didn’t make love to her right now she would surely burn up in these desperate, all-consuming flames. ‘Please, I need you!’

This time he showed blessed mercy, whisking off her remaining garment with an efficiency she might have congratulated in other, less urgent circumstances but right now any delay was too long, any time a waste, when all she wanted in the entire world was to be joined with this man.

Then he was back and she mewled with pleasure and surprise to realise one of them had been aware enough to think of protection as she pulled him into her kiss. He eased her legs apart, his clever fingers returning to once again caress, tease and drive her wild with need until she could not bear it a moment longer.

She tilted her hips in invitation, thrashing her head from side to side, driven crazy with longing, need and something like insanity. Just when she could not stand it any more, he was there at her entrance, and everything in her body seemed to concentrate and focus down on that one, tenuous, madness-inducing contact; that one hitched moment in time where the whole world—the satyrs, sirens, gods and goddesses—all waited with bated breath.

And then he entered her, filling her with one long thrust that drove her head back into the pillows and the breath from her lungs as her body stretched to accommodate his fullness.

Nothing, nothing in the world—not the first sun of spring on her skin, the fresh whisper of breeze through her hair after a long summer day or even seeing Raoul appear through the swirling mists that day—had ever felt so good.

Until he shifted inside her and the best got better.

Her eyes found focus, found his dark eyes watching her as he slowly withdrew and waited on the brink only to fill her even deeper, so that she gasped. But she kept her eyes on his, even as the storm inside her built with every slow withdrawal, with every sliding thrust; even as the rhythm between their bodies built, even as the pace became frantic and their breath with it, even as sensation coiled, intensified, built and built.

Built until there was no place higher to build, no place yet to go. With one final, urgent thrust, one cry of triumph, he made the stars and moon collide and sent their tiny sparkling shards raining down all around her, spelling out the words she already knew to be true.

I love you, Raoul
.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this
. He collapsed alongside her, dragging in air as if his life depended on it, wondering what the hell had just happened. Make love to her, he had thought. Seduce her. That was what he had planned.

So why did he feel like he was the one who had been seduced? Why did he feel like he had been the one handed a precious gift?

She had told him that she wanted him.

She had told him that she wanted to feel him deep inside.

She had wrapped those hot fingers around him and brought him to the very edge of his control.

And, in the sex-fogged recesses of his mind, he knew only one thing: that, for both their sakes, this marriage could not come soon enough.
The call came the next morning. He should have slept, and slept late, given the night of love-making they had had, but Raoul had slipped out of her bed early, unable to rest under the lover’s alcove. He had been feeling claustrophobic, hemmed in by the audience, mocked by the smiling satyrs and pitied by their lovers, as if they knew the truth.

So when the call had come he had been there to take it—to hear the news that Garbas, courtesy of the finest criminal lawyers in Europe, had been granted bail against all odds. Worse still, word from the street was that one of the first places he had visited on his release was Gabriella’s home, looking for her. No doubt needing access to her wealth to fund his defence.

So he had been right to bring her to Venice with him, he acknowledged as he terminated the call. Now he just needed to finish the job he had set himself.

With Garbas on the loose, he would have to do something sooner rather than later—otherwise he would soon track Gabriella down, discover she was in Venice and try to play the friendship card. He could not let that happen.

He glanced at his watch and then back towards the bedroom where Gabriella still lay sleeping and probably would for hours. Half of him yearned to rejoin her in bed, to be there when she woke up, make love to her warm, willing body and blot everything out—the deathbed promise, the past, Garbas. Blot it all out with the glories of her body and the passion of their love-making.

But he could not afford to think that way. Making love
to her was a means to an end, nothing more. He could not afford to let it be more.

So he would leave for Paris now, talk to his contacts and find out what had gone wrong with the police case. And meanwhile Natania could take Gabriella on the promised trip to Murano.

She might be disappointed he would not be taking her, but he would make up for it tonight.

‘I don’t know whether to stay in Venice or go home.’

On the other end of the call, Gabriella heard Phillipa’s soft expression of concern. ‘Do you really have a choice?’

That was exactly Gabriella’s problem—she didn’t know. She’d woken deliciously warm cocooned in the bed clothes, wondering if last night’s love-making had been a dream, being told by the protest and creak of unfamilar muscles that it was not. She’d woken with a smile on her face and with joy in her heart.

And if Raoul had been there to hold her close and make love to her again there would have been no question in her mind. There was no place she would rather be.

But she had woken up after the most wondrous night of her life
alone
.

And Natania’s explanation that Raoul had apologised but had promised to be back in time for dinner went no way to diminishing this overwhelming sense of abandonment.

Hadn’t last night meant anything to him? All night his body had told her he loved her. All night she’d waited for him to say the words, expecting him to say the words
she had found herself so close to saying every time she looked at him.

Yet this morning he had gone without a word.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head, trying to clear her muddied thoughts. ‘I guess I really should go home and sort out the estate some time, and then I have to do something about returning to work. And Consuelo finally texted this morning and wants to catch up …’ Then she thought about leaving Raoul, the man who had blown her world apart. ‘But …’

‘But what? Is it Raoul?’

‘He makes me feel so good, Phillipa. He makes me feel so alive.’

‘Ah.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you love him?’