Enemies at the Altar (13 page)

S
IENNA
woke during the night and had trouble going back to sleep as the local anaesthetic had worn off. The painkillers the doctor had given her were still in her handbag in the car. With all the fuss Andreas had made, she had forgotten to bring it with her into the villa. She tossed off the covers and padded downstairs, turning on the minimum of lights as she went.

She walked past Andreas’s study and saw the thin line of light shining from beneath the door. She heard the tapping of his computer keyboard and the squeak of leather as he shifted in his chair. There was a pause in the tapping as she heard him mutter a very rude word, and then the tapping resumed.

She tiptoed past in her bare feet, but one of the floorboards protested volubly and suddenly Andreas’s study door was flung open and he stood there towering over her. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘I’m going out to the car.’

His brows slammed together over his eyes. ‘Whatever for?’

‘I forgot to bring in my bag,’ she said. ‘The painkillers the doctor gave me are inside it.’

‘Why didn’t you ask me to get it for you?’

‘I didn’t think of it till now.’

‘Go back upstairs,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his weary-looking features. ‘I’ll bring it up to you.’

Sienna went back to her room and sat propped up against the pillows. Within a few minutes Andreas came in, carrying her bag as well as a glass of water. She took the pills and he set the glass on the bedside table.

‘Does it hurt much?’ he asked.

‘A little,’ Sienna said. ‘Just a dull throb.’

A little silence passed.

Sienna felt the drumbeat of her heart as his gaze meshed with hers. One of his hands was resting on the bed within a hair’s breadth of hers. She felt the magnetic pull of his body, the sensual tug on her flesh, as if all of the organs and cells inside her body wanted to shift to be perfectly aligned with his.

His thumb moved just a fraction and stroked against the little finger of her undamaged hand. It was such a tiny touch and yet it made a tumultuous storm of feeling erupt inside her. Her skin tingled all the way up her arm. Her heart picked up speed and her insides flexed and coiled with unbridled need.

His hooded gaze slipped to her mouth. It felt as if he had physically kissed her. Her lips burned and fizzed and she had to sweep her tongue out over them to dampen down the sensation.

He raised a hand to her face, his touch so gentle it felt as if he were wearing kid gloves. He traced the pad of his finger over the cushion of her bottom lip. It was such an achingly intimate caress—the moisture of her lips and the dryness of his fingertip meeting in an erotic moment that stirred something deeply primal in the core of her being.

‘I want you,’ Sienna said on a whisper of sound.

Andreas’s eyes locked on hers, dark, intense and serious. ‘Is that the painkillers talking or you?’ he asked.

‘It’s me,’ she said, touching her hand to the stubbly skin of his jaw. ‘I want you to make love to me.’

He covered her hand with his and, lifting it from his face, pressed a kiss to the middle of her palm, his tongue moving against the sensitive flesh in an erotic stroke that sent her senses into a tailspin. ‘I want you too,’ he said. ‘It’s driving me crazy.
You’ve
been driving me crazy, do you know that?’

Sienna shivered as he leaned in to kiss the skin of her neck just below her ear. ‘We’re both a little crazy, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘Hating each other and yet wanting each other.’

His mouth brushed over hers, a light-as-air, teasing kiss that made her want to scream out loud for more. ‘Total craziness, that’s what it is,’ he said, sliding one of his hands underneath the curtain of her hair as he gently drew her closer.

Sienna closed her eyes as his mouth came back down on hers. His lips moved with gentle urgency against hers. The undercurrent of lust that flowed between them made her blood race like high-octane fuel through her veins. Every thudding heartbeat made her longing for him rise to a feverish level. She could feel it building inside her body. A tug and release sensation that resided deep in her womb, making her hot and moist and restless for the full possession of his body.

His tongue commanded entry to her mouth and with a soft sigh of pleasure she opened to him. He played with her tongue, dancing with it, cavorting and teasing it into submission.

Electric shocks arced down her spine when his hand moved to cover her breast. The barrier of her thin nightwear was no barrier at all. If anything, the movement of the fine fabric against her nipple intensified the sensation. But then he pushed the fabric aside and took her nipple and areola in his mouth. It was an explosion of feeling that made her flesh sizzle and shiver with delight. His tongue teased her nipple by rolling over it and circling it, making all the tiny super-sensitive nerves dance in excitement. He uncovered her other breast and subjected it to a similar heart-stopping sensual assault, making her breathing and heart rate go into a frenzied mismatched rhythm.

His mouth came back to her as he gently eased her back on the bed, his weight supported by one of his elbows. ‘Let’s get rid of this, shall we?’ he said, peeling away her nightwear.

Sienna shucked herself out of it, feeling strangely at ease with him without the covering of her clothes. His gaze devoured her hungrily. It made her flesh sing with delight as his eyes took in every curve and contour of her body.

‘You’re incredibly beautiful,’ he said, sliding a hand down over the jut of her hipbone. ‘So slender and your skin is like silk.’

‘I want to touch your skin,’ Sienna said, starting to work on the buttons of his shirt, but she didn’t get very far with only one hand.

‘Hold that thought,’ he said. He lifted himself off the bed and stood there, looking down at her as he undid each button of his shirt, shrugging it off his shoulders before unfastening the waistband of his trousers.

Sienna’s eyes followed his every movement with
breathless anticipation. Seeing him totally naked for the first time made her breath stall like a misfiring engine. He was all strongly corded muscles and lean and tanned planes. Masculine hair was lightly sprinkled over his chest in a T shape, arrowing down to his groin, where his erection jutted boldly.

He fished a condom out of his wallet and joined her on the bed again. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked. ‘It’s not too late to stop. I don’t want to hurt your hand.’

‘It
is
too late, and I’ve forgotten all about my hand,’ Sienna said. ‘I want this. I want you.’

His mouth came down and sealed hers with a long passionate kiss that set her flesh alight. He took his time caressing every inch of her body, making her aware of herself in a way she had never been before. She hadn’t realised the pleasure spots she possessed. She hadn’t known how delicious it felt to have his mouth on the undersides of her breasts, or the way it felt to have his hands stroke the silky skin of her inner thighs. She hadn’t known how it would feel to have him gently separate her feminine folds with his fingers and then with the stroke and flicker of his tongue. Her body responded with a sensual energy that took her completely by surprise. It was like a giant wave of sensation that she could not stop even if she tried. It snatched her up in its powerful surge of momentum, tossed her about and flung her out the other side, spent, limbless, breathless and dazed.

Sienna blinked her eyes open and looked at Andreas. ‘Wow …’ she said.

His hazel eyes glittered. ‘It gets better.’

‘You can top that?’ she said with an incredulous look.

He gave her a smile that made her insides quiver all
over again. ‘I’ll take it slowly,’ he said. ‘You’re tiny and I don’t want to hurt you. Just relax, try not to clamp up. You’re meant to stretch to accommodate me.’

Sienna sighed with pleasure as he positioned himself so as not to crush her with his weight. She loved the feel of his hair-roughened thighs and the way his hands were so gentle, almost worshipful, as they caressed her. Tasting the feminine essence of her body on his mouth was a new experience, but a totally erotic one. He kissed her lingeringly while his fingers played with her, making sure she was moist and relaxed before he eased into her slowly, pausing as her body got used to his thickness, before going deeper. She felt her inner walls wrap around him; the sensation of him moving inside her made her spine instantly melt. She moved against him experimentally and her belly somersaulted as she heard him give a deep groan of pleasure. ‘Am I wowing you?’ she asked, sliding her uninjured hand up and down his strongly muscled back.

He swept a strand of her hair away from her face with a tender movement of his hand. ‘Most definitely,’ he said and, with a spasm of pleasure passing over his face, he took her with him to paradise.

Andreas lay on his side, watching as Sienna slept. She was curled up on her side facing him, her little bandaged hand resting in the space between them. Her hair was a tousled cloud over the pillow. The scent of her was on his skin, the taste of her both sweet and salty on his tongue.

He had made love many times with many women. It was a physical union that he enjoyed. But somehow, making love with Sienna was something else, something
infinitely more pleasurable, more deeply satisfying—a mind-blowing experience that touched him where no one else had been able to reach before.

But then she constantly surprised him. That was part of her alluring charm. He never knew what to expect from her. She was totally, and yet somehow delightfully, unpredictable.

She suddenly opened her eyes and gave him one of her breath-snatching smiles. ‘I had this amazing dream,’ she said. ‘This amazingly gorgeous-looking and disgustingly rich guy made love to me. I hate his guts in real life, but in my dream we made magic together. Wasn’t that a weird dream?’

Andreas smiled crookedly as he stroked a lazy finger down her cheek. ‘Are you sure you hate him so much in real life?’ he asked.

She pretended to think about it. ‘Mmm, maybe not as much as I did before, but I’m not in love with him or anything.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked. ‘A short affair to get him out of your system?’

She tiptoed her fingers up his sternum, making his heart leap like a mad thing behind the cage of his ribs. ‘That’s the plan,’ she said, meshing her gaze with his. ‘Five months, give or take a day or two, ought to do it, don’t you think?’

Andreas studied her soft plump mouth for a moment. ‘What if the amazingly gorgeous-looking, disgustingly rich guy wanted you to stay a little longer?’ he asked.

Her grey-blue eyes stilled for a moment. Then she blinked and asked, ‘Why would he want that?’

He slowly coiled a strand of her silver-blonde hair
around his index finger. ‘Maybe he likes having you around to mess up his ordered life,’ he said.

She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘I can’t quite see it, somehow,’ she said, doing that sexy little tiptoe thing again. ‘We’d drive each other nuts.’

Andreas felt an arrow of lust stake him in the groin when her fingers suddenly changed direction, step by exquisite step, as they made their way down to dance tantalisingly over his erection. He snatched in a breath when she boldly circled him with her hand, her soft skin like a silky glove.

She gave him a sultry little smile and bent her head to him, her hair tickling his abdomen and thighs, as she stroked her tongue over his engorged flesh. He groaned out loud as she licked him like a shy, tentative kitten. But then she suddenly turned into a wild rampaging tigress and consumed him whole. Shudders of delight rocked through him as she fed off him hungrily.

He tried to pull away but she pressed him back down with a determined hand. ‘Stay,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said, fighting for control.

‘You did it to me.’

‘That was different,’ he said, breathing raggedly.

‘“All’s fair in love and war”,’ she said in a sing-song voice.

‘So which is this?’ he asked. ‘Love or war?’

She gathered her hair in one hand before curling it over one shoulder, her eyes glinting with mischief and daring. ‘This is war,’ she said, and then lowered her mouth and claimed victory.

I
N
the weeks leading up to her twin’s wedding Sienna settled into Andreas’s life as if she had always been in it. They didn’t discuss the future by tacit agreement, although their affair was as blisteringly hot as ever. She had wondered if Andreas’s ardour would cool over time but it hadn’t any more than hers had. She had been constantly surprised by her body’s capacity for pleasure. His mix of tenderness and daring as a lover repeatedly took her breath away. He would only have to look at her a certain way and she would shudder in anticipated pleasure. She had become more adventurous as her confidence grew. She delighted in catching him off guard, seducing him when he least expected it.

He had been generous to her in showering her with gifts. He had bought her a sophisticated camera and a computer of her own to store her files of pictures. He had encouraged her to have copies professionally printed and had even hung some framed ones in his office in Florence.

Sienna wondered if they would still be hanging there when their marriage came to its inevitable end.

The other project Andreas had helped her with was Scraps. With careful handling and patience, the dog
was now totally at ease around them. Andreas drew the line at having the dog inside the villa, but Sienna was content that Scraps was at least healthy and happy and comfortable with the staff as well as her and Andreas.

For once in her life the press left her alone. They seemed to have accepted that she and Andreas were a happily married couple and, apart from an occasional snap of them having dinner or attending a function together, there was no hint of scandal or anything untoward.

Sienna knew it wouldn’t last but she tried not to think about it. She was becoming very good at not thinking about things that troubled her. Denial had become her closest companion. As soon as a worrying or wayward thought entered her head she would immediately dismiss it, like her feelings for Andreas, for instance. She absolutely refused to think beyond the fact that she no longer hated him. What she actually felt for him was locked behind a door inside her head marked private and off-limits.

She just didn’t want to go there.

As to what Andreas felt about her, she knew was equally dangerous to examine too closely. He had a goal in mind and within a few rapidly passing months he would achieve it. He would be able to claim his inheritance and move on with his life. She didn’t like to presume she would continue to be a part of it.

He never spoke of his feelings. He was attentive and affectionate, and even teasing and playful at times, but occasionally she would catch him looking at her with a frown pulling at his brow. It was as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. She suspected she delighted and frustrated him in equal measure.

One such time was a couple of days before Sienna was due to leave for Rome to help her sister prepare for her wedding. Andreas came into the bedroom they shared just as Sienna was sorting out what to take with her. She had been determined to take a leaf from his book and become better organised. She had planned to be packed well and truly in advance—there would no longer be any last minute mad grabs or flying off without packing appropriately. The bed was strewn with clothes and the floor with shoes, but that was all under control, or it would have been if he hadn’t come home earlier than she had expected. ‘Hi,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘You’re home early.’

His brooding frown looked as if it had been stitched to his brow. ‘Do you have to take everything out of the wardrobe every time you get dressed?’ he asked.

Sienna lifted her chin, more than a little stung by his surly mood. ‘I’m packing.’

A muscle jerked at the side of his mouth. ‘What?’

‘I’m leaving for Rome, remember?’ she said, turning to fling a pair of jeans on to the not-taking-this pile on the floor. ‘I’m going to my sister’s wedding. I told you about it, not that you probably listened. Of course, it’s entirely up to you whether you come or not. No one is pressuring you. I can imagine going to a real wedding where the couple actually love each other will be quite an eye-opener for you.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he asked.

‘Figure it out for yourself,’ she said as she pushed past him to fetch a suitcase.

He shackled one of her wrists with his hand, turning her round to face him. ‘What’s got into you?’ he asked.

‘What’s got into
me
?’ Sienna asked. ‘You’re the one
who came home like a bear with a thorn in his paw.’ She shoved at his chest with her free hand. ‘Take your hands off me.’

A burning gleam entered his hazel gaze as it collided with hers. ‘You wanted my hands on you twice last night and this morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve been getting shivers all day just thinking about what you did to me in the shower.’

She threw him a caustic glare that belied her quivering insides. ‘Well, I don’t want them on me now.’

He tugged her closer, his pelvis hard against hers, his desire warring with her will. ‘Prove it,’ he said.

‘I don’t have to prove anything,’ she said, giving him another shove, but it was like trying to shift a skyscraper.

He put a hand at the base of her spine, holding her to the hardened probe of his erection. ‘One kiss and I’ll let you go,’ he said.

‘All right,’ Sienna said, determined to show him she could resist him. She would rise to the challenge the same way she dealt with all of her traitorous thoughts. She would block it from her mind. ‘Give me your best, Rich Boy.’

His mouth came down but, instead of completely covering hers, his lips teased the side of her mouth, making every nerve twitch and writhe in rapture. She fought against the desire to turn her head that tiny fraction so her mouth was right under his. She scrunched her eyes closed and tried to ignore the way her body was responding to his as if on automatic. Her spine loosened as he shifted his attention to the other side of her mouth. His stubble caught on her skin, sending a lightning bolt of desire to her core.

‘You’re cheating,’ she said, a little shocked at how breathless she sounded.

‘How am I cheating?’ he asked, moving up to suck on her earlobe.

Sienna shivered. ‘You said one kiss, but you haven’t even kissed me.’

‘I’m working my way up to it,’ he said, coming back to that incredibly sensitive corner of her mouth where her top lip joined her bottom one.

She let out a wobbly breath as his tongue came out to stroke along the partially open seam of her mouth. He still hadn’t pressed his lips to hers and yet she was thrumming like a tuning fork struck against a hard object.

Finally she could stand it no longer. She grabbed at his head with her hands, digging her fingers into his scalp as she pressed her mouth to his. He took immediate control by going in search of her tongue, the sensual and commanding thrust of his destroying any hope of her resisting him. She slammed her body up against his, rubbing herself against his arousal, delighting in the crackling sexual energy that fired between them at the intimate contact.

He growled against her mouth as he walked her backwards to the clothes-strewn bed. ‘Get your clothes off.’

‘Off the bed or off me?’ she asked, tearing at his shirt, popping buttons with scant disregard for the designer label it bore.

‘Let’s start with you,’ he said, pulling off her T-shirt as if it were nothing more than tissue paper.

Sienna landed on the mattress with a gasp as he came down on top of her. Somehow her jeans and knickers had met the same fate as her T-shirt. She was naked and
sizzling with need as he parted her, thrusting into her with a groan of primal pleasure that made the skin on her arms come up in a fine sandpaper of goose bumps.

He set a rhythm that was breathtakingly fast, his strongly muscled body pumping into hers with raw urgency until she was screaming out loud her release. She wrapped her legs around his waist, desperate to hold on to the exquisite sensations for as long as she could. She sobbed as the final waves coursed through her. She had never felt such exhilarating pleasure. It racked her body with its aftershocks just as his release burst out of him. She felt every shuddering pulse of his body as he spilled. She felt the way the muscles of his back and shoulders finally relaxed under the soothing stroke of her hands.

In that quiet moment of the aftermath, she felt the carapace of her closely guarded heart fall away as if chipped at by a sharpened chisel.

It terrified her.

She could not allow this to happen.

She had to squash it before it took hold.

‘Get off me,’ she said, pushing against him.

Andreas frowned as he moved to let her get up. ‘What’s wrong,
ma petite
?’

Sienna shoved her hair back from her face. ‘Why do you always switch languages?’ she asked irritably. ‘It totally confuses me.’

‘You understand both Italian and French,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t confuse you at all.’

‘I
am
confused,’ she said, snatching up a wrap to cover her nakedness.

He rose from the bed and came over to where she was standing with her back towards him. He put his
hands on her shoulders, his breath skating past her ear as he drew her back towards him. ‘What’s confusing you,
cara
?’ he asked.

Sienna turned to face him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, letting her shoulders go down in a slump. ‘I think I’m letting my sister’s wedding get to me. It’s so … so starkly different from ours.’

His eyes searched hers. ‘And that’s a problem for you?’

She shifted her gaze from his. ‘No,’ she said, fiddling with a dress on the bed that was now in desperate need of an iron. ‘Why should it be? It’s not the same thing at all. We’re not in love or planning a future together. We both want what we can get out of this arrangement. This little affair we’ve got going is all well and good for now, but I don’t want to be tied to you in the long term any more than you want to be tied to me.’

A long silence ticked past, measured by the rustling of her increasingly haphazard sorting.

‘Do you want some help packing?’ Andreas asked. ‘It looks like you need it.’

Sienna turned and faced him again. ‘I can do it by myself,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time I learned how to sort out the mess of my own making.’

‘This is not your mess,’ he said, frowning as he raked his hair with his fingers. ‘This is my father’s.’

‘Is it?’ she asked, giving him a world-weary look. ‘Is it really?’

He held her gaze for a long moment. ‘I suspect my father wanted to teach me a lesson,’ he said. ‘He wanted me to understand how hard it is to choose between what I think I want and what I really need.’

‘So have you figured it out yet?’ she asked.

He continued to hold her gaze. ‘I already know what I want,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure, however, that it’s what I need.’

‘And what is it that you want, Andreas?’ she asked. ‘More money? More fame and notoriety?’

He took her by the upper arms and pulled her close, making her heart beat triple time as she felt his body stirring against her belly. ‘I think you already know the answer to that,’ he said and pressed his mouth down firmly on hers.