Love Play by Rosemary Rogers (29 page)

'I never promised, bella mia, that I would not try to seduce you!' He
put his lips against her neck for an instant and she almost cried out. 'And yes
... of course, I am slightly drunk. Why not? I thought the wine would bring me
sleep, but instead — it brought me images of you, witch-woman. You make me want
you even though I despise you and know you for what you are. Even though I
often come near to hating you.'

He spoke to her in Italian and there was a note in his voice that made
Sara try to struggle against him. He had come here determined to take her! And
now he talked to her in that rough steel-and-velvet voice that seemed to rub
abrasively against her very nerves. As abrasive as the encroaching feel of his
body over hers with its different textures of hair and skin and male roughness
that frightened her instinctively.

'Go away; I want you to ... just stop and go away!'

She despised herself for being driven to begging with that note of
desperation in her voice, but could not help herself for reacting with
traditional virginal terror when his hand began to caress her deliberately and
intimately.

'I thought you liked being massaged. Stop wriggling so wildly,
carissima, unless you want me to believe that you are already aroused.'

She started to beat at him in retaliation, sobbing with a combination of
terror and fury.

'Basta! What's wrong now? Stop it - I don't enjoy nail marks as a sign
of passion.' His voice snarled at her as he caught both her wrists in midair.
'One would almost think that you were a frightened virgin from your struggles,
instead of a seductive cortigiana who enjoys what she does.'

He was so damned strong! She didn't have a chance against his
determination and his strength unless she told him the truth - that she was not
Delight but Delight's older sister. She'd rather face his anger than what he
planned to do with her.

'I'm not ... I don't . . . oh, damn you, stop! You don't under — '

His mouth silenced her effectively, dwelling over hers in what seemed an
endless variety of kisses that blended into each other and went from savagely
impatient and hurtful to become a slow and deliberate exploration of the shape
and texture of her lips, her tongue, her mouth. He was harsh, then gentle, then
harsh again while his strong brown ringers continued to do what they pleased
with her. Deliberately inciting - almost teasingly slow, he began to play with
the sensitive peaks of her nipples until she was gasping for breath under his
predatory mouth. She felt almost mindless, torn helplessly between wanting and
not wanting -between letting go to feeling and primitive fear.

Now there was no sound between them except their breathing and the moans
that caught in her throat. Oh, God! Sara thought dazedly, I can't believe this
is happening to me and I'm actually starting to want it to happen .., What she
didn't want was to think about anything at all, while she let her senses take
over for the first time in her life; it was like falling very slowly from a
great height, spinning in gigantic slow-motion circles, or being sucked into
the centre of a whirlpool that took her and took her without her conscious
volition. What he did to her with the sensuous pressure and probing of his
caressing fingers was diabolical!

Somehow, at some point it had become no longer necessary for him to keep
her wrists imprisoned, and her hands clung to his shoulders instead of beating
furiously at them. He touched her where she wanted to be touched, reaching
nerve endings and creating sensations she had never known existed. Giving in,
she felt herself tossed and whirled about in a vortex of emotion that made her
arch herself up against him fiercly and almost welcome the sharp stab of pain that
made her cry out and gave way in seconds to another kind of pain that was not
really pain at all, although it too made her give a choked, almost animal sound
that she herself didn't even hear for the pounding drumbeat of her pulses.

More . . . and more . . . and, incredibly, even more. Like nothing she
could have imagined, nothing she had dreamed of, nothing she could describe to
herself or even explain. All she was aware of was the motion of his body over
hers and the feel of him inside her, filling emptiness and taking her to the
furthest reaches of pleasure.

From there, free-falling to reality was like waking from a kind of
trance in which she had not been herself at all but a passionate, sensual
creature who could give herself up unreservedly to desire and its slaking. She
became suddenly conscious of everything. The rumpled, disordered bed and the
dampness beneath her. Marco's body still possessively straddling hers, still a
part of her. Was he asleep? If he said something cruel and sarcastic to her now,
she'd . . .

He moved to free her partially of his weight, his mouth lazily nuzzling
at the soft, sensitive spot between her neck and shoulder. 'Dio mio, but you
are a temptress! So tight and so warm ., . incredible, you make me want you
again!' The growl of his voice against her sensitive flesh sent vibrations
through her that were partly fearful and partly . . . something else that his
words excited in her, bringing out some ancient, primeval instinct that made
her want to touch him. Hold him with herself, inside herself. Learn the texture
of his night-black hair. Discover if he could make her feel the same fierce
rise of passion again and the same fulfilment.

Sara's hands slipped down his back and back up again to his shoulders
and the back of his neck. From there one hand moved down again, exploring the
length of his hard body as far as she could reach, and finding, almost by
instinct the place where their bodies were joined.

'Strega! Witch!' She heard him whisper harshly against the spring of
hair at her temple as he began to move and swell inside her again while his
hands caught in the thickness of her hair to pull her face up to his for his
savage kisses and moved from there under her, to thrust her hips up against
his.

She had been told by all the books she had read and all the girl-friends
she had talked to that this kind of thing could never happen in real life.
Again? Triumphantly, joyfully, she was finding out that they were all wrong!

She was still floating down gently, feeling light as a feather, when she
heard him say something to her that didn't really register and didn't matter
either, not then. Drowsily, Sara turned her face against his shoulder,
murmuring sleepily against it as she snuggled herself closer to him; arms
tightening about him as she did.

Whatever he said had been in Italian and it might have been 'good night'
or even 'domani? which was a word Italian men were very fond of using,
especially to their mistresses. Without being aware of it, she had started to
smile in her sleep. Mistress. Who would have thought it, she was actually
someone's mistress! Marco's, to be exact, and that was really very funny
because she had begun by hating him.

The next thing Sara became aware of was the sun; pushing at her eyelids
with hot, bright fingers. And then a feeling of loss.

Had she actually been dreaming? Sara reached out a tentative, exploring
hand to encounter only a pillow and she frowned. Dream? But when her body
moved, an unaccustomed soreness made her wince - her eyes blinking open to squint
against the sun that streamed in inquisitively through the gap she had left in
the curtains. With a muffled groan she turned over to face the other way and
the empty-side of the bed.

Oh, damn! She didn't really want to think about it just yet, but neither
could she stop the sudden flood of recollection. Reaching for the pillow almost
automatically, Sara hugged it against her as if for reassurance while her eyes
stared unseeingly at the wall. So she'd finally gone and done it; but how
strange that it had been Marco ofall people whom she had been determined to
detest even before she had met him! Marco, who had been the only man she'd
known who could seduce her with a kiss - turn her into what he wanted her to
be, what he expected her to be. And he still believed her to be someone else.
Delight, her sister, whose name he muttered in her ear and against her mouth
while he made love to Sara. Just plain Sara who had always been rather
straitlaced and wasn't at all the kind of woman who men found exciting unless
she was acting a part.

What on earth was she going to do now?

There was one side of her nature that was her father's and had been
trained to be practical and pragmatic. Careful. But then there was also her
mother in her; all the passion and the recklessness that she had tried and they
had tried to subdue. Why? And for what?

Sara stretched her arms above her head, a feeling of delicious languour
creeping over her as she remembered. Perhaps she, and not her sister, deserved
all those things he had said about her earlier. Certainly she felt no regrets
and no guilt at this moment. It had been Sara he had wanted and made love to,
whether he had known it or not! But she had known it - with every tingling inch
of her body, and without any lingering vestiges of shame.

What's done is done. And there's only going forward from now on. She
thought of Marco's body and the way muscles moved smoothly under sun-browned
flesh . . . under her hands. Flushing, she remembered the way his hands had
explored her so intimately, discovering things about her that she hadn't known
herself. Knowing now, Sara found herself moving restlessly against the
disordered sheets. Of course he'd left her because of the servants. But when
would he come back?

Chapter 27

It wasn't until later that the doubts began creeping in to nag at her
mind, and with them returned some traces of the sanity she had lost last night
along with her embarrassing virginity. And it had been quite an embarrassment
to face Serafina and know that the austere housekeeper would realise at once
what had taken place last night. Sara could not help grimacing. She'd thought
about washing her stained sheets herself in the bathtub and hanging them out on
the terrace to dry. But unfortunately Serafina had come in while the bath was
still filling and had taken everything in - including a discarded night
gown
 
with a torn strap lying on the
other side of the room where it had been hurled.

In spite of herself, Sara had not been able to prevent herself from
blushing, just as if she'd been a naughty little teenager.

The usually stone-faced housekeeper was actually human enough to show
some slight change of expression when her eyes encountered the sheets that Sara
had been in the process of tearing from the bed. But by the time her eyes had
come back to Sara's flushed face, they showed nothing; even when Serafina said
in a disapproving voice: 'There is no need for the signorina to concern herself
with such things. I will see to changing your bed linens myself.' Hearing the
sound of water running into the marble bath, Serafina shook her head. 'And if
you had rung for me, signorina, I would have come to run your bath for you. In
the future, please ring for me when you are ready in the mornings and I will
come myself.'

It was not so much the words that the housekeeper had used but their
significance, Sara thought now as she tried to make herself relax in the
pampered, perfumed luxury of her own sunken marble tub. While she had kept her
own personal thoughts hidden, Serafina had been offering her tacit acceptance
of Sara's changed position. From now on Serafina herself would see to Sara's
room and her clothes as well as the bath in the mornings .. . Sara smiled
ruefully at her wavering reflection in a steamy mirror. What had he called her
once during the night? Cortigianai In a voice that was like a snarl. Well, she
should certainly feel like a courtesan now, she supposed. And wondered the next
moment how many other women he had kept here in these same apartments, to wait
on his whim and his pleasure. And then dismissed when he had tired of them — no
doubt with an expensive little gift of jewellery or a new car.

Well .... Sara thought flippantly, I'd settle for the car! And then
wondered why she didn't feel as flippant.

After all - where was he? He'd intruded on her bath before, when she'd
just detested him, and now .. . oh, damn! She must stop this. Look at
everything in a coldly logical way, which was probably how he would look at it.
She had put up a pretty good resistance, which had intrigued him; but now that
he'd won, it was quite possible that he might not want her again. Or if he did
. . . Sara let herself slip a little further under the water, wishing she could
train herself not to blush. He had certainly wanted her last night!

Newly familiar feelings returned suddenly to tug at her nerve endings as
the thought reminded her of everything that had happened last night . . . and
tentatively, almost wonderingly, Sara touched herself. There - where he had
been. Still a little soreness, a tenderness, but . . . oh, God, how could the
clinical 'How To' books that everyone read these days really prepare one for
the reality and the. feelings? Like losing control, and losing restraint, and
wanting anything and everything that was being done to you . . .?

Without her realising it, her eyes had half-closed with the sensuousness
of her memories. Only to be jerked open by the voice that addressed her
sarcastically from some distance above her. 'I had hoped that I was able to
keep you sated for a while! But here I find you lying immersed to the neck in
warm water with that dreamy expression on your face and nothing more than your
own hand to bring you satisfaction! Which one of your lovers were you
fantasising about this time?'

'Oh!' Sara's hand went up to her face as if she'd like to shut the sight
of him out, as he stood over her still dressed for riding - his dusty boots
planted squarely apart and his dark Sardinian face mocking. 'I was certainly
not — ' Sara had begun indignantly, when he cut her off.