Valente rolled her back, so that he could look at her pale heart-shaped face and defeated gaze. Luxuriant jet-dark lashes low over shimmering golden eyes, he breathed huskily, ‘You’re still a virgin?’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she almost spat at him, in angry embarrassment over the extent of his probing.
‘It means a great deal to me, belleza mia. It means I’m getting back what I believed had been stolen from me,’ Valente confessed candidly, all his tension evaporating. ‘What else did he do to you? Did he knock you about?’
‘No, he only ever hit me once … when he discovered that I’d searched your name on the internet.’
Valente was appalled. He went from being boyishly pleased that she had sought information about him to being sobered by the price she had paid for her curiosity.
‘It’s time we got some sleep,’ Valente murmured flatly.
‘We?’ she queried anxiously.
‘Si … sleeping apart will only divide us more. I promise that I won’t do anything you don’t want. I also assure you that I won’t get angry, I will never be rough, and I will never, ever hurt you.’ Valente intoned those promises steadily, in his dark, distinctive drawl.
‘Or force me to do anything I don’t want to do?’ she pressed.
Valente set his even white teeth together so hard he almost chipped them. It was well for Matthew Bailey that he was safely dead and buried, for Valente had long loathed men who abused women. ‘Of course not. You must learn to trust me.’
‘That’s so hard,’ she admitted, watching him stride into the dressing room, listening to doors being opened and shut.
Valente emerged with a handful of burgundy-coloured silk which he tossed on the bed. ‘I bought you a new wardrobe as a wedding present. Change out of that robe.’
‘Who does it belong to?’ she asked, with a piercing sensation in her chest.
‘Nobody you need to consider.’
Valente was reflecting that he had always enjoyed a challenge, that nothing he had ever gained had been easily acquired. On the other hand, she had chosen to marry that bastard Matthew, and Valente was not prepared to wait for ever to enjoy the delights of what should have been his. The ache at his groin reminded him that celibacy had never agreed with him, either. Patience promised to be a gruelling challenge.
Too exhausted to protest, Caroline went into the bathroom. There she shed the robe that she guessed had belonged to a former lover and shimmied into the nightdress before scrambling into bed. Valente was getting undressed, and she looked away hurriedly, shrinking from that intimacy.
‘I’m not making any other promises, piccola mia,’ Valente spelt out succinctly. ‘Tonight changed everything between us …’
‘Yes,’ she agreed flatly, refusing to look at him and burrowing below the sheet.
‘I’m not a man who makes hasty decisions. I’ll give our marriage a chance. We’ll move one step at a time.’
Tears seeped out below her tightly shut lashes. She was defective goods, but he would graciously give her a trial before he sent her back to England. Once again a man was ensuring she believed that all she had to offer was her body. Feeling as though he had battered her with his condescension, she closed her eyes tight, praying for sleep to come quickly, for she was beyond even thinking about the future.
But she didn’t need to think about it, did she? Inevitably he would divorce her. There was no advantage to him in staying married to a woman like her. She had brought him no business dowry and she could not give him a child. What had happened with Matthew had happened a second time. But this time she was heartbroken, and it was all too easy for her to think of herself as absolutely useless again…
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVERY time she glimpsed the magnificent panoramic outlook from the terrace of the Villa Barbieri, Caroline wondered if she had accidentally strayed into paradise.
It was the most beautiful still day, and she loved the silence. The terracotta roofs of the sleepy village on the hilltop were a charming enhancement to the ancient honey-coloured and much-repaired stone walls of the buildings. The far view of the looming Alps was misty and indistinct, while the lush hills opposite were covered with fresh, green chestnut trees, acacias, scrub oak and broom, before petering out into the fertile valley where silvery-green olive groves and lines of grapevines took over.
She lay in the shade on her stomach, with her bikini top undone and Koko dozing beneath her lounger. If ever a cat had been born to live in a house the size of a palace it was Koko. She might hiss and spit at Valente, and emit noisy, sulky cries from a distance when he was around, but Caroline’s pet had wasted no time in making fans of the staff, who could not do enough to make the little cat feel at home.
‘She’s incredibly jealous of me,’ Valente had declared the week before. ‘As far as she’s concerned, I’ve stolen her place with you.’
And it was true, Caroline conceded with a wondering smile at that truth. Koko had been banned from the bedroom, while Valente slept with Caroline every night that he was in residence. He was travelling back and forth to Venice, usually only spending one night away from her at most. It hurt that he had never asked her to go with him, but when he was at the Villa Barbieri she woke up in his arms and increasingly fell asleep in them as well. Enclosed in that simple, unthreatening togetherness with a man for the first time, she had gradually learned to trust him. Somehow she had even learned to long for more than his kisses as he controlled his passion while assiduously stoking hers. Step by step, he had promised only four weeks earlier, and she was already becoming unnervingly eager for the next move forward.
From the first, he had encouraged her to touch him, to explore at will and experiment, and she had soon discovered that the more familiar she became with that lean, beautifully masculine and intensely responsive body of his, the less nervous she was around him. Her fear had gone, for he had proved how self-controlled he could be. With a little sigh she shifted her hips in a sensuous circle on the lounger, recalling how she had wakened him the day before, and the unrestrained sound of his satisfaction while he buried his hands in her hair and urged her on.
With a wicked little quiver of awareness alight low in her belly, she acknowledged that her physical barriers were coming down—and why not? If Valente’s wonderful patience with her had taught her anything, it was that he was still the man she had loved when she was twenty-one years old. And at least he was no longer being forced to go without any sexual satisfaction at all, she reflected. Her cheeks hot, she smiled in remembrance of the pleasure she had discovered she could give him. And she had given that pleasure eagerly, while marvelling at the change in herself and the newly learned confidence driving it.
A helicopter flew overhead while she ruminated over the truth that, given time, she was convinced she would be able to meet the terms of their marital agreement. Valente would win where Matthew had failed, which she supposed was only to be expected when she was in love with Valente and desperate to be part of a normal marriage. She had never got over losing Valente, which was hardly surprising in the circumstances. Her horribly ill-judged rebound marriage to Matthew had made it all too clear to her what she had lost … Footsteps sounded on the terrace and she lifted her head.
‘I thought you wouldn’t be back until late tonight!’ Caroline exclaimed, glancing up in surprise and welcome at her tall, well-built husband.
Valente sat down on the lounger beside hers, his lean, darkly handsome features serious. ‘Since you’re flying back to England to be with your father for his surgery tomorrow, I thought I should finish up early.’
‘Good.’ Caroline smiled up at him, her entire face lighting up.
Sexual hunger