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?’
Gabriella breathed out in a rush, ‘I think so.’
‘And does Raoul feel the same way about you?’
That was where Gabriella came unstuck. What did a man feel for you, if he could make love to you all night and then disappear with the morning without so much as a sweet kiss to remember him by—a man who told you nothing of how he felt?
Unless he was deliberately trying to give her the message that their love-making didn’t mean anything. But that made no sense when she thought of how he had almost worshipped her body. Surely he could not be that callous?
‘I don’t know, Phillipa. It’s driving me crazy, but I just don’t know.’
‘Then it’s easy, Gabriella.