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Face burning, breath coming in tortured bursts, Belle fled upstairs, barely able to credit that he had said that to her. She had read about male fantasies and he had just told her his with a lack of embarrassment that made her all the more conscious of her own ignorance. He was already fantasising about removing her bridal gown. It was a useful message as to what went on in Cristo’s arrogant head. While she was worrying about him getting to know and like their brothers and sisters he was thinking about sex. Was that all their marriage meant to him? Sex and the threat of a big scandal removed?
And if it was, what on earth could she do about it? All her gran’s warnings and dire predictions came crashing down on her at once. What if he was cruel? Unfaithful? Belle swallowed hard, mastering her tumultuous emotions. You made your bed, now you have to lie on it...literally, she told herself sternly as she checked that she had packed the most essential things for herself and Franco.
* * *
Franco cried and begged to get out of his car seat all the way to the airport. Aware of the irritation Cristo couldn’t hide and with her own spirits low at having left home and everything and almost everyone familiar behind her for goodness knew how long, Belle tried to distract the child.
‘Why did your mother have so many children with my father?’ Cristo asked suddenly.
‘She always wanted a big family and I think the kids were her compensation for not seeing much of your father,’ Belle opined and then, hesitating, added, ‘Gaetano wanted nothing to do with them though. When he was here they went to stay with Isa and maybe only saw him once for about ten minutes and it would be very strained. He just wasn’t interested.’
‘He was the same with me and my brothers.’
‘I hated him!’ Belle admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I felt guilty about that when he was killed in the crash.’
‘You shouldn’t, cara,’ Cristo parried. ‘He was a very selfish man, who lived only for his pleasure and his profit. Nothing else mattered to him.’
Belle settled into her seat on Cristo’s opulent private jet. Franco was in the sleeping compartment and, once she had settled her little brother down for his nap, Cristo had informed her that he had hired a nanny for the child, who would be waiting when they reached their destination.
‘Which...is?’
‘Italy. I’m taking you to my home in Italy.’
‘Venice...we’re going to Venice?’ Belle carolled in sudden excitement.
‘No, that is where my mother and stepfather live. I inherited a house in Umbria, which has belonged to my mother’s family for generations. Sorry, it’s not Venice,’ Cristo quipped.
‘Won’t your mother be upset that she wasn’t at your wedding?’ Belle prompted, shooting him a look of wide-eyed curiosity.
‘I doubt it. Anything that reminds Giulia of Gaetano puts her in a very bad mood,’ Cristo admitted, compressing his lips. ‘She never recovered from what he put her through. You couldn’t be in her company for five minutes before she told you that he stole the best years of her life, robbed her blind and slept with—among others—her best friend and her maid.’
‘Good grief...’ Belle breathed, reeling from that blunt admission.
During the flight, even with his laptop open in front of him, Cristo found his attention continually straying from the financial report he was checking. He studied Belle’s delicate profile from below his dense lashes, marvelling at the display of innocence and vulnerability that she continued to exude. Was he supposed to be impressed? Did he strike her as that stupid? After all, Mary Brophy’s daughter was considerably shrewder than her mother had ever been because she had not hesitated to use Gaetano’s children as a weapon to enrich herself. But his awareness of that aspect of her less than stellar character faded whenever Cristo looked at her, appreciating the vibrancy of her Titian curls against her porcelain-pale skin, the clarity of her beautiful green eyes, the feminine elegance of the fingers and unpainted nails adorning the slim hands that held a magazine. She always looked so amazingly natural, he registered, black brows drawing together in a bemused frown as he questioned the depth of his fascination and hurriedly returned to his financial report, trying and singularly failing to rustle up an immediate image of Betsy’s face.
The nanny, Teresa, a middle-aged woman with a warm smile, greeted them at the airport and gathered up Franco with enough appreciation to persuade Belle that her little brother would enjoy the best of attention. Though quite what Cristo expected her to do with her time while someone else looked after Franco, she had no idea. After driving through miles of extensively cultivated agricultural land the sun was going down fast when the limousine began to climb mountain roads with hairpin bends that soon slowed the speed of their passage.
‘It feels as if we’re travelling to the end of the world,’ Belle commented.
‘As far as my mother was concerned, the Palazzo Maddalena, named for one of her ancestors, might as well have been. It was never her style.’
And as the car travelled slowly towards to the massive stone building presiding over the hill tops, Belle knew it wasn’t her style either and her heart and her courage sank to their lowest ever level. For the first time it really hit her exactly what marrying Cristo entailed and the little girl whose earliest home had been a tiny house was ready to surface again because the adult woman was overpowered by the sheer size and grandeur of the property confronting her. Ancient mellowed stone encased the three-storeys-tall palazzo, which had graceful wings spreading to either side. Elaborate terraced gardens in an ornamental pattern spread down the hill in front of it and behind the solid bulk of the building loomed the imposing snow-capped tops of the Sibillini mountain range.
As pale as a newly created ghost, Belle climbed out of the car, her lovely face frozen and expressionless, her wedding gown glimmering eerily in the twilight. Cristo surveyed her with a level of satisfaction that disconcerted him. His wife, his home where he was free to be himself. Her tension, though, was not a surprise because Cristo was convinced he knew precisely why Belle would have preferred Venice. What was the point of marrying a billionaire if she couldn’t enjoy the expected rich advantages that came with the wedding ring? In Venice she could have partied with his mother’s wealthy and famous friends and shopped in expensive boutiques and jewellery stores. An ancestral palazzo in the mountains was no fair exchange.
‘It’s a great place for a honeymoon,’ Cristo informed her with something that just might have been amusement glimmering in his keen gaze.
A honeymoon? Well, she was married. But why was he laughing at her? Did he also see the ludicrous gulf between a boy raised in a gilded Venetian palace and the housekeeper’s daughter? How could he fail to? A tide of self-conscious colour washed Belle’s complexion as they entered the enormous palazzo. She knew time was running out. They had dined on the plane, so not even the need to eat could be stretched out to lengthen the evening ahead. For goodness’ sake, she urged herself, lighten up, wise up. This was the deal; this was the agreement that would ensure her siblings received everything that should have been theirs from birth. They would grow up secure and safe as Ravellis and nobody would have an excuse to mock them or sneer at them. They would have the best of educations and opportunities to equip them to enter adult life. They would never have to worry about where their next meal was coming from. As she listed the countless benefits of having married Cristo Ravelli, Belle’s breathing slowly steadied and she steeled her spine.
Franco clutched at her dress as they mounted the stairs and the manservant who had let them in showed them first to a nursery suite where the nanny tried to detach Franco from Belle. But Franco didn’t like strange places and he started to sob and clutch at his sister and it took Cristo to detach him from her.
‘Kiss-do,’ Franco warbled mid sob, ready to smile until Cristo handed him over to the nanny, and then in desperation stretching his arms out to Belle instead.
Belle moved forward to go to Franco but Cristo forestalled her with a hand on her arm. ‘It’s our wedding night,’ he reminded her drily and the very dryness of his tone disturbed her.
In her opinion only people who loved each other had wedding nights, but that wasn’t what she had signed up for, she reminded herself squarely as Cristo led the way along the corridor and cast open a door across yet another landing into a huge bedroom. In spite of her nervousness, the thrill of desire began to build within her.
Belle’s attention centred on the giant gilded four-poster bed topped with a gilded coronet and stayed there as if a padlock had snapped her into place. Suddenly she was regretting the innate shyness and mistrust that had kept her out of other men’s beds. A little sexual experience would have felt better at that moment when ignorance felt more like a threat.
Cristo closed his arms round her rigid figure from behind and the scent of him engulfed her. He smelled so good, a citrusy mix of designer cologne and aromatic male that did something strange to her senses. Her heartbeat kicked up pace as he tugged her hair back from her shoulders and bent his mouth to her nape. His chest was against her spine and as solid as rock, and lower down against her bottom she was suddenly startlingly aware that he was aroused and that had the oddest effect on her. Even as her nervous tension heightened, she couldn’t help being pleased that she could have that much influence over a male who tended to reveal very little on the surface, and who had stood at the altar in the chapel as though he were an innocent bystander on the brink of boredom.
‘I love you in that dress, gattina mia,’ he growled against her skin, and buried his mouth there in a place she hadn’t even known could be sensitive. Every cell in her body pulled taut with anticipation as he laved her flesh with the tip of his tongue and grazed her with the edges of his teeth in an incredibly erotic approach she had certainly not expected from Cristo Ravelli. She was already trembling, her nipples tingling, a sliding sensation of warmth rising between her thighs. A slice of cooler air feathered her spine and her wedding gown slid down her arms without any warning. A gasp of surprise was wrenched from her but ten seconds later the dress was pooled round her feet and he was lifting her out of it.
He spun her round, swiftly engulfing her hands in his before she could make any move to cover the lacy bra, knickers and hold-up stockings she wore beneath. Shimmering eyes, dark as Hades, flared naked gold as they scanned the full curves of her breasts cupped in the bra, sliding down to her narrow waist and the flare of her hips before seguing down the long, shapely length of her legs.
‘You were definitely worth waiting for,’ Cristo told her with hungry conviction lacing every syllable. ‘You’re gorgeous, cara.’
Belle sucked in a shaken drag of oxygen and then he kissed her with a heat and strength that consumed her. He caressed the seam of her lips, parted them, delved deep and sent a shudder of excitement racing through her that startled her. Yes, as she had noted before, Cristo knew how to kiss and his mouth on hers was deeply addictive and intoxicating. He teased her with his tongue and she shivered and dimly recognised that she was being very efficiently seduced by a man she had once written off as a stuffy banker. Her fingers laced into the thick black hair at the back of his neck and an appreciative growl escaped low in his throat. Just as quickly she became airborne when he scooped her up and settled her down on the bed.
Green eyes dazed, Belle stared back at him, nerves beginning to rise again as he undressed, shedding his tie, his jacket and shoes with a careless haste that flattered her. With his scorching golden eyes pinned to her as intently as though she were Helen of Troy, she realised that he truly did appear to find her very attractive, and when he shed his shirt to reveal six-pack abs and a torso straight out of a male centrefold Belle’s mouth ran dry because for the first time ever she was appreciating the male body. With his every movement sleek muscles flexed below smooth golden skin. A thin furrow of dark hair ran from below his navel and disappeared beneath his waistband and then just as quickly he was skimming off the trousers as well, displaying tight buttocks and a...and a massive bulge in the front of his boxers.
At that point, all of Belle’s virginal concerns surged to the forefront of her mind. Was he supposed to be that big? Was that normal? She could hardly ask.
Cristo wondered why she was blushing as red as a tomato. He had never seen anything more beautiful or more innately satisfying than the sight of her on top of his bed, clad only in delicate lace lingerie. He tugged off his boxers and left them in a heap, on fire for the climax his body craved.
The full-frontal effect caused Belle to edge back up towards the headboard. He didn’t seem to have a single inhibition in his entire body. Her lashes lowered to screen her expression, heat and what she didn’t immediately recognise as hunger snaking through the secret places of her body.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Cristo remarked, tugging her back into the shelter of his arms and reaching behind her to unhook her bra.
‘And you’re very...single-minded.’ Belle selected the word shakily because she thought he had a lot in common with a bullet aimed at a target.
‘I’ve had three weeks to think about this moment,’ Cristo growled low in his throat. ‘Three weeks too long...I wanted you the first moment I saw you.’
‘When you thought I was my mother?’ she parried incredulously.
‘You were crossing the lawn with the dog in tow and looking exactly like yourself,’ Cristo contradicted, raising almost reverent hands to the spill of pale breasts he had unveiled, long fingers tracing the underside of the full round swells. ‘You are totally magnificent, cara mia.’
Her breath was feathering in and out of her lungs in insufficient drags while he played with her straining nipples, teasing and plucking the tender crowns and sending trickles of fire flaming down into her pelvis. He smoothed his hands down over her quivering frame.
‘Are you cold?’ he asked in surprise.
‘Just a bit nervous,’ she gasped, her voice strangled at source as he rested his palm on her inner thigh and then hooked a finger below the lace edge of her knickers and stroked so that a current of pure tingling warmth ran through her veins.
He tipped up her face with his other hand and burning golden eyes assailed hers. ‘Why would you be nervous?’
‘I haven’t done this before.’
‘With me,’ he filled in.
‘With anyone!’
Cristo froze in the midst of trailing off her last garment. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re a virgin?’
The heat of mortification flushed her fair skin like a flaming tide and she couldn’t find her voice and was forced to nod affirmation with a jerk of her head.
‘And this is not a tease?’ Cristo prompted. ‘Not a stupid idea to give me what you think could be a wedding-night fantasy?’
Belle focused on him with disconcerted eyes, striving to imagine how he could even suspect such a thing.
Cristo collided with those clear green eyes and discarded his plans of a wedding-night sex marathon. She wouldn’t be able to handle that. A virgin. He was good at reading people. He was convinced she wasn’t lying and he was shell-shocked because it was not at all what he had expected from her and he did not know whether he liked the idea or not.
‘No, not a tease, cara,’ Cristo said for himself.
‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you?’ Belle guessed.
‘No, I’m not. You’re my wife,’ Cristo pointed out with a sudden sense of satisfaction that she would never be able to compare him to another man in bed, never know anything other than what he showed her. A possessive vibe he didn’t know he had pulsed through him at that awareness.
‘I don’t see what difference that makes. I’m not what you expected,’ Belle protested.
Still taut with arousal, Cristo was tired of talking. He kissed along her delicate jaw bone and then crushed her generous mouth urgently beneath his, shifting over her to lower his mouth to her generous breasts and then string a line of kisses down over her straining midriff to the very heart of her. He eased a finger into her tight channel and she bucked up her hips and he smiled, loving her responsiveness, parting her thighs for a more intimate caress.
‘No...no,’ she began, trying to move away.
Glancing up to meet dismayed green eyes, Cristo made a soothing sound he was sure he had never had to make in the bedroom before. ‘Trust me...I’ll take care of you.’
Belle rested her head back against the pillows and closed her eyes tight, trembling with a crazy mix of mortification laced with tingling sexual awareness and anticipation. He touched her and she gasped out loud because she was so sensitive there and the more he licked and nibbled and tormented her, the more frantically excited she became, all control wrested from her, her body moving in a new feverish rhythm like an instrument being strummed by an expert. Incomprehensible moans and sounds fell from her lips as she writhed and the unbearable ache at her core rose to a crescendo and her whole being was straining towards a climax.
And that was when Cristo lifted over her and eased slowly into the slick, wet welcome of her body. Her eyes flew wide at that shock of sensation, of sudden fullness and stretching inside her.
‘This could hurt,’ he told her gently.
‘I know...’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’m not a baby.’
For the first time in his life Cristo was more concerned about his partner than himself, which felt strangely alien to him. ‘You’re so tight,’ he bit out, flexing his hips, tipping her up to him for a deeper connection and then sliding home to the very heart of her, causing a stinging, fleeting pain that made her grimace.
‘Not too bad,’ she told him shakily. ‘Just do it.’
Just do it? Cristo laughed out loud and grinned down at her preoccupied face. She looked up at him, rocked by the dark beauty of him at that moment wearing that flashing brilliant smile she had never seen before. And then he moved again, sliding back and delving into her again until he was seated to the hilt and strong sensation was exploding like fireworks inside her. The delicious friction as his hips pounded against hers and the speed of his breathtaking thrusts consumed her with wild excitement. It was electrifyingly intense and passionate and so was he, she registered as her body stiffened and clamped tight around him, and wave after wave of pleasure cascaded through her in a climax so powerful she felt utterly drained in the aftermath but decidedly floaty and full of well-being.
‘Well, that was definitely worth getting married for, bellezza mia,’ Cristo groaned hoarsely in her ear. ‘You might be a blackmailer, a gold-digger and a social climber but you’re fabulous in bed.’
Belle’s eyes flew wide in shock and suddenly she was pushing against those brown muscular shoulders and levering out from underneath him in a rage of disbelief at what he had dared to say to her.
She slid out of the bed like an electrified eel and raced into the bathroom in search of a weapon of mass destruction but there was no club, no gun, no whip, nothing with which to thump him good and hard as pride demanded she must. In desperation she filled a glass by the sink with water and stalked back into the bedroom and slung the contents of the glass at him.
Astonished, Cristo sat up dripping in the tumbled bedding, looking extraordinarily and quite irresistibly handsome with his golden skin and bright eyes and tousled black hair and her awareness of the fact only inflamed her more. ‘What the hell?’ he demanded, wiping away the water dripping from his face.
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, you pig!’ his bride screeched at him like a harpy from his worst nightmares.
‘Speak to you...?’ For a split second, Cristo frowned. ‘Oh...didn’t you like me being honest?’
‘I am not a blackmailer, a gold-digger or a social climber!’ Belle fired at him furiously. ‘How dare you accuse me of those things?’
Cristo shot her a derisive look. ‘I hate drama queens.’
‘You think I care about that? You think I’m ever going to get into that bed again with you after what you called me and the way you spoke to me?’ Belle screamed across the depth of the bedroom, so outraged she could barely frame the words.
Cristo lounged back against the banked pillows looking remarkably unconcerned by that threat. ‘I think you will because if you don’t, I’ll be asking for a divorce,’ he spelt out without hesitation.
‘Right then...I want a divorce!’ Belle spat at him before flouncing back into the bathroom and locking shut the door with a loud click.
Well, didn’t you handle that well? Cristo reflected, very much in shock himself at what he had divulged to her of his opinions. After all, it wasn’t as though such frankness came naturally to him. In fact, Cristo, a man of few words, invariably kept his convictions to himself, but somehow something about that fantastic sex had clashed with his opinion of her inside his head and he had found himself delivering judgement there and then. Had he wanted her to know what he thought of her? he queried with a bemused frown. Had he wanted her to prove him wrong or endeavour to develop her character into something more acceptable to him? And why was he even thinking along such lines? He had meant every word he said and he wasn’t taking it back or apologising for telling the truth as he saw it.
CHAPTER SIX (#uca032b44-5670-52ad-a716-c379e0f219ac)
ALMOST TWO HOURS later, Cristo scrutinised the empty four-poster bed as if further attention might magically conjure Belle up from below the tossed bedding. His even white teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. He had gone for a shower in another room, giving her time to settle down, but Belle being Belle, both impulsive and tempestuous, had evidently emerged from the sit-in in the bathroom to take off instead. But to where? It was eleven at night and the palazzo lay several kilometres from the main road.
Cristo expelled his breath with an audible hiss. He had screwed up, screwed up spectacularly and for a reserved and clever male, who rarely ever miscalculated with women, that was a bitter and maddening acknowledgement. Why had he told her what he thought of her and in such terms? That he couldn’t answer his own question only made him more angry and unsettled by the experience. It was their wedding night and his bride had run away, not what anyone would call a promising start and for Cristo, who was an irretrievable perfectionist, it was a slap in the face and an unwelcome reminder that he was only human and that humans made mistakes.
At the bottom of the terraced gardens, Belle swung her legs up on her stone bench, striving for a comfort that was unattainable on such an unyielding surface. Unfortunately she could not think of anywhere else to go, certainly not back to the grand building on the top of the hill with its vast and intimidating heavily furnished rooms where she felt like an old-style kitchen maid roaming illicitly from her proper place in the servant’s quarters. Oh, Gran, why didn’t I listen to you? Belle was thinking with feverish regret and an intense sense of self-loathing.
She had married a man who clearly despised her. And worst of all, she had slept with him, which just then felt like the biggest self-betrayal of all. Tears dripped silently down Belle’s quivering cheeks because she had never felt so alone and out of her depth in her life, at least not since the teenaged years when she had been horrendously bullied. Now she felt trapped, trapped by the marriage, trapped by the promises she had made to her siblings about the wonderful new life ahead of them all. She couldn’t just walk away; it wasn’t that simple. Telling him she wanted a divorce had been sheer bravado and he had probably recognised it as such.
Cristo Ravelli. He got to her as no other man ever had, rousing feelings and thoughts and reactions she couldn’t control. She had become infatuated with him, she decided, mentally and physically infatuated and, as a result, she had acted every bit as foolishly with him as her late mother had once behaved with Gaetano, unable to keep her distance and failing to count the costs of the relationship. How was she supposed to handle Cristo? He was streets ahead of her in the sophistication stakes. He was a Ravelli, taught from birth that he was a superior being. She hugged her knees, rocking her hips against the hard stone beneath her in an unconscious self-soothing motion, her fingers clenching convulsively together as she fiercely blinked back tears.
Well, the infatuation was dead now. He had killed it stone dead. She hated him, absolutely hated him for what he had said within moments of using her body for his pleasure. All right, she reasoned guiltily with herself, it had been her pleasure as well. She couldn’t pretend to have been an unwilling partner in what had transpired, but then she had not been prepared for that level of passion or pleasure. She had dimly imagined that something much less exciting awaited them in the bedroom.
Mercifully it was a clear night, Cristo conceded grudgingly, tramping down the multitude of steps that featured in the gardens. He was in a filthy mood. Telling Umberto, who ran the palazzo, that his bride was missing had embarrassed him and very little, if anything, embarrassed Cristo. But if he couldn’t find Belle, he knew that calling the police in would be considerably more embarrassing. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her if he did find her either. Was he supposed to lie and pretend he hadn’t meant his indictment? Apologise for speaking the truth? He was damned if he was going to apologise when she was forcing him to tramp all over his extensive property in search of her in the middle of the night. Dio mio! Obviously he was worried about her. Suppose she had come down here in the dark and she had fallen? Hitched a lift out on the country road from some cruising rapist or pervert? Her temper might make her do something self-destructive or dangerous, he reasoned grimly. Cristo’s imagination was suddenly travelling in colourful directions it had never gone in before.
And then he heard a noise, the human noise of feet shifting across gravel. ‘Belle?’ he called.
Dismay gripping her at the sound of Cristo’s voice, Belle returned to her stone bench, having stretched and glued her lips together, but he kept on calling and her silence began to feel childish and selfish and eventually she parted her lips to shout back. ‘Go away!’
Relief assailed Cristo. She was safe, would no doubt live to fight many another day with him, a reflection that sent a wash of something oddly like satisfaction through his tall, well-built frame. He followed the voice to its most likely source: the garden pavilion at the very foot of the garden, sited beside a craggy seventeenth-century-built rushing stream and waterfall. Rounding a corner on one of the many paths, he saw her there sitting in darkness, long legs extended in front of her along a stone bench, eyes reflecting the moonlight.
‘I was worried about you,’ Cristo declared, coming to a halt a couple of feet from the pavilion steps, intimidatingly tall, outrageously assured. ‘You didn’t answer your cell phone.’
‘I don’t have it with me and I’m sure you weren’t that worried about my welfare,’ Belle remarked curtly while quietly noting that he looked more amazing than ever when clad in faded jeans and a casual tee, bare brown feet thrust into leather sandals. ‘Not after the way you spoke to me.’
‘It was the wrong place, wrong time,’ Cristo admitted, mounting the steps to lift the lighter from its hook on the wall and ignite the fat pillar candle in the centre of the stone table.
Not even slightly soothed by that comeback, Belle tilted her chin as the candle flame illuminated his darkly handsome features while he looked down at her from the opposite side of the table. ‘But it was obviously what you thought...blackmail?’
‘I did tell you that other people could be seriously embarrassed by you taking such a story to court on your siblings’ behalf,’ Cristo reminded her stubbornly. ‘You told me you didn’t care.’
Your siblings, not his as well, she noted in exasperation, since he was clearly still set on denying that blood tie. ‘Why should I have? Neither you nor your brothers care about them.’
‘Neither Nik nor Zarif even know of your siblings’ existence as yet,’ Cristo pointed out. ‘Nik’s not into children though. For Zarif, however, the news that throughout the whole of his parents’ marriage Gaetano was sleeping with another woman and having a tribe of children with her would be deeply destructive and damaging. He’s the new King of Vashir.’
