скачать книгу бесплатно
Why had she run?
Just because he’d kissed her?
That kiss. He’d seen how it had affected her—damn close to the way it had affected him. It had shaken him to the core. It shook him still.
He hadn’t intended to kiss her. He’d meant to convince her to sell him the property before he seduced her. But something in her defiance, in the way she’d resisted him as they danced, had taunted him. Something in the way she’d tossed her long, lustrous black hair. In the way she’d licked those full red lips, moving her curvaceous body to the music, had maddened his blood.
She’d defied him. And he’d responded.
It was just a kiss, nothing more. He’d kissed many women in his life.
But he’d never felt anything like that.
So? He argued with himself. Even if it was desire stronger than any he’d known, the ending would still be the same. He would take her to his bed, satiate his lust and swiftly forget her. Just like always.
And yet…
He scowled.
Somehow Lia Villani’s beauty and seductive power had made him forget the most important thing on earth—business. He’d never forgotten it before. Certainly not for a woman. And because of that mistake, he might now lose the most important deal of his life.
Nathan had been right all along. Roark had been underestimating the countess. She was far more powerful than he’d ever imagined.
But instead of being furious, Roark was suddenly intoxicated by the thought of the hunt. The takedown.
He would take her property.
Then he would take her.
His body hurt with need for her. He couldn’t forget how she’d trembled in his arms when he kissed her. Couldn’t forget the softness of her breasts against his chest, the curve of her hip against his groin. Couldn’t forget the shape of her. The taste of her.
He had to have her. He wanted her so badly that it made his body shake.
His cell phone rang. He snapped it open.
“Lander,” he said, “give me the good news.”
Lia slammed the door of her silver Aston-Martin Vanquish convertible with a weary thump. Every muscle in her body ached. It had been a long twelve hours. She’d stopped at her town house in New York just long enough to get her passport and change into a knit dress and a cashmere shawl. She’d taken the first flight out of JFK Airport, connecting first in Paris then in Rome, before she’d reached Pisa. Even flying first class, the trip had been exhausting and long.
Maybe because she’d spent the whole time crying. Looking over her shoulder, half expecting the man to pursue her.
But he hadn’t. She was still alone.
So why didn’t that make her feel happier?
Looking up at the medieval castle on the edge of the forested mountain, she took a deep breath. But she was home. The medieval Italian castle, carefully refurbished over fifty years and turned into a luxurious villa, had been Giovanni’s favorite retreat. Over the past ten years, it had become Lia’s home, as well.
“Salve, Contessa,” her housekeeper cried from the doorway. Tears shone in her eyes as she added in accented English, “Welcome home.”
Welcome home. Walking through the front door of the Villa Villani, Lia waited for the feelings of solace and comfort to rush over her as always.
But nothing happened. Just emptiness. Loneliness.
A fresh wave of grief washed over her as she set down her bag. “Grazie, Felicita.”
Lia walked slowly through the empty rooms. The valuable antique furniture blended with the more-modern pieces. Every room had been scrubbed clean. Every window was wide-open, letting in the bright sunshine and fresh morning air of the Italian mountains. And yet she felt cold. She might have been enveloped in a snowdrift…or a shroud.
The memory of the stranger’s kiss ripped through her, and she touched her lips, still remembering how his touch had seared her last night. How his warmth had burned her with a deep fire. And she felt a sudden sharp pang of regret.
She’d been a coward to run away from him. From her feelings. From life…
But she would never see him again. She didn’t even know the man’s name. She’d made her choice. The safe, respectable choice. And now she would live with it.
She barely felt the hot water against her skin as she took a shower. She dried off with a towel and put on a simple white smock dress. She brushed her hair. She washed her teeth. And she felt dead inside.
The loneliness of the big castle, where so many generations had lived and died before she was born, echoed inside her. As she went into her bedroom, she glanced down at Giovanni’s diamond wedding ring on her finger.
She’d just kissed another man wearing her dead husband’s ring. Shame ricocheted through her soul like a bullet.
Tears threatened her as she briefly closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered aloud, as if Giovanni were still alive and in the same room to hear her. “I never should have let it happen.”
She looked back down at the diamonds sparkling on her finger. She didn’t deserve to wear it, she thought with despair. Slowly she pulled the ring off her finger.
Going into Giovanni’s old bedroom down the hall from hers, she opened the safe behind the painting of Giovanni’s beloved first wife. Lia tucked the ring inside the safe and closed the door.
After locking the safe, she stared at the pretty woman in the painting. The first contessa was laughing, sitting on a swing and kicking her feet. Giovanni had loved Magdalena so much. It was why he hadn’t minded marrying Lia. He’d said he already knew he would never love again. He’d loved a woman once, and he would love her forever.
That kind of love was something Lia had never experienced—and never would. She took a deep breath. She felt cold, so cold.
Would she ever feel warm again?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered one last time. “I didn’t mean to forget you.” And she went outside into the sunlight of the rose garden.
The riotous multitude of roses in red, pink and yellow filled the space, surrounded by ancient stone walls that were seven feet high. This had been Giovanni’s favorite place. He’d grown the roses himself. He’d spent hours carefully taming and tending the garden.
But the garden had been neglected for months. The flowers were now overgrown and half-wild. The blooms now reached up into the warm blue sky, some as tall as the stone walls that had been built from the ancient Roman foundations.
She leaned forward to smell one of the enormous yellow roses. Yellow for memory. No wonder it had the strongest scent. She missed Giovanni’s warmth, his kindness. She felt so guilty that she’d forgotten him, even for a moment. For the length of a kiss…
She closed her eyes, breathing in the fragrance, listening to the wind in the trees above, feeling the warmth of the Tuscan sun on her skin.
“Hello, Lia,” a voice said quietly.
She whirled around.
It was him.
His dark eyes gleamed as he stared at her through the wrought-iron gate. Pushing it open, he slowly entered the garden. His black shirt and black jeans stood out starkly against the profusion of colorful half-wild roses. There was a predatory grace in his body as he approached her like a stalking lion. She felt the intensity of his gaze from her fingers to her toes.
Somehow, he was even more handsome here than he’d been in New York. The man was as wild and savage as the forest around them. As unrestrained in his masculine beauty as the sharp-thorned roses.
And they were alone.
He stood between her and the garden door.
This time there would be no taxi. No escape.
She instinctively folded her arms over her chest, trying to stop herself from trembling as she backed away. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t difficult.”
“I didn’t invite you here!”
“No?” he said coolly. He reached for her, twining a black tendril of her hair around his finger as his dark eyes caressed her face. “Are you sure?”
She couldn’t breathe. Birds sang beyond the medieval stone walls once built to keep invading marauders out. The same walls that now kept her in.
“Please leave me,” she whispered, shaking with desire for him. For his warmth. For his touch. For the way he made her feel alive again and young and a woman. She licked her dry lips. “I want you to go.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
And, lifting her chin, he kissed her.
His lips were so hard and soft and sweet, she could hear the buzz of honeybees in the medieval garden, their secret world hidden behind the crumbling stone walls. The fragrance of overgrown half-wild roses drenched her senses. And she felt dizzy. She was lost, lost in him. And she didn’t want it to ever end.
He pushed her back against a wall that was warm with sunlight and thick with twisting vines of wisteria. He kissed her again, more forcefully. Teasing her. Taking. Demanding. Seducing…
Giovanni’s chaste peck on her forehead at their wedding hadn’t prepared her for this. All night on the lonely plane ride across the Atlantic, she’d tried to convince herself that her passionate reaction to the dark stranger’s kiss had been a moment of madness, a one-off that could never be repeated. But the pleasure was even greater than before, the sweet agony only increasing with the hard tension of her longing. All her grief and loneliness and pain fell away. There was only the hot demand of his mouth, the pleasurable caress of his hands.
What he wanted he took.
She tried to resist. She really did. But it was like trying to push away Christmas or happiness or joy. Like trying to push away life itself.
Though she knew she shouldn’t, she wanted him.
She returned his kisses hesitantly, then with a hunger that matched his own. She trembled at the brazen force of her own desire as he encouraged her every tremulous touch, murmuring appreciation at her slightest attempt at a caress.
She felt him pull off her little white shift dress, then her bra. She gasped as her naked breasts were bathed in the warm glow of sun.
With a groan, he lowered his mouth to suckle her nipple, and she cried out. Cupping her other breast in his hand, he licked and stroked her flesh. Caressing her hips, he pulled down her panties, dropping them to the grass.
And she couldn’t stop shaking.
“Lia,” he said hoarsely. “Ah, Lia. What you do to me…”
He picked her up in his strong arms. She stared up at his handsome face, at the intensity in his deep dark eyes.
She suddenly knew this fire could consume them both.
He gently laid her down on the soft grass. Covering her body with his own, he moved slowly against her. She moaned, wanting something, not even sure what she wanted but wanting it now. Unzipping his pants, he spread her naked thighs apart with his own. She felt his hard shaft demanding entrance, and she quivered beneath him, tense and yearning.
He lowered his head to kiss her, his lips and tongue intertwining passionately with her own.
And he filled her with a single deep thrust.
Pain stabbed through her, making her gasp.
He froze, looking down at her, shock rippling over his handsome face.
“How is it possible? You’re a virgin?”
CHAPTER FIVE
LIA, a virgin?
Roark was in shock.
She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Every man desired her. She’d been married for ten years. How could she be a virgin?
How was it possible that Countess Lia Villani, the woman whose beauty seduced and entranced men beyond reason, had never been bedded until now?
But there was no mistaking the physical signs. Her earlier hesitation and awkward response to his first kiss, which he had taken as evidence of her pride, were cast in a new light.
Lia was innocent. Or at least, she had been.
Until Roark had possessed her.
A surge went through his blood. As he looked at her lying on the fallen rose petals, her hazel-green eyes so clear and so deep, he felt a strange breathless rush.
The intensity of the feeling reminded him of skydiving. Flying high above the clouds in Alaska, Roark remembered opening the door of the plane. Staring into nothing but air, he’d heard a buzzing in his ears as he threw himself headfirst off the edge.
He’d fallen with the wind howling in his ears, whipping painfully against his skin in a freefall. He’d felt the dizziness and danger as the earth approached at 130 miles an hour.
The adrenaline that ripped through him was the same now.
Lia was dangerous.
More dangerous than he’d ever realized.
But knowing he was the only man who’d ever had her, fierce pride and possessiveness went through him. Dangerous or not, he could not let her go.
He was still hard inside her. He knew he should pull away. He’d never taken any woman’s virginity but knew instinctively that it had just changed them both forever. They would always be connected by this, and that scared him.
She licked her full red lips.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he ground out.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered, reaching up to stroke his cheek with a small trembling hand. Her eyes were as many shades of hazel as the rose vines and soft earth beneath them. “You make me feel warm. I want you inside me…”
