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Luca took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds before he slowly released it. ‘I never intended to hurt you the way I did, Bronte. I accept full responsibility for it. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I had no choice. It was not the time for us. We met too soon.’
She turned back to look at him, her expression so scathing it actually hurt him to maintain eye contact. ‘So, now you’ve sown all your wild oats, you want what, exactly?’ she asked. ‘You’re not proposing marriage, are you?’
Luca was not going to offer something that would be thrown back in his face, or at least not yet. There were other ways to bring about what he wanted. More subtle ways. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not proposing anything long-term at this stage. I am here in your country and I would like to see if what we had before can be resurrected.’
Her lips pressed so tightly together they went white. After a tense moment she expelled her held breath on a whoosh. ‘You are unbelievable,’ she said. ‘You think you can just pick up where you left off, all things forgiven? What planet did you just drop down from? As if I would agree to being involved with you again. As if!’
It was the tone of her ‘As if’ that did it. Luca felt his temper snap to attention like an elastic band stretched to the limit. ‘You might not have any choice in the matter,’ he said.
Her eyes flared as his words hit home. ‘You wouldn’t dare…’ She almost breathed rather than said the words.
He pushed his jaw forward, his eyes locked on hers. ‘I want you back in my bed, Bronte. If you don’t agree then there is nothing more to be said between us. You will have one week to vacate the premises of your studio. If you don’t vacate in one week the rent will increase substantially.’
Her soft mouth fell open, her eyes still as wide as saucers. ‘You can’t mean that…’ she swallowed and then swallowed again, her voice coming out even scratchier ‘… y… you can’t possibly mean that…’
Luca came over to her and stood just within touching distance, his eyes pinning hers. ‘The decision is yours, Bronte,’ he said, running a hand down her upper arm from shoulder to elbow, each and every pore of her flesh rising in shivery goosebumps under his touch. ‘Which is it to be?’
CHAPTER THREE
BRONTE couldn’t think. Her mind was whirling like a fairground ride that had been set at too fast a speed. He wanted her to sleep with him. He wanted to resume their affair. He didn’t want anything permanent. He was going to use her and discard her like he did before. Round and round the thoughts went until she felt dizzy and sick and heartsore. How could he do this to her? He was the one who had walked away. It wasn’t as if she had done anything to hurt him. He had broken her heart, he had all but ruined her life and yet here he was acting as if she owed him!
She stepped back from him, biting the inside of her mouth until she tasted blood. She turned on her heel and began pacing the floor. She had to think of a way out of this. Was there a way out of this?
‘Come here.’
Bronte felt his two word command like hammer blows to her heart. How ruthless he sounded! She was nothing but a chattel, a possession he had bartered for. She stopped pacing and stood her ground, her chin high, with her eyes flashing their hatred at him. ‘If you want me then you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming for I will not come willingly.’
His lips slowly curved upwards in a sexy smile. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that, tesore mio?’ he asked in a low husky drawl.
Now that you mention it, Bronte thought in panic as she recalled his warm electrifying touch on her arm just moments ago. He had set spot fires all throughout her body with that one stroke of his hand along her upper arm. He had awakened every nerve of her skin, made her heart beat twice its pace and made a hole open up deep inside her, a hollow ache she knew from experience could only be filled by him.
He came back to where she was standing; actually, shaking was probably a more accurate description. He placed a broad fingertip beneath her rigid chin and slowly but surely lifted it until her eyes had nowhere to go but meet his. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it, cara?’ he said. ‘The chemistry between us. I felt it the moment I walked into the studio this afternoon. I can feel it now. You can too. I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it when I touch you. You tremble all over.’
Bronte stopped breathing when he brought his mouth to the corner of hers. He brushed his lips against her skin, a feather-light touch that made her quiver in reaction, fulfilling every word he had just spoken about her response to him. Her body was her betrayer; she had no hope of disguising how he affected her. His warm hint-of-mint breath skated over her lips before touching down on the other side of her mouth, the same soft brush of lips on sensitive skin evoking the same heady rush of feeling inside her body. She heard a soft whimper and realised with a little jolt it had come from her mouth. Her lips had softly fallen open, her mouth an open invitation for the plunder of his.
But he didn’t do it.
He smiled that lazy smile as he met her bewildered, uncertain gaze and then he slowly pressed a soft barely-there kiss to each of her eyebrows. ‘You have the most amazing blue eyes,’ he said, low and deep like a bolt of satin dragged across gravel. ‘Like the heart of a flame, dark and fiery. They burn one minute and the next they shine like the surface of a deep ocean.’
She trembled all over as he ran his hands down both of her arms, his fingers encircling her wrists like handcuffs. She felt the soft tug that brought her flat against his body, her belly coming into contact with his arousal. Heat exploded inside her, pooling between her thighs, hot and fragrant with need. How could she still want him when she hated him so much? It didn’t seem fair that her body would betray her so shamelessly. She hated herself for being so weak. She hated him for making her want him. She hated that she wanted to lean into him and offer her mouth and body to his to pleasure. The pressure of want was building deep inside her: an ache, a pulse, a drumbeat that would not be ignored.
‘Beautiful, sweet Bronte,’ he said just above her mouth. ‘Do you have any idea how much I still want you?’
Bronte felt the proud probe of his hot hard flesh and felt an answering quake of want in her inner core. It was like a hungry beast growling for satiation inside her. Her body stepped up its demand for assuagement, torturing her with tiny exquisite reminders of the pleasure she had felt with him in the past. Her mind was full of images of them locked in erotic poses: his body pinning her from above, from below, from behind or up against the nearest wall or even on the kitchen counter, his body pounding into hers, her arms locked around his neck or waist, her body coming apart time and time again.
‘Tell me you feel it too,’ he said just above her mouth, his warm breath a caress, a temptation, a torture. ‘Tell me you remember how it was between us.’
Bronte was beyond speech. She just wanted to feel his mouth on hers, even if it was for the last time. Surely it wasn’t wrong to want that? Just a taste, a reminder of how it felt to have him kiss her senseless. She pulled her hands out of the loose grasp of his and linked them around his neck. She looked him in the eyes, drowning all over again in their dark brown depths. And then she rose up on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his, somehow knowing that in doing so she was passing a point of no return.
It was like fire meeting fuel. A burn of longing that flickered and then roared, consuming everything in its path. Her mouth opened at the first searing, searching thrust of his tongue, her tongue dancing with his, darting away shyly at first and then flirting with his outrageously, boldly, wantonly. He groaned deeply as he deepened the kiss, his hands guiding her body as he backed her up against the nearest wall, his mouth increasing its pressure, its heat and its passion until she felt as if she was being sucked into a whirlpool of clawing, desperate need.
With the wall at her back, his body had more leverage against hers. She felt the hard ridge of him against her belly, the pounding heat of his blood surging through his veins in primal response to his need to mate. She felt the urge too. It was beating inside her like a primitive tribal drum, the walls of her feminine core quivering in anticipation of the delicious friction of his commanding possession.
His mouth was like a naked flame against hers. His kiss was scorching her but she returned it with matching heat, her tongue darting and diving in a cat and mouse game with his. His hands slid up her body and cupped her breasts, gently but possessively, his thumbs claiming her erect nipples as his own to pleasure, to caress and to tease into submission.
Bronte arched up against him shamelessly. She wished she could rip her clothes off in one movement to feel his warm masculine hands on her bare skin. She tugged at his shirt, pulling it free of his trousers, sliding her hands up his chest, her fingers exploring the hard musculature that had delighted her so much in the past. She felt the hard, flat nubs of his nipples and the scratchy dusting of masculine hair over his chest. He was in every way possible a man: strong and capable, lean but hard muscled, fit and virile, potent and irresistibly sexy.
His mouth moved from hers to her breast; the hot moist feel of him caressing her made her spine turn to liquid. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, something between a whimper and a gasp.
‘I have dreamed of doing this,’ Luca said throatily. ‘Touching you, feeling you respond to me. No one else has ever turned me on quite like you do.’
It was just the reminder Bronte needed that she was not the only one he had been with and she was certainly not going to be the last. He had worked his way through a glamorous array of women since he was a teenager. She had known of his playboy reputation when she first met him but somehow hadn’t been able to resist his seductive charm. She was older and wiser now. And she had responsibilities. Ella was her most important one. There was nothing she would not do to protect her baby girl. Denying herself this was a sacrifice she had to make. For now, at least, until she could find a way out of the honey trap Luca had lured her into.
She let her hands drop from around his neck, her eyes meeting his. ‘I can’t do this, Luca,’ she said. ‘Not here. Not like this. It’s… it’s too soon.’
His eyes seared hers for an endless moment, a muscle working in his jaw as he fought to control his rampant desire. ‘Remember our deal,’ he said.
Bronte slipped out from his arms where they were propped against the wall either side of her head and put a little distance between their bodies. She struggled to get her breathing to steady, difficult when her pulse was fluttering like a hummingbird inside her veins.
‘Deal?’ she asked with a scornful look. ‘Don’t you mean the bribe you put on the table, Luca? Money for sex.’
‘That is rather a crude way of putting it,’ he said.
‘It’s the truth, though, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘You want to turn me into a whore. You open your wallet; I open my legs. That’s the so-called deal, isn’t it?’
A nerve ticked like a pulse at the side of his mouth. ‘Don’t cheapen yourself like that, Bronte.’
Bronte gave a choked laugh that was just shy of hysteria. ‘You tell me not to cheapen myself when you have insulted me more than any other person I know.’
He drew in a breath and moved across the room, standing at the windows that overlooked the shimmering lights of the city below. Bronte saw the stiff set to his broad shoulders, the straight spine and the long legs standing slightly apart.
She longed to go to him and wrap her arms around him, to take whatever he was offering, but she knew in the end it would only lead to further heartbreak. How could she ever trust he wouldn’t walk out on her again? She would not survive it a second time. It had nearly done her in the first time. It had only been the responsibility of Ella that had made her come to her senses and grow up—and grow up fast. But, even so, it was tempting. Oh, dear God, it was tempting. To feel his arms around her one more time, to have him hold her as if she was the most precious thing in the entire world. How she had dreamed and longed for one more time with him over the last two years.
‘Fine,’ he said after a long moment, his voice sounding hollow and empty. ‘You are free to go.’
Bronte felt her heart give a little start. ‘But I thought—’
He turned, his dark eyes hitting hers. ‘Go, Bronte. Before I change my mind.’
She swallowed and took a hesitant step towards the door, but then she remembered her clutch purse was sitting on the sofa. She glanced at it but, before she could move, he stepped forward and picked it up.
He came over to where she was standing and handed it to her. ‘This is all wrong, isn’t it?’ he said.
She rolled her lips against each other, not sure if he wanted an answer or not. Of course it was wrong. It was wrong for her to still want him, no matter what terms he laid down. It was shameless of her, needy and pathetic and desperate, but that was what he reduced her to. No man had ever made her feel so desperately in need. No man had made her heart ache with an indescribable longing. No man had made her want to throw herself at him in spite of everything.
She had to leave.
She had to leave now, before he saw how close she was to offering herself for further hurt. She had to leave before these minutes alone turned into an hour or two of stolen pleasure that, just like in the past, would trick her too-trusting, too-romantic mind into thinking they had any sort of future.
‘I have handled this all wrong,’ he said again with a rueful tilt to his mouth. ‘I should have called you first, given you some warning, perhaps. Maybe then you would not be so wary of me. You would have been better prepared, sì?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked in a scratchy voice.
One of his broad shoulders rose and fell. ‘I wanted to see your instinctive response to me, not a rehearsed one.’
Bronte gave him a disdainful look. ‘You make it sound like some sort of social experiment.’
His eyes stayed on hers: dark, tempting, fathomless. ‘I would like to see you again, cara,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow night. No strings this time. No threats or bribes or blackmail, just two people having dinner together. If you like, we can pretend we have met for the first time.’
Bronte chewed at her lip, torn between temptation and uncertainty. Was this some sort of set-up? What if he still wanted to pull the financial rug from under her feet? ‘The rent thing…’ she said. ‘I don’t have that sort of money. I think you know that.’
‘Forget about the rent,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you in my bed because you have no choice in the matter. I know you will come to me, Bronte. It is inevitable. I knew that as soon as I walked into the studio.’
Had she been that transparent? Bronte wondered. ‘You are deluding yourself, Luca,’ she said with a proud hitch of her chin. ‘You mistook surprise for something else.’
His knowing half-smile travelled all the way to his eyes. ‘So beautiful,’ he said, trailing a slow-moving finger down the curve of her cheek. ‘So very beautiful.’
Bronte flinched in case she betrayed herself completely. His touch was like a feather and yet it set every nerve screaming for more. ‘What’s going on, Luca?’ she asked, rubbing at her cheek as if he had tainted her.
His expression was like a blank stone wall. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This…’ She waved her arm to encompass the suite. ‘You. Me. Us. I’m not sure what’s really going on. I get the feeling there is far more to this than you’re telling me.’
He gave her a small twisted smile. ‘Is it so hard for you to understand I wanted to see you again? Would it not have seemed strange for me to travel all this way, knowing you lived in the same city where I would be based and not at least try and make contact with you?’
Bronte’s mouth tightened with cynicism. ‘Do you make contact with all your ex-lovers wherever you travel in the world? If so, I am sure by now your little black book would be classified as overweight luggage.’
His smile lingered for a moment as if he found the thought amusing. ‘There have not been as many lovers as you might think,’ he said. ‘I have been busy with… other things.’
Bronte wondered what other things had taken up his time. She knew he worked hard in the family business but he had found plenty of time in the past to play hard too. If he wasn’t squiring yet another wannabe model or Hollywood starlet like his equally single younger brother Nicoló, what had he been doing?
‘Did you drive here or catch a cab?’ Luca asked.
‘I caught a cab,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to have to worry about parking.’
He reached for a set of car keys on a nearby sideboard. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
Bronte felt a frisson of fear run through her like a trickle of ice-cold water. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean… it’s no trouble getting a cab. I would prefer it, actually…’
His eyes narrowed just a fraction. ‘What is the problem, Bronte? You surely trust me to get you home safely? I do know which side of the road to drive on here.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I would prefer to make my own arrangements.’
‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’ he asked.
‘My private life has nothing to do with you, Luca,’ she said. ‘Not any more.’
He continued to watch her, his eyes dark and inscrutable. He didn’t speak, which made the silence open up like a chasm between them.
‘Look,’ Bronte finally said, moving from foot to foot with impatience, ‘I have to work tomorrow. And I don’t want my mother to worry.’
‘Your mother?’ A deep frown appeared between his brows. ‘You live with your mother?’
She straightened her spine. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she asked. ‘Property is horrendously expensive in Melbourne. I can’t afford the studio rent and a mortgage. I’m just starting out.’
‘How long have you been teaching at the studio?’ he asked, still frowning.
‘About a year,’ Bronte said. ‘Rachel and I trained at the same academy together. She broke her ankle in a car accident a couple of years ago and had to give up dancing. We decided to set up our own ballet school.’
Another silence passed but to Bronte it felt like hours. Each second seemed weighted; even the air seemed heavy and too thick for her to breathe.
‘The audition you said you missed,’ he said, watching her steadily. ‘Did that by any chance have anything to do with me?’
Bronte felt her heart trip and carefully avoided his gaze. ‘W… why do you ask that?’
‘We broke up, what, about four weeks before you were due to audition, right?’
She gave a could-mean-anything shrug and fiddled with the catch on her clutch purse. ‘I didn’t see the point in trying for the company when my heart wasn’t in staying in London,’ she said. She brought her gaze back up to his. ‘It was time for me to go home, Luca. There was nothing in London for me. The competition was tough, in any case. I didn’t have a hope of making the shortlist. The audition would have been yet another rejection I just wasn’t up to facing.’
‘So you preferred to not show up at all rather than to fail.’ It was not a question but a rather good summation of what she had been feeling at the time.
Bronte hadn’t realised he had known her quite so well. She hadn’t spoken to him of her doubts about making the grade. Their relationship hadn’t been the sort for heart-to-heart confessions. She had always felt as if he was holding himself at a distance, not just physically but emotionally, so she had done the same. ‘Yes,’ she said, deliberately holding his gaze. ‘I did, however, speak to the head of auditions in person and explain I was withdrawing my application. I had at least the common decency to do that.’
There was another long drawn-out silence.
‘I know you took it hard, Bronte,’ he said in a husky tone. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you but I am afraid it was unavoidable. I had to end it. I had no other choice.’
Bronte blinked back the smarting of tears. She was not going to cry in front of him. She had cried all the tears she was ever going to cry over him two years ago. ‘Was there someone else the whole time?’ she asked in a cool crisp tone. ‘You can be honest with me, Luca. I am a big girl now. I can take it. I wasn’t enough to satisfy you, was I? I wasn’t worldly enough for your sophisticated tastes.’
He gave her a brooding frown. ‘Is that what you thought?’
She flattened her mouth. ‘It’s what I know,’ she said. ‘I was a novelty for you at first but it must have become annoying after a while. I was good enough to have sex with but not good enough for you to take on any of your trips abroad. But no doubt you had plenty of women to step into my place.’
He continued to frown at her. ‘That is not the way it was, Bronte.’ He raked one of his hands through his hair, making it look as if he had just tumbled out of bed. ‘I’ve always preferred to travel alone. It’s less complicated.’
Bronte bit the inside of her mouth to control her spiralling emotions. Why hadn’t she left five minutes ago before it had got to this? ‘We went out for close to six months,’ she said. ‘Not once did you spend a whole night with me. Not once, Luca. You never even took me for a weekend away. Not even into the country. I was your city mistress. The easy girl you could bed any time you liked. You only had to pick up the phone and I was available.’
Luca came over and captured Bronte’s flailing hands, holding them firmly in his grasp. ‘Stop it, Bronte,’ he said. ‘You were no such thing. Not to me.’
She looked at him with tears shining in her eyes. ‘You used me, Luca. You can’t deny it. You used me and when you got tired of me you let me go.’
Luca looked down at her hands, struggling to get away from his. His hands were so olive-skinned and dark and big compared to her slim, small creamy ones. Her hands reminded him of small doves fluttering to get away. Her body was so slight. Everything about her was so dainty and elegant. Her dancer’s body, the way she carried herself, the way her eyes looked so big and dark in the perfect oval of her face.
He looked into those big dark eyes and wondered how he could repair the damage he had done. He could see the pain his rejection had caused. It glimmered there amongst the sheen of tears she was so determined not to shed in front of him.
She was so unlike any other woman he had been with in the past. He had loved the fact he was her first lover. She had seemed embarrassed about it but he had secretly delighted in it. He wondered if that was why he could not forget her. She had touched him in a way no one else had ever done. There was a place deep inside of him no one had ever been able to reach and yet he had felt as if she had come so very close. He had not wanted to fall in love with anyone, not with his health the way it had been back then. But with Bronte he had come close. Too close. That was why he’d had to back off before he was in so deep he wouldn’t be able to think rationally. The more time he’d spent with her, the more he’d realised how unfair it would be on her to tie her to him when there was no guarantee he could give her anything in return.
Luca released one of her hands so he could put his other hand in the small of her back, bringing her up against him again. He loved the feel of her body flush against his. She fitted against him as if she had been made for him. He felt his body stirring and wished he could show her what he found so hard to say out loud. But it would only scare her away. It was too soon. He had to take things slowly and carefully this time. She was like a shy fawn with an innate sense of danger. She needed time and careful handling. He had the patience for the careful handling, but time was something he didn’t have at his disposal. A month was all he had to get her to come back to him, to see if the magic was still there so they could build some sort of future together. Would it be enough?
