Italian Bachelors: Brooding Billionaires: Ravelli's Defiant Bride / Enthralled by Moretti / The Playboy's Proposition

‘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.’