Mistress Material

‘I—I’m sorry.’ She trembled as her body felt his warm, sure touch.

‘And so you should be!’ he told her furiously. ‘Don’t you realise that you could have drowned?’ His eyes narrowed as he took in her white, frightened face. ‘Do you hurt anywhere?’ he demanded.

Humiliatingly, her teeth stared to chatter so that she couldn’t speak.

‘Do you?’ he demanded again, still in that same grim tone. ‘Hurt anywhere? Tell me!’

She couldn’t cope with his harshness, not when she was feeling so vulnerable, and she did what she hadn’t done since her father had died the previous year—she burst into tears.

Instantly, his attitude altered. He looked appalled with himself as he gathered her into his arms and laid his strong hand protectively against the back of her head.

‘Don’t cry, bella mia,’ he whispered. ‘There is no need for tears. You are safe now.’

But the shock of realising what might have happened if he had not been there made her sob all the harder, and he made a little sound, a small, rough assertion beneath his breath, as he picked her up and carried her towards the house. She was too weak to do anything other than rest her head against his chest, and gradually the sobs receded. It was just like visiting heaven, being in his arms like this, she realised, her body all wet and clingy and close. She could have stayed like that all day.

‘Wh-where are you taking me?’ she wondered aloud as he mounted the stairs.

‘To get you dry,’ he answered. His gentleness had vanished, and he spoke again in that grim, terse tone which left her wondering why he still seemed so angry with her.

He carried her to her own room and set her down on the thick carpet, glancing quickly around, his eyes narrowing as they alighted on a tiny pair of knickers which were lying in an open drawer, together with a matching bra.

Suzanna blushed.

‘Do you have a towelling robe?’ he asked.

She shook her head. A towelling robe wasn’t the kind of thing you brought to Italy in the middle of summer. She only had a silk wrap.

‘You’d better wait here!’ he told her, and left the bedroom.

He returned minutes later with what was obviously his own robe—a luxurious, almost velvety towelling garment in a deep, midnight-blue colour—and threw it down on the bed. ‘Now strip off,’ he told her. ‘Completely. Put the robe on and I will run you a bath.’

If any other man had issued such a curt and intimate order, Suzanna would have screamed for the police, but because it was Pasquale she simply nodded obediently. He set off for the en suite without a backward glance, his shoulders curiously stiff and set, and Suzanna began to do as he had told her.

Easier said than done. She’d never thought that it would be so difficult to remove two tiny scraps of bikini, but the wet material was clinging to her cold, damp skin and her fingers were stiff and trembling with the cold.

So when, minutes later, the bathroom door opened and Pasquale came back in, accompanied by clouds of delicious-looking, scented steam, it was to find her almost sobbing with frustration as she attempted to slide her hands round to her back to unclip the clasp of her bikini-top.

There was a moment when he froze, as though he’d never seen a woman almost naked before—but that was nonsense. Francesca had already regaled her with stories of Pasquale smuggling girls out of his room when he was still at boardingschool. And you only had to look at that brooding, almost dangerous physique to know that Pasquale would have tasted most of the pleasures of lovemaking...

A strange look crossed those tight features. A look of anger, but of something else too—something which even the totally innocent Suzanna recognised as desire—and then he said something very softly and very eloquently in Italian, before moving quickly to her side.

‘I... I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I can’t... My fingers are all...’

He shook his head, said not a word but deftly undid the clasp with a single fluid movement that sent a brief spear of jealousy through her as she found herself imagining those strong, bronzed hands undressing other women too. Her unfettered breasts bounced free and she heard him catch his breath on a muffled, almost savage note.

He almost flung the robe over her and swiftly knotted the belt around her narrow waist, and then he knelt at her feet, his hands moving inside the robe until they were on her bare hips. Suzanna held her breath with dazed and exultant shock as she felt the heat of his fingers on her cool flesh, but he kept his eyes averted as he peeled the damp bottoms off all the way down the slender length of her thighs, and her cold and discomfort vanished completely as she felt the brief slide of his hand against her inner thigh.

Something hot and potent and powerful bubbled its way into life in her veins as rapidly as bush-fire, and Suzanna was racked with an uncontrollable shudder as she became sexually aware of her body for the first time in her life.

Had he seen her automatic response to his touch? Was that why his mouth had twisted into that harsh, almost frightening line? Why the hard glittering of his dark eyes now transformed him into some unforgettable but slightly forbidding stranger?

‘Now get in the bath,’ he said roughly, and he tossed the bikini away from him as though it had been contaminated. He rose to his feet and moved towards the door, but without his customary elegance and fluidity of motion. ‘And be out of there in twenty minutes—no longer,’ he ordered, but then a wry note which bordered on amusement entered his voice and, thankfully, removed some of the awful tension from the air. ‘No falling asleep is permitted! Understand?’ he finished softly.

‘Yes, Pasquale,’ she answered meekly.

‘Good. I’ll be downstairs making you some coffee.’

She wandered into the bathroom in a heady daze, wrapped in the thickness of his robe, reluctant to remove it because the scent of it—of him—was just too heavenly for words. She hugged her arms against her breasts, then wiped away some of the steam from the mirror and stared into it, mesmerised by the heightened colour of her cheeks and the strange, almost feverish glitter in her eyes.

But what was she imagining? That he had been as affected by that brief encounter as she had? Pasquale Caliandro, the toast of Rome, bothered by a schoolgirl?

No way! she thought with honest reluctance as she pulled off the robe and stepped into the fragrant, steamy water.

The bath made her feel almost normal again. She washed her hair and left it hanging loose, dressing in a pair of white jeans and a loose white cotton sweater before going downstairs to find Pasquale, and the coffee.

She stood in the doorway watching him, enjoying the sight of such a very masculine man looking so thoroughly at ease in the domestic domain of the kitchen.

His dark eyes flicked over her impassively. ‘Feeling better?’ he enquired.

Physically, yes, certainly. But there was still that tingling awareness fizzing around her veins which his touch had brought to life. ‘Much better,’ she answered politely, and then her gratitude came out in a rush. ‘I wanted to thank you, Pasquale—for...’ it sounded a bit over the top to say it, but say it she must ‘... saving my life,’ she gulped.

He shook his head and smiled gently. ‘Let’s forget it.’

But she would never forget it, she knew that, and the burgeoning, almost schoolgirlish attraction she had felt towards Pasquale suddenly flowered and blossomed into mature life.

I’m in love with him, she thought, with a calm certainty.

‘Sit down,’ he offered, and she drew up one of the tall stools he’d indicated and sat, leaning her elbows on the counter as she struggled to say something which didn’t involve the fact that he’d seen her half-naked just minutes ago. Sitting there, with her still damp hair and her face completely bare of make-up, she suddenly felt very young and very boring.

‘You look very efficient in the kitchen!’ she remarked brightly. ‘I’m surprised!’

He raised his dark eyebrows fractionally, but didn’t comment on the sexism inherent in her remark; instead he began to pour the fragrant brew into a large porcelain cup. ‘The Italian male is renowned for many things, but not, I think, for his prowess in the kitchen,’ he said as he pushed the cup towards her.

She knew that. She knew, too, exactly what they were renowned for... For being wonderful... lovers... She gulped, and took a deep breath. ‘So you decided to break with tradition?’ she joked.

A sudden bleakness dulled the magnificent eyes as he added sugar to his own cup. ‘Unhappily, yes. One cannot have servants on hand every minute of the day, and when my mother died...’ He hesitated. ‘Well, Papà was in a state of shock for such a long time, and Francesca was too young...’

Suzanna could have kicked herself for her blundering insensitivity. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she groaned softly. ‘I didn’t mean to put my foot in it.’

He gave a small smile. ‘Time gives a certain immunity against pain, Suzanna.’ And his accent deepened. ‘Didn’t your own father die very suddenly?’

Suzanna went very quiet. ‘Francesca told you?’

‘Yes.’ He paused, and the dark eyes were very direct. ‘It was a car crash, I believe?’

If it had been anyone else but him, she suspected that she would have found the question a gross intrusion, but Pasquale asking it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. ‘Yes,’ she said, and swallowed.

‘You were thinking of him by the pool—when you began to cry?’