A Scandal, a Secret, a Baby

‘You think I should have waited?’ he questioned heatedly. ‘When already you had kept me waiting for so long? Waiting while you did your world tour. Waiting while you did more of your television interviews and your damned newspaper spreads. You knew the kind of man I was, Justina. I was young and I was hungry and I expected the woman I loved to be by my side, supporting me. I had certain appetites which needed to be fed—and I could not tolerate the life you were forcing me to lead. Our very separate lives.’

‘It’s done,’ she said flatly, her heart contracting painfully as she heard him say it. The woman I loved. Past tense. The love was gone—for both of them. ‘It’s in the past, Dante—and it was best for everyone in the long run. It certainly made for a clean break.’

His eyes searched her face and in that moment he felt a pang of regret washing over him. Guilt, too. And he was unprepared for the way it made his heart clench, as if someone was squeezing it with icy fingers. ‘You know, you were never meant to find me with her,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you.’

Justina nodded. Once she would have given anything to have him acknowledge the pain he’d caused. But now it sounded like a patronising afterthought. Almost as if he suspected that she’d never really been able to move on from him without this final sense of closure.

And yet was that so far from the truth? Despite all her best intentions she’d never really got over him, had she? Part of her was still stuck inside her old self, still remembering the lover he’d been—against whom all subsequent men had been measured only to fail.

Maybe she had continued to idealise him. Maybe his undeniable qualities as a lover had made her place him on an impossibly high pedestal which had subsequently distorted her views on men. Was that what had caused her to erect these high barriers around herself, which nobody else had ever been able to scale?

Pride helped her form careless words, and a career on the stage meant that she was able to utter them with a degree of conviction. ‘The hurt I felt was just a part of growing up,’ she said. ‘You were simply a necessary part of my sexual education, Dante.’

For a moment there was a stunned silence, and when he spoke his voice was underpinned with a dark note of anger. ‘I must say that I’ve heard myself described in many ways—but never quite like that before.’ The tip of his tongue slowly traced the outline of his upper lip. ‘And did I provide you with good grades during this sexual education I gave you?’

Justina’s heart skipped a beat as her body began to ache with half-forgotten hunger. She told herself she ought to get out of the car while she still had a chance, but it was as if someone had turned her limbs to stone. ‘I don’t...I don’t remember.’

‘You don’t? That’s such a pity. Then maybe I ought to refresh your memory for you.’

She met the challenge in his shadowed eyes and saw the way his lips had parted. Did she murmur something—or indicate with her expression that she wasn’t averse to the idea? Was that what made him move closer?

And suddenly they were kissing. Kissing as she’d forgotten how to. His hands were at her waist and she was reaching for his shoulders. In no time at all he was running his fingers over her satin-covered breasts and she was moaning like a woman in pain.

He snapped his seat belt free, swiftly followed by hers, but the space inside the car was cramped and already the windows were starting to get steamed up. It was hard to move, because there was nowhere to move, and her cheongsam made it even harder. The realisation that they were sitting right outside her hotel didn’t even enter the equation until she heard Dante mutter something urgent in Italian. He dragged his mouth away from hers and she could see the look of frustration burning in his eyes.

‘Not here,’ he bit out, shaking his dark head. ‘Not like this. Take me inside, Justina.’ He bent his head to drift his lips over hers. ‘Take me into your body before I explode.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ufae33ed9-f8f3-5cbb-9429-0db1cd429e30)

HER HOTEL ROOM was pristinely tidy. It was one of the things which Dante remembered as being uniquely Justina. While the rest of the band had existed in a rubble of half-eaten room service food and discarded wine bottles she had lived in her own neat little bubble, sitting writing her songs in the middle of all the chaos. He remembered her telling him that it was her particular antidote to a messy and erratic upbringing.

But his thoughts about her orderliness lasted for about as long as it took for the door to close behind them, for him to take her into his arms again and for his mouth to crush down on hers in another hungry kiss. He could feel the restless movement of her body as she writhed against him, but he got the sense that her mind was screaming out all kinds of objections.

Very deliberately, he grazed his mouth over hers with a slow and erotic brush. ‘I want you,’ he said, his words coming out unsteadily. ‘I have never wanted a woman as much as I want you in this moment.’

Justina closed her eyes as his lips moved to her neck, her fingers tangling themselves luxuriously in the thick darkness of his hair. ‘Dante...’ she whispered, knowing that the rest of the sentence went something like, You know we shouldn’t be doing this. But the words remained unspoken—and how could they be spoken when he had started touching her breasts like that?

‘What the hell kind of dress is this?’ he questioned as he felt around for a zip.

‘It’s called a...a cheongsam. I...I bought it in Singapore and I—’

‘I’m not interested in its history!’ Roughly, he cut through her stumbling explanation. ‘The only thing I’m interested in is how to get the damned thing off.’

‘There are buttons down the side,’ she gasped.

‘Sono mille!’ His fingers were trembling as he began to fumble them open. ‘How many?’

She felt cool air rushing onto her skin and told herself to call a halt to this madness. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Her body was too hungry, her desire too strong to be able to resist what he was doing to her. Hadn’t she spent the past five years wondering if she’d ever feel like this again? Wondering if her body would ever feel this incomparable rush of desire? And suddenly Justina knew that she didn’t want to be passive. That if this was to be their swansong then they would come together as the equals they’d never really been. She was no longer the virgin lover he had needed to teach. She had graduated with honours, and maybe it was time to remember just how much she’d loved having sex with this man.

She kicked off her high heels and sent them flying across the room before beginning to tug at his tie.

‘Impatient?’ he queried, thinking that in the past she would have slid the shoes tidily from her feet.

‘Aren’t you?’ she whispered back as she turned her attention to his shirt. She slid open the buttons and greedily peeled it away to reveal the honed torso beneath, bending her head to graze her teeth against his skin, her tongue licking luxuriously against its silken surface.

‘Dio.’ He shuddered, and tore at another button of her dress. He pulled the garment away from her with hands which were shaking, and if such a reaction was unheard of for someone of his experience he didn’t care. He unclipped her bra in one deft movement. Her panties he disposed of by ripping apart the delicate lace with his fingers, and he heard her little gasp of pleasure as they brushed over her honeyed heat.

‘You always liked me to play a little rough, didn’t you, tesoro?’ he demanded as he tugged off the last of his own clothing—and was taken off guard by her fervent passion as she pushed him down onto the bed.

She moved over him, her face filled with an expression he could never remember seeing before as she straddled him. Her eyes were slitted so he couldn’t read them, and she was biting her lips as if she was trying to stop them from trembling.

‘Do it,’ he commanded.

But Justina shook her head. Tonight she was going to call the shots. This was going to be her therapy, the recovery she needed. She would feast on his body until she’d had her fill. She would let the harsh light of reality shine down on this demi-god of her imagination and by morning she would see him for the mortal he really was. This was sex, she told herself fiercely—and she wasn’t going to make the mistake of confusing it with love.

‘I’ll do it when I’m good and ready.’

Dante moaned as she circled her hips to brush her feminine core over his steely erection so that he could almost feel her—but not quite. She was close enough for him to be able to plunge inside her, and yet she kept her moist treasure almost tantalisingly out of reach. His head fell back against the pillow and for a moment he felt almost helpless. This was not how he liked it to happen—at least not with Justina. He liked to be in control, to play the dominant role, and yet she was writhing around on top of him like some teasing whore. And, God help him, he liked it.

‘Per favore,’ he groaned. ‘Please.’