Riccardo's Secret Child (10 page)

With one swift movement he dragged the strapless bra down so that he could massage the twin peaks of her breasts with their tight, protruding nipples. As he massaged them she groaned with pleasure and every groan urged him on.

‘Touch me,' he commanded, circling her wrist with his hand and guiding it to where his throbbing manhood needed the cool touch of her fingers. He unzipped his trousers and as she gripped his stiffness through his silk boxer shorts she gave a little cry of desire.

‘Feeling a little warmer now?' he asked, punctuating the warmth of his breath in her ear with the damp coolness of his tongue.

Julia was beyond answering. The gardens could have been designed, she thought wildly, for this type of activity. The trees were a natural barrier against prying eyes and the scattering of benches a welcome respite for unsteady legs. Riccardo led her to one of these benches, and when she had sat down he splayed apart her legs and positioned himself between them, then he lifted her vest. Her bra was still pulled down and her breasts spilled over the top of it, forming erotic points that reminded him of nothing more than ripe fruits. Ripe fruits ready for eating, which was what he intended to do.

With a stifled groan he buried his face against her breasts
and began sucking, and her hands, hesitant at first, curled into his dark hair while her body slid down the bench until she was arching back to enjoy the erotic sensuous pleasure he was giving her.

She had no idea how this had happened and she didn't care. She had no experience of this sort of raw, carnal lust and she was a willing student. In fact, more than willing—eager. With her head thrust back, she blindly cupped her other breast, offering it to his greedy mouth and she kept her hand there as he suckled, the tip of his tongue flicking erotically over her engorged nipple.

When he removed his feasting mouth she felt the cool air against her bare skin and she twisted in protest, but he was already rucking up her skirt, and Julia's eyes flew open in shock.

He raised his head and smiled wolfishly at her. ‘When you say no, do you mean no? Or do you mean yes, please?'

Julia pulled up her bra and shoved down her top but her frantic efforts at rearranging herself stopped there. She looked at him, ready to explore the most intimate region of her body in a way no other man had, and was rocked by excitement.

‘I don't think…' she panted breathlessly. ‘We can't…I've never…'

‘Never felt a man's mouth down here?' To demonstrate the place he meant, he pulled aside her briefs and cupped her with his hands, pressing down until she squirmed. ‘And do you want to?'

‘We should go back in…side…'

He didn't answer. Instead he bent his head closer to her, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in the musky, womanly scent of her, fragrantly enticing. A thought flickered through his head and was gone before it had time to register. The thought that what he was doing was somehow
dangerous, except how could it be? He was in the driving seat and fired with the need to possess. For the first time with this woman, he was on ground with which he was familiar. He would have preferred to have been making love in his king-sized bed in his apartment, but this had a thrilling feel of the stolen moment. He felt like an adolescent and that in itself was so novel a feeling that he thought he should not wish it away.

‘If you really want to go inside,' he said unsteadily, ‘then, of course, we will.'

Julia twisted like someone in the grip of a fever, a movement he took as surrender, and he lightly skimmed his tongue along the crease of her womanhood, her gasping shudder making him give a grunt of exquisite satisfaction.

He intensified the pressure of his tongue, pushing it deeper within her and holding her firm as she bucked against his hands. It was every bit as erotic as he had imagined it would be. More. He could feel every thread of shock in her at what he was doing and, even more powerful, the need for him to continue. He moved his tongue up and down, sliding into her moistness and licking the tiny bud that had her convulsing with lust.

She curled her fingers into his hair and tugged, her hands pleading with him to stop because he was driving her crazy, but he didn't want to stop. He wanted to take her to the brink and then complete their lovemaking by thrusting into her, like a stallion, so that he could see her face when she reached the dizzy heights of her orgasm.

It took a while for the sound of voices to penetrate Julia's numb, giddy world. It was only when the woman giggled, a high-pitched sound that drifted through the trees and insinuated that another couple had obviously come out for precisely the same as she had been doing, that Julia jerked up and back into the world of the living.

She stared down in horror at Riccardo, barely able to vocalise, but he was already standing up, cursing under his breath.

Julia sprang to her feet and tidied herself with trembling hands.

She had no idea what to say. What was there that she could possibly say? She must have gone completely crazy. She couldn't bring herself to look at him and had turned to head back hurriedly into the club, when he stopped her.

‘Don't think you can run inside and pretend that none of this happened,' he grated harshly, furious at their interruption. He had been as fired up as she had been and could already see that she was retreating. Dammit, he was not going to let her retreat on him!

The amorous couple had obviously heard their voices and vanished into another part of the garden, as eager as they had been for privacy. Julia felt sick. Sick with shame and mortification and utterly bewildered by her behaviour.

Riccardo held onto her arms, forcing her to look at him, to acknowledge what had just taken place. He had invaded every pore of her body and now he wanted her to admit it. ‘You opened a door and you can't tell me that you can shut it now!'

‘
I
opened a door!' Julia spluttered.

‘OK, we
both
did.'

‘Things got a little out of control. I…I must have had too much to drink…'

‘And don't blame the drink! You were as aware of what was going on as I was! And you were enjoying every minute of it!'

Julia stared at him in helpless, frustrated silence. She could feel the cold air wrapping itself around her.

‘I'm cold and it's time to leave,' she said unsteadily and after a few seconds he released her.

‘Not before we sort this thing out.'

‘There's nothing to sort out. I…I don't know how…how we happened to…'

‘Stop shying away from the bald truth. How we happened to make love.' With every passing minute she was withdrawing from him, shutting him out, and he was not going to allow her to do that. He had come too far to admit defeat now and walk away. Riccardo Fabbrini never walked away from unfinished business, and this was unfinished business as far as he was concerned.

‘We happened to do it because we wanted each other. Still do.'

‘It was a moment of madness!' she denied heatedly.

‘When is lust ever not a moment of madness?' He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. The truth was that he was still on fire and the even more gut-wrenching truth of the matter was that he would continue to be on fire until he completed the task he had set for himself, killed off the curiosity to possess her that was driving him crazy. No woman had ever sent his senses rocketing into orbit as this complex creature trembling in front of him had. ‘Have you never experienced a moment of madness?' he asked wryly.

‘Never.'

‘Then you haven't lived.' Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds.

‘Maybe not in your eyes.' Her voice sounded high-pitched and defensive. If he couldn't hear the fear in it then she certainly could. Fear of the sweeping tide of physical attraction that had bowled her over the minute he had laid his hands on her. And the attraction hadn't begun tonight. It had been simmering under the surface from the very first moment she had seen him. She had just flatly refused to acknowledge it.

He was so wrong in every respect. He was everything
Caroline had bitterly described him to be. Cold, ruthless, arrogant, a man who got what he wanted whatever the costs and at whatever price. She should have recoiled in disgust at the feel of his hands on her back and the warm breath against her cheek as they had danced, but the opposite had happened and she could not make sense of it. And she should have fled from the touch of a man who had been her sister-in-law's ex-husband, but Caroline had never loved him. Her brief infatuation had been a bright flicker before fading away. There was no betrayal there, but still…

Her heart was still hammering in confusion as they reentered the club and she preceded him to their table, not bothering to sit down.

‘We're not leaving yet,' he informed her, pulling his chair out and sprawling on it, magnificently and gut-wrenchingly masculine, his body lazily indolent as he summoned across their waitress and ordered a refill of coffee for them both. ‘So you might as well stop hovering like a startled rabbit and sit down.'

A little brown sparrow? A startled rabbit?
Apt that he described her as prey, when she saw him as a predator.

Julia reluctantly perched on her chair and looked at him. ‘I don't see the point of conducting a post-mortem on what happened,' she said quietly. ‘It did, for reasons I can't fathom…'

‘For reasons it
suits you not to fathom
,' Riccardo corrected harshly.

‘You're not attracted to me, Riccardo; you made that perfectly clear the very first time I met you. Remember?' Julia sat back to allow her cup of coffee to be placed in front of her, along with the individual plunger, a jug of cream and a bowl of rough sugar cubes.

‘And the feeling was mutual, if I recall,' he drawled mockingly. ‘Let's just say that time alters everything.' He
leaned across the table, invading her space, and she felt her pulses quicken in automatic response. ‘If we hadn't been so rudely interrupted we both know where it would have ended.' He smiled wolfishly at her, cutting through her defences and silencing the denial rising to her lips. His eyes locked with hers, making her feel giddy. ‘You wanted me in you as much as I wanted to be in you. You were desperate for our foreplay to go further, darling, and I was as desperate as you were. Let's just face the truth and deal with it.'

‘But why?' Julia cried. Why what? It was inconceivable that Riccardo Fabbrini was attracted to her. Something else was going on here, under the surface. It was easy for her to see why she had succumbed to him in a moment of passion and, whether he liked to admit it or not, under the influence of alcohol which had lowered her natural reserve. He was devilishly good-looking. There could be very few women who would not respond to his suffocating sexual magnetism. She might hate herself for her temporary weakness, might argue that it defied all logic, but she could still understand her response.

But she possessed no such irresistible qualities of attraction. So why had he seduced her? Because it had all the hallmarks of a seduction.

She was staring at him, trying to find the right words to express what was going on in her head, when a voice cut through the thick silence. Julia sat back and found that her body was rigid with tension and she was breathing rapidly, like someone slowly being deprived of oxygen.

‘Riccardo! I've been trying to call you for three weeks! Where have you been?'

Riccardo cursed silently to himself and looked at the platinum-blonde staring down at him with angry, hurt green eyes. There could not have been a worse moment for Helen
Scott to make her appearance. She was dressed, as always, in an outfit that revealed the maximum amount of body without being indecent. Tonight, the colour was red, a bright, eye-grabbing red in the shape of a dress of minuscule proportions, and black shoes that added a further four inches to her already considerable height.

She drew up one of the two free chairs, completely ignoring Julia's presence and fixed him with doleful, accusing eyes.

‘I've been busy,' Riccardo told her coolly. ‘Have I introduced my date for the evening? Julia, this is Helen. Helen's a model, if you hadn't already guessed.'

‘A model and your girlfriend.'

‘Ex-girlfriend.' He sighed impatiently, acutely aware that Julia was looking between the two of them and forming opinions. Opinions, for some reason, he did not want her to form. He had never been ashamed of the series of fabulously built, good-looking blonde women who had adorned his arm since his divorce. In fact, he knew that he was the envy of most red-blooded males whenever he went out with one of these women. But he was ashamed now. He could imagine her judgemental, clever brain ticking away, forming conclusions about the kind of relationships he conducted with women, meaningless relationships with women who had never challenged so much as a pore of him. The fact that such relationships had suited him as much as the women in question now sickened him.

Julia, sitting back and watching, felt her heart turn to lead. If she had needed reminding of why exactly a man like him could never be attracted to a woman like her then she had received a very timely reminder. She didn't think that she had ever seen a woman as exquisite as the one sitting next to her, or rather draping her body across the table next to her. Where Caroline had been stunningly
pretty, this woman was strikingly beautiful. Every feature was chiselled to perfection, from the arched slant of her eyebrows to the small, perfectly shaped nose and the wide curve of her mouth.

‘I've been trying to get in touch with you,' Helen said huskily, the threat of tears in her voice. ‘I love you, Riccardo, and I thought you loved me.'

‘This is neither the time nor the place…'

‘Then where is?' The full mouth trembled. ‘I just want to talk with you. In private. I know we can work things out, I know it. I can't sleep, Riccardo, I can't eat. All I can do is think of you, of
us
.'