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  ‘Don’t come over on my behalf, Dante.’ Angela shook her head then addressed her daughter. ‘Ariana, tell Gian that I shall just be a moment.’

  ‘Gian?’ Dante checked, for his mother did not like Gian, especially since his father’s second wedding.

  ‘Ariana and I are heading back to Rome tonight; I asked Gian if he could take us.’

  ‘But my pilot is here. Why didn’t you ask me to organise him?’

  ‘I didn’t know if you were staying or going.’ Angela shrugged. ‘I just want to get away, it is too painful to be here. Ariana...’ She looked over again. ‘Go and let Gian know I shan’t be long.’

  But first Dante gave his sister a kiss. ‘Are you okay?’ he checked, troubled, for since the funeral Ariana had been terribly withdrawn.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you staying with Mamma tonight?’

  ‘I think Mamma just wants to be alone,’ Ariana said. ‘I might go to Nicki’s.’

  Nicki was a friend of Ariana’s who ran a little wild, and wouldn’t be the most calming influence. ‘Stay here,’ he suggested, but Ariana gave him a wide-eyed look. ‘I didn’t mean here in the house. I meant at Luigi’s, or at the hotel.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I just want to go back to Rome.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ he checked.

  ‘Very.’

  Dante decided he preferred Ariana feisty and argumentative and was worried as his dejected-looking sister headed off. ‘Keep an eye on her, Mamma.’

  ‘Of course.’ Angela nodded. ‘I am going to go.’

  ‘First hear this,’ Dante said. ‘As soon as Mia is out and everything has been settled, I shall transfer the house to your name. I am sure he left it to me rather than you so that if she contests the will, as I expect her to, there is less chance she will win. It is rightfully yours and—’

  ‘I don’t want the house, Dante,’ Angela cut in.

  Dante was stunned.

  She had wept over this house. Sobbed to Ariana how she missed being at home. Cried at the wake and said she had ached for two years to be back in Luctano.

  ‘Surely you want it. You said—’

  Again she cut in. ‘Dante, I have done my time here. It is beautiful, yes, but I don’t want the headache of the endless staff it takes to run the residence, the grounds, the stables, the vines. This house is a labour of love, and my love for it died long ago. I like my apartment in Roma. I cannot say it more clearly than that. I don’t want the house.’

  ‘Did you ever?’

  He saw his mother’s shock at the question, and he instantly regretted raising the matter today, but his father’s death had thrown up so many questions. Though clearly his mother had no intention of answering any of them. ‘I shall see you in Roma, Dante.’

  Roberto had already left and, with the mourners all gone, Dante stood by the fire and waited for relief to hit, for the day had gone as well as it could have. No drama, no scenes, his father had been laid to rest.

  So where was his peace?

  Yes, his father’s death had thrown up many questions.

  His mother didn’t want the house?

  Had she ever? Dante’s question had not been a spontaneous one—the thought had been brewing for some time.

  He remembered the rows in their childhood that had stopped when the twins had arrived, but then again, there had been an awful lot of trips by his mother to Rome. She would come and visit Dante at school there, even though he boarded.

  Suddenly, Dante could place his mother’s lover.

  Signor Thomas, his English tutor at school.

  Dante had always felt lied to.

  Never more so than now.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MIA HAD LONG SINCE left the family and mourners to it, and was packing up the last of her things.

  She took off her wedding and engagement rings and placed them in her purse. She cast a final longing glance around Suite al Limone, feeling torn to leave it behind.

  Mia didn’t feel completely ready to yet.

  When she heard the last of the cars leaving and the drone of voices fade, she rang down for one of the staff to come and take her cases down to the car.

  Except there was no response to her summons.

  She made her way down the stairs and saw that Dante had stayed till the last.

  ‘Where are the staff?’ Mia asked.

  ‘I said they could be finished for the day—the tidy-up can happen tomorrow,’ Dante said. ‘It has been a long and emotional day for them too. Don’t worry,’ he added, ‘I am going to head to the hotel now. You will have the place to yourself soon.’

  ‘There is no need for you to go to the hotel, Dante.’

  His mouth twisted into a smile. ‘You have your grace period, Mia, plenty of time to sharpen those claws...’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I shan’t be staking any claim to the house, Dante, and neither shall I be taking the three-month grace period. I am leaving tonight. It’s all yours.’

  Dante looked at her and waited for more information, but there was none forthcoming. He had expected her to stay, clinging till the bitter, expensive, contested end.

  He felt like a prize boxer, primed to fight, yet suddenly without an opponent. As she went to walk off he made what he hoped was the parting shot. ‘On to your next one?’

  ‘My next one?’ Mia frowned.

  ‘The next foolish old man...’

  ‘You have no idea,’ Mia retorted.

  Oh, yes, he did! ‘The next foolish old man who would blow apart his family and reputation just to be with you.’

  ‘Your father was no fool,’ Mia said, because Rafael Romano had known exactly what he was doing when the deal had been made. ‘And neither was he old. He was barely in his fifties.’

  ‘But far too old for you,’ Dante retorted, though the fact was, his loathing of their union had nothing to do with age; it was that his father had chosen her.

  Mia.

  The woman who drew from him a desire so potent that she had made the last two years a living hell.

  ‘Oh, please...’ she sneered, and she could almost hear the prison doors between them clanging open, for duty was done.

  Almost.

  There was just this final bit to get through and she would be free of the Romanos and never have to lay eyes on them again. Or, more pertinently, never have to put up with the scathing barbs of Dante Romano again.

  And though she should retrieve her cases this minute and leave it all behind, foolishly Mia decided that she would have her say, for she could hold it in for not a second more.

  Her one final say!

  And this was a new version of hell for Dante, watching her step towards him in anger, her curves in her black dress nearing him, her eyes glittering, as she moved closer, ever closer...and finally there was emotion on that unreadable face.

  ‘You have no idea, Dante. You look at me and you see a whore, you stand there and judge me, but even with your assumptions, you’re a hypocrite. You think nothing of sleeping with women for money.’

  ‘I’ve never paid for it in my life.’

  ‘Please! You think they would be with you if you weren’t rich, if you didn’t shower them in diamonds, or take them to your fancy hotels and give them the full Dante Romano treatment?’ Jealousy coursed through her, as it had for two years, hearing from Rafael and then reading herself of his endless trysts, his lavish ways. But it was something else coursing through her as he met her eyes and gave his response.

  ‘Oh, they would still be with me.’

  Dante said it with such authority that she began to doubt her case, yet Mia fought to retrieve it. ‘No. They want you for your money, the jewels, the gifts; they would hardly want you for your tenderness—’

  ‘I can be tender when
I choose to be,’ he interrupted. ‘And I can be less than tender when she chooses that I be.’

  As Dante gave her a teasing glimpse of him in the bedroom, the lights went out in her head. His hand took her left one and he examined it for a moment. ‘You wasted no time in removing your rings, I see.’ He moved the hand he had rejected earlier today to near his mouth and kissed the tips of her fingers.

  It was only their second contact ever, and just the lightest touch of his mouth made her want to fold over as his velvet lips brushed skin that felt as if every nerve in her fingers lay exposed and wired to her centre.

  ‘You see, my dear stepmother, I can be tender...’

  ‘Stop calling me that!’ Her voice shrilled as he took a finger in his mouth and sucked it. Despite herself, she wanted to press her finger deeper for more of the caress his tongue gave.

  He sucked and he kissed, then left her finger cold as he kissed her palm.

  ‘Why?’ he said, kissing her palm so tenderly, yet it was painful too as between strokes from his tongue he taunted her. ‘Does it embarrass you to be turned on by me?’ he asked. He kissed her hand then placed the palm of it on his chest as he continued, ‘Did you feel shame when you sat in the dining room last night and wanted me?’

  ‘I did not want you,’ she insisted, pushing back at him a little, her voice strained as it forced out the lie.

  ‘And then last night, in the kitchen...’

  ‘I didn’t want you,’ she choked, but his smile told Mia he knew she lied. ‘I don’t want you,’ she begged, though neither believed it.

  ‘Then go, dear Mia. Stop playing with fire.’

  She should go, Mia knew. She should turn and run, except she had never thought she was capable of such a brutal desire.

  Because this desire was brutal—an aching, physical want that dimmed regular thought. She was playing with fire and Mia found that she liked the burn.

  Their eyes locked and held, and beneath her palm she felt the now rapid thud, thud, thud of his black heart.

  His hand came to her face and he traced her cheek, then slid it behind her hair and yet he did not pull her towards him. Instead Dante asked a question. ‘What do you want, Mia?’

  ‘For this all to be over,’ she admitted.

  ‘And me.’

  ‘To never have to see you again.’ She shivered.

  ‘Yet here you stand.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He kissed her then, slow and deep. His lips were plump as he parted hers with his tongue and she let him. It mattered not that she had rarely kissed a man before, for there was no experience required when Dante claimed a mouth so fiercely, so absolutely.

  The thought of tongues had always repulsed Mia.

  Now, though, she tasted the cool wedge of muscle and the only thing that repulsed her was her own crippling desire, for she craved more. She danced her tongue with his, tasting him, wanting more, even as she fought to reject his kiss.

  It was Dante who removed the pleasure of his mouth and she stood there, running a tongue over her wet lips just to taste him again.

  ‘And yet still here you stand.’

  She swallowed, and his eyes watched her throat as she did so. He lifted her hair, lowered his head, and his mouth met her tender neck.

  Oh, God, Mia thought as he pulled her right into him and kissed her neck, not lightly but deeply.

  ‘Dante...’ She was pressed into taut flesh and she could feel his hard length against her stomach. She felt dizzy as his mouth pressed harder against her neck, and something awakened deep inside her.

  ‘Go now,’ he told her, even as he undid the little black pearls of her woollen dress and exposed her black bra. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘before we do something we regret.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’ So raw was her admission that for the first time that day, tears squeezed out of her eyes.

  ‘We can’t go anywhere,’ he told her. For the first time he was not warning a lover that he had no desire for a lengthy affair—more, he was reminding Mia that they could never be.

  ‘I know.’ She whimpered her response, for he had lowered his head and the feeling of his mouth on her breast brought both tension and relief. He tasted her at great length, and to various degrees; his tongue lathed, his teeth nipped, and his jaw was rough, all of which was a dose of the sublime, and when he lifted his head she only wanted him more.

  Need overrode shyness, so it was Mia who removed his shirt, taking in the body that she had ached to see for so long. The dark bruises of his nipples, the fan of hair on his chest and the flat, toned stomach were a feast not just to her eyes but to her mouth as well as she tasted his skin. The sound of him unfastening his belt had her clenching down below. Yet when he had completely undressed, when she saw him so erect, she felt her throat tighten at the sight of him. She couldn’t not touch him, yet she was nervous too, and so she stroked first the line of black hair on his stomach, and then trailed her hand down to the jet-black, crinkly curls below.

  ‘Take me in your hand,’ he said roughly.

  Now it was fascination that overrode shyness. First, she touched him lightly, but feeling the strength behind the soft velvet skin she closed her hand around him and was startled—in a good way—at the low growl he gave.

  ‘Mia.’ He sounded like he was on the edge as he put a hand over hers and together they stroked him. To see him grow even more at the touch of her hand made her throat feel as if she were choking, so tense was she with excitement.

  ‘I need to know you,’ he said as he undressed her. ‘I need to know your scent and your taste...’

  She was shivering as he knelt and pulled down her tights, taking her knickers too, and she wept as he held her hips and he kissed her there. ‘Dante...’ Her hands were in his thick hair, his tongue probing, as his hand moved between her thighs to part them further. He was seducing her on his knees and she was shy but wanting, nervous but needing. She did not know this feeling, this feeling that moved her hips of their own accord into his kiss, and did not know how the stroke of his tongue could make her feel so urgent, so desperate. ‘Please, Dante,’ she begged, because she was losing control and not sure how to or if she should. His fingers were on a delicious, relentless, creep into where not even Mia herself had been. She clamped her thighs together and forced out her truth. ‘I’ve never slept with anyone.’

  Dante halted, unsure if this was a game, but when he looked up and saw her—stunned, frantic and so very unsure; when he felt the press of her thighs on his hand, for the first time, a woman naked and wanting yet resisting—he was unsure how to proceed.

  ‘Virgin?’

  One word that raised so many questions.

  Or rather it should raise so many questions, but it raised something else instead, to intense proportions. And now they were past caring that they were forbidden.

  ‘Come here,’ he said. He pulled her down so she was on her knees facing him. He took her face in his hands, and he looked at her turned-on eyes and swollen mouth. He had but one question. ‘Do you want this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And then, for the first time, Mia received the warmth of Dante’s smile. It was a caress in itself; it was intimate; it was everything, for it blew away the grief and hell of today. So beautiful was his smile that she returned it, even though she was shivering.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he told her, then his mouth kissed her hot cheeks and he pulled her into him so that she sat on his thighs. They kissed, wet, slow kisses, her hands holding his head, her breasts splayed against his chest as Dante kissed her deeply. He drank from her mouth and he sucked her tongue as he drew her deeper into his embrace, so that she was pressed against his length and she was mired in desire and frantic with need.

  He laid her down on the rug; he was lost in her, relieved to let the grief and the strains of the day disperse as their bodies meshed.

 
When he first nudged in he was met with resistance, so he pushed in again and then he heard her whimper as he inched into her virgin space.

  She bewitched him, she entranced him, and right now he was tender.

  So tender that his kiss dimmed her pain, so tender that his hand, warm and firm on the small of her back, felt like a balm, even as he drove into her. ‘Stay still,’ she whimpered, for she somehow had to acclimatise to the feel of him inside her.

  He paused and kissed her softly. His breath was ragged then as he fought the urge to move, but at her signal he started to stretch her again.

  ‘Dante,’ she sobbed as his palm in her back guided her to take him in deeper and deeper.

  He was dizzy at the sensation but he was also aware of how new this must be for her. He withdrew a fraction and looked down at her pale, tense features, and saw there were tears spilling from her eyes.

  He lowered his head and brushed her temple with his lips. He tasted the salt of her tears on his tongue, and then he covered her mouth with his and drove in again, swallowing her sob.

  And then they were one.

  He started to move, stoking the fire that was spreading within her. He lifted his head to watch the reaction as he ground in, each thrust jolting her, and saw she was wild for the sensations he evoked. She felt wound up, taut from her jaw to her toes, and there was no pause from Dante and no desire to escape. He was relentless and rattling all her senses, and she was arching into him and surely near repletion, and yet he told her that there was more to give...and then he called out her name.

  ‘Mia...’ He called it again. ‘Mia Mia...’ My Mia.

  And it just finished her, every nerve shooting arrows to her centre, arching her in tension. His last rapid pummels, the final swell of him brought her release, pulsing over and over. And yet he groaned for more, demanded that she let go further, and even to the end she fought the very climax that engulfed her.

  Not even a breath could she take in, so intense was the pleasure he gave as with a breathless shout he shot deep inside her.