Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
V ICTORIA OPENED HER eyes to find Marcello holding a bulging paper bag. The hugest, smuggest smile was on his face.
‘Bagels?’ she guessed sleepily.
‘And coffee. Sit up, breakfast is served.’
Covering a yawn, she held the duvet to her naked breasts and propped her back against the velvet headboard.
‘Bacon, cream cheese and avocado,’ he said, handing her a wrapped bagel with a flourish.
She blinked her surprise.
He grinned and swooped a kiss on her mouth. ‘My powers of observation are limitless.’
‘And only slightly lesser than your ego.’
‘Impossible.’
Laughing, she unwrapped the still-warm goodie in her hands and took a bite. After days of her only sustenance coming from Marcello’s attempts at cooking, it tasted like heaven. That Marcello had ordered it—his plain T-shirt, low-slung shorts and bare feet suggested he hadn’t left the apartment to buy them—and that he’d ordered her favourite fillings only made it sweeter. When he stripped those few items and climbed into bed, she thought it might be the single happiest moment of her life.
The talk they’d had after their first time had helped settle Victoria’s mind. She’d gone into this with her eyes wide open and she would not close them to reality now. She would take this time with Marcello for exactly what it was: a short but very sweet affair. She would hide away the emotions and think only of the pleasure for as long as it lasted.
‘Does this mean Manhattan’s back in business?’ she asked between bites.
He swallowed the last of his first bagel and dug into the bag for another. ‘The bagel shop is.’
‘Priorities, eh?’
He winked and took a huge bite of his second bagel. She wasn’t in the least surprised when he unwrapped a third for himself or, when she couldn’t eat the third one he’d brought for her, that he devoured it too. The meal he’d been going to cook before the power cut had been forgotten by them both. All they’d been hungry for was each other.
‘So?’ she prompted, determinedly keeping her voice chirpy. ‘Is Manhattan back in business?’ Meaning, is the Guardiola Group reopening its New York doors?
He shook his head. ‘It is still treacherous out there. There are thirty-foot snowdrifts trapping people in their homes, thousands of cars buried... I have given the order to continue working from home until Monday.’ He brushed his mouth to her ear, sending delicious shivers lacing her spine. ‘It is far too unsafe for you to return to your apartment. You will have to stay here for days longer.’
The purest relief filled her chest.
Days longer to enjoy the bliss of Marcello without the real world intruding.
Eyes gleaming lasciviously, he had a drink of his coffee.
‘What?’ she asked, noticing the funny way he was staring at her.
He shook his head before his perfect teeth flashed. ‘Your hair.’
She put a hand to it. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It looks like a bird’s nest.’
‘That’s because someone made mad, passionate love to me while it was still wet from the bath.’ And then made love to her again before insisting she get some sleep, only to wake her when daylight filtered into the bedroom for more lovemaking.
It had been the best night of her life and she would cherish the memories for the rest of her life, and make the most of the memories as they made them because it wouldn’t be long until the rest of her life opened up. When they next stepped into the skyscraper that homed the Guardiola Group, this brief affair would be over, something they both understood without either having to put it into words.
It couldn’t be any other way.
Whether their working relationship could survive it, only time would tell. For now, all she wanted was to live for the moment.
His blue eyes glittered. ‘Not that Italian monster you spoke of?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Eyes not leaving her face, he put his coffee cup on the bedside table, then plucked her cup out of her hand and put it down too. The paper bag filled with their wrappings and napkins he threw onto the floor.
Pinching the top of the duvet, Marcello slowly pulled it down, exposing all of Victoria’s curvaceous body to his greedy eyes. Bagel crumbs had nestled on the top of her breasts and he dipped his head to lick them off, thrilling at her shivers.
‘The Italian monster you speak of needs to make penance,’ he murmured as he circled a large, rosy nipple with his tongue.
Her back arched. Fingers laced through his hair. ‘Oh?’
Still lavishing attention on her beautifully weighty breasts, he trailed a finger down her rounded belly to her pubis. ‘The monster will be your slave for pleasure,’ he whispered seductively, sliding a finger inside her and thrilling to find her already hot and sticky for him.
She moaned. ‘My slave...?’ Her voice broke as he rubbed his thumb over her bud.
‘Your slave. Here to cater to all your desires.’ Raising his face to hers, he gently bit her bottom lip and increased the friction of his thumb. ‘Tell me your desires and fantasies, bella . All of them.’
‘Just...’ She moaned again and writhed into his hand. ‘Just...just keep doing that.’
Being Victoria Cusack’s sex slave was, Marcello decided a few mornings later whilst trying to catch his breath in her arms, a very fulfilling occupation. She was proving to be an exacting, insatiable mistress, growing bolder with her demands the longer time passed.
The sex between them was out of this world. So incredible was it that he refused to think about the real world that was waiting for them. His household staff were all back and working and had been given strict instructions to keep out of his bedroom. He’d ordered his finance director to run the Guardiola empire in his absence, and given strict company-wide instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed unless a matter of life or death cropped up.
For the first time in over a decade, he forgot about work altogether and lived for the moment... Which was why it came as a shock when a message pinged into his phone from one of only a handful of numbers he’d set to override his phone being on silent.
Cursing to himself, he rolled off Victoria’s heavenly body to read it.
She rolled with him and kissed his shoulder blade. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘It is a message from Benito.’
‘Your brother?’
His brother and also the head of the European side of Marcello’s empire. ‘He has questions about the keynote speech I agreed to make.’
Victoria’s lips stilled against his skin. He knew without having to ask that the real world had just penetrated her as it had him.
‘That’s only a week away.’
‘Sì,’ he agreed heavily. They were scheduled to leave next Friday for it.
‘You should call him back.’
‘Later.’ Firing a message to his brother saying just that, he put his phone down and turned onto his back. Immediately, Victoria slung her arm over his waist and cuddled into him.
‘Everything’s already organised for the conference, and all the travel to and from it,’ she told him quietly.
He kissed the top of her head. ‘I know.’ Victoria would have organised everything with her usual forensic efficiency.
He still couldn’t understand why he’d agreed to it. Marcello avoided Rome as much as possible. It had been during his latest Christmas visit, over a game of pool in their parents’ games room, that Benito had asked Marcello to make the keynote speech at a conference he was organising. He didn’t know which of them had been more surprised at his acceptance.
He’d called Victoria straight away to inform her. He remembered the noise in the background. She’d been playing charades with her family. There had been a huge smile in her voice. He’d suspected she might have been a little tipsy, something that had made him smile.
‘I’ve done the first draft of the speech for you too.’
He kissed her again and held his mouth to the hair he’d combed conditioner through when they’d shared a bath. Victoria was the only person he’d ever trusted to write a speech for him. She had an unerring ability to put herself in his head and write as if she were speaking from his mouth. He rarely made alterations to them.
Damn it, he couldn’t lose her.
It was impossible that they could return to the status quo of their working life but he had to find a way to ensure this affair between them didn’t have the repercussions he’d feared before it had even started. He would do whatever it took to keep her by his side as his right-hand woman. Whatever was necessary.
‘Let’s take a walk into Central Park,’ he impulsively suggested. Get some fresh air into their lungs and into his head. Prove to himself that he could go more than a few hours without having to make love to her.
She lifted her head and rested her chin on his chest, bemused doubt in her stare. ‘You? Walk?’
‘Why not? We only have two days left before we return to the office.’
There was a flicker in her eyes but her bemused smile didn’t falter. ‘Are you seriously telling me you have suitable clothes to go trekking through feet-high snow in?’
‘All the roads and paths have been cleared.’
‘You wear handstitched shoes. They will be ruined.’
‘I am sure there is an outdoor clothing shop that will deliver stuff to me...’ A thought occurred to him, a thought that was, to his mind, a most excellent idea.
‘What?’ she asked.
He smiled. Truly, no one knew him or could read him better than Victoria Cusack. ‘I have just thought of the perfect surprise for my favourite redhead.’
‘Which is?’
‘It will not be a surprise if I tell you, will it?’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
Her fingers slid down his abdomen and she kissed his nipple. ‘Please?’
He sprang to immediate attention. ‘No.’
Wrapping her fingers around his arousal, she gripped it with just the right pressure and lazily moved her hand up and down the shaft. ‘Please?’
‘No.’
Keeping hold of him, she lifted herself so her face was over his. Still masturbating him, she hooked her thigh between his legs and kissed him deeply, parting his lips with her tongue and moaning into his mouth.
Threading his fingers into her hair, Marcello closed his eyes and submitted to the eroticism of Victoria’s hand pleasuring him, her pubis grinding into his thigh, the weight of her breasts pressed against his skin, and her hot mouth devouring him.
‘Please?’ she breathed into his ear, now masturbating him with the vigour he craved.
‘You are not playing fair,’ he groaned.
‘I know.’ And with that, she released his arousal and twisted around so her back was to him.
‘Why, you little tease...’ Moving quicker than he’d done since childhood, he ignored her kicks and squeals of laughter as he tussled with her and pinned her onto her back.
They were both still laughing when, fully sheathed, he drove himself inside her.
Victoria thought the best thing about being a billionaire had to be the way it made mere mortals bow to your requests. Two hours after Marcello suggested a walk in Central Park, they were both dressed for an Arctic expedition and crossing the slushy, gritted road, heading towards the most magical of winter wonderlands. Fresh snow had settled overnight and covered it all afresh, and it seemed that the whole of Manhattan had come out to experience it, families building snowmen, children being pulled along on sleds by hardy parents, even hardier joggers making the most of their freedom and ploughing their own trail.
‘Shall we skate?’ he suggested when they spotted an ice rink through the trees ahead.
‘I don’t know how.’
‘Then I shall teach you.’
‘You know how to skate?’ she asked, amazed.
‘My grandparents lived in Milan near the Bagni Misteriosi. It is the most beautiful outdoor swimming pool and in the winter it is turned into an ice rink. When we were children, Benito and I spent much of our Christmas holidays skating on it.’
Once upon a time, Victoria would have changed the subject at such a personal turn to a conversation. It had been a part of the rhythm of their lives. Talk about anything and everything so long as it didn’t have real meaning. Now, though, everything was different. She was different. They were different. And it was his use of the past tense that made her carefully ask, ‘Are they still with us?’
‘My grandfather is. He moved back to Rome after my grandmother died. That was a few months before I poached you.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
Victoria had met his parents during their last two visits to Manhattan and thought them lovely, warm people. She wouldn’t have guessed they’d been suffering a recent bereavement.
He squeezed her hand. ‘No need to be sorry. She was very ill and now she is at peace.’
They’d reached the queue waiting their turn on the rink.
‘Shall we?’ he invited.
‘You’re sure you can teach me?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You doubt me?’
Laughing, she shook her head. ‘If I know you, you were probably good enough to turn professional.’
‘It was suggested,’ he said without an ounce of fake modesty that only made her laugh harder.
‘What stopped you?’
‘It was a winter hobby. I cannot help that I am naturally talented at everything.’
She’d only just stopped the tears rolling down her cheeks when he used his magic charm to wangle them to the front of the queue without a pre-booked ticket, and without anyone trying to kill them.
Marcello could not remember a better day. Watching Victoria attempt to ice skate would go down in his annals of history. If he lived to be a hundred he would never forget the day his super-professional right-hand woman was laughed at by small children zooming past her. If he lived to be one hundred he would never forget his pride at the moment she finally dared let go of his hand and skated three feet on her own. Afterwards, they’d shared a giant box of churros dipped in chocolate and drank mulled wine, then taken a carriage ride back to his apartment with the sun setting behind them. Her joy at this had lit her face into something that transcended beauty.
The best part came when they returned to his apartment and she found a pile of boxes laid on the freshly laundered and made bed.
The large hazel eyes landed on him with a question. He adored that her cheeks were still rosy from the cold.
He sat on the armchair. ‘Open the Genevieve box first.’
Excitement thrumming—Genevieve was the current go-to designer of New York’s elite—Victoria removed the lid and carefully parted the tissue paper to lift out a red velvet dress. Shaking it out, she fingered the soft texture with amazement then looked back at Marcello. Expectation was alive on his face.
‘This is for me?’
‘Unless you know another Victoria who wears the same size dress as you. Take another look in the box.’
At the bottom lay an envelope with her name on it. Her heart thumping, she opened it and gasped to find two tickets to the Broadway show she’d abandoned Sheena at. Peering closer, she saw they were for the next night and in what had to be the centre front of the mezzanine.
‘I have been assured that they are the best seats possible for this show,’ he said. ‘We will be able to see the whole ensemble perform without any restrictions, and the acoustics are supposed to be incredible.’
She just gaped at him.
‘I can easily change them for orchestra seating if you would prefer?’
And he would. She saw that. The Lord alone knew how he’d managed to get these spectacular seats at this short notice—she imagined a large amount of money had been exchanged in bribes and sweeteners—and the royal we he’d used...
Marcello would be going with her. Marcello who, when she’d first told him she was going to watch this particular musical, had asked why on earth she wanted to waste hours watching people prance around singing and dancing on stage dressed as witches.
And now he would be taking her.
This was his surprise for her and just as he’d used sweeteners to procure the tickets, the show itself was a sweetener. His last gift before he said goodbye to her as a lover.
‘Do you want me to change them?’ he asked, doubt creasing his forehead.
She swallowed to loosen her throat, and shook her head. ‘These are perfect, thank you. And so is the dress.’
The doubt remained. ‘You are sure?’
Not wanting to spoil what for Marcello was the most thoughtful and unselfish gift he could have given her, she smiled through the pain lacing her veins. ‘When I went with Sheena, we were so far back in the gods that the cast were like ants.’
The crease in his forehead changed. ‘Sheena?’
‘My old roommate.’
Understanding dawned. ‘You went to see the show with a girl friend?’
She nodded.
To her amazement, he burst out laughing. The sound rumbled through the vast bedroom and soothed her despondency enough for her to straddle his lap and rest her hands on his chest.
‘What’s so funny?’
His grin was as wide as she’d ever seen it. ‘I thought you had gone on a real date.’
‘That’s what I wanted you to think.’ Leaning her face into his, she eyeballed him and added, ‘I stupidly thought you’d give me some peace for the night if you thought it was a proper date.’
His hand slipped under her jumper and flattened against her naked back. ‘You should have told me the truth. If I had known you were with Sheena , I would have waited until the next day to get you to help me find that pen.’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘You sabotaged my night out on purpose?’
‘Sì,’ he agreed without an ounce of shame. ‘I didn’t want you doing what Denise did to me.’
‘That’s a blatant abuse of power. There are laws against things like that, you know.’
He slid his hand around and cupped her breast. Voice thickening, he said, ‘We have already established that I am a monster and that monsters need to perform penance.’
Capturing the hand on her breast and squeezing it, Victoria shifted herself forward so his hardness pressed between her legs. She ground down on him. There it was. That dilation in his eyes. She would never, ever get enough of seeing that and knowing she was the reason for it, not even if they had all the time in the world...
The despondency at what the dress and theatre tickets represented suddenly lifted.
Marcello had feelings for her. She knew it as well as she knew him. He’d deliberately sabotaged what he thought was a real date. Not even he usually stooped that low: he didn’t have to. It was a rare member of his vast staff who left for pastures new. Denise leaving had been an anomaly. From the few conversations Victoria had had with her predecessor, Marcello hadn’t been a fraction as demanding of her personal time as he was of Victoria’s.
Her chest contracted and then bloomed open, and, though she tried her best to temper it, hope rushed to fill the gap.
Frightened at the direction of her thoughts and feelings, Victoria yanked her jumper off and then kissed him hard, infusing her senses with his dark taste and driving out everything else. Dragging at his bottom lip with her teeth, she huskily whispered, ‘Sabotage means serious penance.’
Marcello cupped the back of her head and pulled her mouth back to his. ‘Punish me however you see fit,’ he said between savage kisses.
Hazel eyes flashing their desire, she tugged at his sweater. Between them they lifted it off him before she slipped an arm behind her back and released her bra. Beautiful, bountiful breasts jutted before him, and he took one into his mouth and sucked greedily, his hands already working on the button and zip of her jeans.
With the barrier of two sets of denim between them, Marcello clasped her bottom and got to his feet, carrying her with him, then practically threw her onto the bed.
When he yanked her jeans and knickers down her legs, he had a brief memory of the first time he’d performed this same act. Then, he’d been determined to avoid letting his gaze focus on any aspect of Victoria’s body. Now, he shamelessly soaked in every perfect inch.
How the hell was he supposed to return to their normal working life after this? he wondered for the hundredth time as he kissed her perfect toes and, working his way out of his own clothing, kissed his way up her perfect leg. Just to imagine being back in the office they shared...
His arousal grew even stronger as he inhaled the heat of her excitement at the same moment an image flashed in his mind of bending Victoria over his desk...
Burying his face between her legs, glorying in her moans and pleas, he submitted to his imagination and let it run riot into all the directions he’d expressly forbidden it from running before.
He didn’t see how they could end it. Not yet. It was too soon.
But end it they must.
Somehow, he would have to find a way for them to work as they’d done before with this chemistry still blazing so brightly between them, but it was impossible to imagine catching a glimpse of Victoria absently chewing on her bottom lip and not wanting to replace her teeth with his own. Impossible to imagine sharing the back of the car or the cabin of his private jet and not having the need to pull her onto his lap, bunch her smart skirt around her waist, pull her knickers aside and thrust up into her, and as he imagined that, she arched her back and cried out loudly.
Crawling up to kiss her, he groped in his bedside table drawer for a condom with something bordering on fury. Finally grabbing hold of one, he yanked it out with such impatience that he knocked the drawer off its hinges. It fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
‘Clumsy,’ she breathed heavily as she snatched the foil from him and, with a growl, used her teeth to rip it open. ‘On your back, slave.’
The fury abated as he did as commanded.
Heaven was Victoria rolling the condom over his arousal.
Nirvana was Victoria climbing on top of him and sinking down on his length, and as she grabbed his hands and placed them on her breasts then pressed her hands tightly into his chest, cheeks ablaze with the colour of her passion, he realised true nirvana would only come the day he entered her bare...
The thought was swept aside as the pleasure took control and the glory that was Victoria riding him with her head thrown back before she threw herself forward and, her lips entwined with his, ground herself down on him hard enough to bring them both to an earth-shattering climax.
Such was the force of Victoria’s orgasm that she fell into the most delicious passion-induced coma in which her brain switched off but every nerve ending buzzed with pure post-coital bliss.
This was her favourite time, the silent moments when they lay replete in each other’s arms, as close as it was possible for two humans to be.
Marcello’s sigh brought her out of the coma. She sighed too, because she knew what it meant. Time to break the fusion.
With a kiss tender enough to make a grown woman cry, he climbed off the bed and padded to the bathroom.
Stretching, she sighed again and rolled onto her side. The bedside table loomed in her vision and she smiled, remembering why its drawer was on the floor, then peered over the side of the bed to see the mess it had made, smiling even wider to see the scattering of the restocked condoms he’d had delivered and...
The smile froze on her face.
For the longest time she stared at the photo that had fallen onto the floor with the rest of the drawer’s contents before she plucked up the courage to pick it up.
It was a photo of a much younger Marcello in jeans and an open-necked navy shirt. He was cuddled next to a beautiful brunette wearing a long towelling robe. They were sitting on a hospital bed together, beaming smiles on their faces. In Marcello’s arms was a tiny newborn baby.