Lucy Gordon - Swept Away!

‘He is not my lover.’

‘He wants to be.’

‘Come on,’ someone yelled from the retreating crowd. ‘They’re going to show the pictures.’

She would have argued further, but he slipped his arm about her, urging her forward irresistibly until they reached the villa, where someone had linked up the camera to a computer and had projected the pictures onto a screen.

There was Dante, high up, splendid, laughing down at them. Whether his triumph lay in making the climb, or in making Sandor look absurd and diminished, only Ferne knew. One thing she was sure of—he’d done it in style.

She looked around for Sandor, wondering how he was taking this.

‘He retired,’ Gino explained. ‘He’s had a long day.’

Translation: he’s sulking like a spoilt child , Ferne thought. Dante had hit the bull’s eye.

Dante himself seemed oblivious to his success. He was deep in conversation with Rab, and by now Ferne was sufficiently in tune with his mind to recognise that this was another move in the game. He wouldn’t say anything in front of an audience. But later…

‘I’ve had a long day too,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’

She slipped away and hurried up to her room. Sooner or later there was going to be a visitor, and she wanted to be ready.

First she needed a shower to wash the day off her. She turned it on as hard as she could and stood there, head back, arms wide, just letting it happen. It felt good.

She could have laughed aloud when she thought of how Dante had achieved his revenge—an Italian revenge—not violent, but skilled; a lithe, dancing movement, a quick thrust of the stiletto, unseen by anyone but his adversary, who had slunk away, humiliated.

Now she realised that she ought to have feared for Dante’s safety when he’d been up high, but she hadn’t, because she was under the spell he cast. And she was still under his spell, she thought happily.

She finished under the shower, pulled a robe around her and stepped out into the bedroom. But what she found there made her stop sharply.

‘Sandor!’

He was leaning against the door, his arms folded, a look of happy expectation on his face. He’d removed his shirt so that his magnificent chest was presented for her approval in all its naked perfection, smooth, muscular, evenly tanned.

‘What are you doing here?’ She sighed.

‘Oh, come on, sweetie. We both knew this was going to happen.’

‘Tommy, I swear, if you try to touch me I’ll thump you so hard you’ll see stars.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t tell me what I mean. I’m warning you.’

He laughed and sauntered easily over to her, the king claiming his rights.

‘I think I might just put that to the test— Aargh !’

He yelped as her hand struck his face.

‘You bitch!’ he wailed. ‘I could get a swollen lip.’

She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak there was a knock on her door. She darted to open it and found Dante standing there. He was wearing dark-blue pyjamas, and his face had an innocent look that filled her with suspicion almost as great as her relief.

‘I’m so sorry to trouble you,’ he said, ‘but there’s no soap in my bathroom and I wondered if you’d mind—Oh dear, am I disturbing something?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Ferne said. ‘Mr Jayley was just going.’

Dante regarded Sandor with apparent surprise, seeming not to have noticed him before, but Ferne wasn’t fooled. He knew exactly what he was doing. In his own way, he was as much of an actor as Sandor, but a more subtle one.

‘Good evening,’ he said politely. ‘Oh dear, you seem to have suffered an injury. You’re going to have a nasty swollen lip.’

‘Eh!’ Sandor yelped. He tried to make for the bathroom, but Dante was blocking his way so that he was forced to turn away and retreat from the room altogether, slamming the door behind him.

‘That should keep him occupied,’ Dante said with satisfaction.

‘BUT how did you know? I didn’t hit him that hard. He didn’t have a swollen lip.’

‘No, but he was afraid of it. I was just outside the door and I heard everything.’

‘And was it coincidence that you were there?’

‘Certainly not. I was lurking in the corridor. When I saw him go in, I listened. After all, you might have welcomed him.’

‘And then you’d have just gone away, I suppose?’ she said sardonically.

Slowly Dante shook his head, and there was something in his eyes she’d never seen before.

‘No way. If you’d welcomed him, I’d have come in and thumped him myself a lot harder than you did. But there was no need. You dealt with him very efficiently—I’m glad to say,’ he added softly.

‘You didn’t really think I wanted him, did you?’

He made a wry face. ‘I hoped not, but I needed to know. When I saw how easily he entered, I did wonder.’

‘I was in the bathroom, or he’d never have got in.’

‘Are you really over him?’

‘Of course I am. I just wish we’d never come here.’

‘You were a big hit at dinner.’

‘You weren’t doing so badly yourself,’ she flung at him.

‘Just passing the time, keeping an eye on you, making sure you didn’t misbehave. I had to know how you feel about him. It mattered.’

‘And now you know.’ She met his gaze, silently urging him on.

But the man who’d dismissed his enemy with a master stroke suddenly seemed to lose confidence.

‘What happens now?’ he said. ‘It must be your decision. Do you want me to go?’

‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said distractedly. It was almost true.

‘Ferne.’ His voice was quiet and suddenly serious. ‘If you don’t know, neither of us knows.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Fair?’ His voice was edgy. ‘You stand there half-naked, doing heaven knows what to me, and I’m being unfair?’

The towel robe had opened just enough to show her breasts, firm and glowing with the need she could no longer hide. While she hesitated, he took the edges of the material and drew them apart, revealing the rest of her nakedness.

‘ That is being unfair,’ he said in a shaking voice.

She couldn’t move. Her whole being seemed to be concentrated on him, on his touch and the thought of where it would alight next. The feeling was so intense that it was as though he was already caressing her everywhere. It was almost a shock when he laid his fingers lightly at the base of her throat, leaving them there, seeming to wait for something.

She drew a long breath. None of Sandor’s dramatic caresses had affected her one tenth as much as Dante’s patience.

‘Tell me,’ he said softly.

‘Tell you…?’

‘Tell me what to do. Ferne, for pity’s sake, if you want me to stop say so now, because I don’t have that much control left.’

Her smile was deliberately provocative. ‘Perhaps a man can have too much control. Maybe he even talks too mu—’

Her words were silenced by his mouth on hers. It was too late now, past the point of no return. Her own kiss was as fervent as his, speaking of desire held in too long, of frustration released in giddy, headlong joy.

While he kissed he was pulling at the robe until it fell to the floor and there was no barrier to his hands caressing her everywhere, setting off tremors that shocked her with their intensity. She managed to return the compliment, ripping away at his clothes until he was as naked as she.

Neither of them knew who made the first move to the bed. It didn’t matter. They were running down the same road, seeking the same triumphant destination.

She had anticipated his skill, but her imagination had fallen far short of the reality. He made love as he did the quick-step, unfailingly knowing the right touch, the right movement, always in perfect understanding with his partner. Her body felt as though it had been made for this moment, this loving, this man, and only this man.