PENNY JORDAN - Master Of Pleasure

She had, she remembered, felt like this the first time she had seen him. Only then the liquid heat erupting inside her body had not been shadowed by either pain or knowledge. The physical ache of her longing for him had seduced her before he had even touched her, and when he had touched her…She closed her eyes, not wanting to remember but it was too late. Inside her head she could hear her own voice as she cried out to him, caught up in the grip of her own unbearable pleasure, her eyes wide open with the awed shock of it while he leaned over her in the shadowy coolness of the yacht’s main cabin, watching her as the expert touch of his fingers brought her to orgasm. Her first orgasm. He had waited until its shuddering hold on her body had eased before giving her the look of hooded triumph that would become so familiar to her and saying laconically, ‘Perhaps now would be a good time to tell me your name?’

She opened her eyes abruptly. Her face burned now at the memory of her own behaviour then. She had only been seventeen, she reminded herself shakily. A child whose head had been stuffed with daydreams. Still, she had felt she knew all there was to know. She was now twenty-eight, a woman who knew enough to realize how dangerous her past had been, and how lucky she was to have escaped from it, and from Gabriel. She was free of that now. Of that and of him, and of all that he had made her feel and want.

She could feel Gabriel looking at her, focusing on her, the intensity of his concentrated gaze making her tremble. He couldn’t guess what she had been thinking, what she had been reliving. She was far too mature now to betray herself to him. Nevertheless, the dull ache inside her was refusing to subside and, as though she had no control over it whatsoever, she could feel her gaze being drawn to his body, to his throat, and the vee of sun-warmed flesh exposed by the neck of his polo shirt. Beneath it his torso would be ridged with muscle, the darkness of his body hair arrowing downwards over the tautness of his belly. Her gaze followed the downward arrowing of her thoughts, coming to rest where her hand and her lips had once rested so intimately and so pleasurably. She could still remember the hard sleekness of male flesh over rigid muscle, its smooth supple movement beneath her eager touch…

What was she doing? Frantically she pushed back the memories. She wanted badly to swallow, to wet the nervous dryness of her lips, but she was afraid of doing so in case…in case what? In case Gabriel guessed what she had been remembering and subjected her to the kind of savagely sexual possession she had once found so exciting? Here, with her sons less than ten yards away?

‘Let go of me,’ she breathed, trying to pull her wrist free.

‘Are you sure that is what you really want? Once you begged me for my touch. Remember?’

She couldn’t help it. She shuddered violently.

‘Ah, yes. I see that you do,’ he taunted her as he released her. Her flesh felt cold without his next to it. Cold and bereft. She mustn’t let herself think like that.

‘Let me warn you, Sasha, just in case you have forgotten. I know exactly what you are.’ He studied her body with a contemptuous and knowing sexual inspection that made her want to hit him.

‘I am the twins’ mother, and that is the only way you will ever know me from now on, Gabriel,’ she fired back at him. Were those words for his benefit, or for her own? He released her arm so quickly she almost lost her balance. She looked at him. His back was turned towards her. She shuddered. How could she ever have been so foolish as to have loved him? But she had. Desperately, wholly and completely, hungering for him to return her feelings, believing that she could trade sex for love. What a fool she had been. But she wasn’t that fool any longer.

STILL gripped by shock, Sasha watched Gabriel turn towards the boys. She couldn’t get her head around the enormity of what Carlo had done. But they were different from other men, these Sardinian men. They lived by a different code; theirs was a paternalistic society, and the belief in their right to order the lives of their families absolute.

When Carlo had told her about Gabriel’s mother she had seen that he did not share her shock that Gabriel’s father should seek to force his daughter into a marriage of his choosing.

‘No wonder she ran away,’ she had commented.

Carlo had frowned at her and shaken his head. ‘She was fortunate that her father forgave her and that he was powerful enough to persuade Luigi to marry her despite the humiliation she had forced on him.’

‘But to make her marry a man she did not love—’

‘It was his right as her father.’

‘And forcing her to abandon Gabriel, her baby? You can’t believe that was right, Carlo.’

‘Not right, no, but Giorgio was a proud man and the head of our family. The purity of the Calbrini bloodline was a matter of honour to him, and to accept as his grandson a child whose blood—’

‘But in the end he had to accept Gabriel, didn’t he?’

Carlo had inclined his head, as though in acceptance of her argument, but Sasha had known that in his heart he was as old-fashioned and traditional as Gabriel’s grandfather. She suspected that he had only told her the story of Gabriel’s birth because, despite what Gabriel had done to her, Carlo had still felt he had a duty to stand by his second cousin. He might have offered her the protection of his money and his name, but he had still been a Calbrini. And so were her sons. Carlo had never forgotten that, and neither must she—although for very different reasons.

Gabriel was still watching her sons.

‘There isn’t any point in me introducing you to them. After all, you are hardly likely to be playing a hands-on role in their lives, are you?’ she challenged him.

‘On the contrary. I intend to make my duties as their guardian a priority—which is why I am here. Who knows how badly they may have been damaged by the circumstances of their life?’

He had answered without even looking at her.

‘They miss Carlo, but his death has not damaged them…’

Gabriel swung round to face her.

‘The damage to which I refer is not that caused by the death of their father but rather by the life of their mother.’

A terrible cold stillness had her in its grip.

‘You have no right to say that.’

‘I have every right. They are my wards. It is my moral and legal duty to protect them.’

‘From me? I am their mother!’ Her hands were curled so tightly her nails bit into her flesh.

He turned slowly to face her, the golden eagle eyes as flat as polished stones.

‘You may be their mother, but you are also a woman who craves the lifestyle only a very rich man can provide. When such a man pays you for the use of your body he will not want his enjoyment of that body to be interrupted by the needs of a pair of nine-year-old boys. In the eyes of most courts such a mother would be considered derelict in her maternal duty and not worthy of the name.’

She could almost feel the acid burn of his bitterness.

‘Just because your own mother abandoned you—’

‘You will not speak of her.’

Sasha had never felt more angry, nor more afraid.

‘I have decided that it is in the best interests of my wards that they remain here, on the island that was their father’s home, while I consider what is best for their future.’

‘That is not your right.’

Sasha was afraid, and fighting hard not to show it, Gabriel recognised. The pulse in her throat was fluttering like a trapped bird struggling to be free. He could almost feel the waves of panic and fear beating up through her body. He could certainly see the shocked outrage in her eyes.