Count Valieri's Prisoner

chapter NINE



IT WASN’T EASY, as Maddie soon discovered, to lie wide awake next to a sleeping man, whom you were desperate not to disturb.

Especially when it was the first time she’d ever shared a bed for the entire night, she thought, wondering what would happen if her imitation of a statue was interrupted by an attack of cramp. Or sneezing. Or if she simply fell asleep and turned over...

Don’t even think about it, she adjured herself grimly. Concentrate instead on the stars you can see through that hole in the roof.

But although her body was still, her mind remained restless.

Wasn’t there some psychological syndrome, she wondered desperately, that caused victims to become physically attracted to their kidnappers?

Surely just knowing that would help her to fight this dangerous obsession. To overcome this bewildering, illogical need to move closer to the warmth of him, and the false security his arms seemed to offer.

Because she couldn’t jeopardise her future—her marriage and all her dreams of happiness for what could only be a brief and sordid fling with a—a serial womaniser. A man, after all, who had spent the last two days and nights with another girl in some love nest in Viareggio.

A man who had surely done enough damage already to the Sylvesters, without enticing her—a promised wife—into this ultimate and disgraceful betrayal.

Think of Jeremy, she urged herself feverishly. Focus on him, and only on him. Think of being reunited with him, when all this will seem like a bad dream. Imagine being in his arms and belonging to him again.

At which point she paused, because, if she was honest, her sense of belonging had occasionally faltered in the past months.

And she found herself remembering unhappily how hurtful it had always seemed when Jeremy had dressed and left immediately after lovemaking, which had also been rushed and quite often less than satisfying—for her at least.

‘You make me feel like a tart,’ she told him one night while he was hurrying into his clothes. She tried to make it sound as if she was teasing rather than complaining, but he’d glanced at her defensively.

‘Don’t, darling. You know how things are.’

‘Well, yes.’ Nigel Sylvester’s shadow seemed to hang over them even in their most intimate moments. She controlled a shiver, again, trying to sound jokey. ‘But surely your father isn’t having you watched.’

‘Of course not, but he expects me to be first into the office each morning. So I need to leave from home.’ He came over to the bed and kissed her. ‘We’ll soon be married, Maddie. We just have to be patient, that’s all.’

And I have been, she thought now as she had then. In all sorts of ways. But for how much longer?

She looked back at the stars, trying, as a last resort, to count them, but always somehow getting the total wrong, and having to begin again. Until, eventually, she closed her eyes against their dazzle, and her mind to the numbers whirling in her head, and let sleep claim her at last.

The next time she opened her eyes, she saw above her a patch of sun-brightened blue sky signalling morning.

For a brief moment, she struggled to figure out where she was or what had woken her, and then, destructive as a tidal wave, memory came rushing back, and slowly and carefully, she turned her head.

Andrea Valieri was lying less than a foot away from her, propped up on one elbow, his mouth curving in a faint smile as he watched her. The sleeping bag had slipped down from his body, revealing that, apart from a pair of silk shorts, he was all bronzed skin. His hair was tousled, and he needed a shave, but neither of those circumstances detracted one iota from his sheer physical appeal.

‘Buongiorno.’ His voice reached her softly. ‘E come stai?’

Dry-mouthed, Maddie stared at him, trying to make her voice work, and at the same time wondering what in the world she could possibly say...

He tutted reprovingly. ‘Have you not learned how to respond when the man in your bed wishes you “good morning”? Then permit me to show you.’

He moved then, reaching out to scoop her closer as he bent and let his mouth brush hers.

It was the lightest of touches, but all the same Maddie was aware of it in every inch of her skin, every nerve-ending. But most of all in every pulse of the soft inner trembling building inside her.

A trembling which could so easily become an ache—which she could not afford.

Only to feel her resolve slipping away as Andrea kissed her again, his mouth moving on hers, still gently but with a growing insistence as the seconds lengthened into minutes.

Maddie felt the flicker of his tongue probing her lips, searching for the inner sweetness they protected. At the same time his fingertips were stroking back the damp, dishevelled hair from her forehead, then tracing the contours of her face down to the curve of her throat where they lingered.

Her breath caught in mingled apprehension and excitement as his lips followed the same path softly kissing her eyes, her cheeks, the tremulous corners of her mouth, before feathering his lips over the pulse in her throat, making it leap in anticipation.

When, at last, he raised his head, Maddie’s face was burning, forcing her to stifle a gasp as she registered the sudden tumult in her blood.

Now was the moment—if ever—to push him away. To hang on to some atavistic notion of survival and test his given word that he would not force her.

She was not a virgin but, at the same time she felt so inexplicably nervous and insecure that this might indeed have been her first time with a man.

Her body seemed to belong to a stranger, its reactions, responses to his mouth and hands, alien and bewildering, as if she was balanced on some brink as enticing as it was dangerous.

But when her hands lifted to his chest, it was not in the planned rejection. Instead, she found her fingers splaying across the muscular hair-roughened warmth of his torso, her palms pressing against the harsh thud of his heartbeat, knowing it echoed her own.

And as if responding to some unspoken invitation, Andrea sought her mouth again, his kiss deepening into passion, commanding a response, gathering her closer, as her lips parted at last to grant him the access he wanted.

And offer the surrender that she herself craved. No right—no wrong any more, she realised dazedly. Just this man and this moment. She could deny it no longer as she relinquished—released every pent-up sensation born of the tension that had been building between them since their first meeting.

Her nipples were pebble-hard under the concealment of her only garment, desire scalding between her thighs as their mouths explored and clung with heated, hungry delight. As their tongues met—mated in rising sensual urgency.

Eventually, Andrea lifted himself away from her, putting her back on the mattress, before leaning over her to unfasten, button by button the shirt she was wearing, his hand travelling downwards without haste, pushing the edges of the fabric apart so that his mouth could follow the warm, naked path he’d created, and seek the soft roundness of her uncovered breasts.

Maddie stroked the tangled black hair, her eyes closing as she savoured the delicious rasp of his chin against her bare flesh. Gasping with the pleasure that lanced through her as he cupped her breasts and raised them to his lips, capturing the dark-rose of each excited nipple in turn, and suckling them with delicate eroticism.

She could feel through the silk of his shorts the scorching strength of his arousal pressing against her, and her loins ached with the need to have all the male power of him sheathed inside her. To give herself completely.

But as her fingers sought his erection, Andrea halted her.

‘Not yet, mia bella,’ he told her huskily. ‘For now I wish this pleasure to be for you.’

He unfastened the remaining buttons, and, for a long moment, looked down at her naked body, his eyes glowing like molten gold. He moved so he was kneeling at her feet, lifting them carefully to his gentle kisses, while his hands stroked her slim legs, sliding them beneath her to caress the sensitive area at the back of her knees, sending a long shiver down her spine, before travelling up to her flanks and slowly and sensuously moulding the swell of her buttocks.

Then his hands firm and purposeful, he lifted her towards him, letting his mouth drift enticingly over her slender thighs, before he reached the soft shadowing between them and kissed that too.

Maddie made a little sound between a sigh and a whimper and heard him murmur, ‘Sì, carissima,’ as if he was answering some question she could not find words to ask.

He parted her legs, his fingers exploring her, pushing into the hot, sleek wetness of her. Seeking the tiny, tactile mound of her *oris and teasing it with a fingertip to aching, quivering arousal, before bending his head, and possessing her with his mouth, his silken tongue flickering on her at one moment, then circling slowly and voluptuously the next.

Making her moan and writhe as he slowly and wickedly increased the exquisite pressure, coaxing her with devastating expertise towards her release.

She could hear a voice she hardly recognised as her own sobbing, ‘Oh God, there—please. Yes—yes—now...’

And as her driven body finally reached the utmost pinnacle of pleasure and throbbed into climax, she cried out his name in joy and astonishment.

Afterwards, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, Andrea murmuring to her in his own language between kisses.

Nothing, she realised in wonderment, had prepared her for this moment. Had warned her of how he might make her feel, or the overwhelming sensations he would be able to exact from her eager flesh. She’d never denied she was capable of the normal female responses, but Andrea’s lovemaking had taken her to a different dimension, quite outside any past experience. And her instinct told her this was only the beginning.

He’d truly said this time had been for her, she thought, her body still tingling in the aftermath of her delight, but now she wanted to pleasure him in turn.

Or as well, she amended, smiling against his skin as she asked herself, astonished, how she could possibly want him again so soon.

He said softly, ‘I have marked you a little, mia cara, I should have shaved. I will do so next time.’

She stroked his chin with the back of her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ And next time, she thought, was now...

She raised herself a little, leaning on one arm, then reached down, her fingers playing with the waistband of his shorts, deliberately tantalising him before she began to ease them down over his hips. And Andrea laughed softly, lying back in acquiescence, his arms linked behind his head, his whole attitude an invitation to take—or give—whatever she wanted.

And then between one breath and the next, everything changed. Andrea was no longer relaxed in sensuous anticipation, but jack-knifing into a sitting position, head bent as if he was listening for something.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Surprised, Maddie sat up too. He silenced her with a gesture and then she heard it. The distant blare of a vehicle’s horn, succeeded by the faint noise of its approaching engine.

‘Camillo,’ he ground out. ‘Dio mio, I did not expect him so soon.’ He pushed himself up from the mattress, jumping to his feet, and raking a hand irritably through his hair.

‘Stay there,’ he directed abruptly, heading for the outer room. ‘I shall dress and deal with him.’

In spite of the curtain which he’d tugged into place as he left, she had a perfect view of Andrea, once more discreetly clad in his cord pants and sweater, moving the barrier from the doorway and walking out into the sunshine.

Leaving her there in a tangle of mixed emotions, with disappointment, embarrassment, and physical frustration leading the pack, as with unsteady fingers, she tried to fumble the shirt buttons back into their holes under cover of the sleeping bag.

Knowing that having tasted rapture in his arms, she’d wanted the full banquet. And that she should be relieved that Camillo had signalled his approach and not caught them in flagrante.

And stopped right there, the breath catching in her throat. What was she thinking of? she asked herself incredulously. Because she had other far more cogent reasons for welcoming the interruption.

I nearly made the biggest mistake of my life, she thought frantically. Oh God, how could I have been so stupid?

Yet, if she was honest, she knew exactly why. The plain fact was she’d been subjected to the attentions of a practised seducer, and, in spite of all her brave words and pious resolutions, she hadn’t even put up a struggle. Because she’d wanted him. Wanted to know and be known completely. And how shameful was that?

Count Valieri, she thought, swallowing. That was how she must revert to thinking of him now. Her kidnapper—and not the glamorous and alluring lover whose hands and mouth had wrought such havoc with her senses only a little while ago.

She should have been warned when he’d told her he’d never taken a woman by force. Because, of course, he didn’t have to.

I must have been his easiest conquest ever, she thought bitterly. His experience would tell him exactly how I was feeling. And he—he was unexpectedly kind.

But how could she ever face Jeremy again, knowing she’d committed the ultimate in betrayal by having a one night stand with his enemy?

But for Camillo, she would be in the Count’s arms now, answering any and every passionate demand he might make of her. Oblivious to the nightmare of anguish and regret that would surely follow when she came back to her senses.

Except that it was her senses that had deceived her in the first place, turning her into this unrecognisable creature—this wanton who’d shown Andrea Valieri a hunger she’d not known could exist—until that moment. And who’d sobbed and begged for a piercing, soaring satisfaction wholly outside her wildest dreams.

Just as he’d known it would be, because he had no illusions about her level of sexual sophistication. Which was yet another humiliation to add to the growing list.

‘Next time,’ he’d said. Well, there would be no next time—just as there should have been no ‘this time’. Because, she was back in control—of her mind as well as her body. And she would not allow herself to become his plaything again.

She heard the sound of voices, and shrank further under the sleeping bag. People talked about the cold light of day, she thought, and they were right. Because she was discovering that even bright sunlight had the power to make you shiver.

The curtain was pushed aside and Andrea came in, his face set.

‘Camillo has brought you this,’ he said, and placed her travel bag on the foot of the mattress.

She said slowly, staring at it. ‘My things? Really—my own things? You’ve given them back to me?’

A faint smile dispelled some of the grimness from his mouth. ‘Sì, davvero.’ He paused, then added crisply, ‘There is water heating for you to wash, but I would recommend that you make haste. Camillo tells me that the weather will change, bringing storms, and the road is already dangerous enough.’

She nodded. ‘I—I’ll be quick.’

‘And I must pack this.’ He bent and gathered up the sleeping bag into his arms leaving Maddie with no covering except the half-buttoned shirt. Which, suddenly, was not nearly enough.

With a swift nervous gesture, she huddled it around her as best she could, seeing the astonishment in his face turn to something more disturbing and much colder until, without a word, he turned on his heel and left her.

Maddie got up slowly from the mattress, aware she was shivering. She still ached from her fall, but the bruises were beginning to come out, and she could at least put her foot to the ground without hobbling.

The bag did not contain everything she’d brought to Italy, but it held a complete change of clothing, including underwear, and her toiletries, so she wasn’t going to quibble. Even, she discovered, her watch had been returned. Her phrase book too, but not, of course, her passport, wallet or tape recorder. That was too much to hope for.

But what, she wondered, as she made her swift and rudimentary toilette, had brought about this change of heart in her captor? Because that was how she must regard him from now on. Keep all the wrongs he’d done to her firmly in the forefront of her mind.

And be thankful it had been no worse, she thought, as she zipped up her black cut-offs and pulled her flowered black and white tee shirt over her head.

She had thought wearing her own clothes would make her feel less vulnerable, but she was wrong about that too. And knew that she would never feel really safe until she was back in London. And maybe not even then.

It took every scrap of courage she possessed to walk out of the hut to where the jeep was waiting, but the two men were clearly more concerned with the heavy cloud already gathering above the mountain tops than her sensitivities.

She received a slight, formal inclination of the head from Camillo, as he took her bag and opened the rear door of the jeep for her. Andrea merely sent her a brief, unsmiling glance with his curt, ‘Andiamo. Let’s go.’

She soon realised it was not a journey she would want to make twice in a lifetime.

Because the Count had not been exaggerating about the state of the road. In places, it was only just wide enough for the jeep, and deeply pot-holed with a serious drop on one side, which Maddie, sitting with her hands tightly clenched in her lap, wished she hadn’t seen, especially when she heard the sound of stones and earth falling down into the valley as they passed.

She was sorely tempted to close her eyes, but that might have been interpreted as a sign of weakness, so she kept them open staring rigidly at the back of Andrea Valieri’s dark head, only to remember with startling suddenness how thick and vibrant his hair had felt under her fingers.

Which was an equally dangerous road to take, she realised, when her body began to tingle with other memories. The awakening of fresh desires.

And better to be considered a coward than make an abject fool of herself all over again, she decided resolutely, leaning back and shutting her eyes tightly.

After a while, the jolting grew steadily less until, with a final lurch that brought her heart into her mouth, the jeep swung to the right and Maddie sat up to discover they had emerged on to a reasonably decent road, descending between the hills.

‘Mai piu. Never again.’ The Count turned, giving her a crooked smile. ‘I shall arrange to have that track closed immediatamente. Anyone wanting Giacomo in future will have to reach him on foot.’

‘How nice,’ she said. ‘To have that kind of power.’

The smile vanished. ‘Especially when one can use it to do good, Maddalena.’ He paused. ‘But perhaps you have only encountered the other kind.’

And he turned away, addressing some quiet remark to Camillo.

Which will teach me, Maddie thought, savaging her lip once more, to try and score points.

She stared out of the window trying to concentrate on the spectacular scenery, striving to rebuild the barriers in her mind and make them unassailable. To somehow recover some shreds of self-respect and decency to take back to Casa Lupo.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash followed almost immediately by a low, threatening rumble of thunder. At the same moment, the first heavy drops of rain hit the windscreen. The threatened storm had arrived in all its malignant force.

Maddie caught her breath as she watched the lightning forking down into the peaks as if it planned to tear them apart. And the crash of the thunder made it seem as if the mountains themselves had indeed succumbed to the eerie force and were beginning some lethal collapse, sweeping away everything in their path.

She’d never thought she’d be glad to see the house again, but, after nearly twenty minutes of driving, half-deafened, through the equivalent of a river, Casa Lupo’s solid bulk seemed, absurdly, like a beacon of hope instead of a prison.

High iron gates swung open on to a short drive leading to the main entrance where Eustacio waited anxiously in the shelter of a huge black umbrella.

He rushed forward as the jeep halted, holding the umbrella over Maddie as he escorted her into the house, bombarding her with a stream of Italian which left her floundering.

‘He is glad you are safe,’ the Count supplied drily as he followed her into a massive hallway with a wide marble staircase at the far end.

‘Oh,’ said Maddie, forcing a smile. ‘Grazie, Eustacio.’

‘He says too that Alfredo kisses your hands,’ he added.

‘Am I supposed to know who Alfredo is, or why he should want to do such a thing?’ she inquired tautly.

‘He is the father of Jolanda, now recovering at home. In the eyes of her parents, you are a heroine, Maddalena.’

‘Hardly that.’ She flushed.

‘Perhaps not,’ he returned silkily. ‘But let us leave them their illusions, mia cara.’ He beckoned and a sheepish Luisa came forward, and took charge of Maddie’s travel bag. ‘She will escort you to your new accommodation.’

‘Where this time? A dungeon?’ She extended her wrists. ‘Won’t I need handcuffs?’

‘A delicious thought which we might discuss in more detail later,’ he said softly and unpardonably, and her flush deepened hectically.

‘The only thing I wish to discuss with you, Count Valieri,’ she said between her teeth, ‘is the time of my flight back to London.’

And with all the dignity she could muster, she followed Luisa up the marble staircase, instinct telling her that he was watching her every step of the way. And warning her at the same time not to look back.