The Disobedient Mistress, page 6
Misty stared back at him, her facial bones tight. ‘I feel like a doll you’ve dressed up!’
‘Worry if I start trying to undress you,’ Leone advised in a jungle-cat purr.
She couldn’t help it: her face flamed and, although she had been dying to ask what the film was, she said nothing for the remainder of the drive.
Even before they emerged from the limo, she saw the press cameras and the crash barriers holding back the crowds waiting to see celebrities arrive. Her nervous tension started to rise. Cool as ice, Leone walked her between the barriers with a light arm at her spine. She was quite unprepared for the sudden question shouted by a journalist.
‘Who’s the new lady, Leone?’
And without the smallest warning, the cameras were turned on them along with a whole new barrage of questions, which Leone ignored. A smile stuck to her numb mouth like paint, perspiration dewing her short upper lip, Misty was intimidated by the surge of interest and the photos being taken. What on earth would Birdie think if she opened a newspaper and saw Misty, who had supposedly come to London to work, attending a film première with diamonds hanging from her ears? How was she to explain that development? Why the heck hadn’t it occurred to her before now that a male who made regular appearances in the gossip columns was likely to attract that kind of media attention?
‘You should’ve warned me it would be like this,’ Misty muttered minutes later, her low-pitched voice full of reproach.’ I had no idea that my being with you was going to be such a public event.’
Leone dealt her a sardonic appraisal. ‘Ditch the artless routine. Why do you think you’re looking so good? Only married men hide their mistresses.’
‘Well, I can tell you right now that being your mistress stinks!’ Misty hissed furiously out of the corner of her mouth.
‘If we were playing this for real, you wouldn’t be talking like that,’ Leone drawled in purring provocation, his breath fanning her cheek, and she coloured furiously as she caught an older woman watching them and realised how intimate his pose must seem.
Before the lights went down, Misty engaged in looking out for famous faces and spotted several. Her self-consciousness only returned when she realised that she was under examination too by several sets of curious eyes. The film was an edge-of-the-seat thriller and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Before the credits were rolling down the screen, Leone whisked her out again. Emerging into the brightly lit street, she froze at the sight of the waiting cameras.
‘Ignore them and smile,’ Leone murmured as he felt her stiffen in discomfiture.
As the limo door closed on them he flashed her a look of exasperation. ‘Why the shrinking-violet act?’
‘I don’t want my photo in the newspapers!’ Misty protested. ‘I don’t like people talking about me!’
‘You…don’t?’ Leone queried in a tone of mockery.
The silence buzzed.
Leone leant forward, extracted a DVD from a storage unit and fed it into the player below the built in television. He zapped the control and lounged back in the corner. ‘I just want to remind myself of how shy you are in public…’
Misty frowned in bewilderment as the television screen came to life to show Flash on stage at one of his concerts, and then a split second later her heart sank as she realised which concert it was. There she was dancing like a wanton showoff, hair everywhere, wild-eyed, skimpy little dress showing far too much thigh. She broke out in nervous perspiration. Her fingers knotted, nails scoring welts into her palms. Her lowest moment…and somehow he had discovered that that ghastly performance of hers had been captured for posterity on film, which was more than she had known herself. In all her life, she did not believe she had ever felt more humiliated or embarrassed than she did at that instant.
‘Switch it off!’ Misty pleaded in a desperate rush.
‘I’m looking hard for signs of timidity,’ Leone confided. ‘There you are in front of thousands of people—’
‘Please switch it off!’ Misty gritted feverishly.
‘Don’t be so selfish,’ Leone scolded her with a slow, mocking smile that made her face burn even hotter with squirming chagrin. ‘The camera loves you and I’m sure the guys in the audience loved you too. You’re very sexy.’
Misty made a wild grab at the remote he held in one lean hand, but he stretched it out of reach. ‘If you don’t give me that control, I’ll-’
‘You’ll…what?’ Leone prompted with amusement.
‘You don’t understand…Flash dared me! I’d been drinking, I didn’t care about anything that night…’ Registering that she was telling him things he had no right to know and merely increasing her own mortification, and recognising that the cynical glint in his dark golden eyes had merely heightened, Misty lost what remained of her hold on her temper and threw herself at him to retrieve the control.
‘Accidenti!’ Leone exclaimed, finding himself engaged in a physical struggle with something of his bemusement showing in his lean, strong face. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Give it to me!’ Misty raked at him, straining over him to stretch a hand up to his.
‘When I pictured you on my lap,’ Leone savoured with roughened intensity as he dropped the remote and closed both lean hands round her slender forearms at speed, ‘this isn’t quite the way it was, amore.’
Infuriated at the position he had trapped her in, Misty snapped, ‘Let go of me!’
Instead he drew her fully down on him. Smouldering dark golden eyes lodged on her startled face. ‘You should think twice before you climb on top of a guy and ask him to give it to you…’
Belatedly she realised that her dress had ridden up and that the most sensitive part of her whole body was pressed to the hard, surging masculine arousal of his. Her breath caught in her throat, heat flaring through her in an accelerated surge of sexual awareness. ‘You know I didn’t mean—’
‘And right now,’ Leone murmured with mesmeric huskiness, his brilliant eyes holding hers as he anchored one hand into the fall of her copper hair to ease her forward. ‘I am very tempted to satisfy your request.’
He locked his hot mouth to the tiny pulse flickering like crazy below her collar-bone and a shudder of response hotter than any fire raked through her. Her head tipped back, one hand grabbing at his shoulder to steady herself, a strangled little moan torn from her throat. Her breasts were taut and full, her nipples straining. He bent her back over one strong arm and let his sensual mouth rove over her exposed cleavage, driving her mad with frustrated longing for more. Shock was leaping through her in waves for her own hunger had surged so fast in response to his that she was breathless and her heart was beating so fast she was afraid it would burst.
‘Dio…’ Leone growled, gathering her up in his arms and laying her down full length on the smooth cream leather seat. ‘I don’t want to stop…’
CHAPTER FOUR
MISTY clashed with Leone’s burning golden eyes and just lay there, every inch of her drawn tight with screaming anticipation.
He hit a button and the flickering lights of the city streets showing through the tinted windows were screened out, locking them into greater privacy. He shed his jacket in a fluid but purposeful movement. He plucked off her shoes, cast them aside and then he reached for her again.
‘I…’ she began, nervous second thoughts prompting her at the exact same moment as Leone’s carnal lips locked to hers with urgent hunger.
It was like going to heaven on a rocket. The explosion of passion jolted her. His tongue plundered the tender interior of her mouth, setting up a chain reaction through her quivering body. He slid a hand beneath her hip, lifting her to him, and she locked her arms round his neck, letting that wild kiss deepen to the brink of cutting off her own oxygen supply.
With a harsh rush of breath, Leone lifted his dark head, colour scoring his superb cheekbones, golden eyes shimmering over her. Unclasping her hands, he drew the straps of her dress down over her arms. ‘I want to rip that dress off you and the silk would tear like paper, but we do have to vacate the car at some stage,’ he pointed out with audible regret.
Shock shrilled through her as he unzipped her dress and cooler air hit her exposed flesh. She was breathing in rapid, irregular little gasps, striving not to think of what he had just said, but her brain had begun to turn again. They were in a car. Did she want to lose her virginity on the back seat of a car? All right, so it was a limo, but right now his chauffeur probably had a very good idea of what his passengers were doing and she would have to walk out past the man and pretend she didn’t mind him thinking she was a real little…a real little slut…
‘You have gorgeous breasts…’ Appreciative golden eyes scorched over the pert, pouting mounds now bared for his appraisal.
In thrall to the conviction that she was behaving like a wanton, she glanced down at her own nakedness and almost had a heart attack. But her immediate effort to cover herself with her hands was thwarted by the simple fact that he was holding them.
‘In fact, I don’t think a brief sortie is likely to satisfy me.’ Leone lowered his head to run the tip of his tongue over a quivering pink nipple and her spine arched in an involuntary spasm of response, an ache stirring with powerful effect between her thighs.
‘No…?’ she gasped, too controlled by tormenting sensation to catch her breath.
He closed his mouth round a lush rosy peak and caught her sensitive flesh between his teeth in a teasing, sensual assault. She could not restrain the low, keening cry that escaped her parted lips. A knot of unbearable tension was tightening low in her pelvis. She wanted him, she wanted him as she had never wanted any male. Somewhere in the background she was dimly conscious of the faint sound of music, familiar music that tugged at her memory. Then Leone let his fingers tug at her distended nipples and thought was snatched from her again with a vengeance. Excitement had her in its tenacious hold. She was lost in the fierce hunger of her own body
‘I’m going to screw you senseless, amore,’ Leone intoned with raw sensual force, sinking his hands beneath her hips to tug her dress out of his path. ‘And then I’m going to take you into my bed tonight and do it all over again.’
A combination of shock, excitement and shame hit her all at once. But even as that threat excited her to an embarrassing degree the words jarred on her: too raw, too realistic. And in the background she finally recognised the melodic sound of the song that Flash had written for her and inwardly cringed at her own weakness with Leone Andracchi. How could she have been so stupid as to allow matters to get so far? Leone would just be using her for sex. He didn’t care about her, he didn’t even like her, for goodness’ sake! That she found him sheer, tormenting temptation was no excuse. And letting him have her on the back seat of his limo would be the ultimate in tarty behaviour. Surely she had more respect for herself?
‘What’s wrong?’
It shook Misty that he had noted her withdrawal that fast. She snaked back from him and sat up in an awkward movement, frantically wrenching at her dress in an effort to yank it up and cover her breasts at speed. There was a ghastly ripping sound that made her squeeze her stinging eyes shut in despair. But the electric silence that stretched was even tougher on her nerves.
‘You’ve changed your mind,’ Leone breathed not quite steadily.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled shakily. ‘I wish I’d changed it sooner but this…us…well, it’s a really bad idea. As you said yourself, strictly business is wiser.’
‘You want me to make a deal that includes access to your body as well?’ Leone derided in a tone that stung her sensitive nerves like a whiplash.
In a sudden motion, she turned round and hit him so hard with her open palm that a shuddering sensation ran up her arm and her hand went numb. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m not some whore available for a price!’
A silence that left the previous silence behind in the starting stakes had fallen. A perfect imprint of her fingertips was burned into the olive skin above his aggressive jawline and his golden eyes were molten with outrage and shock.
‘I’m not going to apologise for hitting you either,’ Misty framed on the back of an overwrought sob. ‘It’s a pity someone didn’t thump the hell out of you a long time ago! Just because you’re not used to a woman saying no.’
‘I didn’t argue. I freed you immediately,’ Leone grated in a ferocious undertone. ‘There is no excuse for you striking me when you know that I can’t hit back.’
Misty was trembling. She sat up, dragging at the dress until it stretched back over her breasts. She was scared to look to see where the delicate silk had torn. She dived into the shoulder straps and began to struggle to do up the zip.
‘Let me,’ Leone said icily, turning her round to run up the zip with the merest touch, as though he were risking radioactive contamination.
‘Thanks.’
He sent the blinds flying back from the windows with the stab of one lean finger. She wanted to open the passenger door beside her and throw herself out even though the limo was still moving. His wounding words had bitten deep and sent her careening into the kind of loss of control she had not surrendered to since childhood, and in the aftermath she was in shock and ashamed but she couldn’t bring herself to apologise for slapping him after what he had said.
The limousine drew up. The chauffeur opened the passenger door. As she sat there, frozen with knowledge that her once-beautiful gown was now ripped right up to her waist, something warm and heavy was draped round her shoulders: his jacket. She drew in a quivering breath and began to climb out. An arm curved round her, keeping the jacket in place, Leone walked her into the well-lit foyer and exchanged a word with the unctuous doorman, who went to call the lift for them.
Inside the lift the silence was so profound that it buzzed in her ears. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him until it occurred to her to wonder why he was accompanying her. Just to get his jacket back? She glanced up. His lean, powerful face was set in forbidding lines, stunning eyes veiled and dark.
He used a key on the apartment door and tossed it on a side table. She slid out of his jacket and extended it.
He hooked it with one lean brown hand. ‘Goodnight,’ he said without any expression at all.
As he strode in the direction of the bedroom corridor, Misty cleared her throat. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To have a long cold shower,’ Leone framed in a gritty tone. ‘You have a problem with that too?’
Her face flamed. ‘I meant…you’re staying the night here?’
‘I don’t sleepwalk,’ Leone assured her very drily.
Finally she added two and two and made four for herself. Her full mouth compressed. ‘You’re staying because I’m supposed to be your mistress. So I’m a put-out-on-the-first-date girl now as well as everything else…’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Leone had swung back.
Misty surveyed him with silver-grey eyes awash with resentment. He was a visual joy and she was questioning now if her susceptibility to those stunning dark good looks of his had dulled her wits a week earlier. She had not foreseen the costs she would pay in terms of her own reputation, but she should have done. In a small business like hers, the reputation of a female owner was all important. Nobody was ever likely to take her seriously again after she had been seen draped round Leone Andracchi wearing diamonds and designer garments. That was bimbo territory. The few who had accepted that Flash was just a very good friend would now suspect otherwise. People would decide she was a gold-digging tart who threw herself at any rich man who came within her reach and female clients would be none too keen to hire her services.
‘You heard me.’ She folded her arms with a jerk. ‘If you stay tonight, you’re making me look like a tramp.’
‘I’m so grateful that you’re not my mistress.’ Thrusting lean brown fingers through his tousled black hair, Leone surveyed her with an aura of sardonic satisfaction. ‘You saved us both from making a serious error of judgement this evening. Feel free to hit me any time I get too close in the future.’
Anger stiffened her. ‘I really am starting to hate you—’
‘Hold the feeling, nourish it,’ Leone advised with silken mockery. ‘Because if you ever end up in bed with me, life as you know it will end.’
Misty flung her head back, lustrous copper coils of hair falling back from her slanted cheekbones, grey eyes silver with rage. ‘Oh yeah?’
A wolfish grin of appreciation slashed his lean dark features. For a split second all the charisma he had bent over backwards to conceal from her flashed out full force and she found herself staring, hooked like a fish on a line. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he emphasised huskily. ‘I’ll be gone before you get up tomorrow. I’ll see you Friday. We’re heading up to Scotland for the weekend.’
And with that concluding assurance he strolled with fluid grace down the corridor, leaving her standing there like a woman who had just seen exactly what she did not want to see. A male genuinely capable of fascinating her, a male who could shift within the space of minutes from icy reserve to sardonic humour to that self-mocking smile, which had made her stupid heart sing and bang like a drum.
Snatching in a ragged breath, Misty walked down to her own room, closed the door and leant back against it for a moment, feeling oddly empty. She lay awake in the moonlight and was shaken to discover her mind wandering to an imaginary vision of Leone having a cold shower. Feeling the heat of a self-loathing blush, she rolled over and stuffed her face in a pillow. She relived her own wild, wanton craving for him in the limo and squirmed with discomfiture.
When she had heard other women talking about not being able to resist some guy, she had never been too impressed. After all, she had not even found Philip irresistible. In her teens, she had had to come to terms with the cautionary tale of her own mother’s mistakes and deep down inside, although she had never admitted it even to Birdie, she had been afraid that she might turn out to be the same as her mother, Carrie, who had mistaken lust for love. Carrie had flitted from one relationship to the next and left a trail of destruction and abandoned children in her wake.
