The Sicilian's Bought Cinderella, page 11
Dante brushed his lips over hers. ‘If there is accepted etiquette then no one has told me.’
‘How do your lovers normally behave after you’ve made love?’
‘Don’t think about them. They are not you. You wouldn’t be here if you were.’
She winced.
‘Aislin, stop comparing yourself to other women.’
‘But I’ve seen pictures of your other lovers. They’re all so...glamourous!’
‘Maybe, but none of them has turned me on the way you do.’
Her cheeks pinked and a spark flared in her eyes. ‘Really? You’re not just saying that?’
He traced a finger over her soft lips. ‘You do something to me, dolcezza, and I am not going to apologise or feel regrets, because what we shared was incredible.’
The spark deepened into a glow and she skimmed his finger with her pink tongue. ‘It was, wasn’t it? I think that’s what’s thrown me. I didn’t know it could be so good.’
And neither had he.
Feeling a fresh stiffening in his trousers, Dante groaned and clasped her cheeks in his hands. ‘I want to make love to you again.’
She slid her arm around his neck, pupils dilating. ‘What’s stopping you?’
‘The time.’
‘What...?’ She jerked out of his hold to look at her watch and gave a squeal of dismay. ‘Dante, we’re going to be late! The champagne reception’s about to start.’
‘That’s what I meant about the time,’ he said with pained dryness. He stood up and winced at the ache that had set off again in his loins.
Aislin jumped to her feet and caught sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror by the bathroom door. ‘Look at the state of me!’
Her unkempt hair could just about be tamed with a brush, and she could redo her make-up, but her dress was all crumpled.
‘Do they have a laundry service here?’ She flew to the wardrobe and wrenched the door open. ‘I’m going to have to wear the evening dress I got for tomorrow night’s wedding reception.’
She could scream with frustration. Tomorrow night’s dress was much flashier than the one she had selected for tonight, which she had chosen figuring she should ease herself into this world gently. The only solace she could find was that, having seen Cristina’s glamorous dress, tomorrow night’s dress would be more fitting.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I bought outfits to match the itinerary but I didn’t make any allowances for the clothes being crumpled up by having sex in them.’ She thought quickly as she pulled out the dress she’d bought for the wedding reception. ‘How do people in your world cope with all these outfits? Why can’t they just have an outfit for the wedding ceremony that they keep on for the evening party like normal people?’
‘Do that, then.’
‘But you said everyone will change into party wear for the evening bash.’
‘No one will care if you keep the same outfit on.’
‘I guarantee you, every woman will be examining my outfits as carefully as their own. I’ve supposedly bagged Sicily’s most eligible bachelor so they’re going to be extra curious about me. The clothes I wear will reflect on you.’
‘I’ll give the personal shopper I hired for you a call and ask her to send more dresses over.’
She pulled a face, torn between not wanting him to waste more money on her and not wanting to show him up by wearing the same evening dress twice. Aislin wanted to fit into this world for the weekend for his sake.
‘I’ll call her now,’ he said while she stood there arguing with herself, strolling over to stand behind her and wrap his arms around her stomach. ‘And don’t feel guilty.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m the one responsible for ruining your dress and, unless you want us to be seriously late, I suggest you take your new outfit and lock yourself in the bathroom before I ruin that one too.’
When Aislin emerged from the bathroom thirty minutes later, Dante let out a whistle.
‘Wait a minute before you say anything,’ she ordered then hurried to her suitcase and removed a pair of jade-green high heels. She slipped her feet into them and did a twirl. ‘Now you can tell me, how do I look?’
‘You look like someone who had better leave this room right now before I throw you on the bed and make love to you again.’ He wasn’t joking.
Aislin looked ravishing. She’d showered and changed into a beautiful emerald-green silk dress that had a Roman toga appeal to it. High-necked and sleeveless, it gathered at her slender waist, where it was encircled by a thick silk band covered in hundreds of tiny crystals. Falling to her knees, it had elegance and just the right touch of glamour. In the time she’d spent in the bathroom, she’d also reapplied her make-up, her eyes now rimmed with dark kohl, giving a smoky effect. She’d cured the problem of her hair by sweeping it into a messy knot at the nape of her neck. The loose tendrils falling down the side of her face were, he was certain, unintentional. On her ears were huge hooped rose-gold earrings that suited her colouring beautifully.
‘I shall assume you mean that as a compliment... Do you mean it as a compliment?’
‘Yes. Get out.’
They’d made love but it hadn’t made a dent in his hunger for her.
When he joined her a few moments later he found her backed against the wall by the door.
Their eyes met.
He wanted to haul her into his arms and ravish every part of her so badly that, right then, he was prepared to say to hell with the wedding celebrations and Riccardo D’Amore, throw her over his shoulder and carry her back inside.
She held a hand out to him.
He stared down at it. Her short but shapely nails were bare of any varnish or the ornate things he guessed every other female guest here would have done to theirs.
A pang of guilt cut through him.
He’d plucked this minnow from a small town and taken her into this city of sharks he inhabited. Even if Riccardo failed to be convinced that Dante was a changed man who was nothing like his deceased father, he had a duty to take care of his minnow and keep her safe from the predators who would eat her alive.
He would not let her out of his sight.
CHAPTER TEN
UNIFORMED STAFF WAITED at the bottom of the stairs to lead the guests through the castle to the champagne reception outside.
Her hand firmly clasped in Dante’s, Aislin gazed in awe at the enormous rooms with their high frescoed ceilings and ogled the furnishings that were a mix of old and new, gaudy and stylish. She guessed the generations who had lived here had simply replaced curtains and carpets when the old ones were worn with the latest trends and without sympathy with what was already there. The lack of internal uniformity turned what could easily have been an imposing monument into something more relaxed.
She tried to compose her features into something more relaxed too.
Beneath the beautiful dress she wore with its expensive price tag, she was painfully aware she was just plain old Aislin O’Reilly, a small-town Irish girl whose most glamorous wedding invite to date had been in a three-star Dublin hotel.
A hugely obese man stood on the patio area by the wide double doors that led out to the beautiful gardens, holding court and greeting the guests as they were brought outside.
‘Is that Cristina’s father?’ Aislin asked in an undertone.
‘No. That’s Riccardo.’
‘I thought Cristina’s father was hosting this reception?’
‘He is but Riccardo cannot resist muscling in and taking over. He has to be in charge even when he isn’t.’
‘And you want to do a business deal with him?’
‘No, I want to do a business deal with his son.’ He squeezed her hand, indicating this whispered conversation was over because now they were being taken to him.
Riccardo greeted her politely enough with the traditional Sicilian embrace and kisses, but then took hold of her hand and peered down to examine her ring.
‘You are to be married,’ he said in heavily accented English when he finally released her, and focussed his little piggy eyes on Dante. ‘Congratulations.’
From the tone of his voice, Aislin guessed he already had suspicions about the authenticity of their relationship.
‘Thank you,’ Dante replied smoothly.
Riccardo patted his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief. He looked as if he was about to say something else when a tiny middle-aged woman with short hair, wearing a trouser suit, joined them.
Immediately, his whole demeanour softened.
‘My wife, Mimi,’ Riccardo said, before addressing his wife in Italian.
Mimi fixed keen eyes on Aislin before embracing her and kissing her cheeks. ‘No English,’ she said, waving her hands as if in apology.
‘No Sicilian,’ Aislin replied with a grin. Although Sicilians mostly spoke their own dialect which to her untrained ear sounded just like Italian, her studies had taught her that Sicilians were proud of their island and proud to call themselves Sicilian.
Dante spoke a few more words and then he led Aislin away from the D’Amores to join the glamorous guests milling around over the immaculate lawn.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she whispered, squeezing his fingers in her anxiety.
‘I won’t. Relax.’
And then she found herself thrust into the heart of the crowd which ranged in age from small toddlers right up to a wizened old man with an oxygen tank attached to his wheelchair.
Names were thrown at her, embraces and kisses exchanged and an ever-replenished stream of champagne and fruit juices carried by model-pretty staff was readily available.
When Dante introduced her as his fiancée, virtually everyone found it impossible to hide their shock. As he’d predicted, everyone was keen to look at her engagement ring, and the women especially made appropriate cooing noises.
But she also noticed the whispers between them and the side glances, and felt herself being weighed up and judged. Not all the judgements were favourable. One woman in particular, a beautiful sloe-eyed brunette called Katrina, gave her the chills. Aislin knew she was prone to an overactive imagination but the Medusa had had a friendlier stare than Katrina.
Dante kept her hand in his protectively throughout, as if he were an anchor keeping her rooted through her navigations in this mega-rich world.
It took half an hour of awkward social chit-chat before people stopped feeling the need to circulate quite so extensively and formed small groups. And that was when she received her first real line of questioning.
‘How did you two meet?’ asked a tall, willowy blonde called Sabine who had mercifully kind eyes and a small child clinging to her legs. Aislin was pretty sure she recognised her and thought she might have once graced the covers of the glossy magazines her old treacherous housemate had liked to buy. Sabine’s husband, a squat French media tycoon, had excused himself for a cigarette.
With the Medusa woman finally out of her eyeline, Aislin lowered her guard. ‘I broke into his father’s cottage and tried to attack him with a showerhead,’ she answered with a grin.
Clearly thinking she was joking, Sabine laughed. ‘That’s one way to make an impression.’
‘She certainly got my attention,’ Dante drawled, thinking Aislin had pitched her answer just right.
‘I can see that. And why did you break into his father’s cottage?’
‘Ah, well, this is where it becomes a little tricky to explain.’ She took a small sip of the champagne she was nursing. ‘We share a sister.’
Sabine’s eyebrows shot up so high they almost met her hairline.
Dante listened to Aislin explain in that humorous, lyrical way of hers the bare facts of their circumstances. She managed to convey it all without laying blame on anyone and by making it seem, without saying the actual words, that it had been inevitable that they would fall in love.
If he didn’t know the truth, he would have been convinced himself.
Sabine turned her attention to him. ‘Have you met Orla?’
‘Not yet,’ he told her smoothly, not adding that he had no intention of meeting her.
A tightness cramped in his guts. He’d given a deliberately non-committal answer to Aislin’s invitation to Finn’s party. He should have given a firm no.
When this weekend was over his life would return to normal and he would forget all about this sister he’d never known existed and had managed perfectly well without. He would have given her enough money from his own funds that he need not feel any more needless guilt.
And he would forget about Aislin too. If she ever became in desperate need of money, she had the ring. She could sell it and find it worth more than the money Orla would get from Aislin’s pure-hearted generosity.
They would all be taken care of and he would carry on with his life.
For this weekend, though, he would take full advantage of the time they had together.
His vow to keep his hands off her and keep things platonic between them had been broken—and, Dio, how it had been broken—and he had no intention of denying himself more of the exquisite joy he’d found with her.
Dante pulled his gaze away from his Irish fox, now talking with real animation to Sabine about Italian medieval history. Dante had known Sabine for years. He’d steered Aislin to her as, of all the women there, she was the most likely to take her under her wing and not treat her as a rival.
He sensed Riccardo’s stare on them and the curiosity behind it. Everyone here was curious about Aislin.
He thought of Lola and the women who had come before her. Forget discussions of medieval history, they would have been too threatened by Sabine’s beauty to delve any deeper than a fake tribute to her outfit. They would have been friendly enough but their claws would have been primed, ready to strike at the first sign of weakness, anything to make a perceived potential rival feel small. Aislin had none of that cattiness.
She had a temper on her, though. Dio, she had fire in her soul that matched the russet of her flame-like hair.
A huge brass gong was brought out to the grounds, its clang ringing through the still spring air.
Dante breathed a sigh of relief. That was the champagne reception done with. Now it was time for dinner.
In a few hours he would make their excuses and take Aislin back to bed.
* * *
The dinner was held in the sumptuous banquet room and the food they were served was delicious and befitting a castle of this magnificence.
Close to a hundred people were seated around a horseshoe-shaped table and it made Aislin’s brain hurt to think double the number would be arriving tomorrow for the wedding itself. As Dante’s guest, she was on the special insider list of guests which consisted of close family and the closest of friends chosen to spend the whole weekend with the happy couple.
A waiter appeared at her shoulder with a fresh cocktail for her. When they had first filled everyone’s wine glasses, Dante had discreetly asked if she could be served something different. Feeling it would totally lower the tone if she had a beer, she’d asked the waiter to come up with something for her. The result was a colourful fruity cocktail that tasted divine. Thankfully, Katrina the Medusa was at the furthest end of the table to her and out of her eyeline, enabling Aislin to relax.
Dante was more relaxed than she’d known him too.
Making love had changed the tone of their relationship. The desire that bound them in its grip had revealed itself in glorious colour. There was nothing left to hide.
Over the seemingly ordinary words they exchanged throughout the meal ran an undercurrent, a seduction, every catch of his eye making her pulse jump, a heady promise in the air of what was to come when this meal was over. Electricity zinged between them. She could feel it as clearly as the beats of her heart. The heat of his thigh pressed against hers lasered through the material of her dress, the effect the same as if she were naked.
She yearned to see him naked.
How many courses had they had? Five or six? She’d lost count.
Lifting her glass to her lips, she took a long drink and put it back down with a trembling hand.
Dear God, she was shaking.
She managed to breathe a little easier a moment later when the efficient serving staff filed back in and laid individual hot chocolate puddings before them all.
Aislin cut into hers and watched the thick chocolate goo spill out.
That chocolate goo was her, she realised helplessly.
Inside she was melting for him.
It was the most delicious dessert she’d ever tasted but she struggled to swallow even a small mouthful.
‘It’s not like you to leave food,’ Dante murmured when she put her spoon down and pushed her plate aside.
She looked into his eyes and searched desperately for a witty retort.
No retort came, only the truth. ‘This is your fault.’
He leaned closer so his warm breath whispered against her earlobe, ‘What is?’
She turned her face slightly so the tip of her nose brushed his cheek and inhaled his musky skin. ‘That I’ve lost my appetite for food.’
‘Do you have an appetite for something else?’
It took all her strength not to dart her tongue out and lick him.
She clenched the insides of her thighs, as if that action would be anywhere near enough to reduce the heat swirling and pulsing in her pelvis. Every cell in her body danced with awareness...
