you-’
The next moment the world was transformed into a different place as he slowly entered her, and she became his. But she had always been his. If she’d doubted it before she knew it now. She held him tightly, feeling the pleasure mount high and then higher until the world dissolved. Then she was nothing, only heat and darkness and whispered words that she didn’t understand, except that they came from the man who had become one with her and made her one with him.
When it was over he didn’t release her, but held on as though he was afraid she would slip away. But she didn’t want to slip away. She wanted to stay here for ever. She fell easily into a sweet sleep, but awoke an hour later to find him watching her. He smiled and cradled her until she slept again. The last thought in her mind was the memory of his eyes, brooding, watching, never letting her go.
It was too late in the year for a honeymoon on the boat, so they went to the airport the next morning. Angie came with them. Bernardo was still implacable and she was going home. They saw her off to England before catching the flight to Rome. After that they were going on to Paris. It was partly a working trip, as they visited their biggest customers, but Heather enjoyed becoming part of the business. In Paris they toured the couturiers and she acquired a new wardrobe that she wore for entertaining Renato’s customers in the evenings. French was one of the languages she’d studied, hoping to rise in Gossways, and she spoke it well enough to get by.
‘I shall start getting suspicious,’ Renato said as they got undressed in their suite at the Hyatt Regency. ‘I keep getting too many compliments about
‘I’m just trying to do you credit.’
‘Hm!’ His tone was deeply cynical and she chuckled. He was helping her off with a little black number she’d worn for the first time that night, but something provocative in her laugh made his hands move faster, more determinedly. The next moment the little black dress was lying in ruins on the floor and she was in his arms.
‘Renato-’
‘Shut up, I’ll buy you another,’ was the last thing he said before he silenced both of them. And in a few seconds the movement of his lips and hands had driven all else from her mind.
After their first lovemaking she had slipped easily into the rhythm of passion, so that she found herself wanting him at all times, day or night. At first her own eagerness embarrassed her slightly, but that soon passed, and with every day she learned something new about physical love.
She knew that she pleased him as much as he pleased her because nothing was too good for her. He rarely spoke of feelings, never his own. Nor did he often say a word to her that opened doors into his mind. But she had only to express a wish to have it granted.
Once he said a strange thing. As she sat looking at yet another gift of jewellery, he said abruptly, ‘You think I overdo it, don’t you?’
Thinking only to tease him she joked, ‘Not at all. After all, you did once offer me twenty thousand to sleep with you.’
But she regretted it when she saw his brows snap. Renato wasn’t without a sense of humour, but he found it hard to laugh at himself. He didn’t vent his displeasure on her, but he grew quiet in a way she was learning meant that he was upset. And when she said, ‘I was only teasing,’ he brightened too quickly.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m just in a strange mood. Where shall we eat?’
After which the subject was closed, despite all her efforts to raise it and put things right. Nor did she ever wear the jewellery because every time she tried he found fault with her appearance, until it had to be abandoned.
Jewellery was the least of it. Soon after they returned to Sicily she happened to mention the day she’d arrived, when he’d told her Lorenzo was soon flying to New York.
‘I was going to turn my pea shooter onto you, but then you said I was going too, so I had to put my pea shooter away.’
‘You fancied New York?’
‘I’ll say. That’s one of the really annoying things about you-’
‘Among so many-’
‘Definitely-the way you take the wind out of my sails when I’m getting good and mad at you.’
They were in bed, relaxing after making love. He grinned at her, curled up in the crook of his arm. ‘You enjoy getting mad at me, don’t you?’
‘It’s one of my more enjoyable hobbies, yes.’
‘Go on looking at me out of those glittering eyes. It gives me pleasurable thoughts and makes all the effort of landing you worth it.’
‘Landing me? I’m not a fish.’
‘But you were a challenge.’
‘Yes, I know some of the devious methods you used. You were supposed to be persuading Gossways to take me back on the programme, but you never called them.’
Something in his silence told her the monstrous truth. ‘It’s worse than that, isn’t it?’ she demanded, sitting up sharply. ‘You called some buddy among the big shots and made him promise
‘I admit nothing.’
‘You don’t need to…’
‘You’ve got smoke coming out of your ears again.’ He sat up and reached for her. ‘Very pretty smoke, mind you…’ The last words were muffled as she thumped him with a pillow hard enough to send him right off the bed. He grabbed her as he went, and they ended up on the floor together.
‘I thought if I could make you mad enough with me-’ he tried to explain as he grappled with her wriggling body ‘-you’d marry me just for the pleasure of-in my mother’s charming phrase-kicking my shins every day. Ouch!’
‘Oh, stop making a fuss. I only used my bare foot.’
She managed to get free and climb back onto the bed, but he followed her, pinning her down. She looked up at his face, furious, her breasts rising and falling. ‘I’m warning you Renato, I’m good ’n’ mad.’
‘I know. I’ve just got a fresh bruise to prove it.’
‘Let go of me.’
‘When we’ve had a talk about this-’ His eyes roved over her nakedness, and his speech slowed as though something had distracted him. ‘It’s-important to talk,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what-’ his gaze seemed riveted by the sight of her nipples, rosy and expectant ‘-that’s what-good marriages-are made of-’
‘Talking?’ she said breathlessly.
‘Confidence between-’ his fingertips brushed one nipple ‘-husband and wife-trust-where was I?’
‘Trust-’ she gasped.
‘Trust-and shared values-honour-’
‘Honour? You? The most devious, conniving, manipulative-
‘I wasn’t going to,’ he whispered against her skin, continuing the work that had driven her half wild. After that there were no more words, no thoughts, just sensations, need and blinding nothingness. The end was explosive enough to blot out the world, leaving only heat and swirling darkness, and somewhere a man with strong arms and powerful loins to bring her joy.
In a sense that was just the trouble. There was joy, bliss, ecstasy, but not precisely happiness. Not unhappiness either, for how could any bride be unhappy with a husband who gave her all his attention and took her to new lands of sensation she’d never dreamed of before? But not to be unhappy wasn’t the same as being happy. Especially when she realised that sometimes he would use their sexual harmony to distract her from subjects he wanted to avoid.
She never gave their conversation another thought until a week later he put the tickets for New York into her hands.
‘What’s this?’ she gasped.
‘Call it a second honeymoon.’
‘But we’ve barely got back from our first.’
He shrugged. ‘I have business in New York. Of course, if you don’t want to come-’ He reached for the tickets but she seized them and backed away, laughing.
They were in New York for a week, and although he looked in on the odd customer, it never seemed to Heather
