She watched him as she moved her tongue against his in erotic invitation. Then she retreated and, in a final siren’s call, brushed her open mouth against his. When she let her head fall back in ostensible surrender, triumph was in her eyes.
Because his needs were coursing through him with an urgency that was just short of uncontrollable, Alessio lowered his mouth to hers slowly, half inch by half inch. His lips hovered over hers, then descended until they were separated by no more than a breath.
Her mouth, as sweet and lush as a ripe peach, beckoned. And still he did not take. Instead he touched his mouth to her full lower lip. Then, his eyes on hers, he drew it into his mouth.
For a moment Bianca stopped breathing with the sheer pleasure of it. She would beg now, she thought as the last rational thought fled her mind. She would make a fool of herself and beg, and she cared not. Because she could not speak, she moaned.
Alessio stilled. Then, knowing that now they were both the vanquished, both the victors, he plunged into her mouth.
They feasted on each other until they were full of each other’s taste. They drank from each other until they were drunk with pleasure.
Their nerves humming, their breathing ragged, they pulled apart, the terrible knowledge in their eyes. They had shared much more than a kiss. They had possessed each other. Possessed each other as surely, as completely as if they had shared the ultimate embrace.
“And you dare to say that you do not belong to me?”
His breath was hot on her face, and Bianca leaned back, uncaring that the rocks bit into her back. She was trembling, but not with weakness. And she needed all her control not to reach for Alessio again. To taste him. To experience the wild surge of his arousal—and hers.
She would never be the same again, she thought as she let her eyes fall closed. Never.
“Answer me, damn you.”
Bianca pulled herself back from the sensual whirlwird where he had flung her. She wanted him so badly that her body ached with the wanting. But could she give up the wealth and power this marriage was offering her for a blaze of passion? How long would it take for the passion to burn itself out and then she would have nothing? All she had to do was look around her to see how transitory passion was.
“No.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I can never belong to you.” Her heart rent in two and began to bleed as she spoke the words, but unused to giving heed to her heart, she did not notice. “And you and I both know it.”
“You dare to deny it?”
“What would you have me do? Break a betrothal signed and sealed?”
“Why did you agree to this accursed betrothal in the first place?” His voice carried both anger and pain. “You knew that we belonged together.” He gripped her shoulders and pulled her against him. “You knew.”
“Agree?” she repeated in a barely audible whisper. “Agree?” The word broke out of her throat in a cry.
“Just how much do you think I had to say about it when Messere Ugo Cornaro sent his go-between to my father? When he not only offered for me despite the paltry dowry but offered my father enough money to rebuild our company to what it was before the pestilence killed the silkworms and almost ruined us?”
Bianca flung up her arms, thrusting Alessio away. “Just how do you think I could have guarded myself against that? What do you think my father would have said if I had told him, ‘I want Alessio Cornaro instead because his body is straight and his face beautiful and I care nothing that he is a pauper and his brother rich as Croesus’? ”
Alessio looked into her eyes for a long time before he spoke. “And you would have agreed to this marriage even if you had had a choice, wouldn’t you?”
Bianca stared back at him in silence.
The rage took him as he recognized the truth. “Wouldn’t you?” he shouted.
Alessio reached for her again, but she shoved him back with a blow to his breastbone that took his breath away.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again.”
Alessio went very still. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.” Because the incredulous, wounded look in his eyes tore at her, she stiffened her back, “Yes, I am,”
“So.” His beautiful mouth curled in contempt. “For wealth and power you are willing to let yourself be ridden by a man deformed in body and spirit?”
“You speak so of your brother?”
“I speak the truth whether I speak of my brother or a stranger.” His eyes turned dull as they rested on her. “And you will marry him.”
Bianca shivered, as if icy fingers had traced their way up her spine, but she raised her head in defiance. “Yes. I will marry Ugo Cornaro, and the wealth and power I will have to help my family and others will sustain me.”
“Forza, madonna, e buona fortuna. Go to it and good luck.” He sketched a bow and extended his arm to her as coolly as he would have to a stranger. “Come, madonna, I will take you back.”
In silence they returned to their mounts. In silence they rode back to the villa.
And, her heart cold and desolate, Bianca wondered how she would bear it.
Chapter Four
By the time they had reached the steep, cypress-lined road that led to the villa, Bianca had managed to turn the bleak desolation that lay upon her soul like a mourning cloak into a bracing anger. Just who did Alessio think he was to treat her like a leper for consciously making the decision to marry Ugo when she would have been forced to accept the marriage whether she wanted it or not? Who did he think he was to make her want him so badly that she would have given herself to him on the beach? Who did he think he was to touch her soul as it had never been touched before with the wounded look in his eyes?
She stole a look at Alessio, who rode beside her in stony silence. What would it have been like, she wondered, to look forward to marriage with this man instead of with his brother? What would it have been like to have a husband whose back was straight, whose face was unmarred? A husband who sent a fevered heat coursing through her blood instead of cold revulsion?
There would be scant difference between the two, she reminded herself grimly, remembering the confidences her friend Cecilia Sandrini had shared with her. The only difference, Cecilia had said, was that the young lover who had seduced her and planted a child in her belly had dragged out the painful ritual of coupling for hours, while her aged husband came to her bed seldom and, when he did, was done in minutes.
But Alessio would have been different, a secret voice inside her whispered. For all his callous words, for all the violence that was as much a part of him as his skin, he had touched her with tenderness. He had coaxed when he simply could have taken. No, she thought as the yearning drifted through her like a beautiful, melancholy song. Alessio would not be a rough or uncaring lover.
Her carefully constructed armor of anger was disintegrating, she realized with a start. And this longing that surfaced from beneath it was something she had never felt before. A longing that had nothing to do with the physical desire that still had her body tingling. The desolation she had felt on the beach crept back, and she fought against it, impatient with this sudden surge of emotions and sensibilities that had never plagued her before today. Emotions and sensibilities that made her vulnerable.
Before today, life had always been simple for her. She’d wanted. She’d taken. It had been as basic as that. And since she had been a small child she’d understood very clearly that power was something she coveted. Yes, for what she could do with it—she thought of the foundlings’ hospital where she had left Cecilia’s baby—but also for its heady taste alone.