Virgin On Her Wedding Night

CHAPTER NINE

THE marital bed that lay in the lofty grandeur of the Palazzo Barbieri was not christened that night. Indeed, Valente and Caroline slept in separate bedrooms below the same roof for the first time since they were married.

Caroline’s migraine had settled in with a vengeance by the time they boarded the jet. Her medication had barely taken the edge off the drumming pain in her temples, and she’d been nauseous and wretched during the flight. Valente’s efforts to provide comfort had rolled off her like water off a duck’s back. He was the guy who didn’t love her, and just then she hated him.

There hadn’t been an ounce of forgiveness in her body during that taxing journey. The housekeeper, Maria, had helped her to get into bed when they’d finally arrived at the vast building on the Grand Canal, the mechanics of having to get there across all that water having merely exacerbated her misery. She’d lain there in the shaded room, the pain blinding every other sense, until a softly spoken doctor had arrived in Valente’s unusually unobtrusive company. The doctor had given her an injection that had sent her to sleep, and the last thing she’d recalled was the comforting feel of Koko’s soft trusting furry warmth nestled against her, and the realisation that her pet had finally triumphed over the bedroom ban.

By the following morning Caroline was fine again. Maria informed her that Valente had embarked on his day’s work in the offices on the floor below at seven, and Caroline breakfasted solitarily on a big stone balcony overlooking the world’s most famous waterway.

Early on a bright new day, that glorious, vibrant, unforgettable view of the city stole her heart. The magnificent buildings set against an azure-blue sky and lapped by the canal were rescued from picture-perfect beauty and brought to vivid life by the busy surge of water traffic and the milling crowds in the campo on the opposite bank.

Valente strolled out to join her, Maria bobbing in his wake to pour him coffee. Caroline snatched in a slow steadying breath. As always he looked amazing, sleek and dark and breathtakingly beautiful in a dove-grey designer suit, cut to a perfect fit for his strong, muscular body.

Cradling a cup of black coffee in one hand, he leant back against the ancient stone balustrade, trained liquid dark eyes on her and murmured lazily, ‘Feeling better?’

‘Back to normal, thankfully.’ Even as she looked at him, Caroline was disturbed by an ill-timed recollection of the mind-boggling pleasure he had given her the afternoon before. A dulled ache stirred between her thighs and she shifted uneasily in her seat, her face colouring as agonising awareness washed over her.

‘If you want me to, I will come to England with you, gattina mia,’ Valente informed her smoothly.

Caroline shifted her attention from him to the elegant china on the marble-topped table. Was he taking pity on his pathetic lovelorn wife, who could hardly be looking forward to doing without his divine presence for a few days, or was he just basking in the ego-boosting knowledge that he was adored? Her teeth gritted. She could still barely credit her stupidity in gushing out her love and inviting such humiliation.

‘I’ll be so taken up with Mum and Dad that it would be a waste of your time,’ she declared briskly.

An attractive brunette PA in a business suit put in a contrite appearance, holding a phone. With an apology Valente took the call, spoke at speed in Italian too fast for Caroline to follow, and tossed the phone down on the table.

‘Do you like the view?’ he enquired teasingly, evidently untouched by her assurance that his presence was not required in England.

‘Yes. Now I know why you once told me that you could never live anywhere else in the world but Venice. All this-’ Caroline raised small expressive hands, her appreciation sincere ‘-would be impossible to match.’

Just as she was without match, Valente conceded reluctantly, watching the sunshine gleam over the silvery pale long hair pooling in silken loops over her slight shoulders and then highlight her flawless skin, sparkling eyes and soft pink mouth. Seeing her in his home felt surreal. But such thoughts spooked him, since he was a very practical man. Somewhere-possibly even within the beloved city of his birth, he assured himself-there might well be another woman equally beautiful and possessed of Caroline’s special appeal. That imaginary woman might even be less complex than the woman he had married, and a great deal more entertaining, he told himself in emphatic addition. No woman was irreplaceable or irresistible. Nor had any woman ever been necessary to his comfort and peace of mind. He didn’t need Caroline; no matter how hard she tried to entangle him in her sentimental promises she would fail-because he would never allow a woman to have that much power over him again.

Yet, in spite of those reassuringly cautious reflections, Valente could not stop studying his wife’s attractions, nor seeking to pinpoint the source of them. She did that looking-up-through-the-eyelashes thing that all women did to flirt, yet in spite of her essential innocence there was a curiously sultry gleam of promise in her misty grey gaze that made the fit of Valente’s well-cut trousers uncomfortably tight. He regarded her broodingly from below luxuriant lashes, resenting the fate that would remove her from his bed when he most wanted her there, despising the ache at his groin. It would do him good to cool off without her for a few days.

Her body was already reacting without her volition to the growing heat of Valente’s appraisal. Her nipples were pushing against her green lace bra, her breasts felt constricted in the cups, and her heart was racing. And, angry though she still was with him, she could neither stifle that physical tumult of response nor break the hot connection with his gaze.

Valente reached a sudden decision. There would be plenty of time for him to cool off while she was in England with her family! She was his wife. He didn’t need to practice self-denial now. Who was he trying to impress? He swept up the phone to cancel all his appointments, unmoved by his senior PA’s astonishment at his instruction because business always came first with Valente. But if there had ever been a good excuse for breaking the rules it was Caroline, sitting there, huge pearl-grey eyes pinned to him, a silk top lovingly moulded to her delicate curves, a short floral skirt revealing her long slender legs.

He extended a lean long-fingered hand to her. ‘Come here…’

His charisma proved stronger than her antagonism or her wariness. Quivering with tension, she took his hand and he pulled her close. She buried her head in his shoulder and drank in the gloriously familiar scent of him before she let him walk her back into the palazzo-through the grand drawing room, with its superb Murano glass chandeliers adorned with flowers and cupids, and up the stairs to the remarkable master bedroom suite, with its hand-painted murals of frolicking gods and goddesses.

‘Take off your jacket,’ she told him, standing dead centre of the room.

Amusement gave a dazzling edge to his handsome smile. The jacket was cast aside with a flourish. Caroline undid his tie and began unbuttoning his shirt. Although she was absolutely determined to be a full partner, her hands were a little shaky, and he yanked his shirt out in the same moment that he bent his arrogant dark head and kissed her, long and hard and hungrily, one hand meshed in her hair to hold her still and deepen the penetration of her tongue. Liquid lightning travelled through her, firing up every skin cell with anticipation.

With a hungry groan and a dangerous light in his scorching golden eyes, Valente freed her and stepped back from her. ‘I’m sorry, I must be scaring you, gattina mia. I’m too fired up to be gentle. Perhaps this is not a good idea.’

Caroline stretched her taut shoulders before moving forward, confidence fizzing through her veins like a shot of adrenalin. She wanted to be the same as every other woman. She didn’t want him to hold back and handle her with kid gloves, as if she was precious glass he might crack. She didn’t want him to protect her from his passion. He had already taught her that all cats were not grey in the dark. She had gone way beyond the stage of expecting Valente to hurt her or scare her, as Matthew had once done.

‘I’m not scared any more,’ she whispered urgently. ‘I liked that kiss. I like the feeling that you’re on the edge…’

His burning gaze made her blush, and he urged her back to him with impatient hands, covering her ripe mouth with his while he backed her down on the bed. ‘I’m always on the edge with you,’ he admitted roughly. ‘But if you’re still virgo intacta, I can’t promise that this won’t hurt a little. I don’t know. You’re my first virgin.’

Caroline wanted to be his one and only, his last. But desire and the need to experience what other women took for granted had a headier hold on Caroline than the emotions that had brought her hurt and humiliation only the day before. Her body still humming from the erotic mastery of that kiss, she whispered tautly, ‘I want you, and I don’t want to wait any longer.’

It was all the encouragement that Valente needed. Between kisses he extracted her from her fine silk top, pausing to admire the rigid pink buds already poking through the lace of her bra. His hunger at a tormenting high, he bent her back and suckled those ripe buds through the delicate lace, shifting between one and the other while she gasped and jerked. He pushed up her skirt, parted her thighs, scored his finger down over the taut seam of fabric and felt the dampness there with an earthy groan of satisfaction.

‘I used to dream of having you dressed up in the most expensive lingerie,’ he confided with dark amusement as he released the fastener on her bra. ‘But now I’ve got you in it, I just want to rip it off you again.’

He stripped her naked with very little regard for the longevity of the items, but she didn’t care because he was kissing her in hungry, breathless bursts that made her tingle all over. He addressed his attention to her rose-tipped breasts, sucking on the distended tips until she was almost unbearably aroused. And then, when she thought she could take no more, when she was crying out to be touched, he traced the tender damp folds of her womanhood and parted them to discover her narrow channel. His thumb rubbed the swollen pouting bud below her mound, and from that moment on she was writhing and drowning in sensation so intense it was an exquisite torment.

By the time Valente rolled her under him she was so excited that her every skin cell yearned for the next step. He pushed a pillow under her hips to raise her. ‘You’re very small, and I’m shockingly excited, tesoro mia.’

She was more than ready for the hard, hot probe of his separating the tight wet walls of her most tender flesh. Instinct made her arch back and his passage eased. He sank into her in a long, deep surge of power, and there was a sharp flash of pain which made her tense up and bite her lip. But even that didn’t stop her glorying in the strong feel of him inside her, didn’t stop her tightening her inner muscles and watching his beautiful dark golden eyes semi-close with sexual pleasure.

‘Okay?’ he prompted anxiously.

‘Better than,’ she told him shakily. ‘I like it.’

‘I hope so,’ Valente traded with an erotic smile. ‘I have high hopes of persuading you to repeat this pleasure over and over again.’

And, while she was more than satisfied at the wondrous intimacy of his possession, she was thoroughly stunned by the delight of what happened to her when he began to glide in and out of her eager body. Excitement blazed a trail through her and she clung, surrendering to the hot, drugging pleasure of his every thrust. She cried out at the passionate peak of the orgasm which sent her shooting to the stars.

‘I want to pack you in my suitcase to take back to England,’ Caroline confessed dizzily.

Valente laughed out loud and leant over her to kiss her, smoothing her tumbled hair off her damp brow. ‘I hope that was a compliment, because I found you amazing, belleza mia.’

With every fibre of her being she wanted to hug him and kiss him and express her emotions, but she rigorously suppressed those promptings because they could only embarrass her. There was going to be no more of that nonsense! No more emotional outpourings calculated to stroke his ego!

‘You were amazing too-but then that’s only to be expected with all the experience you’ve had,’ Caroline replied carelessly. ‘At least I don’t need to be afraid of sex any more, and we can have as much fun in bed as you like. After all, it has to be the only thing we have in common.’

Valente was not quite sure how to take that assurance, but he didn’t like the tone of it. ‘We are married,’ he reminded her seriously.

‘Sexually speaking,’ Caroline added. ‘How long will it be before you get bored with me?’

Valente sat up and sent her a flashing glance of censure. ‘I’m not going to get bored with you. You’re my wife!’

‘Does that mean you’re going to be the only lover I ever have?’ Caroline enquired, in a forlorn tone of disappointment.

‘Yes, it bloody well does!’ Valente raked back explosively, and thrust back the bedding to get up. ‘What’s got into you?’

A ferocious desire to wind him up, she might have admitted, had she been in a sympathetic mood-but she wasn’t. ‘You’re the one who told me not to bring sentiment into our marriage.’

‘There’s a fine line between candour and bad taste,’ he spelt out coolly.

‘Would it be bad taste for me to ask who the turquoise wrap at the Villa belonged to?’

His bold bronzed profile tensed. ‘Si, and inappropriate.’

‘Well, I thought it was tacky that the evidence of her occupation wasn’t removed before I arrived,’ Caroline traded.

‘Point taken,’ Valente breathed with sardonic bite. ‘May we now close the subject?’

Caroline slid out of bed. ‘I have packing to do.’

‘Your maid can take care of that-I need you to take care of me,’ Valente murmured huskily.

Caroline, already conscious of the slight ache of discomfort at the heart of her, thought that a repeat bout of lovemaking would be unwise. With a rueful smile she vanished into the bathroom, reflecting that Valente, with his high-voltage energy and powerful libido, would take a good deal of taking care of in the sex department, so it was hardly a source of surprise that women like the turquoise wrap lady featured in his life. Whether it was reasonable or otherwise, Caroline could not help wishing that he had never had a need for other women. She also hoped that, unlike Matthew, Valente did not suffer from an ongoing desire for sexual variety and fresh conquests to satisfy his ego. She was in a marriage where she could afford to take nothing for granted.

She used the rest of the day, with the help of the staff, to set up her workshop in an allocated room at the back of the house. She sorted out her stock, and checked her mail for the first time in a couple of weeks. The little ornamental cats she had once collected sparkled in their gorgeous jewel colours on the windowsill, and she began to wonder how she could design a new line of jewellery with Murano glass. It took her a couple of hours to package the orders from her website and organise their dispatch. It was a wrench to leave the workshop without making anything, for she loved the creative thrill of designing a new piece, but by then it was time for her to get changed for her flight.

Shortly before her departure, Valente discovered her in her workshop. He smiled at the cat ornaments, most of which he had given her, and lingered to take a keen look at the jewellery. He was very impressed, recognising the artistry and design in the well-crafted pieces. With a frown he switched off his mobile phone when it began its insistent ring.

‘You’re always so busy,’ she murmured tautly, tense at the prospect of leaving him, but thinking that with the long work hours he maintained she would hardly be missed.

‘I took almost a month off to be with you in Tuscany,’ he reminded her, framing her cheekbones with long graceful fingers, locking her in stasis by the simple act of focusing his brilliant dark eyes on her. ‘During that time I delegated, and blunders were made. This is pay-back time, belezza mia.’

Her eyes slid shut as he captured her mouth in an intoxicating kiss and suckled her swollen lips with devouring sensuality. Heat curled through her defenceless body, rousing a languorous throb of response in tender places. She couldn’t breathe for longing as he dipped his tongue in a moist sweep of her tender mouth.

‘Enough,’ Valente growled thickly, easing out onto the landing outside the room. Splaying a hand to her spine, he directed her down the magnificent staircase which gave access to his offices from the ground floor.

Her slender body all of a quiver, after that bone-melting kiss that had encouraged her to cling rather than walk away, Caroline negotiated the stairs slowly, for her legs felt as if they didn’t quite belong to the rest of her. There was a woman at the foot of the stairs-a gorgeous redhead with a luscious leggy figure revealed rather than concealed by the neat fit of the white linen dress she wore.

His lean, powerful frame tensing against Caroline’s, Valente turned to say something to his wife as they stepped down into the outrageously grand foyer. Before he could speak, however, the woman neatly stepped between the two of them. Kissing Valente on both cheeks, she addressed him in a flood of Italian before finally sparing a rather mocking glance in Caroline’s direction. ‘I’m Agnese Brunetti, an old friend of Valente’s. Dios mio! You are really tiny! Do you speak Italian?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Of course Valente and I both speak to each other in Veneziano, the local dialect,’ Agnese shared, shooting Valente a rueful chummy smile. ‘We’re members of a very exclusive club. Every year there are fewer and fewer of us able to converse in the old way.’

Caroline was chilled to find herself looking up at the statuesque redhead. Matthew had betrayed her with other women too often for her to be anything other than suspicious of such a bold beauty. She knew instantly, in that strange way a woman could, that she was meeting the owner of the flamboyant silk robe left behind at the Tuscan villa. Still inconsequentially chattering in a mixture of what Caroline could only assume was Veneziano and English, Agnese touched Valente’s sleeve once and his lapel in a second, more lingering demonstration of physical ease, making no attempt to conceal her familiarity with him. On hyper-alert, Caroline picked up on the other woman’s every move and change of expression.

‘I’m sorry, but Caroline has a flight to catch,’ Valente breathed coolly, extracting them at speed from the encounter. He signalled one of his hovering staff and asked him to take Agnese Brunetti up to his office. ‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ he told her.

‘I’ve known Agnese for a long time,’ he added casually as he helped Caroline into the waiting motor launch tied up at the splendid front doors of the palazzo.

In a horizontal manner of speaking, Caroline affixed with an inner shudder of recoil. Agnese was his mistress. Past or present? All the way to the airport Caroline tormented herself with unwise comparisons. The beautiful redhead’s voluptuous curves had reminded her of Matthew’s preferences and made her feel inadequate. Suddenly it was a relief to be travelling back to England, to escape the pressure of her marriage and the humiliation of unrequited love and concentrate instead on her father’s health and her mother’s worries on the same issue.

Joe and Isabel Hales were still staying in a hotel, and Winterwood was in control of the builders, as work on both house and apartment proceeded at a rapid pace.

Having first inspected the impressive renovations taking place at Winterwood, Caroline checked into the same hotel as her parents and accompanied them to the hospital for her father’s admittance. Isabel was beside herself with concern that her husband might die on the operating table, and she needed her daughter to keep her calm.

Joe was in surgery for three hours, but the operation was pronounced a success. And, although her father was weak afterwards, within a few days Caroline could see his strength beginning to return. Valente had already had the brochures of several luxurious convalescent homes sent to Isabel, so that she could choose where she and her husband would stay after Joe was released from hospital. Once that move was made, Caroline began to feel rather superfluous to requirements.

Valente phoned her every day. She wanted to ask about Agnese, but was determined not to sound like some clingy, over-possessive wife, suspicious of every woman who came near her husband.

And yet, in truth, Caroline reckoned that she was. In a loveless marriage it was a challenge for Caroline to believe that one woman could be enough for Valente.

At the end of the second week, Valente flew over from Italy to visit her parents. When he arrived at the convalescent home he had two of his business team in tow, for he had had a couple of business calls to make locally. Joe was asking her husband eager questions about the future for Hales Transport when Caroline arrived and found him there. It amazed her to see how relaxed her parents had become with him. It was hard to believe that just five years earlier they had behaved as though he was Public Enemy Number One. But his generosity towards them, and his care during a time of crisis, had reassured the older couple and given him the status of a trusted family member.

‘So, what are you planning to do about our competitor, Bomark Logistics?’ Joe was asking eagerly when his daughter arrived.

‘I think there’s room for both businesses in the current market,’ Valente responded with care, glancing up to see Caroline in the doorway of the large conservatory where the patients entertained their visitors.

With her pale blonde hair casually pulled back from her lovely face, and wearing a dress the colour of lavender teamed with a short-sleeved cashmere cardigan, she exuded the fresh, natural appeal of a wild flower-and she still took her highly sophisticated husband’s breath away. As arousal stabbed into him like a particularly vicious knife he went rigid, and mentally regrouped from that over-the-top reaction to his first sight of her in thirteen days. She was incredibly pretty-but so were thousands of other women, he instructed himself grimly. He could not, however, prevent his wayward thoughts from reaching a peak of proud satisfaction over the knowledge that she was his wife, and therefore exclusively his. She had let him down badly once, and he would never give her the chance to do that again. But, flawed or otherwise, he was willing to admit that she was the one acquisition he was most proud of.

Caroline said her goodbyes to her parents before her return to Italy with Valente. While she talked to them she stole little glances at her husband, for she had missed his charismatic, unsettling presence more than she would ever have admitted during her visit to her former home. He was far too good-looking and sexually compelling for her peace of mind. All too many nights since they had parted she had lain awake, wondering if he was awake too, if he was experiencing anything like the acute pain of separation that was tormenting her. She had worried that the gorgeous Agnese and all her predatory equivalents would be hovering around Valente, all too keen to offer him sexual consolation. She had feared that he might be tempted. He shot her a brief sidewise glance from dense dark-lashed eyes the colour of caramel toffee and she felt almost sick with longing, her mouth going dry, her heartbeat picking up speed.

‘It’s hard to believe that my parents think the sun rises and sets on you now, but it does make life much more simple,’ Caroline allowed, shaking her head over the meteoric leap in status he had contrived in the senior Haleses’ eyes as she and Valente followed his aides out of the visiting area.

‘But I should have been here with you when Joe had his op,’ Valente breathed in a tone of regret. ‘That was wrong.’

‘My parents know how busy you are, and you’ve been so generous in spite of old history,’ she said gratefully.

‘But business should never come before family. Ettore told me that once, and I should have listened harder. He was so busy making money in order to live like his forebears had lived that his children were like strangers to him. He gave them money and little else, and of course they took advantage. By the time I got to know him his descendants were picking his old bones as clean as a pack of vultures. They all enjoyed riding the gravy train at his expense,’ Valente revealed with a grimace. ‘That was why I agreed to try and steer the Barbieri family fortunes into more profitable waters.’

‘You cared about your grandfather. I’m glad you had that bond with him,’ Caroline said warmly.

Valente winced. ‘He was an honourable man, and was once a shrewd businessman in his own right, but by the time I met him he was going blind and was dangerously dependent on his family. He needed my help because he had learned that he couldn’t trust them any more.’

‘You didn’t seem very close to the cousins who came to our wedding,’ Caroline commented.

‘I’m not. I restored my grandfather’s fortunes, and he changed his will and left his property empire to me instead. You can imagine how popular that made me.’

‘You had rights too, as the son of your grandfather’s eldest child,’ Caroline argued.

‘The title of count, of course, went to my cousin, as he was born within marriage, unlike me, but he was denied the ancestral homes and the money,’ Valente revealed wryly. ‘Ettore didn’t trust him or his sisters to spend what needed to be spent on repairing the properties, and I must admit that I have spent a great deal more conserving them than I originally intended.’

‘How do your relatives live now?’

‘I set some of them up in business, and I employ another few and help out some of the older relations with an allowance. We don’t socialise much. In their eyes, I’ll always be the boy from the backstreet calle who shamed the family by exposing my father’s crime. Only Ettore was able to accept me as I am.’

As they crossed the gravel to the waiting limousine his aides were exchanging files. A gust of wind made one of the files flap open and caught a sheet of paper, which fluttered up into the air and fell down at Caroline’s feet. She stooped to pick it up and the name of the business and the familiar logo printed across the top startled her and made her stare: Bomark Logistics. It was some kind of a report. She passed it back to Valente’s aide without comment and wondered what dealings he had with the rival transport firm which had put Hales out of business. Was he trying to buy it? Take it over? Or was he checking out the opposition by some nefarious means?

That gave her two topics she wanted to discuss with him in some detail: Agnese Brunetti and Bomark logistics. Valente had a dark, secretive Venetian soul, and he fiercely conserved his privacy. She took a deep breath when she got into the limousine and turned to him, but by then he was already on the phone. It would be easier to tackle those topics on the flight back to Italy, she decided ruefully.

But Valente had other more pressing plans…