One Last Night (11 page)

His head came down, his brandy-scented breath skating over her upturned mouth. 'Do I need to ask, cara?'

She gave him his answer in actions not words. She met his mouth with hers, sliding her tongue to join his in a sexy duel that got more and more heated the longer it continued. She was breathless by the time he had her locked in his arms, her dress in a pool at her feet, her breasts bare and aching for his mouth. She gasped as his lips closed over her tightly budded nipple, the pleasure so acute she felt her senses spin out of control.

The passion became an inferno, consuming everything in its path. There was no time for moving upstairs, no time for lingering over kisses and caresses or murmuring sensuous promises.

Giorgio pressed her down to the carpeted floor, his body joining hers, covering her with his weight balanced on his arms. His mouth came back to hers, taking it in another steamy assault of the senses, thrusting and probing with his tongue in a delicious and erotic mimic of what was to come.

Maya writhed with want beneath him. She wanted him naked and slick with her moisture and his inside her. She wanted to feel that hard pumping of his body she had missed so much. She became totally wanton with her need. She clawed at his clothes, popping buttons and pulling out his belt from its loops like a madwoman on a mission.

He worked on her clothes with a little more finesse, but not much. He kissed each part of her body he exposed, his lips and tongue lighting fires all along her flesh. He feasted on her breasts, sucking and pulling, swirling his tongue around each nipple, making them pucker even further.

Maya took him in her hand, relishing the turgid potency of him. He quivered and throbbed and then tugged her hand off him, pressing her back down and entering her with a stabbing thrust that sent a shockwave of rapture throughout her body.

He immediately checked himself, retreating a little in case he had gone too deep, but she dug her fingers into his buttocks and urged him even deeper. He groaned and thrust again and again, harder and faster, his breathing becoming ragged, fine beads of perspiration springing up over his flesh and hers as she too felt her control slipping in the heat and fire of the moment.

The friction was just right, catching her swollen pearl of need, the secret heart of her that responded to him so wantonly. She arched her spine and gave herself up to the orgasm as it swept her up into its vortex, swirling and tossing her about like a ragdoll. She shook and quaked with the power of it, the reverberations of her body sending Giorgio into his own powerful release. She felt every muscle in his body tense in that split second before he finally unleashed his control. The quick hard pumps of his body spilling hotly into hers made her feel another wave of pleasure, her inner core pulsing with it until she was as limbless and sated as he.

Maya lay beneath him, her heart still hammering with the thrill of having him possess her totally.

She didn't want to talk and spoil the moment. She wanted to cling to this special closeness for, even though she suspected it was more physical than emotional for him, for her it was all about the feelings she had for him, and that was the way it had always been. She couldn't separate the lust from the love like other people did. Even the night of Luca's wedding, when she had fallen into bed with Giorgio, it had been less about lust and more about love.

Fate had brought them back together, fate and circumstances that meant she would have to think very carefully before she took it upon herself to walk away again.

Sabbatini men played for keeps. Losing was not in their vocabulary. Giorgio's relationship with her had nothing to do with love. It was all about pride and ownership and continuing the blue-blooded line of the family.

But that might be the one and only thing Giorgio could not control, even though Maya dearly, longingly, prayerfully wished it were.

THE funeral for Salvatore Sabbatini was large but the service was still deeply meaningful and poignant. Salvatore had lived a good life, a long life marked along the way with a lot of success and a measure of tragedy. Outliving his son Giancarlo was something he had grieved over in his own way, and when Maya saw the PowerPoint presentation Giorgio had put together of his grandfather's life she too, along with most of the other mourners, had to wipe tears from her eyes as she witnessed the moving sweep of his life, from that of a small child to his last days, holding his much anticipated great-grandchild Ella on his knee.

The celebration of his life continued at a private function in the Sabbatini hotel. It was mostly attended by family and close friends but somehow one or two members of the press had sneaked in. While Maya was watching everyone from the sidelines she suddenly found herself face to face with a large camera lens aimed at her.

'Signora Sabbatini,' the paparazzi man said, 'is it true you are expecting a child?'

Maya was caught off guard and, after too long a pause, mumbled, 'No comment.'

'Word has it the child could be that of Howard Herrington, the man you had a brief affair with during your estrangement from your husband. Everyone knows you and your husband had issues with fertility over the past few years. Do you have anything to say about that?'

Giorgio suddenly appeared at Maya's side, his expression infuriated beyond anything she had witnessed before. 'There is absolutely no truth in those rumours,' he said. 'The child is mine; there is no doubt about it and there never has been. Now, leave, before I ask Security to escort you from the premises.'

The journalist sloped off and Giorgio took Maya's elbow and led her to one of the vacant rooms off the main function room. He closed the door and looked down at her with concern etched on his features. 'Are you all right?' he asked. 'I thought you were going to faint for a moment there.'

Maya placed a shaking hand to her forehead. 'I should have been more prepared…I felt like a stranded fish, standing there with my mouth opening and closing before I could think of something to say.'

He rubbed the side of his face with one of his hands. 'I was hoping to avoid this,' he said. 'That's why I wanted to make a proper announcement before the press got in first with their stupid speculation. It's much harder to control the rumours when they come from unknown sources.'

Maya studied his brooding expression for a moment. 'There's no doubt in your mind that this is your child, is there, Giorgio?'

'No, of course not.' He pushed his hair back where it was falling forward. 'Not now.'

'What do you mean, "not now"?' she asked. 'Has something or someone confirmed my side of the story?'

His dark eyes met hers, holding them for a beat or two before he answered. 'I ran into your date, Howard Herringbone.'

Maya didn't bother correcting him this time. 'Ran into him?' she asked with a sceptical lift of her brows. 'I can't imagine under what circumstances you would…' she put her fingers up like quotation marks '…run into him.'

'All right, I admit it,' Giorgio said after a tense pause. 'I tracked him down and paid him a visit.

He confirmed that you and he had met once for a meal that was set up by a mutual friend.'

Maya was beyond anger. She stood with her blood roaring in her ears at his audacity, at his lack of trust, at his arrogance and bullheadedness. 'So you didn't believe me,' she said through tight lips. 'You could only do that when you had confirmation from another source.'

'Think about it from my side, Maya,' he said. 'It would have been the perfect payback. You left me when I failed to get you pregnant. What else was I to think when I discovered you were carrying a child?'

'I didn't just leave you because you failed to get me pregnant,' she shot back. 'I left you because our marriage was dead.'

'Even so, you didn't exactly rush to tell me,' he said. 'I only found out by chance when I opened that drawer in search of a toothbrush.'

'I was going to tell you,' she said.

His expression was cynical. 'When? Like Bronte did to Luca? When the child was over a year old?'

Maya sprang to her new friend's defence. 'That was Luca's fault, not Bronte's. He was the one who cut her from his life without a single explanation as to why. He didn't trust her enough to tell her the truth about his situation.'

'Luca is a very private person,' Giorgio said. 'He didn't even tell his own family what he was going through.'

'I don't want to get into it,' she said. 'They have sorted it out now and are so much in love; how could anyone not be happy for them?'

'I am happy for them,' he said. 'I just know that Luca has missed out on his child's first year of life. No one can make that up to him or to us as his family. We were all cheated of that year. I would never forgive you the way he has done Bronte if you had tried to pull that kind of stunt on me.'

Maya glared at him heatedly. 'How could I have done that when up until now I have never even stayed pregnant longer than a measly six weeks?'

The air rang with the pain of her words, filling every large and small space of the room with its presence.

He took a step towards her. 'Maya…'

She warned him off by folding her arms tightly around her body. 'Don't make this any worse than it already is,' she said. 'You forced me to come back to you to give your grandfather peace in his last days but he's gone now. I don't have to stay with you any longer. You can't force me. I could pack my bags and leave you today and there's nothing you could do to stop me.'

A flash of anger fired in his gaze like the blast of a gun. 'If you leave me this time around, Maya, you will regret it for the rest of your life. I was too easy on you the first time around. I thought you needed space; I thought we both needed it. But this time the gloves will be off. I will take my child off you as soon as it is born and don't for a moment think I couldn't or wouldn't do it.'

Maya swallowed as his hateful words began to sink in. This was no longer a fight for his money, but for his child as well. He would do anything to keep both under his control. She was immaterial to him: just another piece on the chessboard of his life, to move around as he pleased.

If he loved her wouldn't he just have said so to get her to stay with him?

'You are assuming, of course, that this child will be born,' she said in a voice she barely recognised as her own: it sounded hard and bitter and full of ice-cold contempt.

'The doctor is very confident you will deliver a perfectly healthy child this time,' Giorgio said. 'I want that child, Maya. Don't make me take it off you with a long drawn out divorce and custody battle. You should know by now I will not let you win.'

She threw him a flaying look. 'I know you are ruthless and heartless when it comes to getting what you want. You are prepared to lock yourself into a loveless marriage for God knows how many years just so you don't have to give me what I want.'

'It seems to me you don't even know what you want,' he threw back. 'You said you wanted a divorce but as soon as we were thrown together for a few hours you were back in my bed.

Nothing's changed, Maya. You want me. I want you.'

Maya hated that her colour was high. She felt the shame of her capitulation to him all over again.

She was so weak, so wanton when it came to this man. Why couldn't she have better self-control? 'How long do you think this lust fest is going to last?' she asked.

His coal-black eyes glittered as they challenged hers. 'It's lasted pretty well so far,' he said. 'In fact, if there wasn't a crowd of people just outside this door I would take you here and now and prove it.'

Maya felt her body respond with hot wires of need. Her skin broke out in goose bumps at the mere thought of him possessing her the way he had done the night of his grandfather's death.

They had made love every night since, and yet each time it had transcended the prior experience, as if her body was only now coming to full sensual maturity. She had lost so many of her inhibitions; she had enjoyed his body in every way possible.

There was a knock at the door that shattered the sensual spell like a rock on a thin glass window.

Giorgio strode over to the door and tugged it open. 'Yes?' he barked curtly.

'Oh…sorry,' Bronte, Luca's wife, said, blushing. 'I was just looking for Jade Sommerville. I saw her briefly at the funeral but I haven't seen her since. I guess she must have left early or something.'

Giorgio muttered something about not keeping a head count on every guest and how he should not be expected to and, curtly excusing himself, strode out of the room.

Bronte looked across at Maya, who was still standing with her body so stiff it looked as if she were wrapped in cling film and couldn't move. 'Are you OK, Maya?' she asked.

Maya unpeeled her arms from around her body and let out a sigh. 'Sorry about Giorgio being so rude to you just then. He's had a lot on his mind, as you can imagine.'

'I know.' Bronte's voice was softly sympathetic. 'It's such a sad time for the family. And poor Giorgio's had to do so much for so long. No wonder he's a bit tetchy with everyone. But how are you holding up?'

'I'm fine,' Maya said, shifting her gaze a little.

There was a small but telling silence.

'Look, you can tell me if it's none of my business, but I couldn't help noticing things were pretty tense with you and Giorgio just now,' Bronte said. 'Is that just because of the stress he's been under or something else?'

Maya felt her chin start to wobble but quickly got it under control. 'We are having some teething problems, but no doubt we'll sort them out in time. I haven't exactly been the best person to be around just lately. I can't quite let myself believe this baby is going to make it.'

'Oh, Maya.' Bronte came over and hugged her close. 'You poor, poor darling. I know it's hard but you have to think positively. Soon you'll be showing and then I am sure it will feel much more real to you.'

Maya pulled back from the hug after a moment. 'I know; it's just I'm not sure how to handle Giorgio. The thing is, I have never known how to handle him. I can't get close to him, at least not emotionally. He won't let me.'

Bronte frowned. 'You still love him though, don't you?'

'That's the problem,' Maya said on another heartfelt sigh. 'I love him just as much, if not more than I did before.'

'But?'

Maya's eyes met Bronte's concerned ones. 'Giorgio is incapable of love, or at least of showing it.'

Bronte frowned. 'But he must have loved you once. He married you, didn't he?'

Maya's chin wobbled again and she bit down on her lip to steady it. 'Our marriage was not a romantic match, more of an expedient one.'

Bronte's brows went up. 'What on earth do you mean?'

Maya sighed heavily. 'Giorgio and I met just before his father had the accident. I fell in love with him, but he only married me because his family expected it of him, especially once things looked so grim with his father. His goal was to get married and have an heir and I stupidly agreed to it, hoping that one day he would fall in love with me, but of course he didn't. We made each other positively miserable, especially when it became pretty clear I wasn't going to fulfil my end of the arrangement in producing an heir and a spare on schedule.'

'Oh, Maya,' Bronte said again, clearly lost for words.

'We're only back together because of Salvatore dying and, of course, the baby,' Maya went on. 'If it hadn't been for this pregnancy, we would be apart now that Salvatore is gone. Giorgio was as keen to move on with his life as I was to move on with mine.'

Bronte's expression looked pinched with pity. 'Oh, dear…You surely don't think he has someone else? You know, like a mistress or something?'

Maya thought of that svelte lingerie model and pain sliced through her like the blade of a scimitar. 'I don't know…maybe…I hope not…'

Bronte put a gentle hand on Maya's arm. 'Do you want me to have a word with Luca about it to see if he can talk to Giorgio?'

Maya shook her head. 'No, please don't involve Luca or anyone else in this. Giorgio and I have to sort it out ourselves.'

'Give it time, Maya,' Bronte advised. 'A lot of stuff has happened over a short period of time.

From what I've seen, Giorgio takes on a lot of the stress for other people. I guess that comes from being the oldest brother. Once things settle down a bit he might see things differently. He certainly looks and acts like he cares about you. Luca and I were only discussing it the other day.

Giorgio is so protective of you, making sure you get enough rest and don't do too much. He was absolutely furious with us for allowing you to sit with Salvatore for several hours the week before he died-you know, the day I had my doctor's appointment? He said you were only to be allowed to take short shifts. I was quite frightened of him but Luca assured me it was because he really cares about you and the baby.'

The door opened and Luca came in carrying a fractious Ella. 'Ah, here she is,' he said, winking at Bronte. 'Here's Mummy.'

'Mum Mum,' Ella wailed piteously and reached out her little arms for Bronte.