Playboy's Lesson (11 page)

His eyes were like black flint. ‘Don’t get me started on the insults because I bet I know a hell of lot more colourful ones than you.’

He pulled her through the hotel foyer, rudely ignoring the obsequious staff member who spoke to him on the way past. He stabbed at the lift button, and as if they dared not disobey him, the doors instantly sprang open. He pulled her in with him and the doors hadn’t even closed again before he pressed her roughly back against the nearest wall as his mouth came crashing down on hers.

It was nothing like his first kiss. It was not a kiss of seduction but of punishment. It wasn’t meant to induce pleasure but pain. It was as if the fury that was buried deep inside him had finally found a leaky outlet. It was gushing forth like a blown pipe, pouring into her with blistering heat.

Somehow her arms ended up around his neck, her body pressed so tightly against his she felt the swollen length of his erection pounding with want against her belly. She tasted blood, somehow knew it was her own, but instead of trying to escape she kissed him back, using her teeth and her tongue and her lips as if this was the last kiss she would ever have.

The passion that rumbled through her was a scary, out of control entity. It was a wild primitive side of herself she was terrified of letting loose but there was nothing she could do to restrain it. Desire streaked along her veins like a river of fire, making her flesh feel vigorously alive.

His hot breath and his sexy coffee-scented saliva mingled with hers as his mouth devoured hers with primal purpose. The faintly musky and erotic scent of arousal haunted the air. Goose bumps of pleasure prickled out over her skin as his tongue tangled with hers, driving deeper into her mouth, making her whimper breathlessly in pleasure.

One of his hard thighs came between hers, rubbing against her intimately, ruthlessly letting her know what he could do to her with just a single stroke of hard male muscle against her throbbing need. She gasped as she felt the tingling of her inner core, the exquisite tightening of her flesh, the greedy desperate little ache of her tissues that were already wet and weeping with want.

But then he suddenly pulled back from her with a muttered imprecation, putting the width of the lift between them. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and then frowned when he saw a small smear of blood on his tanned skin.

His eyes met hers, his expression dark and tight with self-disgust. ‘I’m sorry.’ He grimaced as if it physically pained him to say the words. ‘That was unforgivable.’

Lottie tentatively passed the tip of her tongue over the tiny split in her lower lip. She saw him follow the movement with his gaze, saw the convulsive rise and fall of his throat that signalled his regret even more powerfully than his gruff apology.

But she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him.

Not for kissing her so soundly. But for demonstrating how pathetically weak her resolve was against his practised seduction techniques.

Resolve?
Ha!
What resolve? Armour smarmour. Going into battle with him was like going into a fencing match with a soggy noodle instead of a sword.

Pathetic
.

She
was pathetic.

The lift doors opening gave her the perfect exit cue.

Lottie turned and walked out with her back stiff and her shoulders neatly aligned, her head at an angle even her overly strict childhood deportment tutor would have been proud of.

It would have been a textbook I’m-having-the-last-word-by-saying-nothing exit if she hadn’t stumbled over the carpet on the way out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUCCA RIPPED YET another piece of paper off his sketchpad and scrunching it savagely into a ball, threw it at the wall. It bounced off and landed next to the pyramid of sketches he’d tossed there over the course of the evening.

For the first time in his life he couldn’t get into the zone. Couldn’t centre. Couldn’t
anchor
down.

Drawing was the music of his soul but tonight the band had packed up and left. Throughout his life, whatever emotions he grappled with, whatever demons he wrestled, whatever ghosts he avoided, he did it with pencil or paintbrush. It was his way of purging himself of every foul feeling festering inside him. The meticulous concentration of miniature work calmed him. Whether he was doing the preliminary sketch, or painting with one of his finest brushes while he worked under a large magnifying glass, the painstaking process calmed him like a lullaby does a fractious child.

But not tonight.

He was angry. Angry at himself. Angry for allowing his control to slip.

Lottie had needled him and instead of laughing it off in his usual I-don’t-give-a-damn manner he had reacted. Let her see a side of him he allowed no one to see.

Her little dig about him sponging off his family’s money seriously annoyed him. Who was she to talk? What about all the silver spoons she’d been fed with over the years? It wasn’t as if she had a big career path all mapped out. She lived her life
through
other people. Planning
their
events for
them
. She had no events of her own.

He had a right to his family’s money. The security of wealth made up for the emotional wasteland of his childhood. The loneliness he had suffered. The shame and hurt of not having a mother who had loved him and his siblings enough to stick around. The wretched disappointment when yet another important event at school ended without either of his parents showing up. He would look at all the other children with their proud and indulgent parents sitting in the school auditorium during a formal assembly or awards night or on the sports field. He would search that sea of beaming faces, hoping for a glimpse of his mother, desperately trying to match a face to the Laurent’s painting that hung at Chatsfield House. He would think it each and every time, even though he had no hooks to hang his hopes on: maybe
this
would be the day his mother would return. She would come to see him and Orsino. To cheer them on, to be proud of them, to show she still cared about them. His hopes would mushroom up in his chest until he could barely breathe. But then, like a sharp pin piercing the thin skin of a balloon, his hopes would deflate—flat, useless, empty.

He hadn’t made the most of his schooling. He had acted out his frustration, kicked back at authority, deliberately sabotaged his academic potential as a way of punishing his parents for not caring enough to show even a modicum of interest.

He had been lucky to have Orsino, but a twin was not a parent, and nor were older siblings. Antonio and Lucilla, his eldest brother and sister, had filled in where they could, but like Nicolo, and Franco, the next brothers in line, they had issues of their own to deal with.

And then there was Cara, the baby of the family, who had no memory of their mother at all.

Lucca swore as he dragged his hand over his face. He hated thinking about his family. He hated
thinking
. It stirred up emotions he had long ago buried, shining a bright light on the dark shadows of his hurt. The illumination of his pain made him feel physically ill. He could feel it now...the dead feeling in his muscles, the lethargy that dragged at his limbs. The tightness across his forehead, as if his eyes were being pulled back in their sockets by hot metal wires.

He picked up his phone, scrolled past another couple of missed calls from his brother, but instead of returning the call or distracting himself with social media he found himself scrolling through his photo file instead. He came to the photo of Lottie in the palace gardens. The light had caught the top of her tawny head, dividing her hair into segments like skeins of spun gold. Her skin looked as pure as cream with just a hint of dusky rose on her cheek that was facing the camera. She looked young and innocent, untouched, unsullied by the stain of twenty-first-century humanity.

He picked up a new pencil and turned over a fresh sheet on his sketchpad and started drawing....

* * *

Lottie had been fine about spending the night alone.
Perfectly
fine
. Anyway, it had been
exhausting
doing loads and loads of shopping. It had been enormously liberating to wander about without a bodyguard, especially since no press had discovered her. With Lucca’s cutting remark about her goody-two-shoes personality still ringing in her ears she had bought outfit after outfit in a range of colours and styles just to prove she wasn’t half the coward he thought she was. She couldn’t wait to see his face when he saw her dressed in hot pink and wearing make-up and with her hair loose. Which was why it was kind of annoying he hadn’t made any contact since their little spat.

It wasn’t as if she’d been expecting him to take her out to dinner or a nightclub or anything. Perish the thought! She was perfectly fine about watching old movies on the large-screen television and ordering room service.

It had been very quiet next door, which was both a relief and a surprise. She’d expected to hear a boozy giggle or two as he brought a nameless girl back from a nightclub. She’d strained her ears for the sound of clinking glasses or the murmur of voices, but instead she had heard nothing, which just showed how incredibly soundproof the walls of Chatsfield Hotels were these days.

But when it got to ten the next morning and she still hadn’t heard a peep from next door or received a text from Lucca she started to wonder if he had stayed out all night. She paced the floor of the suite and fumed. How dare he leave her hanging? It would serve him right if he missed his important business meeting due to a massive hangover.

Lottie glanced out of the window and saw a cluster of paparazzi in front of the hotel. There was even a television crew. Her stomach knotted. She had pointedly ignored the newsfeed on her phone and the newspaper that had been delivered in the early hours of the morning and was still hanging in its silk bag on the doorknob outside the suite. She could just imagine what utter rubbish the press were peddling. Fashion Tragic Ice Princess Charlotte Spends Night with Dashing Hot Playboy Lucca Chatsfield in Secret Lust Fest.

She turned away from the window in disgust. She would be laughed at, pilloried as usual. Pitied for being the ugly sister. Cinderella without a handsome prince to take her to the ball.

No one would be running after her with a glass slipper in his hand.

No one would be running after her, period.

No one was even checking on her to see if she was fine about being left all alone for hours on end.

Lottie went over to the adjoining door, staring at the lock she had turned over the day before. She felt an inexplicable compulsion to open it. It was like an out of body experience as she watched her hand reach out and touch the old-fashioned brass key. The shock of cold metal against her fingers wasn’t enough to stop her turning the key with a click that sounded like a rifle shot.

The door was silent as she pushed it open. It didn’t even whisper over the carpet.

The bright morning light from her suite fanned across the room like the V-shaped beam of a searchlight and a muffled expletive sounded.

Lottie’s heart jumped as if it had been jerked by a tractor towrope but she didn’t back away or close the door. The suite was in total disarray. It looked like a tornado had been through it. Or a crazed burglar. There were balls of paper littered over the floor and the bed was a mangled mess of sheets and naked male limbs. No female ones that she could see. Thank God.

‘Get the freaking hell out.’ The words didn’t quite have the sting they should have had. Lucca’s voice sounded flat, listless, as if he didn’t have the energy to spit them out.

‘Are you all right?’

Another curse came out of the strangled sheets. ‘Peachy.’

Lottie pursed her mouth as she came farther into the suite. She stepped over a damp towel, her nose wrinkling in distaste as she caught the sour smell of vomit in the air. ‘Serves you right for going out all night drinking,’ she said. ‘Did you know that excessive amounts of alcohol can actually permanently damage your brain? The repeated bouts of dehydration causes the brain to shrink.’

He lifted his head out from under the pillow he’d been sheltering under and cranked open one bloodshot eye. ‘This is not a hangover. I’m sick.’

She folded her arms like a schoolteacher listening to a naughty pupil’s creative excuse for not completing homework. ‘Sure you are. Copious amounts of alcohol irritates the stomach lining causing acute nausea.’

His head flopped back down to the pillow. ‘Whatever...’

Lottie frowned. He looked dreadfully pale and he appeared to be shivering. She could see the shudders vibrating his body like the rigors of a bad fever. She approached the bed and touched the back of his shoulder. It was roasting hot and damp with beads of sweat. ‘You’ve got a temperature.’

‘You don’t say.’ Sarcasm should have sharpened his tone but it was still flat and toneless.

‘Maybe we should call a doctor.’

‘Maybe you should get the hell out of my room.’

‘There’s no need to be rude just because you’re not feeling well.’

He rolled onto his back, keeping his arm across his eyes as if to block the harsh sunlight. ‘Give me a break, princess. This is not my best look, okay? I just need a couple of hours to sleep this man flu off.’

‘What about your terribly important business appointment?’