Sicilian Nights Omnibus (15 page)

She should take the opportunity to shower and wash her hair and ready herself for the evening before Alessandro returned. What would happen tonight? Would they still share this room or, despite all that he had said to Sofia over lunch, would Sofia be the one sharing his bed tonight?

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
S
A
LESSANDRO
HEADED
for the West Tower Suite his mind was on the conversation he had just had with Falcon. He had gone to find his brother, to warn him about what their father had done, and Falcon had been every bit as angry about their father’s surreptitious invitation to Sofia as Alessandro had known he would be.

‘I don’t want her here tonight,’ Alessandro had told Falcon. ‘In fact I’d even go and tell Father that if I’d known she would be here then I would have refused to attend the ball if it weren’t for the fact that he’d be bound to assume that I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as a woman I once loved and lost. The only feelings I have left for Sofia are those of disbelief that I was ever taken in by her, and a certain dislike of admitting that I didn’t recognise what she was in the first place so you had to rescue me from her.’

‘I know that has always rankled, Sandro,’ Falcon had surprised him by saying. And then he had gone on to surprise him even further by adding, ‘I have often regretted my interference, and my inability to control the desire to play the big brother who knew what was best for you. You have always had the most carefully honed instincts of all of us, and it is my belief that in your heart you were already aware of what Sofia really was. But of course in those days my ego did tend to push me into interfering where my interference wasn’t needed. No doubt an attempt to assert my position and to comfort myself that, even though you were an adult, you still needed me. For so long you and Rocco were my
raison d’être
so to speak—the purpose of my determination not to give in to our father. I became very good at telling myself I was doing things for your sakes and not my own, and with your adulthood came the fear of what my purpose in life would be other than my tethered goat status as eldest son and heir. With every step you took towards independence from our father I felt my own status crumble a little more.’

Falcon had reached out and put his hand on Alessandro’s arm in a loving fraternal clasp. ‘I have never said so before, and I have blamed myself many times for not doing so, but I needed you, Sandro—I needed your strength and your support and I was very afraid of losing them. Foolish of me, since those things we shared as boys still bond us together today, even though we seldom speak of them, and I still think of you as my strong right arm, and in fact as my true strength.’

Alessandro stopped in mid-step, as overcome by emotion now as he had been when he had heard Falcon say those words—miraculous, beneficent, humbling words that had filled him with love and given him a truly precious gift.

In answer to Falcon’s emotional speech he had reached out in turn, placing his free hand on Falcon’s arm and clasping it, as Falcon had, so that they were locked together. Then they had released one another and come together in a fierce, loving hug.

‘I have looked up to you all my life, Falcon—and, yes, envied you as well. Not because you are the first-born, and certainly not because of what you will inherit, but because of your great courage and everything that you are. You are my hero, the person I have always longed most to be.’

‘I doubt that your Leonora would be very happy to see the man she obviously loves so much changed in any kind of way. I envy you that, Sandro—a woman who loves you for what you are and not what you have, but also a woman with whom you have so much in common and can share your life. Be happy, my brother, for happiness is the greatest gift life can give us, and it is the one you deserve more than most. We must none of us repeat our father’s mistakes. His bitterness and resentment mark him like a physical brand.’

‘He has accepted now that Antonio did not father a child?’

‘Reluctantly. As you know, I have looked thoroughly into every relationship Antonio had at the time, that would have allowed a child to have been conceived—in the period when he claims the child
was
conceived—even those lasting no more than a matter of hours. The facts prove beyond any doubt that there is no child.’

They had embraced again, but it hadn’t been the breaking down of barriers that had allowed them to reach out to one another and show their love for one another that had occupied Alessandro’s thoughts as much as Falcon’s comments about Leonora. She didn’t love him. Falcon was wrong about that. But they did have a great deal in common, he did desire her and he was certain that she desired him.

What if he suggested to her that they started again as two people who shared a mutual interest and a mutual desire that could, if they chose, go on to the mutual and exclusive intimacy of them becoming lovers who might ultimately commit to one another? Inside his head he had a mental image of the two of them together, of him holding her naked in their shared bed. She was smiling at him, her hair spilling over his body, her expression soft with love and happiness. An extraordinary sense of freedom and joy filled him, softening all the hard, painful edges of doubt and suspicion.

They could be lovers. Lovers who could meet equally in the neutral territory of shared honesty—a territory where they could put aside the contentious issues that kept them apart.

To do that, though, he would have to reveal to her his feelings and his desire, and in doing so risk appearing vulnerable. He would have to be the one who took the first step and showed his need and his weakness. Did he want her enough to take that risk?

As he continued to stride down the corridor, Alessandro knew the answer to his own question.

As for Sofia, he and Falcon had come to a decision to have an immediate message sent to the hotel where Sofia was staying, bluntly telling her that her invitation had been rescinded, and warning her that she would be refused entry if she attempted to attend the ball.

* * *

Their costumes were hanging ready in the dressing room—Alessandro’s that of a fierce Norman warrior and her own that of a Saracen princess. Was she going to be able to get through the evening ahead of them without humiliating herself because of her love for Alessandro? She had felt so desperately jealous this afternoon, forced to sit and watch and listen whilst Sofia flirted with him, knowing that once they had been lovers and that Alessandro probably still loved her now.

She might not be free to announce that she was leaving, but there was one decision she could and had made—and that was that she no longer intended to pursue her dream to work for Alessandro’s airline. How could she, now that she knew how she felt about him? She would never be able to concentrate properly on her work, and if she ever had to fly
him
anywhere she would be so wrought up with longing for him that she simply would not be able to be professional. Her dream was over. The harsh reality of her uninvited and unrequited love had destroyed it.

When Alessandro opened the door into the suite, Leonora was standing by the window, looking out.

‘Checking to see if your spider friend is making a return trip?’ he asked her.

The gently teasing note in his voice brought the swift sting of too-emotional tears to Leonora’s eyes. Blinking fiercely, she half turned round, shaking her head.

‘There’s something I want to discuss with you,’ Alessandro told her. ‘It’s about your desire to work for me.’
And my desire for you
,
he was tempted to say. But he didn’t want to antagonise her by rushing things.

‘I’ve changed my mind about that,’ Leonora told him simply. ‘I don’t want to work for you any more.’
Because I love you too much to bear the pain of seeing you but not being with you.

Her statement was so unexpected and so obviously heartfelt that it made him pause and look searchingly at her. She looked pale and strained.

‘Why not?’

‘I’d really rather not say.’

‘You’ve bombarded me with applications and your CV for two years, and now suddenly, just like that, you don’t want a job with me after all and you won’t say why?’ He shook his head. ‘If this is some kind of change of tactic, designed to make me—’

‘No, it isn’t.’

There was a catch in her voice that checked him. Something was very wrong. She wasn’t simply trying a new strategy.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her. ‘You don’t look well.’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Liar,’ he said, going to her and putting his hands on her shoulders.

He had intended to turn her in to the light, so that he could look at her more closely, but immediately she pulled away from him with a small gasp, retreating into the shadows and then saying too quickly, ‘Our costumes are in the dressing room. You are to be a Norman knight, and I am a Saracen princess according to the labels on them.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘When my family first came to Sicily as Norman knights my ancestor took as his mistress the daughter of the Saracen lord who held this land before he was vanquished.’

Leonora looked at him, and then looked away again, but it was too late. Alessandro had seen the desire in her gaze.

He moved closer to her, wearing his confidence with ease, backing her into a corner as he told her softly, ‘I want us to have a fresh start, Leonora—I want us to be lovers.’

Her heart was a single, tight, unbearable ache inside her chest. To be offered what she so much desired and to know that she must refuse was truly a pain in a class of its own.

‘No.’

‘You want me,’ Alessandro insisted.

‘It must have been a shock for you to see Sofia at lunchtime.’

‘My father would have liked to think so.’

‘She’s the woman you told me about, isn’t she? The one you loved?’

Alessandro frowned. Why were they discussing Sofia, when all he wanted to do was take her in his arms?

‘I may have thought once that I loved her, but I was wrong. And I don’t want to waste time talking about Sofia when I could be holding you.’

She couldn’t bear this. She really couldn’t.

‘No,’ she protested, but Alessandro shook his head and framed her face in his hands, kissing her slowly and thoroughly. When he felt the sweet, sensual shudder grip her he kissed her more deeply, his tongue finding hers, his body closing in on hers.

Please, just let me have this
,
Leonora begged fate. Just these few kisses, and the erotically powerful weight of his body backing her own against the wall whilst his hands slipped from her face to hold her body and shield it from any discomfort. Somehow—how?—her thighs knew how to part for his even whilst her arms wrapped round him. His hands stroked from her back to her breasts, caressing them slowly and rhythmically until she was near mindless with a pleasure that could only demand more, wanting the intimacy of his touch on her bare skin.

She had no words for her need, only the frantic pleading of her lips against his jaw and then his throat, her tongue-tip tasting the male saltiness of his skin and tracing the swell of his Adam’s apple. She pushed away his shirt, her hands trembling as she explored the shape of his back, smoothing her whole hand, palm flat, over his flesh, wanting to absorb the feel of every single cell of him, to commit that sensation to her memory.

She pressed her lips, open and hungry, to the bared vee of flesh exposed by his shirt, burying her face against him, shaking with a need that was as intensely emotional as it was physical. She could feel the swollen hard jut of his sex pressing against her softness. The ache of her own need pierced her, making her want to cry. In her mind’s eye she could see him and feel him, taking that ache to an unbearable intensity with the slow and then fast thrust of his body within her own flesh, soothing it, satisfying it, filling her with a pleasure so perfect that it lifted them both to another dimension.

He was her soul mate. Not a fantasy lover any more, but a real man—far more perfect in every way than the shadowy figure she had once imagined.

The touch of Leonora’s hands and mouth on his skin was pushing Alessandro beyond the limits of his self-control, taking him to a place with a promise of pleasure he’d never known or imagined might exist.

Alessandro tugged up the hem of the T-shirt Leonora had changed into after her shower, pulling it over her head and exposing her braless breasts. Bending his head, he captured one hard, swollen nipple with his lips, caressing it with his tongue-tip as he cupped her other breast in his hand, licking and sucking on her nipple until she was crying out in frantic pleasure. His fingers drew the same delight from her other breast, rendering her mindless and helpless, but when he unfastened the button on her jeans and unzipped them, sliding his hand down over her quivering belly and against her sex, Leonora knew she had to stop him or face the humiliation of him discovering she was a virgin and then rejecting her.

She had to stop him—yes. But please not yet—not now, when he was touching her with such unbelievable erotic intimacy, his fingertip finding the quivering eagerness of her clitoris.

She was velvet and roses, the scent of night and the eternal lure of the tide that moved the sea. She was woman,
his
woman, and he loved her more than he thought possible.

This was too much. She had to stop him now, whilst she was still able. Frantically Leonora pushed at Alessandro’s chest, her heart thudding with a mixture of exertion and unbearable grief, heavy with love and longing, and with the dread of what she must do.

She wanted him to stop. She didn’t want him. She didn’t love him.

Alessandro had thought he knew the meaning of despair and loss, but he realised now he had not known them at all. He could feel his hands trembling as he released her. His throat was raw and his voice harsh as the plea he had promised he would not make burst from his throat in an agonised plea.

‘Why? You want me! I know you do. If this is some game...’

Leonora shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him, but the intimacy they had just shared could not be put aside—and besides, she was incurably honest.

‘It isn’t a game. Yes, I do want you. But you wouldn’t want me if you knew the truth about me. I’m so ashamed. It’s so humiliating. No man would want me if they knew, but especially a man like you.’