Sicilian Nights Omnibus (16 page)

Tears thickened her voice.

What had she done? What secrets were there in her past that caused her such shame?

‘If there have been others then that is only natural. But—’

Leonora started to laugh almost hysterically. She couldn’t help it.

‘Of course it is only natural. That’s the whole point. There
haven’t
been any others. I am not natural. I’m
unnatural
.
What else can I be when I’m still a virgin?’

The air in the room seemed to thicken and go still. Alessandro looked at her, his heartbeat thudding, quickening from arousal to disbelief.

‘You’re a virgin?’

‘Yes,’ Leonora told him in a brittle voice, tossing her head. The defensive tomboy was stirring back to life. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? Perhaps I should wear a sign saying “Men beware. Virgin at large”. It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything. I know how you feel. After all no man of your experience wants to go to bed with a virgin past her sell-by date. You want a woman you can enjoy having sex with—someone who can pleasure you as much as you can her. Not a...a woman like me who isn’t even a proper woman...’

A virgin. She was a virgin. And she was hurting because of it, fearing his mockery and his rejection.

‘You’re right,’ he told her softly. ‘I
do
want a woman in my bed I can enjoy having sex with—a woman who can pleasure me as much as I intend to pleasure her, a woman who loves and desires me as much as I do her.’

He reached for her hand and she let him take it, unable to do anything other than let the pain roll down over her, crushing her and yet leaving her alive to experience even more pain.

‘You
are
that woman, Leonora—my woman.’

‘No,’ she protested, not daring to believe him and certain that what he was saying was some kind of cruel joke.

‘Yes.’

‘But I’m not sensual, or skilled, or experienced like Sofia.’

Alessandro made a dismissive contemptuous sound deep in his throat. ‘Sofia is as hard as nails and just about as sensual. True sensuality does not come from sexual experience but from within, from being with a partner who arouses it and shares it. Falcon was saying to me earlier how much he envies me because you and I share so much in common. I am not a virgin, but there is within me because of my childhood a desire—a need, in fact—to know that what is mine belongs only to me. Had you had ten lovers or a hundred it could not and would not have changed my love for you. But knowing that you have not, and that you will be exclusively mine, is a gift I never hoped to have. It is a soothing balm against a running sore within my psyche, the existence of which I have never been able to admit to myself until now, never mind to anyone else. Knowing I will not have to compete with any other man in your past...’ Alessandro shook his head. ‘I am ashamed to admit these things to you because of what they say about me.’

‘No, you mustn’t be,’ Leonora assured him.

She
did
understand. She knew what he was revealing to her didn’t spring from mere male ego or vanity but instead was something that went much deeper—a vulnerability within him, some might say a flaw, that only made him all the more human and loveable to her.

Even as her heart sang with the revelation that he loved her, she said, ‘I don’t want to disappoint you.’

‘You will never disappoint me.’

He undressed her slowly and tenderly, encouraging her to undress him and then touch him, taking pleasure in her pleasure, taking time to reassure her. And in the end she was the one who urged him to possess her, crying out as she arched up against him, wrapping her long slim legs around him, her body knowing instinctively what it wanted from him and how to elicit it.

He thrust into her carefully, with the pad of his thumb finding her clitoris and caressing it as the pace of his rhythmic thrusts increased. Leonora clung to him, her breathing fast and shallow, her chest flushed with sexual desire, her whole being focused on their shared pleasure.

The convulsions began as he thrust deeper, making her cry out to him, imploring urgently, ‘Deeper, Alessandro. Deeper and harder—yes, like that. Just like that.’

The convulsions gripped tighter and the thrust of his flesh within her own carried her over the threshold into full womanhood without her knowing anything other than the spiralling exploding miracle of her orgasm and the rhythmic surge that took him to his own completion.

Breathless, satiated, brimming over with joy and triumph, Leonora clung to Alessandro’s naked and sweat-slick body, her head resting on his shoulder whilst her heartbeat raced, her heart itself filled to overflowing with the strength and the power of her love for him.

Never had she imagined that she might feel so blessed, so complete. There was no past nor any future, no doubt and no fear, only the wonderful and perfect rightness of the shared here and now.

She reached up and touched Alessandro’s face, her own illuminated with all that she was feeling.

Alessandro was looking down at her, his face shadowed.

Her ‘thank you’ lilted, caught with the sweetness of her joy.

‘We should get ready for the ball, otherwise we’re going to be late,’ Alessandro warned her, withdrawing from her, knowing that if he didn’t it was unlikely they would put in an appearance at all. ‘I don’t want to let Falcon down.’

‘No, of course not,’ Leonora agreed valiantly.

She wasn’t going to allow herself to feel disappointed or to regret anything just because he hadn’t said anything about them sharing a future. It would be naive of her to think that his words of love to her earlier had been intended as a commitment. She must just be happy with what she had with him now, the fact that he loved her now, and not think about anything else.

* * *

Two hours later, with Alessandro on one side of his father and Falcon on the other, as she stood with Alessandro in the receiving line, greeting the arriving guests, Leonora was torn between pride and pain. Pride because she was Alessandro’s, and pain because she knew that their shared time together might only be short.

The last of the guests had been received and welcomed. The quartet who had been playing in the background went to join the rest of the musicians in a specially designed alcove in the ballroom. The ballroom itself shimmered in the light of dozens of candles in elegant silver-gilt candelabra on the walls between the matching silver-gilt-framed mirrors. The scent of the white lilies and the greenery that made up the stunningly beautiful floral decorations filled the air.

The musicians struck up the first notes of a waltz and the guests, who had fallen back towards the walls, to leave the length of the ballroom floor free, turned expectantly to look towards their hosts. To Leonora’s surprise, Alessandro turned to her, making her a small, formal half-bow.

He looked magnificent, in a medieval-style tunic of crimson cloth embroidered with the Leopardi arms worn over a grey undershirt, and a short cloak of scarlet lined with gold flowing from his shoulders. On a man of less male and athletic build such a costume would have looked ridiculous, but on Alessandro it looked magnificent. He was the first Leopardi, the powerful virile conqueror who had captured her heart and demanded his right to her body.

Leonora felt the breath lock in her lungs as he reached for her hand. Her own costume of several layers of the sheerest silk in varying shades of gold and bronze seemed to move with the thud of her heart. Eyes downcast, she allowed Alessandro to lead her onto the floor, hesitating only when he fully claimed her, taking her into his arms. Her gaze flew to his and she felt her body trembling as though she really was the Saracen princess whose virginity he had taken—as though in giving him her hand in public view she was like that princess, allowing him to show his people that he had claimed her for himself.

They danced alone, and Leonora was more conscious of the intimacy of his hold and her own fierce longing for it than she was of the whispered comments of their audience. Her gaze never left his face, her every breath saying how completely and proudly she had given herself to him and how totally she trusted him.

Alessandro drew her closer. She was
his
. He had claimed her in the privacy of his bed, and now he was claiming her in public.

* * *

After they had finished dancing, and the guests had clapped their performance enthusiastically, the musicians struck up again and the floor filled with dancers, allowing Alessandro to talk briefly and politely with some of the guests, whilst always keeping Leonora at his side.

For Leonora the evening passed in a daze of golden joy, highlighted by precious private moments carefully stored in her memory.

She must have talked, eaten, drunk at least some of the champagne she had been served, although she had no real recollection of doing so. All she knew and all she wanted to know was Alessandro.

‘It will soon be midnight,’ he told her, ‘and Falcon is planning to make an important announcement. It’s been too long since I kissed you. Will you be cold if we go out on the terrace?’

Leonora shook her head. What did it matter how cold she might be if Alessandro wanted to kiss her?

The doors to the terrace were locked, but Alessandro had the key, and Leonora noticed that he locked the doors behind them, so that they wouldn’t be interrupted. The sky was so clear that she felt she could almost have reached out and touched the stars.

‘You look lovely. You
are
lovely, Leonora—in every single way. I felt so proud tonight, having you at my side.’

‘No. I was the one who felt proud to be with you,’ Leonora told him.

She could see him smiling as he drew her close and kissed her, slowly and tenderly.

‘I wish we could go back to our room,’ Leonora whispered.

‘You’re a temptress—you know that, don’t you?’ Alessandro’s voice was thick with passion. He squeezed her hand and told her, almost unsteadily, ‘You remember I told you that my ancestor took the daughter of the Saracen he had vanquished as his mistress?’

Leonora nodded her head.

‘What I didn’t get round to telling you,’ he informed her, shifting her weight in his arms so that he could look down into her face, ‘was that he also made her his wife. You see, he fell in love with her—just as I have done with you. Marry me, Leonora.’

‘You want to
marry
me?’

‘Yes. And you’ve got exactly five minutes to make up your mind, because if the answer is no then I shall have to find Falcon and stop him announcing our engagement. I told him earlier that I love you, and that I want you to be my wife, and I can’t think of any better way to tell the world than to make an announcement here tonight of our commitment to one another. If you are willing?’

She pretended to look grave.

‘There’s a condition,’ she warned him.

Alessandro didn’t care. She could make any condition she liked—including insisting on being the one to fly them when they travelled. All that mattered to him now was that she was his. She completed him, made him whole, and he had been a fool not to realise that the very first time he had read her job application and looked at her photograph.

‘Mmm,’ he murmured, as he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm and then each finger in turn. ‘What condition?’

‘You must promise never,
ever
to tell my brothers about that spider.’

‘What spider?’

‘And I want us to have an even number of children so that there is no middle child.’

‘Two, you mean?’

‘Or four, or maybe even six.’

It was two minutes to midnight. Just enough time for Alessandro to kiss her with fierce exultation and commitment, and then reach into his pocket for a worn leather jeweller’s box.

‘If you don’t like this then you shall have something else of your own choice,’ Alessandro told her, opening the box. ‘But this ring belonged to my great-great-grandmother on my mother’s side. It is said that she married the man she loved and that their marriage was long and happy.’

The flawless single diamond on a plain gold band caught the light and captured it, holding it deep in its heart.

‘It’s beautiful and I love it,’ Leonora told him truthfully.

When Alessandro slid it onto her finger the gold felt warm, almost caressing her finger, making her feel it was a true symbol of their love.

There was just time for one more all too brief kiss, and then Alessandro was guiding her back into the ballroom. Waiters were already circulating with trays holding glasses of champagne, and Falcon was waiting to lead them into the centre of the room.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Honoured friends and guests. It is my delight and my privilege to announce the engagement of my brother Alessandro Leopardi to Miss Leonora Thaxton. Please raise your glasses with me to Alessandro and to his wife-to-be, Leonora.’

When Alessandro held out his own glass to her, in a symbolic gesture of intimacy and promise, so that she could drink from it, Leonora trembled from head to foot with happiness.

‘Your father is watching us,’ Leonora whispered.

Alessandro turned his head to look at him.

‘He looks so old and alone,’ Leonora told him.

‘Yes, but it is a situation of his own making. I don’t want to talk about the past. I want to live in the present and in the future—with you, Leonora. I love you so much.’

‘And I you.’

Leonora’s breath quickened. Suddenly all she wanted was for them to be able to slip away to the privacy of their suite, where they could make their vows of love to one another in private.

Falcon watched them. It was obvious that they were madly in love with one another. Alessandro had eyes only for Leonora and she for him. Both his brothers had found love and wanted nothing more than to marry the women who had claimed their hearts. Falcon found it not just hard but virtually impossible to imagine that
he
would ever fall in love—even though he accepted that it was his duty to marry and sire an heir...

* * * * *

The Sicilian’s
Baby Bargain