From Paris With Love Collection - Кэрол Мортимер Mills & Boon e-Book Collections

Скачать книгу

herself lifted, pressed hard against the smooth stone, her body pulsing as her legs encircled him, throbbing with need, anticipating completion.

      Thunder boomed again and lightning rent the sky. She caught sight of his face, wretched, desperate and tortured, and she pulled his face to hers and kissed him so deeply, she knew he must feel her very soul.

      She was lost to the storm going on around her, the storm going on inside, the fury building with the need until he lowered her slowly down.

      She felt his hardness in a nudging press, her muscles working to pull him in; her body ached for completion. And yet he held her there, suspended, for what seemed like for ever as his tongue drove into her mouth, demanding every part of her for his own. Until he let her fall as he pressed inside, her mind blew apart in a raging storm of stars.

      Nothing could ever be better than this.

      The fleeting thought came to her in that one moment of clarity when the world and everything in it was suspended and there existed just this one, intense moment.

      Then he moved inside her and her world threatened to come apart. He was so large she felt that she could not let him go without feeling the suck of his organ on her womb, without feeling the need to have him back inside.

      She was already on the brink. He thrust again and she gasped with the spiralling sensations shuddering around him, and with the next he cried out and buried himself so deep inside her she wondered if he could ever find his way out.

      Her orgasm came in a rolling wave, like the dark clouds had done this day, building and intensifying until there was no way to go but be lost in the thunderclap of her release as she felt him lose himself inside her.

      He carried her to the castle wrapped in the shredded remnants of her dress and his damp shirt; he carried her to his bathroom where they soaped each other in the steamy shower, exploring each other’s bodies, taking the time they had not had before.

      And then he laid her reverently on his bed and acquainted his mouth with every part of her, tasting her, suckling her until she once again cried out, begging for release.

      Afterwards he held her close. ‘I love you,’ she said, and he stilled and kissed her cheek.

      ‘Go to sleep,’ he said, holding her close, his voice a husky promise.

      She snuggled closer. For she knew in her heart that he loved her, even though he still could not bring himself to say the words for whatever reason he must love her.

      She knew it.

      Until she woke in the morning to find him gone.

      There was a letter on his pillow, barely a note, just two short lines:

      I’m sorry.

      Please forgive me.

      And the bottom dropped out of her world.

       CHAPTER TEN

      HE HAD gone. Some time this morning before light, according to Natania who had heard the car, he had left her.

      Why?

      ‘I thought he loved me,’ she said, sitting in Natania’s kitchen, sipping sweet tea.

      ‘I told you this was a bad place. You should leave.’

      Nothing had ever sounded so tempting. But where to go? Back to Paris, and the big empty house? Or Venice, where she would not be welcome if Raoul was there? ‘I don’t know where to go.’

      ‘You have a friend in London. Marco can take you to the airport.’

      She bit her lip, thinking through the options. Wondering how Phillipa’s husband would take the news of her separation so soon after dragging his wife and young baby to Venice for the wedding. ‘I don’t know. I have to call her, see if it’s okay.’

      ‘Call her, then. Or email. There is a computer in the library.’

      ‘You’re right. I’ll book a ticket while I’m at it. Thank you, Natania. I’m sorry that we could not have met in better circumstances.’

      The gypsy woman shook her head, setting the hoops at her ears dancing. ‘It is not your fault. I thought you were the one.’ She sent her gaze in a wide arc. ‘But it is this place. It is what it does to Raoul. It is what it reminds him of. It is a bad place.’

      It was a toxic place as far as Gabriella was concerned. It got worse when she realised the computer was password-protected and she couldn’t even access her email account, let alone book a flight.

      ‘Damn you, Raoul,’ she snarled as she stared at the blinking cursor. On a hunch, she typed ‘Raoul’. No luck.

      ‘Raoul Del Arco’ met with the same ‘invalid password’ response.

      Out of frustration she typed in ‘bastard’, half-expecting that one would work—but then, she rationalised when it didn’t, anyone could have guessed that; it was hardly secure.

      She scanned the desk, looking for somewhere he might have jotted down the password, but the desk was irritatingly paper free. She pulled open a drawer, searching through the papers for something, anything, on which he might have written it down. But she could find nothing and slammed it shut.

      The drawer on the other side got similar treatment. This one was almost empty though; mostly stationery supplies. A few pens. A stapler. A key.

      That drawer got slammed shut too.

      Damn!

      Unless, she thought a moment later, there was a filing cabinet somewhere. She opened the drawer again, picked up the key, which was heavy, despite its small size, and ornately carved. Maybe it was not like any filing-cabinet key she had ever seen before, but then this was Raoul and his filing cabinet was no doubt antique.

      She prowled the library, testing any piece of furniture with a lock, but most were already unlocked and the key did not fit. She studied it in the palm of her hand. Why keep a key that fitted no lock?

      Then she remembered the door at the end of the passageway.

      The locked door. And she wondered …

      What had he done? Raoul drove aimlessly through village after village of simple white stone buildings and small fields set amidst the rocky hills, knowing only that he needed to get away—except there was no getting away from his own black thoughts.

      For he had done the unthinkable. He had done what he had promised himself he would not do. He was supposed to keep her safe; he was supposed to protect her.

      Instead he had given in to his basest self. He had taken advantage of her sweet body, and he had not been able to stop at just once.

      And it didn’t matter that she had provoked him, that she had goaded him with her taunts and her words. Nothing mattered except that he was in the wrong, whichever way he looked at it. He had been in the wrong from the very beginning.

      He had set out to marry her, to do anything it took to keep her and Garbas apart, and he had done that. But in the process he had lost Gabriella.

      You don’t have to love her.

      The old man’s words came back to him. He’d taken the words at face value. They had seemed cold but they had made sense. And he had intended to keep himself apart. He would not love her; he could not afford to, not if he was to set her free.

      He hadn’t meant to love her.

      He pulled the car to a halt near a horreo, a corn shed that looked like a miniature stone cathedral, his palms sweating on the wheel.

      He hadn’t meant to love her.

      But he did.

      He looked at the horreo, reminded of the stone castle where he had brought her and then abandoned her.

Скачать книгу