Mistress Arrangements: Passion's Mistress / Desert Mistress / Mistress by Arrangement

‘And is she still based in Perth?’ Carly pursued unrepentantly. ‘Or has she also moved to Sydney?’

‘Sydney.’

‘I see,’ she said dully, and wondered at her own stupidity in querying if the relationship between Stefano and Angelica still existed. It hadn’t ceased and probably never would.

‘Do you?’ Stefano queried, and she smiled with infinite sadness, all the fight in her suddenly gone.

‘Oh, yes,’ she assented wearily. ‘I was way out of my league right from the beginning.’

‘You should have stayed and fought the battle.’ He sounded impossibly cynical, and it rankled unbearably.

‘I tried.’ Dear lord, how she’d tried. But one battle didn’t win the war, as she had discovered to her cost. Carly tilted her head at a proud angle. ‘Being figuratively savaged by a female predator held no appeal. I much preferred to retreat with dignity.’ Her eyes were remarkably clear. ‘Besides, it’s impossible to lose what you never had.’

‘I willingly slid a ring on your finger, and pledged my devotion.’ His voice held a soft drawling quality that sent shivers scudding down the length of her spine. ‘Was your faith in me so lacking that there was no room for trust?’

The entire conversation had undergone a remarkable change, and she wasn’t comfortable with its passage. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she responded slowly, aware of the tug at her heartstrings, the ecstasy as much as the agony of having loved him. ‘Your concept of marriage was different from mine.’

‘You’re so sure of that?’

A lump rose unbidden in her throat—she doubted her voice could surmount it—and a great weariness settled down on to her young shoulders, making her feel suddenly tired.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to shower and go to bed.’

‘Enjoy your solitude, cara,’ Stefano told her with soft mockery. ‘I have a few international calls to make.’ His expression was veiled, making it impossible to detect his mood, and she watched as he walked to the door, then he turned towards her.

‘Incidentally, I’ve located a reputable breeder who will deliver Ann-Marie’s poodle late tomorrow afternoon.’ He paused, a faint smile tugging his lips at her surprise. ‘A house-trained young female, black, with impeccable manners, who answers to Françoise. I’ll see that I’m home to ensure she has a proper introduction to Prince.’

He opened the door, then closed it quietly behind him before Carly had a chance to say so much as a word.

He was an enigma, she decided as she became caught up in a maelstrom of contrary emotions. There was a sense of unresolved hostility, an inner need that bordered on obsession, to get beneath his skin and test the strength of his anger.

Or his passion, her subconscious mind taunted mercilessly. Wasn’t that what she really wanted?

No. The silent scream rose in her throat, threatening, agonising in its intensity, and she gazed sightlessly around the room for several seconds as she attempted to focus on something—anything—that would rationalise her feelings.

All she could see were the two pieces of furniture that totally dominated the large room. Two queensize beds, each expensively quilted in delicately muted matching colours that complemented the suite’s elegant furnishings.

A leisurely shower would surely ease some of her emotional tension, she rationalised as she stripped off her outer clothes, wound the length of her hair into a knot atop her head, and stepped beneath the therapeutic warm spray.

Ten minutes later she stood before the mirror clad in a towelling robe, her hair brushed and confined into a single braid. Her features were too pale, she decided, and with a slight shrug she transferred her gaze to the opulence of her surroundings.

It provided an all too vivid reminder of another house, in another city, and another time. Then, she’d followed her heart, so totally enthralled with the man she had married that every hour apart from him was an agonising torment.

In those days she’d behaved like a love-crazed fool, she reflected a trifle grimly. So young, so incredibly naïve, aching all day for the evening hours she could spend in his arms.

Beautiful, soul-shaking hours filled with a lovemaking so incredibly passionate that she would often wake trembling at the thought that she might lose him and have it end.

Carly studied her reflection, seeing the subtle changes seven years had wrought. Her eyes lacked the luminescent lustre of love, and held an elusive quality that bore evidence of a maturity gained from the responsibility of caring emotionally and financially for herself and her child. Any hint of naïveté had long since departed, and there was an inherent strength apparent, an inner determination to succeed. There was also pain, buried so deep within her that she rarely allowed it to emerge.

Now she had to fight against the memories that rose hauntingly to the surface, each one a separate entity jealously guarded like a rare and precious jewel.

If she closed her eyes she could almost imagine that seven years had never passed, that any moment Stefano would step behind her and slowly, erotically tease her tender nape with a trail of lingering kisses, then gently slide the robe from her shoulders, and extend the physical sense of touching that had begun hours before over dinner with the veiled promise of passion in the depths of those dark eyes. The shared flute of wine; a morsel of food proffered from his plate; the deliberate lingering over coffee and liqueurs, almost as if they were delaying the moment when they’d rise leisurely to their feet and go upstairs to bed.

Even then, they’d rarely hurried, and only once could she recall him being so swept away that he’d lost control, kissing her with such savage hunger that she’d responded in kind, evincing no protest as he’d swiftly slaked his desire. Afterwards he’d enfolded her close in his arms, then he’d made love to her with such exquisite gentleness that she’d been unable to still the soft flow of silent tears.

Carly blinked, then shook her head faintly in an effort to clear away any further treacherous recollection from the past. Yet it wouldn’t quite submerge, and she gazed sightlessly into the mirror as she pondered what Stefano’s reaction had been when he’d discovered she’d left him.

Good grief! What are you? she demanded of her reflected image. A masochist? He didn’t choose to instigate a search to discover your whereabouts, and in all probability he was pleased to be relieved of a neurotic young wife who warred with him over his indiscretions.

Damn. The silent curse whispered past her lips, and with a gesture of disgust she turned off the light and moved into the bedroom.

There was no purpose to damaging introspection, she resolved as she slid into bed. She was an adult, and, if he could handle spending the night hours lying in another bed in the same room, then so could she.

The challenge was to fall asleep before he entered the bedroom, rather than afterwards, and despite feeling tired it proved impossible to slip into a state of somnolent oblivion.

How long she lay awake she had no idea, but it seemed hours before she heard the faint click of the bedroom door as it unlatched, followed by another as it was quietly closed.

Every nerve-end tautened to its furthest limit as she heard the indistinct sound of clothing being discarded, and she unconsciously held her breath as she visualised each and every one of his movements, her memory of his tightly muscled naked frame intensely vivid from the breadth of shoulder to his slim waist, the whorls of dark hair on his chest that arrowed down to his navel before feathering in a delicate line to a flaring montage at the junction of his loins. Firmmuscled buttocks, lean hips, and an enviable length of strong muscled legs. Beautiful smooth skin, a warm shield for the blood that pulsed through his veins and entwined with honed muscle and sinew.

It was a body she had come to know as intimately as her own as he had tutored her where to touch, when to brush feather-light strokes that had made him catch his breath, and how the touch of her lips, her tongue, could drive him almost beyond the edge of sensual sanity.

But it had been little in comparison to the response he was able to evoke in her, for all her senses had leapt with fire at his slightest touch, and she had become a willing wanton in his arms, encouraging everything he chose to give, like a wild untamed being in the throes of unbelievable ecstasy. Abandoned, exultant—passion’s mistress.

Carly closed her eyes, tight, then slowly opened them again. Dear lord, she must have been insane to imagine she could share this room with him and remain unaffected by his presence.

Was this some form of diabolical revenge he’d deliberately chosen? Did he really intend to sleep?

The acute awareness was still there, a haunting pleasurable ache that fired all her senses and ate into her soul. In the past seven years there hadn’t been a night when she didn’t think of him, and many a time she’d woken shaking at the intensity of her dreaming, almost afraid in those few seconds of regained consciousness that she had somehow regressed into the past. Then she would look at the empty pillow beside her and realise it had all been a relayed figment of her overstimulated imagination.

Several feet separated each bed, yet the distance could have been a yawning chasm ten times that magnitude. Carly heard the almost undetectable sound of the mattress depressing with Stefano’s weight as he slid in between the sheets, followed by the slowly decreasing rhythm of his breathing as it steadied into a deep, regular beat denoting total relaxation.

It seemed unbelievable that he could summon sleep so easily, and a seed of anger took root and began to germinate deep within her, feeding on frustration, pain and a gamut of emotions too numerous to delineate.

Rational thought disappeared as her febrile brain pondered the quality of his lovemaking, and whether it would be any different now from what it had been seven years ago.

In that moment she realised how much she was at his mercy, and that the essence of Stefano Alessi the man now was inevitably different from the lover she had once known.

At some stage she must have fallen into a blissful state of oblivion, for she gradually drifted into wakefulness through various layers of consciousness, aware initially in those few seconds before comprehension dawned that something was different. Then her lashes slowly flickered open, and she saw why.

In sleep she had turned to lie facing the bed opposite her own, and her eyes widened as she encountered Stefano’s steady gaze. Reclining on his side, head propped in one hand, he regarded her with unsmiling appraisal.

Carly’s first instinct was to leap out from the bed, and perhaps something in her expression gave her intention away, for one of his eyebrows arched in silent musing cynicism.

The gesture acted as a challenge, and she forced herself to remain where she was. ‘What’s the time?’ she asked with deliberate sleepiness, as if this were just another morning in a series of mornings she woke to find herself sharing a room.

‘Early. Not long after six.’ His eyes slid lazily down to her mouth, then slipped lower to pause deliberately on the soft swell of her breast. ‘No need to rush into starting the day.’

Carly’s fingers reached automatically for the edge of the sheet and pulled it higher, aware of a tell-tale warmth tingeing her cheeks, and her eyes instantly sparked with fire. ‘If you think I’m going to indulge in an exchange of pleasantries, you’re mistaken!’