The Multi-Millionaire's Virgin Mistress

‘So who were they, anyway?’ she asked now, settling on the sofa next to him and tucking her legs underneath her. She had to stop herself from reaching out and touching his face.

It still surprised and delighted her that she had been lucky enough to fall in love for the very first time with a man so absolutely perfect in every way. Her friends all led chaotic love-lives, constantly euphoric or depressed, or else hanging on the end of the line waiting for some guy to call. Alessandro had never done that. He had taken her virginity and cherished the gift she had given him, never taking her for granted or making promises he had no intention of fulfilling.

‘They were…some fairly important people, Megan.’

He turned to look at her. Her hair was all over the place—soft, blonde hair, the colour of vanilla. Her cheeks were flushed, because he had obviously surprised her dozing. Only Megan could fall asleep in the space of seconds. Whilst wearing a ridiculous outfit. And after having made a complete fool of herself.

‘Sorry,’ she said in a contrite voice. Then, because she just couldn’t help herself, she leaned towards him and stroked the side of his face with the back of his hand. ‘I can understand why you were a bit put out when I appeared unannounced. Or should I say when I was brought in? Would have given anyone a shock. Especially an old man like you, Alessandro. Twenty-five years old! Practically over the hill! Do you realise it’s just a matter of time before you’re collecting your pension?’

She laughed, a rich, warm laugh which he had found infectious from the very first minute he had heard it across a crowded room, in a club to which he had been dragged by one of his colleagues at university who’d seemed to think he needed a break from his books. Every time he heard that laugh, which was often, he wanted to smile. Not, however, now.

‘Here’s how it was supposed to go. In an ideal world I would have made a dramatic entrance…or at least the cake would have made a dramatic entrance…and I would have leapt out of it, like the Marilyn Monroe equivalent of a Jack in the Box, stunning you with my wonderful outfit. Then I would have sung you ‘Happy Birthday’, even though I’ll be the first to admit that my voice is pretty average…’

‘Unfortunately…’ He edged away and looked at her with a shuttered expression. ‘Unfortunately you couldn’t have chosen a worse moment for your little surprise.’

‘No, well…’ Always so comfortable in his presence, Megan could feel stirrings of unease nibbling away inside her, even though really he no longer looked angry. ‘You never told me that you were expecting guests. You said that you would be working, and I just thought that it would be kind of nice to be surprised. You work too hard.’

‘I do what I have to do, Megan. How many times have I told you that?’

‘Yes, I know. You hate this place, and you work hard so that you can get out of it and do something with your life.’

‘I intend to do more than just something with my life.’

His father had done just something with his life. He had left poverty in Italy, hoping to find that the streets of London would be paved with gold. In the event they had been paved with tarmac and cement, just like everywhere else, and his father’s talents, his tremendous mathematical brain which had so enchanted Alessandro as a young boy, had become lost in the mindless boredom of manual work—because he had not been qualified to do anything else, and provincial little England had not been kind to a man whose grasp of English was broken. Never mind that his wife was English. An English rose with as few qualifications as her Italian husband. An English rose whose hands had been prematurely old from the cleaning jobs she had held down so that they could afford a small holiday once a year by the cold British seaside.

Alessandro didn’t like to think of the mother he had only known for the first ten years of his life. He liked even less to think of his father, loyally working for a haulage firm for twenty-five years, only to be made redundant at a time when he had been too old to get another job.

To his dying breath he had continued to tell his son what a wonderful life he had led.

To Alessandro’s way of thinking his father’s talents had been wasted, by lack of opportunity and the cruelty of a world that judged a man’s worth by bits of paper. He would, he had determined from an early age, get those bits of paper, and he would control the world so that it could never control him the way it had his father.

‘Those three men,’ he said, keeping that unaccustomed drift of memory to himself, ‘who were treated to your impromptu performance, are instrumental in my plan for the future.’

‘You mean, the pinstriped crew?’

He paused. ‘You need to grow up, Megan.’

That one statement, delivered with a coldness she had never heard before, was shocking. Yes, they were total opposites. They had laughed about that a million times. But he had always indulged her. She’d drag him away from his books with homemade picnics in the park and he would laugh at the sausage rolls and packets of biscuits and cheap wine. She would make a fool of herself singing karaoke, and he would shake his head in good-natured wonder and tell her never to consider a career in singing. He had never told her to grow up—and certainly never in that tone of voice.

‘It was just meant to be a bit of fun, Alessandro. How was I to know that the instruments of your plan would be here? And why do you have a plan, anyway? Really? Life’s not a chessboard, you know.’

‘That’s exactly what it is, Megan. A chessboard. The life we end up getting depends entirely on the moves we make.’

‘I know you want to do stuff with your life, Alessandro, but…’ Megan shot him a look of bemusement. This wasn’t quite the sort of talk she had been expecting, but it was certainly revealing. ‘You can’t planeverything. I mean, I really hope that I end up being a good teacher…’

‘In a small country school somewhere…’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Alessandro told her patiently.

He looked at her expressive, open face and felt like a monster, but this was a conversation that had to be undertaken. His future had unexpectedly come rushing towards him like a freight train, leaving him no choice.

‘Did you ever think about qualifying and going to teach somewhere else?’

‘Somewhere else? Why should I? You know that St Nicks have offered me a post for after I qualify.’

Her face softened as she thought of the pleasing prospect of teaching the children there. She was nothing like the high-flier that Alessandro was, and her future might not be so ruthlessly controlled as his appeared to be, but it was still looking pretty rosy from where she was sitting.

‘Where else should I be going to teach?’

‘What about an inner-city school?’

‘Why are we having this conversation? Is it because you’re still mad at me—because I embarrassed you in front of those people? Don’t be…You wait right here, and I’m going to get us both something to drink. Some wine…’

She didn’t give him time to answer, or to follow up with some more heavy-duty remarks about life choices. Instead, she stood up and did a little sexy shimmy, throwing him a seductive look over one shoulder, before heading for the kitchen and pouring them a large glass of wine each.

She’d kind of hoped that he would be undressed when she returned, because he was always, but always, predictable when it came to being turned on by her, but he wasn’t. In fact, he was standing up, and he had an awkward look on his face that promised more talking.

Whatever those guys had said to him had obviously made him a little too thoughtful, and it was her duty, she told herself mischievously, to take his mind off matters. And at the back of her mind she knew she really didn’t want to hear what Alessandro wanted to say….

A very good place to start would be with his shirt. She placed the glasses on the small, beaten-up round table by the window and pulled off the white shirt, which she casually tossed over a chair.

‘Megan…’ Alessandro turned away and leaned heavily against the wall. ‘This isn’t a good time for this.’ He tensed as he heard her walk towards him. He could picture the teasing smile on her face.

‘Don’t tell me you’re getting too old for sex,’ she said to his averted back. ‘You’re only a year older!’ She wrapped her arms around his torso and then slipped her hands under the tee shirt, gently rubbing his flattened brown nipples with the tips of her fingers.

Alessandro shuddered, furious with himself for not being able to push her away when he knew that he had to. For both their sakes.

He felt the push of her breasts against him and turned round with a stifled moan, his big body arching back in denial of the primitive instincts he seemed unable to control.

He closed his eyes and shuddered again.

Nine months of seeing her, practically living with her, even though her college was over twenty miles away. Out towards the country because, she had told him often enough, big cities gave her a headache. Something about her was irresistible.

She took his hand and guided it to the strap of the black swimsuit which she was still wearing.

‘At least the cake wasn’t real,’ Megan murmured, already wet and hot for him. ‘Can you imagine if I’d emerged covered in Victoria sponge?’

She stood on tiptoe so that she could kiss his neck, and even though he wasn’t, as he usually was, devouring her with his hunger, he was responding. She could feel it in the tension of his muscles—and… She put her hand on him and shivered with pleasure at the very big, very hard indication of just how much he wanted her—even if, for some weird reason, he was trying to fight it.

‘Mind you,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘you would have had to lick it all off…’

The image was too powerful for Alessandro. He looked at her, at the deep cleavage inviting him to touch, promising him physical satisfaction of the kind he had never known in his life before.

I am, he thought with a strange feeling of helplessness, only a man, dammit!

He hooked his fingers under the straps of the swimsuit and ran them up and down against her smooth skin.