Master Of Pleasure

‘You didn’t have to agree to Carlo’s request,’ she forced herself to point out. ‘Why did you? My sons mean nothing to you.’

Gabriel could hear the hostility in her voice. He looked towards the two boys. Sasha was right, of course; they meant nothing to him beyond the Calbrini blood in their veins. His initial reaction when Carlo had told him his intention had been to refuse. Why should he burden himself with the responsibility of his cousin’s sons, especially when he knew what their mother was? It was obvious what Carlo was trying to do. He was bankrupt and in debt, his sons were too young to fend for themselves, and their mother could not be relied on to protect them; she would sell herself to the first man who could afford her. All this must have gone through Carlo’s mind as it would have done his own. So Carlo had turned to him, on his sons’ behalf, knowing that morally Gabriel could not and would not reject the claim of their shared Calbrini blood.

Since then, however, Gabriel had had more time to reflect on the situation. He had reasoned to himself that in accepting the role of guardian to Carlo’s sons he could spare himself the necessity of producing heirs of his own with all the potential legal pitfalls that could entail. Carlo’s sons were Calbrinis. He had decided that he would spend some time with Carlo’s sons to evaluate for himself whether or not they were worthy of raising as his own heirs. If they were, then as their guardian he would raise them exactly as he would have done his own sons, to become the heirs his vast empire and wealth required. As for Sasha…

He could feel the burn inside his body like that of an old unhealed wound. Their shared history was a page of his life he had never been able to remove. The women who had gone before her, like those who had come after, had never managed to leave the imprint on his senses that she had. She was a payment owed to him in the balance sheet of his life. Fate was now giving him the opportunity to salve his wounded pride.

Once he had collected the capital and interest on her debt to him, once he had reversed the past and forced her into a position where he would be the one to walk away from her—for nothing else would salve his pride—then he would make it plain that there was no place for her in the new lives of her sons, and certainly not in his. Gabriel did not envisage any real problems. He knew Sasha. She was a hedonist and a sensualist, driven by sexual and financial greed. He was not foolish enough to think that he could simply trick her into doing what he wanted. The minute she guessed what he was planning she would cling to the boys, determined not to let go of her passport to his wealth. He would have to be subtle and thorough.

And ultimately, if she refused to relinquish her claim to her sons…?

If she was foolish enough to do that then she would soon realise her mistake.

‘No, but they meant a great deal to Carlo.’ Gabriel answered Sasha’s question coolly. ‘And my word means a great deal to me. Since I have given him my word that I will act in all ways towards them as though they were my own, that is exactly what I intend to do.’

‘What?’ His own? The shock of what Gabriel had said rocked Sasha back on her heels. Why hadn’t she anticipated this? She knew how much Carlo had loved the boys, but she knew too how deep his Sardinian roots went, and how important his family and its honour were to him. If only Carlo had told her what he was planning she could have done something, anything—whatever it would have taken. Pleaded, begged, demanded that he didn’t do this to her. He had known how Gabriel felt about her, how much he despised her. And he had known too…

She took a deep breath. She hadn’t thought about any of this in years. She hadn’t allowed herself to—not once since she had slipped from Gabriel’s bed in the pale light of a false dawn while Gabriel slept, unaware of her intentions. She had taken nothing with her when she left the yacht—not the expensive clothes he had bought her, nor the jewellery—only her passport. And enough money to get the hotel where Carlo was staying, to give herself and her future into his keeping. She had been eighteen then, and Carlo had been in his midsixties. Small wonder that a month later, when he had married her, the officials had thought he was her elderly father. She had not cared, though. All she had cared about was that now she was safe.

She could see Gabriel looking at the boys, and she reacted immediately to what her maternal instincts translated as a threat, reaching for his arm, wanting to stop him from going to them. But before she could touch him Gabriel swung around, his own grip on her wrist making her wince. His body was tensed like that of a hunter, a predator, waiting for her to try to escape so that he could punish her. A shudder of recognition ripped through her belly as she was subjected to the once-familiar signs of her own body’s arousal. How could this be happening? It was over ten years since Gabriel had last touched her. The twins’ birth had flooded her senses and emotions with an intensity of a different kind of love that had obliterated all she had once felt for Gabriel. Or so she had told herself.

How could one touch do this to her? How could he make her feel like this—her lower belly hollow with anticipation, her legs trembling, sweat springing up along her hair line and adrenalin forcing its way along her veins? It was a trick of her own imagination, that was all, she tried to reassure herself. She did not want or desire him. How could she? But the ache of longing inside her was intensifying and drowning out rational thought. Arousal and anger, desire and dislike, all the sweet, savage sexual alchemy of their shared past swept back over her.

She had, she remembered, felt like this the first time she had seen him. Only then the liquid heat erupting inside her body had not been shadowed by either pain or knowledge. The physical ache of her longing for him had seduced her before he had even touched her, and when he had touched her…She closed her eyes, not wanting to remember but it was too late. Inside her head she could hear her own voice as she cried out to him, caught up in the grip of her own unbearable pleasure, her eyes wide open with the awed shock of it while he leaned over her in the shadowy coolness of the yacht’s main cabin, watching her as the expert touch of his fingers brought her to orgasm. Her first orgasm. He had waited until its shuddering hold on her body had eased before giving her the look of hooded triumph that would become so familiar to her and saying laconically, ‘Perhaps now would be a good time to tell me your name?’

She opened her eyes abruptly. Her face burned now at the memory of her own behaviour then. She had only been seventeen, she reminded herself shakily. A child whose head had been stuffed with daydreams. Still, she had felt she knew all there was to know. She was now twenty-eight, a woman who knew enough to realize how dangerous her past had been, and how lucky she was to have escaped from it, and from Gabriel. She was free of that now. Of that and of him, and of all that he had made her feel and want.

She could feel Gabriel looking at her, focusing on her, the intensity of his concentrated gaze making her tremble. He couldn’t guess what she had been thinking, what she had been reliving. She was far too mature now to betray herself to him. Nevertheless, the dull ache inside her was refusing to subside and, as though she had no control over it whatsoever, she could feel her gaze being drawn to his body, to his throat, and the vee of sun-warmed flesh exposed by the neck of his polo shirt. Beneath it his torso would be ridged with muscle, the darkness of his body hair arrowing downwards over the tautness of his belly. Her gaze followed the downward arrowing of her thoughts, coming to rest where her hand and her lips had once rested so intimately and so pleasurably. She could still remember the hard sleekness of male flesh over rigid muscle, its smooth supple movement beneath her eager touch…

What was she doing? Frantically she pushed back the memories. She wanted badly to swallow, to wet the nervous dryness of her lips, but she was afraid of doing so in case…in case what? In case Gabriel guessed what she had been remembering and subjected her to the kind of savagely sexual possession she had once found so exciting? Here, with her sons less than ten yards away?

‘Let go of me,’ she breathed, trying to pull her wrist free.

‘Are you sure that is what you really want? Once you begged me for my touch. Remember?’

She couldn’t help it. She shuddered violently.

‘Ah, yes. I see that you do,’ he taunted her as he released her. Her flesh felt cold without his next to it. Cold and bereft. She mustn’t let herself think like that.

‘Let me warn you, Sasha, just in case you have forgotten. I know exactly what you are.’ He studied her body with a contemptuous and knowing sexual inspection that made her want to hit him.

‘I am the twins’ mother, and that is the only way you will ever know me from now on, Gabriel,’ she fired back at him. Were those words for his benefit, or for her own? He released her arm so quickly she almost lost her balance. She looked at him. His back was turned towards her. She shuddered. How could she ever have been so foolish as to have loved him? But she had. Desperately, wholly and completely, hungering for him to return her feelings, believing that she could trade sex for love. What a fool she had been. But she wasn’t that fool any longer.

CHAPTER THREE

STILL gripped by shock, Sasha watched Gabriel turn towards the boys. She couldn’t get her head around the enormity of what Carlo had done. But they were different from other men, these Sardinian men. They lived by a different code; theirs was a paternalistic society, and the belief in their right to order the lives of their families absolute.

When Carlo had told her about Gabriel’s mother she had seen that he did not share her shock that Gabriel’s father should seek to force his daughter into a marriage of his choosing.

‘No wonder she ran away,’ she had commented.

Carlo had frowned at her and shaken his head. ‘She was fortunate that her father forgave her and that he was powerful enough to persuade Luigi to marry her despite the humiliation she had forced on him.’

‘But to make her marry a man she did not love—’

‘It was his right as her father.’

‘And forcing her to abandon Gabriel, her baby? You can’t believe that was right, Carlo.’

‘Not right, no, but Giorgio was a proud man and the head of our family. The purity of the Calbrini bloodline was a matter of honour to him, and to accept as his grandson a child whose blood—’

‘But in the end he had to accept Gabriel, didn’t he?’

Carlo had inclined his head, as though in acceptance of her argument, but Sasha had known that in his heart he was as old-fashioned and traditional as Gabriel’s grandfather. She suspected that he had only told her the story of Gabriel’s birth because, despite what Gabriel had done to her, Carlo had still felt he had a duty to stand by his second cousin. He might have offered her the protection of his money and his name, but he had still been a Calbrini. And so were her sons. Carlo had never forgotten that, and neither must she—although for very different reasons.

Gabriel was still watching her sons.

‘There isn’t any point in me introducing you to them. After all, you are hardly likely to be playing a hands-on role in their lives, are you?’ she challenged him.

‘On the contrary. I intend to make my duties as their guardian a priority—which is why I am here. Who knows how badly they may have been damaged by the circumstances of their life?’

He had answered without even looking at her.

‘They miss Carlo, but his death has not damaged them…’

Gabriel swung round to face her.

‘The damage to which I refer is not that caused by the death of their father but rather by the life of their mother.’

A terrible cold stillness had her in its grip.

‘You have no right to say that.’

‘I have every right. They are my wards. It is my moral and legal duty to protect them.’

‘From me? I am their mother!’ Her hands were curled so tightly her nails bit into her flesh.

He turned slowly to face her, the golden eagle eyes as flat as polished stones.

‘You may be their mother, but you are also a woman who craves the lifestyle only a very rich man can provide. When such a man pays you for the use of your body he will not want his enjoyment of that body to be interrupted by the needs of a pair of nine-year-old boys. In the eyes of most courts such a mother would be considered derelict in her maternal duty and not worthy of the name.’

She could almost feel the acid burn of his bitterness.

‘Just because your own mother abandoned you—’

‘You will not speak of her.’

Sasha had never felt more angry, nor more afraid.