Exotic Affairs(189)

Trust. Dio, but that word was playing a major role in his life right now, he acknowledged as he started walking towards the doors which led into the family’s formal reception room.

Antonia clung to his side. His parents fell into step behind them. As they reached the doors a waiting servant smoothly pushed them open to reveal a vast room lit by huge mountains of crystal. Marco paused on the threshold, so he could give Antonia a moment to absorb the sheer grandeur of the room and the people who were already present and waiting for their entrance.

The hum of conversation dropped into silence. Faces turned, people stared. Beside him, Antonia’s pulse began to quicken as she took in the full impact of the whole assembly. And Marco did nothing, just waited for her restless eyes to finish making a full inventory of what he had set up for them here tonight.

Then at last she saw them, standing out like a pair of statements. Bold, brash, utterly scorning any hint of discomfort. Her warm soft red-painted mouth slackened, her ensuing gasp audible only to him. Surprise tingled from her fingers into his, then she simply stood there so breathless and still that he actually began to wonder if he had made a big mistake.

This just wasn’t happening, Antonia tried to tell herself. She was having a dream. A very weird dream. She had to be. In a minute all of these people were going to start laughing in gruesome mockery, telling her to get out and never come near them again, which was how dreams like these usually finished. It was the only answer she could form to what it was she was looking at.

But it wasn’t a dream. She knew it because she could feel Marco literally vibrating with waiting tension beside her. She tried swallowing and found she couldn’t. She tried turning to look at him, but she couldn’t do that either because her eyes were refusing to move from what they had frozen on.

For right there, hanging on his parents’ wall for everyone to see, were two nudes painted in oils and mounted in matching frames. One was herself, looking slender and sleek and coyly seductive. The other was Marco, looking as bold and arrogant in his nakedness as she’d always perceived him to be.

Heat roared into her cheeks, then faded away again. Her heart began to thunder on the total shock of seeing the two of them so brazenly presented like this. And suddenly the dress began to make sense, the desire to drip her in diamonds. Marco was taking them all on—his parents, his friends, all those mocking doubters who didn’t believe he could love this woman who could expose her body like this.

If you can’t beat them, join them, he was saying. If I can’t make them believe, then—what the heck? Throw these two paintings in their faces and let them think what they like!

‘If you can hack it then I can too,’ Marco murmured beside her, and his voice was soft, layered with warmth and humour and a lazy challenge.

She found the strength to look at him, saw the humour reflecting in his eyes, plus something else—a plea, maybe, for her to understand what it was he had been trying to achieve when he’d decided to do this.

A short laugh rippled from her. It spilled into her eyes and turned his smile into a grin. She looked frontward again—and continued to smile, because she understood. She knew! This was his way of levelling the differences in them. It was him coming down his lofty ladder. It was her climbing up to meet him.

The hand he placed on her lower spine threaded electric sensation across her naked skin as it began drifting up her spine to her slender nape in an act of sensual possession.

‘More to come,’ he warned softly, and urged her into movement again.

Her legs felt like rubber. Her pulse was racing, and her mind was lost in a haze of shock and some dismay and a whole lot of sinfully delicious elation. He took them past smiling faces, past rueful faces, past familiar faces like Franco and Nicola. She saw, through what felt like a misted glaze, Stefan grinning knowingly at her, while the woman at his side looked on curiously. She was tall and dark and so beautiful it made Antonia halt for a second to offer her a warm smile.

‘Tanya.’ She whispered the woman’s name.

‘Later,’ Marco advised, and pressed her into movement again.

At the other end of the room, he finally paused. It was a staged arrival, which placed them exactly in between their naked images. Lights sparkled, diamonds flashed, faces observed curiously as he turned her towards him.

Holding the whole room captive, he looked deep into her eyes, then dropped his gaze to her mouth and allowed it to linger there until the pulse of anticipation became an energy charge all of its own.

‘Right,’ he said huskily, ‘now, this is the deal…’

‘Another one?’ she whispered back, aware that he was deliberately holding her balanced on a pin-head of expectation with the warmth of his eyes and the promise of his kiss, and the touch of his fingers on her—