'Red hair,' he observed too plea sandy. 'I should perhaps have
realised that somewhere there would be a temper to match it.'
'I'm sorry,' she said, biting her lip to conceal the pain she was
feeling from his crushing grip. 'But you shouldn't have said that.'
It was you that wanted to hear the truth,' he said coldly. 'And you
will be sorry, I promise you.'
He pushed her down on to one of the sofas, sat down beside her
and before she could pull away or utter a protest, his arms were
round her pulling her against him and he was silencing her indignant
mouth with his own.
He was very thorough and very brutal, but only Juliet was aware
that it was anger not passion that was driving him. To Annunziata,
scuttling from the room with the debris from the table, it would
simply have seemed as if the signore was re-establishing his
mastery after some lovers' tiff.
The weight of his body was pressing her inexorably back against
the soft cushions. Her hands had come up between them
instinctively in an attempt to push him away, but it was useless.
Against the demand of his lips and hands, she had all the resistance
of a rag doll. Her fingers were splayed against the dampness of his
shirt front and she could feel the warmth of his skin through the thin
material. Somewhere inside her a small wanton voice was urging
her to unfasten the buttons of his shirt and slip her hands inside, to
touch the warm muscularity of his chest.
He lifted his head and stared down at her, and although he was still
frowning, she knew that much of his anger had already been
dissipated in that first furious assault on her mouth.
When he bent to her again, his kiss, his touch had magically
gentled. This time his lips barely brushed hers before moving on to
caress the curve of her cheek, her temples, her half-closed eyes.
And at once that old traitorous longing rose up within her to betray
her, roused by this new and unexpected tenderness.
Santino pressed his lips along the smooth line of her jaw and
lingered over the telltale pulse in her throat, while his hand gently
and rhythmically stroked the curve of her bare shoulder.
Juliet felt a little shaken sob rise in her throat. His hands and mouth
were unbearably persuasive and her own response was little short
of tumultuous. The restraint he was showing was a provocation in
itself, and she was shamingly aware that her body was straining
upwards to meet his in an unspoken offering, her rounded breasts
straining against the flimsy material which imprisoned them, the
nipples taut with desire.
He stared at her again, his eyes studying her mouth as if he had
undertaken to commit its soft fullness to memory. His hands were
busy at the nape of her neck, unfastening the scarf that confined her
hair so that it fell in a tangled coppery cloud on to her shoulders.
Then he bent and kissed her again, parting her lips with intimate
possession and awakening her to a greater sensual awareness of
what a kiss could be than she had ever known before.
When at last he lifted his head, she heard herself give a little
involuntary moan of protest, and he laughed, deep in his throat.
'Don't be impatient, cara mia.' His voice was deeper and huskier
than she had ever heard it. 'We have all the night ahead of us, and
besides, I want to dance with you-a pleasure I've promised myself
for a long time.'
He slipped the scarf round her waist and holding both ends in one
hand pulled her gently, almost teasingly to her feet.
Dance? she thought bewilderedly. But there's no music.
As if he had read her thoughts, he led her over to an intricately
carved chest at one side of the room and pressed some hidden
switch. At once music swelled into the room from concealed
speakers, very soft and slow with an insidious sensuous beat. He let
the scarf drift to the floor and slid his arms around her, drawing her
close, making her move with him to the music.
For a dazed moment she thought that this was what she had
dreamed about when she had first seen this dress. She had known
instinctively that it was a dress to fall in love in, and she knew now
that in spite of everything that had happened, everything that had
been said, she had fallen in love with Santino Vallone. She let
herself relax against his body, leaning her head against his shoulder,
while his arms tightened possessively round her.
She could, she thought, have stayed like that for ever, but laughing
softly he pushed her away to arm's length, spinning her gently so
that the long delicate skirt floated out around her like a blue-green
cloud, then drew her back so that he could kiss her again. Nothing
mattered, she thought, closing her eyes, but the sheer intoxication of
his nearness.
His lips found the sensitive hollow just below her ear, and she
heard him whisper, 'Dance for me, mia. I want to watch you.'
Opening her eyes, she found the room was much darker than it had
been. While they were dancing, Santino must have been
extinguishing the lamps one by one. But he had retained one of
them, a tall standard lamp which spilled a pool of light on to the
tiled floor rather as a spotlight might do upon a stage, and this
presumably was where he wanted her to dance, because he had
stepped back into the shadows and was standing watching her.
She felt suddenly shy and a little foolish. She was no dancer, but no
one could have resisted the beat of that music. It was strangely
lonely in the pool of light as she began to sway to it, using her
shoulders and hands first, then her hips and the whole of her body,
the rhythm seeming to take over and become a part of her. Her
whole body felt light as air and she lifted her skirts in each hand,
using the fullness as if they were butterfly wings as she dipped and
swayed and turned in time to the beat.
But she wasn't a butterfly, she thought dreamily as she spun round.
She was a moth circling endlessly in the brightness, utterly
possessed by its brilliant, dangerous excitement.
Santino was behind her suddenly. His hand lifted the heavy fall of
hair away from her neck and his lips were burning on her nape.
'Exquisite, mia cara,' he murmured against her ear. 'But not quite
what I intended. I wanted you to dance for me as you danced at
Vittoria Leontana's party. You can't have forgotten. Or shall I
refresh your memory?'
His fingers stroked down her bare back until they reached the edge
of her dress, then continued, taking the long zip fastener with them.
The gown slipped from her shoulders and slid to the floor at her feet
in a shimmering pool.
For a moment Juliet stood still, shocked and motionless, then with a
stifled cry she bent and snatched up the dress, holding its folds
protectively against her bare breasts as he turned her inexorably to
face him. His eyes narrowed impatiently as he observed her
instinctive gesture of modesty.
'Why bother to pretend any more?' he asked. 'You didn't cover
yourself before me-or nearly thirty others-at Vittoria's party,
although your outraged escort intervened before the ultimate
revelation.' He smiled reminiscently, but the smile did not reach his
eyes which remained curiously hard as they studied the girl in front
of him, who might have been some piece of ancient Roman statuary
of a goddess, clutching her flimsy draperies about her, except for
the ebb and flow of colour in her cheeks which marked her as being
all too human.
'I don't know what you mean,' she managed at last past the tightness
in her throat.
'Don't you? Yet it was a memorable performance. It made an
indelible impression on me, cara, and I was only privileged to see
the last few minutes of it. But I was told afterwards that when it
was realised you were not only prepared to take off your dress but
everything else beneath it, you could feel the shock waves oh the
Via Veneto.' He smiled without mirth. 'Striptease is not new, of
course, but it has a certain rarity value when performed in a usually
respectable salotto. Nor, I believe, does the dancer normally
distribute her garments as so much largesse among her audience.'
He paused. 'Poor Rizziani was most upset,' he continued almost
casually. 'I thought at the time he was probably disturbed to find
that your charms were not reserved for his eyes only as he had
probably thought, but I think now he was probably equally
concerned at the cost of the clothes you had discarded so
carelessly, and which he had presumably paid for.'
The calm voice stopped, and Juliet found her legs buckling under
her as if only the necessity to hear what he had to say had been
keeping her upright. She sank to the floor, her hands still gripping
her crumpled gown so tightly that the knuckles showed white.
Bowing her head, she began to cry, long tearing sobs that hurt her
throat, painful tears that scalded her eyes.
He wasn't lying, even though her mind rejected the pictures his
words had evoked. He spoke so coolly, so passionlessly, but then
he had no idea that he was destroying an illusion. Janina-the
spoilt, the beautiful, the envied. Juliet's blood went cold within her
as she visualised her mother's stricken reaction if this ever came to