The Italian's Pregnant Mistress(23)

He was bare-backed but still in his work trousers and he could feel his  throbbing erection pushing against the zip. Anticipation soared through  him. He pulled down the zip of her neat grey skirt and watched as she  stood up and completed the job of divesting herself of the last piece of  clothing covering her.

'Shall we go upstairs?' Francesca glanced back towards the door, then  looked at Angelo, comfortably sprawled on the sofa, his eyes fastened on  her.

He had been right. They had been right. Right to acknowledge the power  of their mutual sexual attraction, right to eliminate all the frills and  fuss of possible emotional ties that would never happen. He wanted her,  she wanted him, and his invitation was to indulge their joint desires  until such time as they presumably became bored with one another. Of  course, he would be the one to grow bored with her. That was just a  reality she would have to accept and deal with because without any  emotional ties whatsoever boredom followed hard on the heels of  predictability and her initial allure would soon become tarnished around  the edges. She would deal with that when the time came. She, too, would  indulge her desires and her love which could never amount to anything,  not with a man like him. It would be better than nothing-which, frankly,  was what she had had for the past three long years.                       
       
           



       

'This sofa is big enough for the both of us,' Angelo said thickly,  devouring her naked body with his eyes and restraining himself from  leaping up and dragging her down to the ground like an animal on heat.  'Unless advancing middle age has made you lose that exploring edge of  yours.'

Francesca laughed, picked up the nearest cushion from one of the chairs  and threw it at him. 'Middle age indeed! I'm twenty-seven!' She  approached him, knelt down by the side of the sofa and cupped his  beautiful face in her hands, sighing as he stroked her back. 'You should  be the one to be careful, Angelo. You're an old man compared to me. No  need to prove your virility by pretending that you're still capable of  making love in unusual places.' She giggled and kissed him on the mouth,  stifling his immediate protest. With one hand, she slowly fiddled with  his belt, finally unhooking it and setting to work on the button of his  trousers and the zip. She could feel the hard bulge that told her how  much he wanted her and was fired by a wild, giddy passion.

'Prove my virility? You realise that you've laid down a gauntlet and,  like any self-respecting red-blooded male, I'm going to have to take it  up?'

He did. On the sofa and, later on, in his massive king-sized bed. It was  only when the sunlight began to mellow behind the gauze curtains that  Francesca glanced at her watch and let out a little yelp.

'It's after five!'

'So what?' So what? He had missed a string of appointments. A first for  him. His mobile phone had probably been going mad in the pocket of his  jacket downstairs. He didn't care. For the first time in weeks he felt  liberated and in control. He had acknowledged his feelings, acknowledged  that the woman lying next to him, rather making a show of getting up,  was the woman who still turned him on. He had wanted her and not simply  to even scores or salve the ego that had been blasted to hell three  years previously. He had just wanted her.

And now he could have her. He was a free man and he could have her  without any uninvited feelings getting in the way of his enjoyment. He  had told her just how it was, had left it up to her to decide whether  she wanted to have a relationship with a man whose only feelings towards  her were ones of lust and desire, had been more than prepared to shrug  and walk away if she had turned him down. No questions asked, no  blinding rages, no backward glance. Those times were long gone. He was a  man utterly in control and it brought a smile of satisfaction to his  lips.

'Where are you going?' he asked lazily, dragging her back down on to the  bed and propping himself up on one elbow to stare at her.

'The day's practically gone, Angelo! I had no idea how long we'd spent … I had stuff to do … '

'So did I,' Angelo pointed out. He feathered a kiss on her mouth and his  satisfaction went up a couple of notches as she helplessly responded.  Really, she should have stormed out on him the minute he told her that  he had deliberately kept her in the dark about the broken engagement for  no better reason than he had wanted to see just how much she wanted  him. She should even now be at home, breathing fire at his arrogance.  But here she was, proof that she wanted him just as much as he wanted  her. The past had blinded him to what was really a very simple truth,  which was that had he still had any feelings for her he would never have  forgiven her and had her back. That would have been weak and sad and he  was neither weak nor sad. No, his only weakness was sex and that was  entirely acceptable. He felt deliriously happy in a way he had not felt  for a very long time, not even when he had been engaged to Georgina and  heading down a path that had seemed entirely sensible and fitting.

Francesca groaned. 'Your meetings! Wouldn't your secretary have called? To remind you?'

'She probably did, on my cellphone, which is conveniently located out of  hearing. She wouldn't have got through on this number. It's  ex-directory and barred to everyone but a handful of close friends and  relatives. This is the one place where I don't allow work to intrude if I  don't want it to.'

'I never realised there was such a place,' Francesca said dryly.  'Anyway, I've got to go. I have things to buy and if I don't hurry I  won't get to the shops in time.'

'What things?' He ran his hand along her thigh and felt her suppressed  sigh. 'A few olives and some tomatoes? It can wait until tomorrow.'

'I have to get back and start doing what I should have been doing today. Lord, Jack must be wondering what's happened to me!'

'Let him wonder. Today we celebrate.'                       
       
           



       

'What exactly are we celebrating?'

'What do you think?' He raised his eyebrows and treated her to an  expression very much like the one worn by the cat that had got the  cream. 'We make great lovers and here we are, doing what we should have  been doing all along.'

Francesca tried not to think too far ahead. Pondering on the destination  of a road leading nowhere wasn't exactly going to put her in the  perfect frame of mind and, having told herself that she would enjoy the  present and not live beyond it, even in her darkest thoughts, she wanted  to maintain her perfect frame of mind. And, yes, it did feel perfect.  Right here, wrapped up with this man, the sunlight fighting a losing  battle against the thickly bunched gauze curtains, the day lost in a  haze of blissful love-making.

'I'm a little hungry.'

'That's a very pedestrian way to greet my remark,' Angelo complained,  thinking how much he had missed her forthrightness. 'Shall we go out for  dinner? I know a very nice little restaurant just around the corner … '

'You mean get dressed, walk somewhere, order food, wait for food, eat  it, then drag the remainder of the evening out with coffee? That sounds a  little long.' She grinned and nudged her leg along his. His body felt  slick, as hers did, from the physical exertion of making love. 'I could  rustle up something from your fridge.'

'I'm not sure that's such a good idea,' Angelo drawled.

'Why not?' Francesca was genuinely puzzled. Once upon a time they had  cooked together, or rather she had watched him while he cooked, lounging  around in one of his shirts, in that little apartment in Venice. Now  that she herself had become a cook, and one in demand, it made no sense  to her that they should hunt out cuisine in any restaurants.

'Because what we have now,' he told her dispassionately, 'is all about  sex. It's not about domesticity and cooking.' Never again would he go  down that road with this particular woman. He could look back now at the  past and in retrospect make a couple of very good deductions as to how  she had managed to insinuate herself beneath his skin to the point where  he had recklessly allowed himself to become vulnerable. It had been an  easy enough road but a slippery one. The sex had turned into something  warmer and more comfortable, and lazy, snatched evenings in his kitchen  with the sound of some classical music wafting in the background while  they played at being real partners had been the first step downhill.

'Oh, right. Yes. I understand.'

'I hope you do, Francesca, because if you don't then we might just as well call it off right now.'

He was deadly serious.

'It would be a shame, considering how much pleasure we give to one another, but it would be life … '

The rush of hurt that followed his words, his casual indifference to  anything intimate between them aside from intimacy of a purely physical  nature, was intense. Why the hell should she be hurt? It wasn't, she  reminded herself, as though she could ever, ever allow her relationship  with Angelo Falcone to go anywhere. What he had offered was just what  suited her, the only thing that could suit her, when it came to him. It  was lunacy to get wistful about something as trivial as sharing the  cooking.