A Shadow of Guilt Read online

  Looking slightly tortured Gio just asked, ‘Are you sure?’

  He was giving her a chance to go, to think about this. Her heart lurched. She nodded again and said firmly, ‘Yes.’

  Valentina was lifted into Gio’s arms against his chest so fast that her head swam. He shouldered his way into the bedroom off the main living area and Valentina could see a huge bed dressed in dark grey linen. The sun was setting outside, bathing the room in a dusky glow.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked far too belatedly, a little stunned at how fast everything was moving.

  ‘It’s mine, sometimes I stay overnight.’

  Gio carefully lowered her to stand by the bed. For the first time in what felt like aeons there was space between them and already Valentina felt bereft. It scared her. But not enough to put more space between them.

  Gio’s face was flushed and the first indication of stubble darkened his jaw. He opened his mouth and Valentina quickly put her hand up to cover it, afraid he was going to ask her again if she knew what she was doing. She didn’t want to think or rationalise what was happening. She just wanted to feel.

  Gio took her hand down and a small smile touched his mouth as if he understood. He held her hand against his chest where she could feel his heartbeat fast but strong, and with his other hand he wrapped it around her neck and pulled her towards him.

  This time the kiss was hungry and devouring. It became heated in seconds, and Valentina curled her hand into his shirt, bunching it up. Her other hand went to his hip and found the hot skin underneath his shirt. Emboldened, she slid it around to his back and explored under his jeans, feeling the cleft of his smooth buttocks. Gio broke the kiss and said thickly, ‘I need to see you.’

  His hands were on her shirt, undoing her buttons. Valentina shivered with anticipation and looked down. Gio’s hands looked huge and very dark, long fingers grappling with tiny buttons. She heard him curse softly when the buttons eluded his grasp and brought her own hands up to do the job. To be standing here, undressing in front of Gio … it was too huge to think about.

  When her shirt fell open to reveal her lacy bra, Valentina blushed hotly. Gio pushed her hands aside and pulled open the shirt even more, until it came off her shoulders and down her arms and fell to the floor.

  She couldn’t look up at him. A hand snaked around to her back and undid her bra. He pulled the two straps down her arms and her bra joined her shirt on the floor. Instinctively Valentina went to cover her breasts but Gio stopped her arms. ‘Don’t …’

  He tipped up her chin so that she had to look at him and his eyes were molten with heat and need, dissolving Valentina’s inhibitions. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  She saw his eyes drop to take in the swells of her breasts and their tips tingled painfully. With two hands he cupped them, and moved his thumbs across the sensitised peaks. Valentina moaned softly, closing her eyes. It was too much to see his hands on her flesh like that.

  Somehow Gio manoeuvred them so that he was sitting on the bed and he brought Valentina between his hard thighs, trapping her between them. With one hand on her waist holding her steady, he cupped a breast with his other and brought his mouth forward, and fed that hungry aching tip into the hot cavern of his mouth. Valentina sucked in a tortured breath and her hands went to his shoulders, holding on for dear life as shards of intense pleasure went from her nipple to between her legs.

  Gio was remorseless, sucking and teasing the peak into throbbing stiffness. Flicking it with this tongue before sucking fiercely again. Valentina wasn’t even aware of her hand going to the back of his head to hold him there. She cried out when he moved to the other breast and administered the same exquisite torture. Valentina had never known a pleasure like it. It was awakening an even more intense need in her body, down low, where her legs were pressed together by Gio’s thighs.

  Suddenly Valentina pulled back from his wicked mouth and looked down. Her eyelids felt heavy. Thickly she muttered, ‘I want to see you too.’ And she bent down to pull Gio’s polo shirt up and over his head. When his magnificent torso was revealed she could only look at it as reverently as he’d looked at her.

  He was beautifully muscled, not an ounce of fat. Dark olive skin and a very masculine dusting of hair. Gio’s eyes glittered fiercely and he said, ‘Come here.’ Valentina obeyed without question but this time she straddled Gio’s thighs so that she was sitting on his lap. He brought both arms around her and the sensation of her bare breasts and wet nipples against his chest made her gasp. He pulled her head down to his and covered her mouth, swallowing her gasp. Her arousal levels rose to fever pitch. She’d never known there could be so many kinds of kisses. This was dark and wicked and she could feel the bulge of his erection underneath the apex of her legs. She wriggled, heightening the sensation. Gio’s hand went to the front of her jeans and Valentina broke off the kiss with a gasp when she felt his fingers come between her jeans and skin.

  Her hair was falling down her back, making every nerve end stand on edge. Gio’s fingers were hot against her lower belly and as she looked into his eyes he flicked his thumb and opened the top button. With the top button gaping open and the zip pulled down, Gio spread his hand around the back of her waist and delved underneath, cupping one firm buttock.

  Valentina arched upwards against him, and Gio took advantage, his mouth and tongue unerringly finding a turgid nipple and sucking fiercely as his hand went deeper and his fingers found the damp cleft of her body.

  Valentina cried out, her legs pressing tight against his thighs as if that might assuage the delicious torture, but then suddenly the earth was moving and she was on her back on the bed with Gio looming over her, his shoulders impossibly broad, a lock of dark hair falling messily onto his forehead.

  Valentina wanted to reach up to touch that lock, invaded by a dangerous tenderness, and had to clench her hand to a fist to stop it. Thankfully Gio was far too busy distracting her to see anything of this turmoil within her.

  With a fast economy of movement he had opened her jeans fully and was pulling them down and off so now she was in nothing but her knickers. This was more naked than she’d ever been in front of anyone apart from her mother and Valentina bit her lip when trepidation and insecurity lanced her.

  Something pierced through the heat haze in Gio’s brain when he saw the flicker of trepidation on Valentina’s face, and the full plumpness of her bottom lip caught between small white teeth. Like a cold bucket of water being thrown in his face, something occurred to him. His hands stilled on the button of his jeans and he frowned. ‘Valentina … are you a virgin?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  GIO SAW VALENTINA’S face flush and a heavy weight settled in his gut. She brought up an arm to cover her breasts and just like that the temperature in the room zoomed down from about a million degrees to minus forty.

  Stifling an almost overwhelming urge to smash his fist into the nearest solid object, Gio stepped back from the sinful provocation of Valentina’s practically naked supine body. A body he would have been sinking into right now and discovering for himself just how innocent she was, with scant thought of being gentle.

  On stiff legs he went straight to the bathroom and lifted the robe from the back of the door and came back, holding it out to Valentina, who he avoided looking at on the bed. Discovering she was innocent was not something he’d expected in a million years and this changed everything. She could not really want him to be the one to take her innocence, and when the heat of passion died away, she’d realise that and hate him even more.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice, soft and husky, grated over his exposed and sensitive nerves. The muscles in his arm bunched and he said more curtly than he intended, ‘Take the robe, Valentina, I don’t sleep with virgins.’

  Valentina was sitting up on the bed holding the robe to her naked chest, in shock, for a long minute afterwards. Gio had left the room, pulling on his shirt as he did with just a curt, ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  She
felt cold all over and yet still hot and tingly inside. The sense of something momentous being ripped out of her grasp was huge. There was an awful sting to his rejection of her because she was a virgin, a sting that cut much deeper than she liked to acknowledge. To avoid looking at that far too controversial subject, Valentina allowed anger to rise into her overheated brain. How dared Gio react like that?

  The anger gave her the impetus to move and with stiff arms she pulled on the robe and belted it tightly around her and stalked out to the living area. When she emerged it was to see the rigid lines of Gio’s body as he looked out the window with his back to her. He clearly knew she was there as she saw him tense even more.

  Valentina resisted the urge to pick something up and fling it at his head. Instead she said with saccharine sweetness, ‘I’ll just go and divest myself of my virginity and be back so we can continue where we left off, shall I?’

  Gio whirled around, arms crossed and muscles bunched. Tension stamped all over his features. He looked wild and uncivilised and it made Valentina feel even hotter.

  ‘You should have been honest with me.’

  Valentina crossed her arms and laughed out loud. ‘You are such a hypocrite! You just told me that you’ve slept with women and not even remembered their names—how do you know that they weren’t virgins?’

  Gio winced. Why on earth had he spilled his guts like that? He’d never articulated to anyone how empty and meaningless those two years were. How low he’d sunk.

  He tried to ignore how achingly sexy Valentina looked in nothing but the robe with her dark hair spread out across her shoulders. Frustration coursed through his veins, making his body hurt. He bit out, ‘They weren’t. Believe me.’

  Valentina taunted, ‘So I should preface every kiss I have with a man with “By the way I’m a virgin”?’

  Something dark went into Gio’s gut at the thought of her kissing any other man. ‘Yes, especially if every kiss ends up with you lying half naked on a bed.’

  Valentina sucked in a gasp at the injustice of that comment and felt the prickle of humiliating tears. All she could think of right then was how ardently she’d thrown herself at Gio, how she’d begged him to kiss her. Make love to her. She’d been gyrating on his lap like some kind of an exotic dancer. He’d tried to stop her, had asked her twice if she wanted this, and each time she’d said a resounding yes.

  As if sensing her turmoil Gio uncrossed his arms and put out a hand. Valentina backed away and fire raced up her spine, obliterating any lingering desire. ‘I hate you, Giacomo Corretti. And I wouldn’t sleep with you now if you were the last man on this earth.’

  Valentina whirled around and hated that tears were blurring her vision. She dashed them away and went back into the bedroom where she ripped off the robe and dragged on her clothes, every move she’d made and kiss she’d just given this man running through her head like a bad B-movie.

  When she re-emerged she stalked straight to the main door, turned the key and had her hand on the handle before she felt a hand on her other arm. Instantly sensations ran all the way down to her groin and her still-sensitive breasts peaked.

  ‘Look, Valentina, wait—’

  She ripped her arm free and looked up into Gio’s face. The contrition she saw there sent her over the edge. She could handle anything but not this … pity. She lifted a hand and before she was even aware of the impulse, it had connected so hard with his face that his head snapped around. Trembling all over from an overdose of adrenalin and emotion she said, ‘Don’t touch me again. Ever.’

  The first day of the Corretti Cup race meeting was dawning and Gio stood in his study office looking out the window at the hive of activity in every corner of the racetrack. It was usually his favourite time of the year but this year he was impossibly distracted. Distracted by a five-foot-seven chestnut-haired, amber-eyed temptress and a level of sexual frustration he’d never known could exist. Not to mention the ever-simmering cauldron of emotions in his gut—ever since he’d seen her again. Gone was the numb shell that had been encasing him since he’d returned to Sicily.

  Valentina.

  Her name was on his mind, his lips, every waking moment. He could still feel the sting of her hand across his face. It had been no less than he’d deserved. When he’d realised she was a virgin he’d reacted viscerally. He could never be the one to take that prize from her. It would be a travesty. Yet she had been ready to give it—in the heat of the moment. Gio knew damn well that in the aftermath Valentina would have realised the magnitude of what she’d just done and with who, and she would have felt nothing but disgust for giving in to such base desires.

  Grief for Mario—talking about him had defused something between them, but no way was it strong enough to withstand the bitter and deep anger she undoubtedly still felt towards Gio. The chemistry that sizzled between them had obscured that momentarily.

  She might hate him for rejecting her now, but he’d saved him and her from that simmering enmity deepening even more.

  Gio knew all this and repeated it over and over again to himself but the truth was that he was lying to himself. Because for all of his lofty assertions to Valentina that he didn’t sleep with virgins, all he wanted to do was close the gates to his racetrack, turn everyone away, find her and put her over his shoulder like a caveman. And then he wanted to take her to a quiet place and make love to her until they were both weak and sated.

  Until she was no longer a virgin. Until she was his and no one else’s.

  Valentina should have been focusing on the task at hand—the first day of the Corretti Cup—but her mind kept veering off track back to the other evening and the excruciating humiliation of having Gio reject her because she was a virgin.

  Even now, hot tears pricked her eyes and to counteract the weak emotion she stabbed a fork with unnecessary zeal into a piece of pork. She felt so conflicted … the hate she’d always felt for Gio was disturbingly elusive now. She wanted to think of his rejection, hold that to her like a cold justification, but she kept thinking about what he’d told her.

  He’d ripped apart a huge part of her defence around him by revealing what he’d gone through after Mario’s death.

  And then he’d taken her in his arms … and Valentina had turned into a complete stranger. She’d begged him to kiss her, to make love to her. Self-disgust filled her now. Few men would turn that down … and Gio had merely proved himself as susceptible to a warm willing body as the next man. What he hadn’t counted on was her unwelcome innocence.

  The hurt that seized her in the pit of her belly reminded Valentina that his rejection had cut far deeper than she wanted to acknowledge.

  Stabbing the pork viciously again, Valentina told herself that he’d done her a favour by not sleeping with her. Her conscience pricked her to think of the emotional fall-out if she had slept with him and for the first time she considered the rogue idea that perhaps he’d done it out of some moral sense of integrity.

  One thing was certain: there was no way that Valentina was ever going to allow him to make her feel so vulnerable or exposed again.

  ‘Val?’

  Valentina looked up feeling a little dazed to see her assistant Sara, who was eyeing the very overpierced piece of pork warily.

  ‘Yes?’

  Sara looked up. ‘I, ah, just checked the main buffet tent and it’s all moving like clockwork. No one is waiting for their food.’

  Valentina forced a smile and her mind back to the task at hand with effort. ‘Thanks, Sara, I’ll go and check the VIP tent. You can start to organise the canapés for the drinks reception later.’

  As Valentina hurried off she forced all thoughts of Gio out of her head but then she suddenly caught a glimpse of him in the distance and instantly all efforts to put him out of her head were reduced to naught. She cursed loudly.

  ‘You look stunning tonight.’

  The tiny hairs rose all over Valentina’s body and her breath automatically quickened and her heart missed a beat. She
looked up from where she was running a pen down the list of VIP names to see Gio standing in front of her, ludicrously handsome in his black tuxedo. He’d changed since she’d caught that sighting of him earlier. His normally unruly hair was tamed into some kind of order, making him look even more debonair.

  She’d been burningly aware of him since he’d walked into the huge and lavishly decorated marquee about an hour before but to her relief he’d been on the other side of the room, talking to people. Mainly a steady stream of women which had aroused very dark and disturbing feelings inside her. But now he was here. And she couldn’t breathe.

  Somehow she found the wherewithal to breathe in and said coolly, ‘It’s the only formal dress I have—I didn’t have time to go shopping.’

  Gio’s dark eyes ran over her from where she’d put her hair up in a simple high knot, down over the black structured dress with its flared skirt and a pair of peep-toe black shoes. She was markedly dressed down compared to all the other women in the room who were dripping in jewels and dressed in the latest slinky silky fashions. Which was only appropriate, she’d told herself, hating that she felt somehow less.

  Despite the vivid recall of the other night and her lingering sense of humiliation and anger, Valentina felt hot colour seeping up her chest when face to face with Gio again and the memory of how she’d slapped him. She’d never hit another human being in her life. The compulsion to apologise was suddenly acute. Her emotions had betrayed her and she didn’t want him to think she still felt so volatile. Avoiding his eyes, she said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry … about hitting you.’

  ‘I deserved it.’

  Gio’s quick answer had her looking up to see him put a hand to his jaw as if to test it. Her belly clenched when she noticed a tiny scar high on his cheekbone. Had she done that? Treacherously her intent to be cool dissolved. ‘Did I really hurt you?’

  Gio’s mouth curled up on one side, making Valentina’s insides feel curiously liquid.