Michelle Reid Collection. Michelle Reid
Читать онлайн книгу.
moment Antonia saw him her beautiful face lit up, her gorgeous mouth broke into a sensational smile. And she struck out towards Kranst like a pigeon recognising home.
CHAPTER THREE
STANDING on the sidelines, Marco watched them meet, watched them smile, watched them murmur to each other. He watched Antonia lift her hand to his shoulders and Stefan Kranst slide his hands around her waist—then their mouths came together in a tender soft kiss.
He tried telling himself that it was just a greeting—that it was as natural as any other kiss exchanged tonight. But it wasn’t true, and everyone knew it. Which was why conversations stopped, heads turned, and the whole room watched Marco Bellini’s mistress embrace her ex-lover with brazen ease.
Strikingly tall and fair, Stefan Kranst might be ten years older than Marco, but he had as little trouble as Marco securing any woman of his choice. And Dio, he had secured a few during the year since Antonia had left him, Marco recalled deridingly.
But this woman was now his woman. She lived in his home, she slept in his bed, and she clothed herself with his money. Which made that lush red-painted mouth Kranst was kissing his exclusive property.
The primitive heat of an age-old burn of possessiveness began to form blisters inside the wall of his chest, the urge to go over there and drag them apart holding him absolutely still while he fought to contain such an utterly crass act. Everyone was watching, waiting—hoping, in their cruel little way, that he was going to do exactly that and cause the kind of nice juicy scene they could dine out on for the next month.
And her dress was too short, her legs too long, and her slender ankles too sexily elevated by the heels of her shiny-red backless shoes, Marco observed—refusing to remember that he had thought the exact opposite before he had witnessed her wrapped in that particular man’s arms.
Had she done it for effect? Had she worn the dress because she’d known all along that Kranst would be here tonight and had wanted to please him? No bra, he remembered, dropping his eyes to the twin points of her breasts hovering a half centimetre away from Kranst’s chest. He knew what that felt like. He knew what was happening to Kranst right now, because the bastard also knew what it felt like to hold Antonia that close.
No proper panties, either, knowing her. His eyes moved lower, checking for a tell-tale panty-line and finding none, which meant she was wearing one of those sexy little g-strings she liked to favour now and then.
Usually for his exclusive pleasure. So, when he saw Kranst’s long artistic fingers splay over the slender curve of her hips, Marco took it as a personal insult to see her accept the intimacy as if the man still had every right to place his hands on her like that!
The sudden burst of soft laughter brought his hard gaze flicking upwards in time to catch that laughter animating just about every exquisite feature on her face. Then one of her hands curled around Kranst’s nape, and they began talking to each other as if it was perfectly acceptable for them to behave like this in public.
But it was not acceptable, and she should know it. She should know that such behaviour with a man everyone here knew had been her lover before Marco only made her look cheap and made him look a fool!
Was she doing it deliberately? Was this her way of letting him know that he wasn’t the only fish in her sea?
Sometimes he hated her. Sometimes he hated her so much he was bewildered as to how he could want her so badly, feeling the way he did. She wasn’t his type. She had never been his type. She was too young, too uncultured and just too damn flighty! Or why else would she choose to stand out like an exotic flower in flimsy red silk while the rest of the room wore classy black chic?
Someone slid up beside him. ‘Well, caro, she certainly knows how to make a man welcome,’ a very mocking female voice drawled.
Gritting his teeth together behind the determinedly relaxed line of his mouth, Marco ignored Louisa Florenza’s silken barb, and maintained his silence as the two of them stood watching Stefan Kranst begin edging Antonia backwards a few steps until he had put them both on the tiny dance floor.
Her hand remained curled around his nape. Both of his rested on her slender waist as he set them swaying to the music while they continued to talk. And their concentration on each other was so absolute that it was clear Antonia had completely forgotten all about the man she had actually come here with!
‘You know, you cannot fail to be impressed by her complete lack of guile.’ Louisa smoothly injected her next poisoned barb. ‘Most women would be dying of embarrassment if they were confronted by their ex-lover in a room packed full of the friends of her present lover. But she doesn’t seem to care at all!’
‘You are standing next to me, cara,’ Marco pointed out. ‘Do you see me dying of embarrassment?’
As a reply, Louisa linked her arm through the crook of his arm. ‘We had some good times, Marco, hmm?’ she murmured wistfully.
Good times? Watching Antonia swaying sensually to the music, he promised himself that if the gap between their bodies grew any smaller he would go over there and…‘You were a cat with claws, Louisa,’ he drily reminded her. ‘Which made the good times very few and far between.’
‘I purred like a kitten in your bed, though,’ she came back, with an example of that sensual purr.
It did nothing for him, which further annoyed him because it had used to do many things for him. But now all he could hear was another woman’s soft sighs breathing tremulous pleas that could drive him out of his mind.
‘And you liked to feel my claws now and again…’ ‘I still bear the scars,’ he clipped.
‘Good,’ she said, but he sensed the knowledge getting through to her that his mind—and his body—was very much elsewhere right now. ‘I hope you will always bear them. For what you are feeling now, as you watch her make love to him on the dance floor, is what I feel every time I see you with her. And those scars will last for ever, Marco, I can assure you.’
The bitterness in her tone finally caught his attention. Turning his head, he looked down into the face of one of Italy’s most beautiful women—and smiled a very sardonic smile. ‘Any scars you retain from me, bella mia,’ he drawled, ‘belong exclusively to the loss of that intravenous drip you had attached to my money.’
Unfazed by the accusation, Louisa held his very mocking gaze. ‘Are you implying that she does not enjoy the same privilege?’
‘No,’ he conceded, and his smile began to tighten as he returned his attention to the two closely linked bodies on the dance floor. ‘But she has yet to abuse that particular privilege.’
‘Clever girl,’ Louisa commended.
Not so clever, Marco countered silently as he watched her soft-blonde head give a small shake that set the paste diamonds decorating the clasp holding up her lovely hair shimmering in the lights. Then she put her hand across Kranst’s mouth to stop whatever it was he was saying to her.
Was he asking her to go back to him? Was he asking to paint her again? Was he talking sex to her just as Louisa was talking sex to him?
Intimacy was the absolute devil, he decided. A forsaken intimacy was even worse. It gave people you no longer felt a thing for a power over you you could never take back.
‘He still wants her.’ Louisa’s remark hit him dead centre, as if she could tap into his thoughts.
‘His desires don’t interest me,’ he answered dismissively. The real point was—did Antonia still want Kranst?
Then another thought slid silk-like into his head, filling him with something disturbingly like dismay. Could it be that Antonia was becoming tired of him?
The very suggestion was so alien to him that he couldn’t quite work out how to handle it. No woman in his memory had even considered walking away from him until he was ready