They didn’t suspect anything. They knew exactly what was happening inside the car. He smothered a chuckle at her relieved expression, not bothering to correct her assumptions. Putting a hand to the small of her back, he led her to the stairs leading to the interior of the plane. “Come along. Our flight is ready to take off.”
They entered the cabin and as soon as the plane was airborne, Max’s cell phone rang. He looked over at her and apologized before picking it up and talking. Clarissa enjoyed listening to him speak in the foreign languages, some of which she knew and others, she had absolutely no grasp of. After a while, she pulled open her laptop and started working herself and soon she was absorbed in the translation of the current novel she was working on.
At some point, she must have fallen asleep because several hours later, she heard Max’s voice and his hand gently nudging her awake. “You’re home, Clarissa,” he said softly into her ear.
Clarissa sighed in frustration. “Great,” she moaned. Home meant no more days spent in Max’s company, no more exciting conversations, no more waking up and knowing he was in a breakfast room sipping coffee and reading the financial section of the newspaper as he waited for her arrival. She hated that.
Getting off the plane, Clarissa felt a slight depression settle into her bones. She’d been with Max for so many days, feeling him next to her, laughing with him, listening as he spoke to her or with someone else and being able to enjoy the deep timber of his voice.
Now, being back home on her father’s estate in her small little cottage which didn’t seem as warm and cozy as the sun drenched villa in Sicily, all she wanted to do was to turn around and try to convince Max to follow her inside. But the look on his face moments before he kissed her goodbye told her that her arguments would fall on deaf ears. The man had an agenda and he was using every ploy in his arsenal to get her to marry him.
Seeing the determined look on his face, she squared her shoulders, smiled calmly back at him and then walked into her cottage. Moments later, she fell into a puddle of frustration on her quilt covered bed, frustration and unsatisfied sexual desire still pinging around in her body. Damn the man! He had no conscience, she told herself. If she had any self-respect, she’d stop seeing him.
But deep down, Clarissa knew that wasn’t an option.
Chapter 11
The following four weeks were both heaven and hell. She spent several wonderful evenings with Max, dining at delicious restaurants, going to the opera, the ballet, the theatre or to various social functions. At all of them, Max was courteous and attentive, never letting her out of his sight for very long and always pulling her close when she was near, making her feel wanted and desirable.
At the end of the evening, he was merciless. The first few nights after their return from Italy, she would willingly fall into his arms, eager for his kisses and his touch that would light her body on fire with need. But he would never follow through with the promise of his kisses. He would leave her aching and shivering with a desire she’d never knew was possible, but he would still leave her. Max was an expert at discovering all of her erogenous zones; her back, her thighs, her neck and shoulders. He never once touched her breasts although they were swollen and aching with the need to feel his hands on them. And he never touched her above the thigh or below her stomach. It was as if he were teasing her.
By the third week, she could no longer handle his touch. The night he brought her home from a dinner party, she took a seat as far away from him as she possibly could in the limousine. “Why so far, cara?” he asked and reached out to pull her close.
Holding her hands out in front of her, she shook her head and warded off his hands. “No Max. Please don’t touch me.”
He laughed softly and shook his head as well. “You don’t really mean that,” he said and pulled her onto his lap.
Clarissa quickly grabbed his wrists and held them away from her. “Please Max,” she begged, tears brimming on her lashes and ashamed that she’d reached this level but unable to help it when