Castellano's Mistress of Revenge Read online

  The removal men had been busy while Ava and Marc were at dinner, for upon entering the formal sitting room she could see various works of art belonging to Marc already hanging on the walls. It was as if he was marking his territory. Even when she excused herself to use the bathroom upstairs she saw that he had taken over the master bedroom. Two well-travelled suitcases lay open on the bed as well as a black toile-tries bag. Even the air smelled of him, that enticing aroma of citrus and male pheromones that never failed to make her toes curl.

  ‘Madame?’ Celeste appeared from the walk-in wardrobe. ‘Did you want me for something?’

  ‘Non, Celeste,’ Ava said, blushing at being caught peering into Marc’s domain. ‘I was just…er…checking that Signor Castellano has everything he needs.’

  ‘Oui,’ Celeste said. ‘I was given instructions to unpack for him.’ She seemed to hesitate before asking, ‘Shall I move your things in here too?’

  Ava’s eyes rounded, her heart banging against her breastbone like a church bell pulled too hard. ‘Did he ask you to do that?’

  Celeste gave a Gallic shrug. ‘It is inevitable, oui?’

  Ava pulled her shoulders back. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He is a very handsome man,’ Celeste said as if that explained everything.

  Ava pursed her lips, wondering how to explain the situation. ‘Look, Celeste,’ she began, ‘I don’t want you to think the wrong thing, but—’

  ‘It is all right, madame,’ Celeste assured her with a knowing look. ‘I was young once. You have a history with him, oui? It is hard to resist a man who has gone to such trouble to get you back in his life.’

  Ava frowned. ‘Celeste…I’m not sure you understand. Marc Castellano ruined Douglas. He took everything off him. His ex-wife was left with nothing, not to mention his children. Douglas wanted Adam and Lucy to have something to remember him by. It was his dying wish.’

  Celeste glanced past Ava’s shoulder, clearing her throat diplomatically. ‘Excusez-moi, Signor Castellano,’ she said with a little bow. ‘I am not quite finished unpacking your things.’

  ‘C’est bien, Celeste. Je vais me reposer,’ he said. ‘Bonsoir.’

  ‘Bonsoir,’ Celeste said and exchanging a conspiratorial raised-brow look with Ava on the way past, left to make her way downstairs.

  ‘Do you have any objections to my taking over this room?’ Marc asked.

  ‘No objections at all,’ Ava answered in an offhand, couldn’t-care-less tone. ‘The villa belongs to you. You can sleep where you like.’

  His dark eyes contained a hint of amusement as they meshed with hers. ‘Is that an invitation to join you in your bed?’

  She crossed her arms, her mouth flattening with reproach. ‘No, it is not.’

  He lifted a hand to her face, trailing his fingertips down the curve of her cheek, his touch stirring every nerve to zinging life. He stopped just short of her mouth, his index finger touching the tiny crease at the corner that so rarely these days lifted upwards in a smile. Ava held her breath, feeling her whole body sway towards him. It was like a magnetic force pulling her towards him. She lowered her lashes to avoid his gaze, but he countered it by placing a fingertip beneath her chin, pinning her gaze with his.

  ‘I was surprised to find you weren’t occupying the master suite,’ he said. ‘When did you move out of your husband’s bed?’

  Ava felt her breath tighten in her throat. Should she tell him she had never occupied it? Would he believe her? No, of course not, she thought. Given the way Douglas had insisted they give every appearance of a normal relationship in public, it would take more than a few words from her to counter the many Press photographs that had been printed with Douglas’s arm around her waist or gazing at her adoringly. It had sickened her to be complicit in the web of lies that surrounded their relationship, but it had saved Serena and that was all Ava really cared about. ‘He was very ill towards the end,’ she said. ‘But in any case, we decided early on to have separate rooms. He wasn’t a good sleeper. He…he had terrible insomnia.’

  Marc moved away from her and, picking up a silver-framed photograph of Serena and Richard’s wedding day, examined it for a moment or two before placing it back down. He turned back to face her, his expression mask-like. ‘What did your sister have to say about your relationship with Cole?’

  Ava tried to keep her expression as blank as possible. ‘Serena was the one who introduced me to him in the first place,’ she said. ‘She worked in the accounts department in his London office.’

  ‘So it was a whirlwind affair.’ It was neither a statement nor a question, so Ava didn’t respond. Silence seemed so much safer—fewer lies to tell that she might regret later.

  He glanced at the wedding photograph again before returning his gaze to hers. ‘Your sister lives a very different life from what you have chosen for yourself. And yet you are still very close, are you not?’

  ‘We have our moments like any sisters do,’ Ava answered. ‘Since our mother died when I was nine, Serena, being two years younger, has always looked up to me as a mother. But you know all this. I told you about it when we met five years ago.’

  He studied her for an endless pause, his eyes roving hers as if searching for something deep inside them. ‘Yes, you did,’ he finally said. ‘I told you how I envied you, remember? Being an only child left me with many burdens to carry alone.’

  Ava remembered well how deeply Marc’s childhood had affected him. Whenever he had spoken of it, which was rarely, she got a sense of the acute loneliness of him as a young, bewildered little boy with no one to turn to for comfort. In the beginning she had hoped to be the one to heal him of his childhood wounds by loving him and cherishing him for the rest of their lives. Somehow it seemed all the more tragic now that he was likely to spend the rest of his life moving from one pointless relationship to the other, never trusting or loving someone long enough to build a lifetime together.

  ‘I have to go to London early next week,’ Marc said. ‘I would like you to come with me. It will give you a chance to catch up with your sister.’

  Ava’s forehead creased again. Serena would take one look at her with Marc and realise something was up. ‘But I’ve just come back from London,’ she said. ‘I’ve barely unpacked.’

  ‘I am sure your sister will be delighted to see you again so soon,’ he said.

  Ava pressed her lips together, dropping her gaze from his. ‘Serena hasn’t been well just lately,’ she said, twisting her hands together. ‘I don’t think now is the right time for her to have visitors.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that. Is it something serious?’

  Ava lifted her gaze back to his. ‘She has had several miscarriages over the last couple of years,’ she said. ‘The last one was at four months along, just ten days ago. It was very traumatic for her, as you can imagine.’

  His dark eyes showed his compassion, which made it all the harder for Ava to summon up her ill feelings towards him. It reminded her of how tender he had been with her in the past whenever the slightest ailment had struck her. How she had longed for such tenderness over the last five years!

  ‘I am very sorry,’ he said deeply. ‘The loss must be truly devastating for both your sister and her husband. But would not another visit from you be just what she needs to cheer her up?’

  Ava crossed her arms over her chest again, hoping it would ease the tight ache of her heart. ‘I am not sure… She was not up to visitors while I was there. I can call Richard and see what he thinks, but I don’t think he’ll be too happy about it. They both are suffering terribly. It’s been a huge disappointment.’

  ‘Ava, it is important that we are seen together as a couple, not just here in Monte Carlo, but also when I have to travel elsewhere for business,’ Marc said in a serious tone.

  She raised her brows at him cynically. ‘What you mean is you want me under lock and key so you can control every move I make, don’t you, Marc?’

  He worked his jaw for a mome
nt, as if trying to withhold a stinging retort. ‘I am paying you to be my mistress, Ava,’ he said after a small, tense pause. ‘It is part of the job description. After all, you accompanied Douglas Cole whenever he travelled abroad, hanging off his arm like a limpet.’

  ‘That was different,’ Ava said without thinking.

  He lifted one dark brow in a perfect arc. ‘How so?’

  She compressed her lips, lowering her eyes again. ‘Douglas was very ill in the last few months of his life,’ she said. ‘He needed more and more support from me in order to travel for business.’

  ‘I bet you hated every minute of tending to his needs,’ Marc said. ‘It is not quite the role you were expecting when you accepted the role as his bride, now, was it? But then the lure of the money would be enough to induce you to do anything, would it not?’

  She gave him a cutting glare and turned her back to him. ‘I hope you are not expecting me to mop your sweaty brow for you some time in the future, for I won’t do it.’

  Marc felt his hands tense and forced each of his fingers to unclench. Her defiance both irritated and aroused him. She was much feistier than she had been in the past, but then the sweet, loving woman he had thought he had known back then had all been an act, an artful, devious disguise to get him to take his focus off his business so she could undercut him with her partnership with Cole. This was the real Ava McGuire: tough, combative and furious at him for having her under his thumb at last. He was going to enjoy every minute of taming her. They would be dynamite in bed together, perhaps even more so than they had been before. He could feel the electric tightness of the air whenever she came near him; her body gave off pulsing waves of attraction that ran over his skin, heating it to boiling point. It was all he could do not to push her up against the nearest wall and take her roughly any way he could, satisfying this aching, burning need that throbbed incessantly in his groin. He could feel it now, the burgeoning of his flesh, the rush of blood that made him swell with longing.

  ‘I promise you I will not ask you to mop my brow, cara,’ he said, watching as she shook the waves of her blonde hair back past her shoulders as if its length annoyed her. ‘I have other places on my body I would much rather you pay close attention to.’

  She swung back to face him, her grey-blue eyes flashing silver daggers at him. ‘You think you can make me do anything you want, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘But I am no man’s plaything. I have never been and never will be.’

  ‘Ah, but that is not true, now, is it, ma petite?’ Marc asked as he came closer again, taking her by the shoulders this time. ‘Cole got to play with you all he liked. Now it is my turn.’

  Her slim throat moved up and down, the tension in her shoulders palpable under the gentle but firm pressure of his hands. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said, eyeballing him determinedly. ‘I want double the money.’

  He lifted a single brow at her calculating behaviour. ‘We agreed on a price, Ava. I am not paying you more than you are worth, especially since you are what one would call “used goods”.’

  Her mouth tightened, but to his surprise her chin gave a tiny wobble before she got it back under control. She blinked at him a couple of times, which made him wonder if she was close to tears.

  A trick or a tactic? He couldn’t quite make up his mind. Instead he did what he had longed to do from the moment he had turned up at the villa earlier that evening.

  He bent his head and, before she could do anything to counteract it, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Ava had no time to prepare herself for his kiss, not that she could have even if she’d had a lifetime or two. The passion that roared between their mouths was like an inferno as soon as contact was made. Her lips throbbed and burned and blistered with longing as his ground against hers, roughly at first, angrily almost, as if he hated himself for still wanting her. She kissed him back with equal rage; annoyed at how she still wanted him, how she had wanted him to kiss her as if the last five years hadn’t happened.

  The pressure of his mouth on hers grew and grew until with just one stabbing thrust of his tongue she opened to him, her whole body melting in his rough hold, her spine almost collapsing, throwing her forward so his arms had to leave her shoulders to wrap around her body instead, holding her up against his rock-hard form. She felt every delicious arrantly male inch of him, the way his erection pounded against her belly, reminding her of how powerfully he was made, and how explosive he could be in the final moments of release.

  His tongue explored her mouth in intimate detail, shockingly intimate: licking, sucking and stroking until she was whimpering in response. His teeth nipped at the fullness of her lower lip, fuelling her desire to an unmanageable, uncontrollable level. She gasped as he moved from her mouth to run his tongue over the sensitive skin of her neck before he used his teeth on her, pulling at her flesh teasingly, taunting her to play the same dangerous game with him.

  Ava put her lips to the stubbly skin of his neck, shivering in response as his peppered skin rasped against the softness of her lips, relishing in that exquisite reminder of how male he was and how softly feminine she was in comparison. He tasted of citrus and salt and a hint of male sweat, a tantalising cocktail that had her head spinning faster than any triple-strength Cosmopolitan could ever do.

  She used her tongue like a cat, licking him softly at first, tentatively, teasing him until he growled deep in his throat. She bit him then, a soft, playful little nip that tugged at his skin, making him press himself against her pelvis with throbbing urgency as his need for her grew thick and hard and insistent.

  She rubbed against him wantonly as she went for his neck again, harder this time, her spine turning to molten wax as he swore roughly and returned to her mouth, covering it with his with almost bruising strength. Ava tasted blood, but she wasn’t sure if it was hers or his. She didn’t care, all she could think about was having this kiss go on and on, to be held like this, so firmly, so possessively and so passionately. It had been so long since she had felt this exhilarating sense of abandonment. Her body felt as if it had come to life again after being shut down for five lonely years. Every drop of her blood raced through her veins, every nerve-ending bloomed and buzzed with feeling and every pore of her skin ached to feel him touch her intimately.

  She felt his hands glide over her breasts beneath her top, cupping them through her lacy bra, before he deftly released its clasp at the back to hold her skin on skin. The palms of his hands were warm and slightly rough, again a delicious reminder of how intensely male he was. She quivered as he gently pinched her nipples, rolling them between his finger and thumb until they were hard as pebbles and achingly sensitive.

  Ava drew in a scratchy breath as he lowered his mouth to her right breast, taking her in his mouth, the hot moistness anointing her, ramping up her need for him until she was almost gibbering with desire.

  ‘Please…oh, please…’ she groaned as he moved to her other breast.

  She felt him smile around her nipple, as if her reaction to him pleased him no end. She shuddered as he suckled on her hungrily, his mouth a sweet torture on her senses. She arched backwards, gasping for air, for release, for the pleasure only he could deliver.

  ‘Marc…please…please…’

  He lifted his mouth off her breast and met her feverish gaze. His eyes glinted with satisfaction, his mouth tilting in mocking amusement. ‘Look at how easy you are for the taking,’ he said. ‘One kiss and I could have had you right here and right now.’

  Ava had never slapped anyone in her life; she abhorred violence of any sort, but her hand went flying through the air towards his face before she could stop it. Luckily he did. He captured her wrist, halting its progress.

  ‘Violence is not and will not be a part of this relationship,’ he said with gravitas.

  Ava raised her chin, not even bothering to blink back her tears. ‘You started it.’ She flung at him accusingly. ‘You were too rough.’

  His eyes went to her mouth. She s
aw the shock register in his gaze, the sudden flare of his eyes as they saw the tiny split she could feel on her lower lip. ‘Forgive me. I was too rough with you. It will not happen again.’

  Ava wanted it to happen again. She wanted him to lose control so she would not be the only one suffering this empty, unfulfilled ache deep inside. She also wanted him in this mood, this tender, concerned Marc she had once or twice caught a glimpse of in the past. Fresh tears came to her eyes, cascading down her cheeks unheeded as she stood before him, her heart contracting painfully for how she had loved and lost him.

  Marc’s brows drew together. ‘Does it hurt that much, cara?’ he asked gently.

  Ava wrenched out of his hold with unnecessary force considering he was barely touching her, let alone restraining her in any way. ‘It’s not about my lip, damn you,’ she threw at him, angry at herself for losing control in front of him.

  He silently handed her a clean, neatly folded and pressed white handkerchief, his eyes intensely dark and watchful as they held hers.

  Ava took the square of fabric with a hand that was a little unsteady, and gently dabbed at her mouth, conscious of him studying her every movement. She scrunched up the handkerchief after she had finished, but when he reached for it she held it behind her back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’ll need soaking. I’ll see to it.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ he said with a wry look. ‘You can throw it away or give it to the household staff to clean. I am not expecting you to do my laundry, Ava.’

  Ava kept the handkerchief tightly clutched in her hand. She had smelled his clean male scent on it as she’d held it to her mouth. She wasn’t going to give it back, she decided. If it was the only thing she had left of him when this was over then so be it.

  ‘I would like to go to bed,’ she said in a subdued tone as she felt the fight go out of her. ‘I’m very tired.’