Sins of the Past by Elizabeth Power Read Free Book Online Page A

around herself that had fooled even a man as worldly as Damiano D’Amico.
    ‘You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?’ he had groaned that night in his private rooms, when things had got so out of hand between them, when her hands had stolen inside his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders so that she could see him, touch him, feel the satin of his pulsing flesh that clothed the exciting strength of his body. The night she had allowed him to lead her into the bedroom, realising that unless she admitted the truth there would be no turning back.
    Scared by what her boldness had instigated as she’d allowed her hands and lips free rein over his muscular, hair-feathered chest, she’d been even more afraid of his turning away fromher in disgust if she told him the truth, perhaps ridiculing her innocence and her lack of sophistication. There was no way she could have suffered the humiliation of that. It would have been too demoralising and degrading, as well as agonizing, to have him reject her. And so, aroused to fever-pitch by his lips and those skilled and oh, so capable hands on her body, when he’d asked her if she was on the pill, she had murmured tremulously that she was.
    He had known almost at once, of course, that she had lied, but things had gone too far, and the fire that had raged between them had been too hot and consuming even for his disciplined will.
    As pain had made her cry out, she’d heard his groan of rejection, swiftly followed by one of defeat as he lost control.
    It had been an experience she could never have imagined. Rivers of sensation had tumbled through every electrified cell in her body, making her cry out again, but this time in ecstasy from the earth-shattering strength of her climax.
    He’d waited until she’d slumped back against the pillows, gasping and spent, before rolling away from her with the swiftness of the mistral that blew down from the mountains in winter, and to Riva it had seemed just as chillingly.
    ‘What the devil was all that about?’
    Riva recoiled from the white-hot emotion running through his burning question.
    ‘You lied to me! Why the hell did you think you could get away with lying to me?’
    He was angry. She couldn’t understand how he could be so angry. Not if he loved her! He should have been pleased, flattered …
    ‘I—I didn’t think you’d mind.’ Reduced by the experience of a lifetime and then his frightening anger, she let slip the charade of sophistication that had resulted in her winding up in bed with him.
    ‘You didn’t think I’d
mind
!’ On his feet now, he swungaway from the bed, slapping his forehead as he did so. ‘My dear, reckless girl.
Mamma mia!
Did you even
think?’
    Shamed by his unexpected reaction, and by how irresponsible he thought her, she covered her small breasts with the sheet and asked candidly, ‘Why is my virginity so anathema to you?’ And, in view of how gladly she had sacrificed it for him, she murmured, ‘Shouldn’t you be glad?’
    ‘No, I darn well shouldn’t! What did you imagine I would say?
“Grazie, signorina?
That was very generous of you"?’
    ‘Stop it!’ She couldn’t bear it! Not his mood, nor his angry words, let alone the meaning behind them. He was reducing what they had just done to nothing. No—worse than that—to something sordid, making her feel no better than a whore.
    ‘And what if I’ve made you pregnant? Had you thought of that?’
    Yes, she had, she remembered thinking, but only fleetingly, caught up in too many other emotions—desire, passion, embarrassment, the fear of rejection.
    ‘Do you really think I will have any sympathy with you if you come crying to me in a few weeks saying you’re going to have my baby?’
    Numbed by the significance of what those last words could only mean—that he didn’t love her—Riva couldn’t believe he could hurt her any more until, with eyes narrowing into cold, speculative slits, he added, ‘Or was that all part of the