LUCY MONROE - Valentino's Love-Child

“I’m not talking about sex.”

He turned her to face him and lowered his head so his lips hovered above hers. “Let’s not talk at all.”

Then he kissed her. He would show her that they were too right together to dismiss their relationship because it wasn’t packaged in orange blossoms and meters of white tulle.

She fought her own response. He could feel the tension in her, knew she wanted to resist, but as much as she might want to she was as much a slave to their mutual attraction as he. Her body knew where it belonged. In his arms.

But her brain was too active and she tore her lips from his. “No, Tino.”

“Do not say no. Say rather, Make love to me, Tino . This is what I wish to hear.”

Lucy Monroestarted reading at the age of four. After going through the children’s books at home, she was caught by her mother reading adult novels pilfered from the higher shelves on the bookcase…

Alas, it was nine years before she got her hands on a Mills & Boon® romance her older sister had brought home. She loves to create the strong alpha males and independent women that people Mills & Boon® books. When she’s not immersed in a romance novel (whether reading or writing it), she enjoys travel with her family, having tea with the neighbours, gardening, and visits from her numerous nieces and nephews.

Lucy loves to hear from readers. E-mail her at LucyMonroe@LucyMonroe.com or visit her website: www.LucyMonroe.com

BY

LUCY MONROE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

VALENTINO GRISAFI brushed a silky auburn curl away from where it blocked his view of his sleeping mistress’s face.

Mistress . An old-fashioned word for a very modern woman. Faith Williams would not appreciate the label. Were he to be foolish enough to use it within her hearing, she would no doubt let him know it too. His carina americana was no wilting flower.

Pretty American . Now, that suited her. But if he should let on he thought of her like a mistress? Ai- yi- yi .

Eyes the blue of a peacock feather would snap with temper while she lectured him on how inappropriate the term was. And he supposed she would have a point. He did not pay her bills. He did not buy her clothes. No matter how many hours they spent together here, she did not live in his Marsala apartment. She did not rely on him for anything but his company.

So, not his mistress. But not his girlfriend, either. Long-term commitment and love had no place between them. Theirs was a purely physical relationship, the duration and depth of which was dictated purely by convenience. Mostly his. Not that Faith had nothing to say in the matter.

She could walk away as easily as he and had no more incentive to make time in her schedule for him than vice versa. Luckily for them both, the relationship— such that it was—worked for each of them.

Perhaps they were friends also and he did not regret it, but that had come after. After he had discovered the way her sweet, curvaceous body responded to the slightest touch of his. After kisses that melted his brain and her resistance. After he had learned how much pleasure he could find basking in her generous sensuality, once unleashed.

The sex between them was phenomenal.

Which was no doubt why he could already feel the loss of the coming weeks.

Tracing her perfect oval features he leaned close to her ear. “ Carina , you must wake.”

Her nose wrinkled and the luscious bow of her mouth twisted into a moue of denial, her exotically colored eyes remaining stubbornly closed. Her recently sated body not moving so much as a centimeter from its usual post-coital curled position.

“Come, bella mia . Waken.”

“If you’d come to my apartment, I could stay in bed sleeping while you had to get dressed and leave,” she grumbled into the pillow.

“Most nights, I leave as well, carina . You know this.” He liked to have breakfast with Giosue. His eight-year-old son was the light of Valentino’s life. “Besides, I am not waking you up to go. We need to talk.”

Faith’s eyelids fluttered, but her mouth did not slip from its downward arch.

“You are adorable like this, you know?”

That had her sitting up and staring at him with grumpy startlement, the tangerine, supersilky, Egyptian cotton sheet she’d insisted he use on his bed clutched to her chest. “Sane people do not find cranky attractive, Tino.”

Biting back a smile, he shrugged. “What can I say? I am different. Or perhaps it is you. I do not recall finding any of my other amantes so cute when they were irritable.”

He did not like using the word lover , but knew better than to refer to her as the equally ill-fitting title of mistress . And she had already cut him off at the knees for referring to her once as a bed partner. She said if he wanted to use such a clinical term, he should consider getting an anatomically accurate blow-up doll.

Why these thoughts were plaguing him tonight, he did not know. Defining her place in his life was not something he spent time doing, nor was he overly fond of labels. So why so preoccupied with them tonight?

“I have no interest in hearing about your past conquests Signor Grisafi.” Now she really looked out of sorts, her eyes starting to flash with temper.

“I apologize. But you know I was hardly an untried boy when we met.” He had already loved and lost a wife, not to mention the women who had warmed his cold bed after.

He and Faith had been together for a year, longer than he had been with any other woman since the death of his beloved Renata. But that hardly altered his past.

“Neither of us were virgins, but it’s bad form to discuss past relationships while in bed with your current lover.”

“You are so worried about following protocols, too,” he mocked.

He had never known someone less concerned with appearance and social niceties. His carina americana was the quintessential free spirit.

A small smile teased her lips at that. “Maybe not, but this is one social norm I’m one hundred percent behind.”

“Duly noted.”

“Good.” She curled up to him, snuggling against his chest, her hand resting casually on his upper thigh and causing no small reaction in his nether regions. “You said you didn’t wake me up to send me on my way?”

“No. We need to talk.”

She cocked her head to one side. “What about?”

He couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and kissed the tip of her straight nose. “You really are adorable when you first wake up.”

“I thought it was when I was grumpy.”

“Have you ever woken up not irritable?”

“I have a perfectly sunny disposition in the morning. Not that you would know that little fact as we’ve never spent a full night together, but you’ll have to take my word on it. It’s only when I have to wake up after being sated so gorgeously with your body that I complain.”

It was an old argument. She had never taken his refusal to spend the entire night together with full grace. She understood his desire to be home for breakfast with his son, but not his insistence on leaving their shared bed after at most a short nap after their lovemaking.

Her continued pressing the point frustrated him and that leaked out into his voice when he said, “Be that as it may, there is something I have been meaning to tell you.”

She stiffened and pulled away, her blue-green gaze reflecting an instant emotional wariness. “What?”

“It is nothing bad. Well, not too bad. It is simply that my parents are going on a trip. They wish to visit friends in Naples.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t know.”

“Naturally, I did not tell you.”

“And?”

“And I cannot leave Giosue at night when he does not have his grandparents there to watch over him.” Never mind the staff that lived on site at their vineyard, Vigne di Grisafi, much less the housekeeper that had her own room in the house. It was not the same.

“I understand.” He could tell from her expression that she really did. “How long will your parents be gone?”

“Two weeks only.”

“I won’t see you at all?”

“It is unlikely.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, but in the end she simply nodded.

“I will miss you,” he found himself admitting. Then he scowled. He hadn’t wanted to say that. “This.” He brushed his hand down her body. “I will miss this .”

“I heard you the first time, tough guy. You can’t take it back now. You may as well admit you like my company as much as me in your bed.”

He bore her back to the bed, his mouth hovering above hers. “Maybe almost as much. And speaking of sex. I will have to do without you for two weeks, I think we should take advantage of our time together.”

“Have I ever said no to you?” she asked with a husky laugh.

“No and tonight is no time to start.”

Faith woke surrounded by warmth and the scent of the man she loved.

Her eyes flew open and a grin split her face. It hadn’t been a dream. After making love into the wee hours of the morning, Tino had asked her to spend the night. For the first time ever.

Okay, maybe not asked…more like informed her that she was staying, but it was the same result. She was in his arms, in his bed—the morning after they’d made love.

And it was glorious.

Every bit as delicious a feeling as she had thought it would be.

“Are you awake?” his deep voice rumbled above her.

She lifted her head from its resting place on his hair-covered chest and turned the full wattage of her smile on him. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like you were telling me the truth when you said you had a sunny disposition in the morning. Maybe I will have to start calling you solare .”

Sunlight? Her heart squeezed. “Tay used to call me Sunshine.”

“A past boyfriend?” Tino asked on a growl, the morning whiskers on his face giving him a sexily fierce aspect. “You are right, discussing past amores while in bed with your current one is definitely bad taste.”

She laughed, not in the least offended. “He was my husband, not a past boyfriend,” she said as she scooted out of the bed, intent on making coffee.

“You were married?”

“Yes.” Weird that after almost a full year together, she was telling him about having been married before for the first time. But then, that was the nature of their relationship. She and Tino focused on the present when they were together.

She’d learned more about him—and a tragic past similar to her own—from his mother than she’d ever learned from him. Strangely enough, where Tino showed no interest in Faith’s art, his mother was a fan. They’d met at one of Faith’s showings in Palermo. In spite of the generation difference in their ages, the two women had hit it off immediately and both had been thrilled to discover they lived so close to one another. Vigne di Grisafi was a mere twenty-minute drive from Faith’s small apartment in Pizzolato.

Not that she’d ever been there as Tino’s guest. She’d been seeing Tino for two months before she realized the Valentino Agata mentioned so frequently was Tino, the man Faith spent her nights making love with. At first, she’d found it disconcerting, but she’d soon adjusted. She hadn’t told Agata about the fact she was dating Tino though.