Desire Has No Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

against the side of her lips. In her ivory-coloured suit and
eau-de-nil
blouse she looked as cool as her eyes upon his face.
    'To remind my mother of the eternal city when she and my father left Italy to live in America,' he replied. 'There seemed more chance of him finding a good job and he worked hard so he could buy a share in a shoe business. He was unaware that one of the partners was crooked, and he was blamed for a fraud that wasn't his and sent to prison. While there he tried to defend a youth who found himself under siege by a homosexual thug, and for that my father was beaten senseless and he died in the prison hospital of a ruptured blood vessel in his inside. Of necessity my mother had to cook and clean for those who could afford to pay her for working herself half to death so I wouldn't go hungry to school with holes in my shoes.'
    He broke off abruptly and took a deep drink of his champagne. 'I don't suppose you remember my mother, but in her wedding photograph she wore a lace veil and looked so lovely and eager, as if she believed that love was going to be hers all her life. I gave her my love, but how could it ever be the same as my father's? She died herself in Naples two years ago, and I am thankful that her sad life ended in the sunshine of Italy. She adored Italy and never could like America, and that was one of the reasons why I chose to make Naples my place of business. I won't make excuses for the casino, except to say that I wanted money as soon as possible. My mother had leukaemia and I was able to give her a few comfortable years before she joined my father.'
    He fell quiet, his grey eyes fixed broodingly upon the champagne glass in his hand. 'The best vintage you have on board,' he had requested, and it had struck Julia that he would have liked to tell the stewardess that he was a bridegroom.
    'I—I'm sorry to hear about your parents,' she said. 'But that doesn't excuse your behaviour, does it, Rome? Or doesn't it worry you very much that you've ruined my life?'
    'My dear, if you represent ruin, then there should be more of it about.' His eyes were smiling, taunting her just a little as they wandered over the smooth sweep of her hair from her temples, a bright frame around the delicate charm of her face. 'You're looking particularly lovely.'
    'It wouldn't suit you to have it otherwise, would it, Rome? You want women to be as stylish as the clothes you put on, so they compliment your Latin looks.'
    'Do you like my looks, Julia?' He said it a trifle mockingly. 'It would be nice to know that something about me appeals to you.'
    'Do you need me to like something about you, Rome?' Her cool green eyes studied his face, made striking by the good bone structure that was so entirely rooted in his Italian background. There were shadings of ruthlessness in the thrust of his cheekbones, a suggestion of great passion about the moulding of his mouth, a secretiveness in the cleft that was so exactly centred in his chin.
    She had felt the power of his physical passion, so unlike anything she had imagined with a cultured, civilised man like Paul Wineman. Rome was utterly Latin, with a deep vein of southern sensuality running through him, erotic and out to enslave a woman by her senses. He would understand the dark desires a woman might feel… might need to have gratified. At the thought Julia blushed and felt as if waves of alarm and awareness singed the very roots of her being.
    This man was her husband! How could she be sure he'd abide by his promise to behave as if he were her guardian? The gold rings on her hand and the vows they'd exchanged in the church, with its stained-glass windows, its holy statues and incense, were symbols of his ownership.
    'To love, honour and cherish,' he had said.
    'With my body I thee—take,' she had substituted in her mind.
    Julia felt a subtle sense of torment. The man she had married was ineffably his own master… and hers. She felt it in the way he looked at her, in the way he