Vineyards Of Deception

Isabella fell back onto the mattress, her body slick with perspiration and limp with pleasure. Spasms of her powerful release still violently racked her slender frame. Alessandro had disentangled, detached and distanced himself from her within seconds of their mutual orgasm and lay on his back beside her, his breathing heavy and ragged.

Isabella turned on her side to lovingly trace his harsh profile with her eyes, yearning to touch and caress the smooth, silky and slightly tanned skin but knowing from experience that her touch would be rebuffed. His words, the ones that were always wrenched from him during his climax, still hovered in the air between them and they still, after all these months, hurt more than they should have.

"Give me a son, Isabella..."

With those five words, he inevitably killed the afterglow, destroyed the intimacy of the moment and relegated the act into nothing more than a biological imperative. After eighteen months of the same, Isabella had finally realized that it would never change. It wasn't an abrupt realization, rather it was one that had been growing steadily since the very first time he'd said the words.

But Isabella had her own five words! They were words that had been on the tip of her tongue for months and should have been spoken long before now. They were words that she could no longer swallow back; no matter how much it killed her to say them. She sat up, naked, her body still trembling and drew her knees to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs, pressed her cheek to her knees and watched as his breathing steadied, his own shaking was subsiding slightly. He lay spread-eagled, also magnificently nude, his eyes were shut but she knew he wasn't asleep. No, he would take a few moments to compose himself before heading for the shower, where she always imagined him frantically scrubbing her scent and touch from his bronzed skin.

She could no longer contain the words and they spilled from her lips with desperate earnestness.

"I want a divorce, Alessandro."

He tensed, every single muscle in his body went as tight as a coiled spring, before he turned his head to meet her watchful gaze. His eyes were hooded and his upper lip curled mockingly.

"But I thought you loved me, Isabella," he taunted with exquisite cruelty and Isabella lowered her eyelids, trying to mask the shaft of pain at his words. When she was sure she had her emotions under control, she once again lifted her eyes to his dark gaze.

"Not anymore," she managed, hoping the lie sounded convincing.

"Hmmm..." it sounded deceptively like the purr of a cat. "What happened to 'I'll love you forever, Sandro'?"

"Things change," she whispered.

"What things?" He rolled onto his side and propped himself up onto his elbow, resting his head on his hand. He looked so much like a Roman gladiator in repose, that her throat went dry with desire. She swallowed painfully.

"F.feelings change..." she stuttered haltingly. Again that husky purr of agreement but Isabella wasn't fooled by his relaxed posture; he was as tense as a coiled snake. "I.I've changed..."

"You look no different," he assessed, his voice still terrifyingly tender.

"Still the same Isabella I married. The one who claimed to love me so much, she couldn't live without me. The one whose daddy made sure she got exactly what she wanted..."

And that was when he struck, without moving, without so much as changing his voice.

"The same timid little Isabella, who can't even give me the only thing I've ever wanted from this pathetic excuse for a marriage." She flinched but she refused to divert her eyes.

"A.all the more reason for a divorce," she tried for blase but failed miserably.

"Maybe for you," he shrugged elegantly. "But I told you from the very beginning, cara, there would be no easy way out of this marriage. Not until I got what I wanted from you and that day looks to be a long way off! Unfortunately, cliche though it may seem, you've made this bed and we both have to lie in it!"

"I can't live like this anymore," she buried her face in her knees and fought to keep the tears at bay.

"Neither of us has much choice..." he sat up and stretched languidly before getting up and walking, naked, to the en-suite bathroom. Isabella heard the shower start moments later and took a few seconds to compose herself, swiping the hot tears from her face with the backs of both hands before dragging on a gauzy peignoir and heading toward the kitchen to make herself a hot drink. While she was sitting on a bar stool, sipping her hot milk, she felt Sandro's presence behind her and the hairs in the nape of her neck stood on end.

"You must be cold in only that skimpy little thing you're wearing..." he observed idly heading to the fridge and dragging out a carton of orange juice. His short black hair was damp and standing up in tufts where he had carelessly towel-dried it after his shower and he wore nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts. He looked as gorgeous as always and Isabella hated him more than ever for that masculine perfection.

"I'm fine..." she got up abruptly and headed toward the sink to rinse her mug but he grabbed her elbow to halt her movement. She tensed, shocked by the touch... Alessandro never touched her outside of the bedroom. In the eighteen months they had been married, this was the first time that she could recall him touching her without it being a precursor to sex. He leaned closer to her and lowered his lips to her ear. She felt his hot breath on the side of her face before he spoke.

"There'll be no more talk of divorce, Theresa... ever," he told her with a sickening air of finality.

"You can't stop me from divorcing you, Sandro," she responded bravely.

"You really want a divorce, cara?" He asked tauntingly and she nodded stiffly. "If you get that divorce, your cousin loses her business and she can't afford that now, not with a new baby on the way. She and her husband need all the capital they can get."

Somehow she hadn't expected that. She should have but she didn't. Sandro had loaned her cousin, Lisa, the start-up capital for her bookshop. Isabella didn't know what the specifics of that loan were but she had always assumed that it was something he had done out of generosity. Staring up at him now, she couldn't believe her own naivete. Sandro did nothing out of sheer generosity and that loan was merely another weapon for him to use against her if he needed to!

"You wouldn't," she responded with nothing but bravado. "Lisa has done nothing to deserve this."

"Cara, I will do whatever it takes to get what I want from you."

"I have money too I can help her..." she began desperately.

"No, you have a rich father and he had the opportunity to help Lisa when she was looking for the start-up capital for her bookshop but he made his contempt of the idea more than obvious to everyone at the time and you know that he would never support you through a messy divorce, Isabella."

"I still don't believe you would do it! You have a reputation to uphold, you're an honest businessman, you wouldn't destroy a small business just to prove a point. What kind of message would that send?" she asked bravely.

"That I'm not to be trifled with," he shrugged. "Do you honestly think I care what people think of me, Isabella? Do you think I care what you think of me? I never have and I never will. You're weak and spoilt..."

"I'm not..." she tried to defend herself but he made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat before continuing on as if she hadn't spoken.

"You'll get your divorce eventually but there's something I need to get from you first! You wanted this marriage, remember? You begged for it... So, if you want a divorce right now, it'll come with some heavy penalties attached to it. Are you willing to gamble with your cousin's future?"

He knew she wouldn't do it! He knew he had her exactly where he wanted her. There would be no divorce. Not when so much hung in the balance. But there would be changes... Isabella Chloe Noble De Lucci was done with being a doormat! She said nothing, choosing to turn and walk away instead. He watched her go, she could feel his gaze burning into her slender back but he did not call her back. She did not return to the bedroom they had been sharing since the first day of their marriage, opting instead to head for the library, knowing that she could not sleep another wink. Not in that room, not anymore...

He came downstairs, hours later, for breakfast. It was a Saturday morning and he usually didn't have any early morning meetings to rush off to on a Saturday, instead he tended to linger over his newspaper and coffee and largely ignore Isabella. That morning was no different. It was as if their early morning argument hadn't happened at all. They usually ate their casual weekend meals in the kitchen and the homey setting lent a false sense of domesticity to the scene. But while Isabella was uncomfortable and tense in the intimate setting, Sandro always remained as cool as the proverbial cucumber.

Then again, that was nothing new, as he rarely showed emotion. In fact the "discussion" of that morning was the most heated she had ever seen him. He kept his feelings under wraps but had always made his contempt of her more than clear. It was in the way he refused to meet her eyes, the way he could make love to her without kissing her on the mouth, the way he could talk past her when he had something to tell her... while eternally optimistic, stupid Isabella, had never been good at hiding her feelings from him. Not from the very moment she'd met him, nearly two years ago. How hopelessly infatuated she had been! How quickly she had fallen in love... She shook herself, refusing to think about things she could not change and instead tried to focus on changing her present.

Breakfast passed with agonizing slowness, the silence broken only by the sound of his newspaper as he carefully perused the business section. She barely ate and hated him for being so unaffected by the tension that he could finish a hearty meal. She picked up her dishes and headed to the sink.

"You have to eat more than one slice of toast," his voice suddenly growled unexpectedly. "You're getting much too thin." The fact that he had noticed what she'd eaten, despite having hardly glanced at her over his newspaper, startled her.

"I'm not that hungry..." She responded softly and placed her dishes in the sink.

"You barely eat enough to keep a sparrow alive," he lowered his paper and met her eyes for a few seconds before diverting his gaze back to the mug of coffee on the table in front of him. The direct eye contact was so unusual, that Isabella barely restrained a gasp.

"I eat enough," she responded half-heartedly, normally she would have let it go but she wanted to see if she could goad him into meeting her eyes again. No such luck, he merely shrugged, neatly folded his newspaper and dropped it onto the table beside his empty plate. He gulped down the last sip of his coffee before getting up from the table.

She watched as he stretched; his black t-shirt lifting to reveal the toned and tanned band of flesh at his abdomen. Her mouth went dry at the sight of that dark flesh and once again she was disgusted by her reaction to his physical presence. She had spent the first year of her marriage believing that Sandro would come to love her. She had firmly believed that he would get over his anger at being forced to marry her and that he would go back to being the laughing, affectionate man she had known in the first few months after they had met. But after nearly a year she had been forced to face reality, he truly hated her. He hated her so much that he couldn't bring himself to speak to her, kiss her, touch her outside of bed or even look at her. Theresa had finally realized that there would be no thaw; their marriage was a perpetual winter wasteland and if she ever wanted to feel the warmth of the sun on her face again, she had to get out of it.

Unfortunately, she now knew that escaping would be trickier than she had thought. She would have to find a way out that did not include hurting her cousin. Lisa and Rick were expecting their first baby and while Lisa was having a fairly easy time of it, Isabella was concerned that anything that would upset her could be potentially harmful to her or the baby. Also, while Rick's advertising agency was fairly successful, Lisa had always prided herself on the fact that she held her own financially in their relationship. Taking her bookshop away could put too much strain on their relationship and Isabella didn't want that on her conscience!

She sighed heavily and started to do the dishes. She liked to do little household tasks despite the fact that Sandro, who was the president of the bank his father owned, "had more money than God" as her father had once put it. Isabella had even enthusiastically insisted on doing some of the cooking herself. They employed a housecleaning staff, as was practical since they lived in a ten bedroom, five bathroom monster of a house but on Saturdays the staff had the day off and Isabella liked picking up after herself and Sandro instead of letting the staff get to it when they returned. Sandro didn't pretend to understand her need to have a hand in the everyday running of the house and had mockingly accused her of playing house once, shortly after their wedding. He had never seemed to notice it again after that.

She stared down at the dishes she had ready to be placed in the dishwasher and quite abruptly abandoned the task halfway through before heading upstairs and leaving Sandro still in the kitchen.

She changed her clothes from sweat suit to jeans and t-shirt, dragging her pale, shoulder length Titian hair into a ponytail and tugging on a denim jacket to ward off the early autumn chill. She passed by the den where he had retreated with his laptop, probably to get some work done, on her way to the front door.

"I'm going out," she casually called through the open door and his head jerked up while his eyes flared with some indefinable emotion.

"Where..." he began.

"I don't know how long I'll be gone," she dashed out before he could utter another syllable, grabbing her shoulder bag and car keys on the way out. She had her reliable little silver Mini Cooper fired up by the time he eventually made it down to the front door. With a cheery little wave that she knew had to grate, she reversed out of the driveway and headed out. She had no clue where she was going and knew that there would be hell to pay when she got back but it felt good just to do something so defiantly out of character. Her cellular phone started ringing seconds later and when she stopped at a red light; she switched it off and tossed it aside.

It was still early, barely nine and because it was Saturday the roads were a bit congested. Still, she felt free and she headed from the relative tranquility of Clifton, one of the wealthiest suburbs in Cape Town, towards the city. Usually she would go to Newlands and spend the day with Rick and Lisa... but she knew that it was the first place Sandro would look. He knew how limited her social life was. Instead, she thought of all the things she could do with this unexpected time and, deciding to stick with the trend of the day, opted for the most out of character thing she could think of... she went to the movies. It was the purest form of escapism she could think of and if there was anything that Theresa desperately wanted, it was to escape from her life. So she spent her day going from one cinema to the next; laughing, crying, cringing or jumping, depending on the plot. It was the most unproductive day she had ever spent in her life and she loved it!

By the time the last show of the day finished it was after midnight and she had a throbbing headache from nothing but darkness and the flickering light of the projector and a slightly upset stomach from a diet of soda and popcorn. It was as she was heading back to her car, that the sudden reality of her situation sank in and she started trembling. She didn't know what to expect from Sandro... She had never seen him display anything other than icy control, even in bed but it was the first time she had ever done anything like this and while she knew he would never physically hurt her, she also knew that emotionally, his potential to hurt her was unlimited. She cringed at the thought of his icy sarcasm and reluctantly made her way home. The house was ablaze with light when she got back and the dread made her stomach heave. She swallowed down her nausea and bravely parked her car and headed toward the front door. It was wrenched open before she even had the chance to get her keys out.

She gulped slightly at the huge form of her husband looming in the doorway and stifled a yelp when he grabbed her arm and yanked her inside. He slammed the door shut, gripping both shoulders in his huge hands and backed her up until she was leaning against the door. It took her a few seconds to get over her disorientation and realize that he wasn't hurting her, his gaze was feverishly raking up and down her trembling body, until apparently satisfied that everything was in relatively good condition he raised his eyes to meet hers full on.

His eyes, which she'd had so little opportunity to actually look into, were heartbreakingly beautiful. They were chocolate brown and set between incredibly thick, blue-black lashes and beneath sweeping brows and right now they were smoldering with something that, in any other man, might have been described as fury. His hands released her shoulders and crept up to her face... she flinched slightly at the contact but they remained gentle, moving to cup her jaw, his large thumbs brushing over her cheeks. Her breathing became ragged when he leaned toward her, dipping his head so close to hers that she could feel his clean, warm breath on her face. He tilted her jaw slightly and she groaned, aching for his lips on hers, wanting it so desperately her legs had just about turned to jelly and the only thing that kept her from falling to a puddle at his feet was his own huge body braced against hers. She could feel his erection throbbing against her stomach and knew he wanted it as desperately as she did... His lush mouth was centimeters away from hers and when he finally spoke, his lips brushed against her mouth.

"You pull a stunt like this again tesoro mia and I swear to God, you'll regret it!" She flinched away from him as reality brought her back down to earth with a thump. He let her go and she slid down the door to land at his feet. He raked a contemptuous gaze over her, the ice back and the fire gone...

"Where have you been?" He asked calmly. She staggered to her feet, humiliated that she had allowed him to affect her to such an extent that she would fall at his feet. She tilted her head back defiantly and refused to answer him.

"Isabella... I'm warning you..."

"Warning me?..."she taunted shakily. "You want to stay married? Fine. But I refuse to let you walk all over me anymore. It's time you start showing me some respect!"

"How the hell am I supposed to respect someone who sold herself to the highest bidder?" He growled with tight control and she gasped, stung. "I have no respect for you, Isabella... not even as the potential mother of my child because, quite frankly, you can't even do that right."

She lost it, completely, and for the first time in her entire life Isabella resorted to violence. She launched herself at him, hissing, spitting and scratching like a cat! In that moment she hated him so much that it felt like a living thing trying to claw its way out of her to get at him. When she came back to herself, she realized that he had her in his arms, her back to his front, her wrists in his hands and her arms crossed over her chest. They were both out of breath and she realized that there were terrible mewling sounds coming from the back of her throat, the words of hate she had repeatedly hurled at him, having long ago faded into incoherent sobs. His lips were in her hair, just above her left ear and he was making soothing sounds, not hurting her, just restraining her with his superior strength. She went limp, hanging defeated from his arms.