by Lynne Graham
‘Kiss?’ Zia proffered instantly, moving forward to land a big splashy kiss on Luca’s cheek and then give him an enthusiastic hug.
‘Isn’t cupboard love great?’ Luca mocked his own calculation with an amused smile and vaulted upright again. ‘We got off on the wrong foot yesterday. A peace offering was a necessity.’
‘It was a kind thought,’ Darcy conceded stiltedly.
‘I can be very kind, bella mia,‘ Luca countered huskily.
Darcy collided with his scorching dark stare. And quite without knowing how she knew it, she knew he was thinking about sex. That sixth sense awareness spooked her and plunged her into confusion.
As her skin heated her breath caught in her throat, and her heart gave a violent lurch. She couldn’t look away from those stunning dark golden eyes. The impact of that look was staggering. She felt dizzy, unsteady on her feet and far, far too hot. The tip of her tongue skimmed along her dry lower lip in a nervous motion. Luca’s intent scrutiny homed in on the soft fullness of her mouth. Something drew tight and twisted, low in her stomach, a sexual response so powerful it terrified her. Mercifully, Zia broke the connection by holding out her new doll for her mother’s admiration.
‘You haven’t much time to say goodnight to her. My sister is joining us for dinner,’ Luca advanced as he strode out through the door. ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes.’
‘Night-night, Luca!’ Zia called cheerfully.
Luca paused and glanced back with a raised ebony brow. ‘In the right mood, she’s really quite sweet, isn’t she?’ His eyes became shadowed and his wide mouth compressed. ‘I had nothing to do with Ilaria when she was that age... I was at boarding school. She was only seven when I went to university. I lived to regret not having a closer bond with her.’
Twenty minutes later, having tucked Zia into bed and read her a story, Darcy walked into their bedroom. Only his jacket and tie removed, Luca was in the act of putting down his mobile phone.
‘You look fantastic in that dress...you know why?’ A wolfish grin slashed his lean, strong face. ‘It fits. It isn’t two sizes too large or a foot too long!’
‘Margo always helped me to choose my clothes,’ Darcy confided. ‘She said that I had to dress to hide my deficiencies.’
‘You have none. You’re in perfect proportion for your size.’
But Darcy’s diminutive curves and lack of height had been deficiencies to a stepmother who was both tall and lushly female in shape. Margo had loathed red hair as well, insisting that Darcy could only wear dull colours. Growing up with Margo’s constant criticism, and Nina’s pitying superiority, Darcy had learned only to measure her looks against theirs. That unwise comparison had-wrecked her confidence in her own appearance.
But now she gazed back at Luca and could not fail to recognise his sincerity. He’d told her she looked fantastic. And sensual appreciation radiated from the lingering appraisal in those intent dark eyes. If she didn’t yet quite credit that she could look fantastic, she certainly realised with a surge of gratified wonder that Luca genuinely believed she did.
Her softened gaze ran with abstracted admiration over his long, lean, powerful physique. She was shaken to note the earthy and defiantly male thrust of arousal that the close fit of his well-cut trousers couldn’t conceal. She reddened hotly, but she also felt empowered and outrageously feminine.
‘Luca...’ she whispered shakily.
Later, she couldn’t recall who had reached out first. She remembered the way his gaze narrowed, the blaze of golden intent between black spiky lashes, and then suddenly she was crushed in his arms and clinging to him to stay upright. He parted her lips to invade her tender mouth with his thrusting tongue, dipping, twirling, tasting her with fierce, impatient need. He cut right through her every defence with that blunt, honest admission of desire. She trembled violently beneath that devouring kiss. He made her feel possessed, dominated, and utterly weak with hunger.
‘I should never have left you...I’ve been in a filthy temper all day,’ Luca confided raggedly, slumberous eyes scanning her lovely face with very male satisfaction, a febrile flush on his taut cheekbones. ‘I want you so much...’
‘Yes...’ Darcy acknowledged a truth too obvious to be denied. She felt the same. Her heart was pounding, her whole body throbbing with intense arousal. It was like being in pain; it made her crave him like a drug.
‘I can’t wait until later...I’m in agony,’ Luca gritted roughly.
Hard fingers splayed across her spine to press her into direct contact with his hard thighs. He shuddered against her with a stifled groan, kissing her temples, the top of her head, running his fingers through her hair and then bringing her mouth back hungrily under his again. She couldn’t get close enough to him. He slid one hand beneath her skirt, skimming up a slender thigh to the very heart of her. The damp swollen heat of her beneath the thin barrier of her panties betrayed her response. Excitement made her squirm and moan against that skilled touch.
‘Luca...please,’ she gasped urgently.
He backed her down on the side of the bed. He leant over her, hands braced on either side of her head, and plunged deep into her mouth again, eliciting a low cry of surrender from her. Tugging down the zip on her dress, he removed it, skimming off her remaining garments with deft, impatient hands. He stilled for a second, reverent eyes scanning the pouting curves of her breasts and the silky dark red hair at the apex of her slender thighs.
‘You are gorgeous, bella mia...how can you ever have doubted that?’ Luca demanded as he stood over her, peeling off his own clothing at speed.
He came down to her, gloriously aroused. Cupping her breasts, he caressed the sensitive buds with his lips and his tongue, and then he kissed a slow tantalising trail down over the flexing muscles of her stomach, pushing her quivering thighs apart to conduct a more intimate exploration. She was shocked, but too tormented by her own aching need for his caresses to stop him. He controlled her utterly, pushed her to such a pitch of writhing, desperate excitement she was helpless.
He rose over her again, his breathing fractured. He dipped his tongue between her reddened lips in a sexy flick as he tipped back her thighs with almost clumsy hands, his own excitement palpable. Burnished golden eyes assailed hers. He hesitated at the crucial moment when she was braced for the hot, hard invasion of his body into hers.
‘Luca!’
‘Dio mio...I don’t know myself like this!’ he groaned ruefully. ‘I feel wild...but I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You won’t...’
‘You’re so much smaller than I am.’
‘I like it when you’re wild,’ she whispered feverishly.
Above her, Luca closed his eyes and slammed into her hard, releasing such a flood of electrifying sensation that Darcy moaned his name like a benediction. He withdrew and entered her again, with a raw, forceful sense of timing that was soul-shatteringly effective. Her entire being was centred on the explosive pleasure building inside her. Heart pounding in concert with his, she cried out in ecstasy as he drove her over the edge. Then she just collapsed, totally drained.
They lay together in a sweaty huddle. Luca released her from his weight but retained a possessive hold on her, pressing his mouth softly to her throat, lingering to lick the salt from her skin and smooth a soothing hand down over her slender back.
‘That was unbelievable... that was paradise, cara mia,’ Luca sighed in a tone of wondering satisfaction. ‘I have never felt this good.’
‘What time is your sister coming?’ Darcy mumbled.
Luca tensed, relocated the wrist with a watch, and suddenly wrenched himself free. ‘Porca miseria...Ilaria will be here at any moment!’
Feeling totally brainless and lethargic, Darcy watched him spring off the bed.
‘Darcy...’ he gritted then.
‘What?’ she whispered with a silly smile, surveying him with a kind of bursting feeling inside her heart.
‘You can share my shower.’ Luca
scooped her up into his powerful arms and strode into the bathroom with her.
‘I’ll never get my hair dry!’ But still she watched him, trying desperately hard to work out why she felt so ecstatically happy.
‘Your eyes are glowing like neon lights.’ Studying her with a curiously softened look in his dark, deep-set gaze, Luca hooked her arms round his strong brown throat and kissed her again, holding her plastered to every inch of him beneath the gushing cascade of water. He raised his head again, a slight frown drawing his black brows together. ‘I assume you’re on the pill...’
‘Nope.’
‘I didn’t use anything to protect you,’ Luca told her slowly as he lowered her back down to the floor of the cubicle. ‘Santo cielo... how could I be that careless?’
Darcy had stiffened. How could she be that careless again? Yet another time. The first occasion had resulted in Zia’s conception. She had foolishly assumed that the course of contraceptive pills she had stopped taking the day she failed to marry Richard would still prevent a pregnancy. Naturally it hadn’t. Her own ignorance had been her downfall.
‘Very little risk,’ she muttered awkwardly, avoiding his searching scrutiny.
‘You would know that better than I.’
He was wrong there, Darcy conceded ruefully. Her monthly cycles caused her so little inconvenience that she never bothered to keep a note of dates. She hadn’t a clue what part of her cycle she was in, but she had almost supernatural faith in the power of Luca’s fertility. Suppose she did become pregnant again.... Oddly enough, the prospect failed to rouse the slightest sense of alarm. Indeed, as Darcy looked up at Luca, mentally miles away while he washed her, she was picturing a small boyish version of those same features that distinguished Zia. A buoyant warm sensation instantly blossomed inside her. Only when she appreciated how she was reacting to that prospect of pregnancy was she shocked by herself.
‘What’s wrong?’ Luca prompted.
In her haste to escape those frighteningly astute eyes, Darcy lurched out of the shower. Grabbing up a towel, she took refuge in the dressing room to dry herself. I can’t be in love with him. I can’t be, she told herself sickly. It was a kind of immature infatuation and it had its sad roots in the past. Karen had been right about her: she had spent too much time alone. Building romantic castles in the air around Luca Raffacani would be a very stupid move, and, having done it once and learnt her mistake, she was convinced she was too sensible to be so foolish again.
By one of those strange tricks of fate Luca found her attractive, and they were sexually compatible, but she would have to be an idiot to imagine that Luca might now develop some form of emotional attachment to her. He had said it himself only this morning, hadn’t he? He had talked with outrageous unapologetic cool about how they should be ‘skimming along the surface of things and having a great time in bed’ rather than arguing. Suddenly Darcy was very glad she had slapped him so hard...
‘Tell me about your sister,’ Darcy invited Luca as they left the bedroom. Having donned an elegant black dress and fresh lingerie at speed, she had attempted to coax her damp curls into some semblance of a style, but she was out of breath and her cheeks were still pink with effort. ‘It’ll look strange if I know nothing about her.’
Luca, as sleek and cool and elegant as a male who had spent a leisurely hour showering, shaving and donning his superb dinner jacket and narrow black trousers, gave her a wry look. ‘My parents died in a plane crash when Ilaria was eight. My aunt became her legal guardian. I was only nineteen. Emilia was a childless widow, eager to mother my sister, but she was very possessive. She made it difficult for me to maintain regular contact with Ilaria.’
‘That was selfish of her.’
‘She also refused to allow me to share in Ilaria’s upbringing when I was in a position to offer her a more settled home life. And she was a very liberal guardian. She spoilt Ilaria rotten. When my sister turned into a difficult teenager, Emilia saw her behaviour as rank ingratitude. Being a substitute mother had become a burden. She demanded that I take responsibility for Ilaria and within the same month she moved to New York.’
‘Oh, dear...’ Darcy grimaced.
‘Ilaria was devastated by that rejection and she furiously resented me. We had some troubled times,’ Luca conceded with a rueful shrug. ‘She’s twenty now, but I have little contact with her. As soon as she reached eighteen, she demanded an apartment of her own.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Seeing his dissatisfaction with this detached state of affairs, Darcy rested her hand on his sleeve in a sympathetic gesture. ‘I always think the worst wounds are inflicted within the family circle. We’re all much more vulnerable where our own flesh and blood is concerned.’
‘You’re thinking of your father?’
‘It’s hard not to. I spent my whole life wanting to be somebody in his eyes, struggling to win his respect,’ Darcy admitted gruffly.
‘Everyone’s like that with parents.’
Tensing as she noticed his attention dropping to the hand still curved to his arm, she hurriedly removed it, thinking then with pain that the kind of physical closeness which he was at ease with in bed seemed a complete no-no out of bed.
‘But I was reaching for something I could never have. I don’t think my father ever looked at me without resenting the fact that I wasn’t the son he wanted...but all that made me do was try harder,’ she confided ruefully.
Luca reached for her hand and curled lean fingers tautly round hers. ‘Was that why you took the Adorata?’ he demanded in a roughened undertone, shrewd dark eyes drawn to her startled face. ‘Darcy impressively riding to the rescue of the family fortunes with a pretend lucky find?’
Caught unprepared, Darcy lost every scrap of colour in her cheeks, her green eyes darkening with hurt at that absurd suspicion. Once again she had forgotten what lay between them, and with too great a candour she had exposed herself to attack.
‘You must’ve lied to your father. He may have been domineering and aggressive, but he had the reputation of being an honest, upright man. Did you tell him that you had found it in some dusty antique shop where you had bought it for a song?’ Luca pressed with remorseless persistence.
A door opened off the ball. Both Darcy and Luca whipped round. A slim, stunning girl with shoulder-length dark hair and a sullen expression subjected them to a stony appraisal.
‘I have no intention of wasting an entire evening waiting for you to show up at your own dinner table, Luca,’ Ilaria said with brittle sarcasm. ‘Just why did you bother to invite me?’
‘I hoped that you might want to meet Darcy. I’m sorry that we’ve kept you waiting,’ Luca murmured levelly.
Ilaria vented a thin laugh. ‘Why didn’t you give me the opportunity to meet her before you got married?’
‘I left several messages on your answering machine. You never call back,’ Luca countered calmly.
The combination of aggression and hurt emanating from Ilaria was powerful. But then her big brother had married a total stranger. In those circumstances, her hostility was natural, Darcy conceded. Tugging free of Luca, she walked over to his sister, a rueful look of appeal in her eyes. ‘You have every right to be furious. And I don’t know how to explain why—’
‘We got married in a hurry,’ Luca slotted in with finality as he thrust open the door of the dining room. Atmospheric pools of candlelight illuminated the beautifully set table awaiting them. ‘There’s not much else to say.’
‘I can’t imagine you doing anything in a hurry without good reason, Luca,’ Ilaria gibed. ‘Have you got her pregnant?’
Darcy froze, and then forced herself down into the seat Luca had spun out for her occupation. While Luca shot a low-pitched sentence of icy Italian at his sister, Darcy drowned in guilty pink colour and glanced at neither combatant. The suggestion had been chosen to insult, but it was more apt than either of her companions could know. However, she recognised the position Luca had put himself in, and she wanted to help minimise
the damage to his already strained relationship with his sister.
‘We had a quiet wedding because my father died recently.’ Darcy spoke up abruptly. ‘I have to admit that we were rather impulsive—’
‘Impulsive? Luca?’ Ilaria derided, unimpressed. ‘Who do you think you’re kidding? He never makes a single move that he hasn’t planned down to the last detail!’
‘In this case, he did,’ Darcy persisted quietly. ‘But it was selfish of us to just rush off and get married without letting our families share in the event.’
‘Your family wasn’t there either?’ The younger woman looked astonished, but was visibly soothed by the admission. ‘So where did you meet...and when?’
‘That’s a long story—’ Luca began.
Darcy rushed to interrupt him. Telling the truth, or as much of it as was reasonable, would be wisest in the circumstances, rather than that silly story of her having reversed into his car in London and shouted at him. This was his sister they were dealing with, and Ilaria had to know that Luca would have wiped the pavement with any female that stupid.
‘I met your brother almost three years ago at a masked ball here,’ Darcy admitted, an anxious smile on her lips.
The effect of that simple statement stunned Darcy. To her left, Luca released his breath in a stark hiss and shot her a look of outright exasperation. To her right, Ilaria’s face locked tight. She gaped at Darcy in the most peculiar way, her mouth a shocked and rounded circle from which no sound emitted, her olive skin draining to a sick pallor which made her horrified dark eyes look huge.
‘I seem to have—’
‘Put a giant foot in your mouth,’ Luca completed grimly.
And then everything went crazy. Just as Darcy realised with a sinking heart that naturally his sister had to be aware of the theft that had taken place that night, and that she had just foolishly exposed Luca and herself to the need for an explanation that would be wellnigh impossible to make, Ilaria flew upright The focus of her stricken attention was surprisingly not Darcy, but her brother.