by Kate Walker
Bringing her hands up in a rush, she caught hold of Vito’s face, held it still as she wrenched her mouth away from his, put her head back slightly so that she could see his face. He was still holding her so tightly that she could only move a few inches away, bending her back against his arm to try to focus on his hard-boned features. She was so close that all she could really focus on were those dark, deep eyes.
But at least he wasn’t kissing her. When he kissed her she couldn’t think, she could only feel. And right now she had to think. She had to decide. Was there any sort of future possible with this man? And was it a future filled with one of those conflicting feelings that had almost torn her in two just moments before? With hate or…?
No, she wouldn’t, couldn’t let herself think of the word ‘love’ in connection with this man. She had only known him a few short hours; barely a day, all told. Such a few short hours but he filled her mind and her thoughts like no one else ever had.
And she needed him. She wanted him. Even now her body was aching with the hunger for his touch that she was having to deny herself in order to be able to try to at least consider what options she had ahead of her.
I came for you…he had said. I came for you… He still wanted her. And he still wanted her enough to have travelled all this way from Sicily to be with her.
I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since you left that morning…
What woman wouldn’t be thrilled to hear a man say those words? Especially a man like Vito Corsentino.
And, even though she was only prepared to admit it to herself, the truth was that he had been so right when he had said that she had felt the same. She could deny it to his face, but deep inside, in her heart, she knew that she had never been able to forget him, no matter how hard she had tried. And now he had only to touch her again, to kiss her once, and she had been lost, putty in his hands.
But she couldn’t risk letting him know how lost she was. She was going to have to put up some sort of a fight, wasn’t she? Or it would just be that first meeting all over again and he would think that he could do as he wanted with her.
The idea of Vito Corsentino doing just as he wanted with her made delicious shivers feather along her nerves, making her tingle all over. And when he reached for her mouth again her senses cried out to her to give in, though her mind told her she ought to put on the brakes if she possibly could.
‘Just a minute…’
Inserting her hand between their two mouths, she pressed her fingers against his lips, stopping the kiss but not subduing the sensual experience. The feel of his mouth under her hand was devastating, the softness of his lips, the warmth of his breath against her skin made her heart skip several beats and her own breath catch in her throat. No matter how much she tried to armour herself against the sexual net this man could weave around her simply by existing, it only took the slightest touch, the smallest kiss to push her close to the edge of total meltdown.
‘What about this unfinished business between us?’
It seemed to take more strength than usual to push the words from her mouth. Her throat wanted to close over them; hold them back. The truth was that she didn’t really want to dig too deeply.
‘What do you really want?’
‘I want you.’
The black eyes met hers over the tops of her fingers and she felt as if the fires that burned in them would sear her skin, brand her as his like some slave girl of primitive times bought and marked as the king’s personal property.
‘If you want honesty, I didn’t come here for a relationship—I came here because I want you back in my bed.’
It was as harsh as a slap in the face and it made her pull back, twisting away from him, moving halfway across the room and then stopping, moving behind a chair to shield herself from him.
‘You think that that’s the way to win me?’
The words were raw with the pain that burned inside but that she wouldn’t let him see in her expression as she faced him defiantly, blue eyes locking with darkest grey until she could almost see the sparks of challenge that flew between them.
She could see herself reflected in his face too, or, rather, the way he was feeling about her, about the bravado she was showing. It was there in the glint in his eyes and in the faint curve that was back on his mouth. He didn’t mind the defiance, in fact he was quite enjoying it. And what made her shiver in spite of the warmth of the sun on her back was the sudden realisation that perhaps in a way he knew more about her than she did about herself.
Slowly her hand crept out, touched the carved wooden back of the chair that she was keeping between them, and she suddenly had to ask herself whether the truth was that she was keeping it there to keep him from her. Or was the reality the fact that she was putting it in the way of her own need, the temptation to ignore all promptings of common sense and go back into his arms?
Honesty forced her to admit that if she followed her heart, that was what she wanted to do. She had the frightening feeling that it was exactly what he was expecting.
‘You think that just declaring that you want me in your bed is enough to make me throw myself at you?’
‘You did on the beach.’
Emily winced at the memory the pointed words had evoked. She didn’t want to be reminded of the wild madness that had taken her over then. The way that she had ignored all common sense and thoughts of her own safety.
‘I—wasn’t myself then. I was under stress and I’d just almost drowned.’
And he’d rushed into the sea to rescue her. At a time when no one else gave a damn about what happened to her, the effect had been like a rush of potent spirit to her head. But she wasn’t in that situation any more. So why did she still feel that she might do something every bit as foolish all over again?
‘Do you want me to flatter you—to cajole—to tell you that I’m madly in love with you? Well, mi perdoni, I don’t do flattery and I don’t do seduction by lies. Not when I want something this much.’
‘So what do you do?’ She had to struggle to resist the enticing tug of that ‘Not when I want something this much’. She was so weak and so low that just the thought of being wanted that much made her legs tremble, her muscles turning to water. ‘What do you give a woman if you don’t flatter?’
‘Honesty.’
There was no warmth in the steely grey eyes, but there was something else. Something that in a gentler man she would have described as sincerity. But in Vito, the only word she could come up with was forthrightness. The one thing she was sure of was that she really had no reason at all to doubt that he meant what he said.
‘I’m paying you the compliment of giving you total honesty.’
‘And what do you expect in return?’
‘The same sort of honesty. I can’t hide the fact that I want you. If you’re not with me, I’m thinking about you. If you are with me I can’t take my eyes off you.’
It was like balm to her wounded soul. It soothed the death by a thousand cuts that Mark had inflicted on her. For Mark she hadn’t been sexy enough, wasn’t proactive enough in bed. She didn’t give enough, he’d said at the beginning, she was too restrained, too controlled. By the end, the accusation had been that she was just plain frigid, a frosty, unfeminine bitch. Vito had shown her that none of those accusations were the truth. With him she had little or no control; any frost in her make-up had melted in the blaze of heat that flooded through her when he touched her.
‘Honesty from you would be for you to admit that you want this too.’
‘I do…’ It was a long-drawn-out sigh, one she could no longer hold back. ‘I do.’
Had she moved or had he? She suspected that they had acted simultaneously, taking a step—several steps nearer to each other so that all she had to do was to reach out a hand…
When she did so she found it taken into his, the warmth and strength of his clasp wonderful after the emptiness of the past few months.
Gently but irresistibly Vito dr
ew her towards him, his arms coming round her as he bent his head to take her mouth again. He took his time about this kiss, lingering over the pleasure of teasing her, tasting her, enticing her to open up to him. And the explosion of heat that ran up her veins, setting the pathways of her nerves alight, instantly made total nonsense of Mark’s vicious, belittling accusations.
Her breasts felt tight and swollen, her heartbeat setting up a heavy, honeyed pounding that was echoed in the throbbing pulse between her legs. Her eyes seemed weighted down, difficult to open, but she wanted to look up into his darkly watchful face.
‘How long…?’ she managed through the burn of sensuality that was flooding every part of her. ‘How long can this last?’
‘Until I’ve had enough. Until I’m sated with you—or you with me. We might have six months, we might have a year, but I promise you in all the time we are together I’ll never look at another woman, never give you cause to be jealous. And when it’s over I’ll tell you straight. No pretence. No lies.’
‘Total honesty,’ Emily murmured. She could take that.
‘Total honesty,’ Vito agreed deeply, taking her mouth again.
His hands were where she needed them now. They stroked and smoothed, caressed their way over the skin exposed by the short sleeves of her dress, slipped in at the scooped neckline, branding heat and need on the sensitive flesh. Her breasts felt tight and swollen, aching for his touch on their sensitivity, pressing themselves against the hard wall of his chest as he crushed her to him.
‘Emilia, tesoro…’
It was a low, rough mutter deep in his throat as he caught her hair in long, powerful fingers, pulling her head back so that he could take her mouth again, white teeth tugging softly on the lower lip where just moments before his thumb had smoothed away the evidence of her doing the same. And then a moment later a sweep of his tongue eased the tiny pain.
‘I have wanted this—dreamed of this…‘
Emily felt as well as heard the words as Vito murmured them against her neck, making her arch back so that she exposed the fine lines, the smooth skin that he kissed his way down, lingering at the base of her throat where her heightened pulse beat rapidly under his caress.
Hard, hot hands found the curves of her breasts, stroking the sides for a moment before cupping them both in his palms and smoothing his thumbs across the swollen, peaking nipples. Her breasts had never felt so thin-skinned, so sensitive in her life before. The sensation was so wild, so fierce that Emily flung her head even further back, arching into him even more, her eyes closing as she savoured the sharp intensity of pleasure that came almost close to pain.
‘Vito…’
His name was a moan of delight, of encouragement, of…
‘No!’
The sensual pleasure died, replaced rapidly by a shock like cold water splashing into her face as her pleasure-drunk brain suddenly registered the cruel and unwanted shaft of reality that sliced into the heated delirium that had her in its grip.
How could she have forgotten…?
How could she enjoy the heightened sensitivity of her breasts when the reason for that was one that passion had burned from her mind? But now a tiny, fearful, rational voice was screaming at her from the darkness on the sides of the red haze of sensuality that was melting her brain.
Her breasts were so newly sensitive because she was expecting a baby—his baby—and in a moment if this continued then Vito was going to find out…
‘No…’ she tried again but he didn’t hear or if he did then he wasn’t listening because his proud dark head had left her throat and moved lower, lower, kissing his way over one breast, that tormenting mouth heading for the hard, tight nipple that pushed so proudly against the fine material of her dress.
‘N—’ Emily began again, only to have the sound choke off in her throat, turning into a wild moan of delight as Vito’s tongue swirled over her breast, moistening the cotton that covered her before letting his mouth close over her nipple and suckling hard.
‘Oh, no!’
That might have been what she wanted to say, but the sound came out as nothing like the command to stop she meant it. Or did she truly want it to be that way? Didn’t she really want to express herself the way it was as a cry of such sensual satisfaction that it encouraged him to even more caresses, even more sensual torment?
She knew she should stop him, had to stop him. But the truth was that she couldn’t stop him. Not when the only way was to clutch at his dark head with her hands and pull it upwards by the hair, dragging him away from her. But her hungry body wouldn’t let her act on what she knew she had to do. And her fearful mind dodged away from the inevitable repercussions of her actions if she did.
So she could only linger as she was, half in delight, half in an agony of fearful apprehension. She was unable to fully enjoy the sensual touch, the stinging kisses and yet she couldn’t bear to make them stop, couldn’t tear herself away from his arousing embrace, even though it might lead to discovery. Inevitable disaster when he found…
Her mind froze in pure icy panic as those knowing hands slid lower, stroking over her hips, down her thighs. When warm, hard fingers moved under her dress, lifting the loose skirt, and trailed burning, erotic patterns up the tender skin they found there she froze into panicked stillness, knowing that to stop him now, to reach down and drag his hand away, would be as dangerous as to stand outside in the wildest thunderstorm, shielding herself only in metal and defying the lightning strikes to do their worst. Moving away would only rouse his suspicions, make him think her a cold-blooded tease.
But oh, which was worse—to be thought a tease or this? How could she let him find out this way—and yet how could she tell him now…?
‘Vito—Vito…’
His name was a whispered refrain on painfully dry lips, her heart racing so high up in her throat that it was making it impossible to breathe, and all the while she knew that he must believe her reaction to be one of delight. Of pleasure, when the terrible truth was…
No—she had to stop this—had to tell him…
‘Vito…’ she tried desperately. ‘Vito, please, I have something…’
But it was already too late. Those knowing hands had reached the feminine centre of her body, sliding over the cotton and lace of her underwear, cupping her most intimate flesh and then—and then…
He froze. With his hands still on her, still curved on the gentle swell of her belly, the unmistakable sign, only small as yet to the eye perhaps, but oh, so obvious to the touch—the curve of her flesh beneath which slept her baby—his baby…
‘You’re pregnant!’
She’d expected a roar of fury and had been nerving herself to see the dark blaze of anger in his eyes. Instead she found that she was face to face with an iceman. With a man whose features had become immobile, his jaw set tight, his mouth a slashing line across his face. Only his eyes seemed alive and they burned like black ice, searing across her skin like a blade.
But it was his voice that froze her own blood in her veins, stilling her breath and making it impossible to move or think, or even react in any way.
‘You are pregnant,’ he said again, each syllable cold and clear, as if carved from the ice that formed his eyes. ‘Lei é incinta,’ he repeated as if only stating the fact in his native language could bring the fact home to him.
His ice-dark eyes held her transfixed, as if the cold from them had imprisoned her in the one spot, unable to move. His long, tense body radiated hostility and barely controlled fury, but none of it showed in his face or in his voice. He was so totally, ruthlessly under control that it made her shiver in her shoes, her legs feeling like water beneath her.
And all the time his hands still curved across her belly in a mockery of the gentle, loving caress that a brand-new father might give his child while it was still in the womb. A caress that included the beloved mother of his child in the same tender moment.
But she was not the beloved mother of his child. And if he
had had his way she should not have been carrying a child at all.
And—
‘Madre de Dio…’
Her thoughts splintered as Vito’s savage curse shattered the terrible stillness in the air. Snatching his hands away as if he had been burned, he swung away from her, the force of his movement expressing the violence of his thoughts as he went first to the window to stare out across the wide expanse of the lawn, then turned back again and paced from one end of the room to the other and back again.
‘Vito…’ Emily quavered but if her voice reached him he ignored it and kept up the restless, furious pacing, pacing like a caged lion, as if he couldn’t bear or cope with being still.
At the far end of the room he paused again, staring out of a different window, at a different view, and the stiff, taut length of his back, the aggressive set of the broad shoulders might have been a high stone wall complete with cruel barbed wire set along the top, they expressed so firmly the hard and unyielding command, ‘Keep out! Keep out!’
Vaguely, in the back of her mind, Emily registered a sound from the front of the house. The sound of tyres on gravel as a car approached. But she couldn’t let it distract her, didn’t dare to focus her attention on that instead of—
‘Vito…’ she tried again but even as she was still speaking he had rounded on her again and she knew the question he was going to ask before he even opened his mouth.
‘You said you were on the Pill…’ He flung the accusation in her face and even from the distance of several feet she felt the lash of his tongue like the flick of a cruel whip.
‘I know I did—but—’ she tried but he dismissed the stumbling attempt at explanation with another of those brutal, slashing movements of his hand, cutting her off in mid sentence. There was something he needed to know much more urgently than that.
‘The child,’he said, his voice rough and harsh. ‘This baby—is it mine?’
‘I…’Emily was still struggling with the first question, trying to get her bruised and battered mind to think straight, to explain what had happened in the most acceptable way. The way that might just lessen the bitter fury that had him in its grip or at least ease his mood enough to make him listen.