by Heidi Rice
Perhaps his fascination with Katherine was nothing more than an extension of that.
She’d always frustrated and intrigued him—even as a mouthy nineteen-year-old. Add in the insane sexual chemistry that had just flared out of control and it created a potent cocktail.
“What’s so funny?” she asked stiffly, confusion and insecurity replaced by indignation, which only captivated him more.
“I’m not going to make love to you again tonight,” he said. Or not in a way that would make her more sore, he corrected himself. He couldn’t make any guarantees he would be able to keep his hands off her entirely.
“I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
The blush softened, and her eyes were shadowed by surprise, but also an emotion that struck him deep in the chest. Gratitude.
Why would she settle for so little?
His ribs tightened. He ignored the feeling. Plumping the pillows against the headboard, he lay down beside her and slung his arm around her shoulder.
She snuggled close to his side, resting her head on his arm, the shuddering sigh full of relief. He wasn’t a snuggler—he never cuddled after sex because he’d never seen the point. But once again he found himself beguiled, oddly humbled by the ease with which she had accepted his comfort. Why would she trust him, he wondered, when he was the opposite of trustworthy where she was concerned?
She pressed a hand to his chest and wound her fingers absently in the hair there. The familiar heat triggered in his groin.
He flattened his hand over hers. “Go to sleep,” he heard himself say, the selflessness of the gesture surprising even him.
There were so many things he still wanted to do to her. And so many questions he wanted to ask. But he remained silent, knowing the answers might deepen the strange sense of connection.
As she relaxed against him in sleep, the robe fell open, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of one flushed breast, the nipple rouged by his earlier attention.
The need pooled in his groin, intensifying the ache, the urge to draw the rigid peak into his mouth again and suck the same livewire response from her all but unbearable. But instead of waking her up, and bringing them both to another shattering orgasm, he found himself lying there in a state of purgatory and staring at the night sky through the terrace doors.
He had a golden rule, a rule he had never broken before now, had never even had the desire to break. He never slept with any woman for more than one night. But he already knew one night with Katherine would never be enough.
CHAPTER SIX
KATIE AWOKE THE next morning with a start to find herself alone. In her own bed. Sights, sounds and sensations bombarded her from the night before. She might almost have believed it was another erotic dream as she lay in the bright, airy room, the sun streaming through the balcony doors, but for the tenderness between her thighs and the oversize bathrobe she was still swaddled in.
Jared’s mouth hot on her breast, his penis hard and thick as he entered her, the all-consuming orgasm which had swept through her... And afterward the shock, the concern and—so much more devastating to her peace of mind—that tantalizing glimpse of the man behind the facade.
For a moment as he’d held her afterward she’d felt so secure, so safe.
She blinked, the sting of tears in the back of her throat almost as concerning as the melting sensation in her core.
She crawled out of bed and headed to the bathroom as numerous other niggling aches and pains made their presence felt. The scalding-hot shower went some way to restoring her equilibrium, or at least a semblance of it. But she still felt off-kilter.
She’d spent so long trying to suppress her mother’s legacy that on some weird subliminal level she’d simply assumed she would be able to sleep with Jared and forget about it. The way her mother had done with so many men.
The vague recollection of him carrying her back to her own room, and her sleepy attempts to get him to stay, made her shiver as she soaped her hair and tested the tenderness in her breasts.
How could she not have realized sex would be so...well, so intimate?
She tugged on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, the shaky feeling returning as she recalled the look on Jared’s face when he’d come back out of the bathroom.
If she was reluctant to need a white knight, Jared was considerably more reluctant to be one.
The questions that had taunted her yesterday night swirled back into her brain.
Why didn’t he do emotional attachments? Quite apart from anything else, didn’t he get unbearably lonely?
While she’d always shied away from sexual intimacy, she’d found it incredibly hard to live without emotional intimacy, especially in the last few months.
How many times had she had to resist calling the De Rossis, homesick for the sound of Megan’s voice, Dario’s gruff advice, or Izzy’s inane prattle about unicorns, Disney Princesses and her latest Lego construction? How many times, particularly in the first few weeks, had she latched on to groups of people because being completely alone had terrified her? People like the German backpackers she’d partied with for one glorious weekend after meeting in an Amsterdam hostel. Or the bar staff in Paris she’d hung out with every night after lights out while working for a few weeks in a Bastille brasserie.
If anything, being alone had made her appreciate so much more the company of others.
A pang dug into the center of her chest. Why would anyone commit themselves to a lifetime without those connections if they didn’t have to?
Hot on the heels of that thought came the memory of Jared’s caresses, so urgent, so addictive. Heat spiraled down to her core—the yearning acute, despite the soreness still lingering in her sex, and making her blush when Inez brought in a breakfast tray.
There was a folded note propped up against the coffee pot with her name written on it in Jared’s thick black scrawl.
Katie forced herself not to grab it off the tray but she couldn’t control the kick of anticipation as the maid poured the coffee and arranged a dish laden with frittata and ham on the balcony table. The tempting scent made her empty belly growl.
As soon as Inez had left the room, Katie lifted the note and flicked it open.
Her heart beat an uneven tattoo as she scanned the three short sentences.
Last night shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again. I’m not in the habit of deflowering virgins.
Caine
Her heart sunk into the pit of her stomach and the paper fluttered to the floor from nerveless fingers. The warmth, the feeling of safety and security, even the insistent buzz of sexual arousal, was replaced by the sharp stab of hopelessness and inadequacy.
* * *
“Everything’s good, Dario. The passport should be here by Monday,” Jared spoke into his cell phone, his voice hoarse as the guilt threatened to strangle him.
He’d had another nightmare last night. Had woken up aching and sweating, his head splitting, the terror so huge his throat had been raw from the shouting—and his penis as hard as an iron spike. Because in his nightmare Katherine had been locked in that squalid room with him.
Thank God he had remembered to close the terrace doors this time before falling into a restless sleep.
He had spent the morning immersed in a conference call with the San Francisco office at the resort’s business center and harassing his PA to get onto the British consulate again and get an answer out of them about the ETA on Katherine’s passport.
It hadn’t helped. Instead of calming him down, he now felt even more shaky and tense.
“Jared, is there a problem?”
He thrust an impatient hand through his hair, clinging on to his usual cool by his fingertips as he recalled the sweet, seductive light in Katherine’s heavy-lidded eyes as he’d placed her in her own bed the night before.
Can’t you stay with me?
“It’s nothing,” he said down the phone line. “I guess I’m just tired and kind of stressed.” Not surpris
ing, given that he hadn’t had an uninterrupted night’s sleep since Katherine had burst back into his life. “The Borelli buyout was more complicated than I thought,” he added.
He heard Dario’s wry chuckle. “Owning and operating a billion-dollar company sucks sometimes, no?”
Jared let out a strained laugh.
If only that were the problem.
A loud rap sounded on the door and he ended the call with Dario as he beckoned his executive assistant into the room. The efficient young man looked agitated, which was not like him.
“What’s wrong, Carlo?” he snapped, the little patience he had left evaporating.
“The villa’s housekeeper has called. She says Ms. Whittaker left the premises without telling anyone and that she borrowed the gardener’s scooter.”
Jared’s heart hit his tonsils. “When?”
“About half an hour ago.”
He swallowed down the curse, the frustration caused by Dario’s call coalescing into something a great deal more volatile.
Shouting instructions to the young man to have five of his men sent to Marina Grande, Capri’s main port, in case Katherine attempted to leave on the ferry, he strode out of the building.
As he mounted the bike and peeled away from the resort offices, his temper kicked in—but did nothing to override the wave of panic and concern.
He’d planned to create some distance today, for both their sakes, to give them time to get over last night’s mistake and control the hunger once and for all.
Trust Katherine to screw up his best laid plans.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE ROAR OF the motorbike’s engine drowned out the putter of the tiny Vespa. Katie’s head whipped round and her heart charged into her throat as Jared’s monstrous black bike drew alongside. He signaled her to stop. Reluctantly, she braked on the deserted road.
Seriously? Can this day actually get any worse?
Stopping the bike in a spray of stones, Jared dragged off his helmet and dismounted. He stalked toward her, brushing back disheveled locks of dark hair. With his suit pants speckled with dust and his white shirt sticking to his chest in damp patches, he looked more untamed than she had ever seen him. As his big body bore down on her, the memories from the previous night came flooding back unbidden, dark and torrid, and only added to her humiliation. She forced herself to stand her ground as the shock of awareness reverberated through her system.
His head dipped. Even hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses the heat of his gaze burned over every inch of exposed skin—which unfortunately was quite a lot in her T-shirt and shorts.
“Where the hell do you think you’re headed?” The growled demand had her temper kicking in at last, smothering the crippling pain caused by his note.
“I didn’t know I was under house arrest.”
He tore off his sunglasses and fury sparked in his deep-blue eyes.
“You spoiled brat! I’ve just spent the last half hour searching the island for you.”
The old insult stoked a restorative wave of fury.
“Why would you bother?” she snapped. “You’ve already deflowered me, remember?”
The insensitivity of his note cut her to the bone all over again. He’d destroyed her in that moment, the same way he had five years before. The same way her father had every time he’d made her feel small and insignificant. But she refused to be beaten down. Or ashamed of what she’d given freely and openly the night before. And the pleasure they’d shared.
He stiffened, obviously taken aback. “The note was supposed to be an apology for that.”
“If that’s your idea of an apology, you need a lot more practice.”
And did he really think an unnecessary apology was going to make her feel any better?
“Fine, I’ll say it again,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry about what happened last night. If I had known it was your first time, I would never have touched you.” He thrust his hand through his hair, making deep grooves in the sweat-soaked waves. If she hadn’t been so miserable, she might have taken some satisfaction in knowing she had finally blasted through his usual cool. “And you were the one who chose to keep it a secret.”
“Don’t you get it?” she asked. “I don’t need or want an apology. I wanted to make love to you. I made a choice. That I don’t regret. Even if you do.”
A choice she was now determined to own once and for all with this morning’s excursion, if she ever managed to find the place she’d been searching for in the dusty heat for over an hour.
“Oh, yeah? Then why the hell were you running away from me?” he asked, exasperated.
She stared at him, stunned by the passion in his voice. Seeing past her own unhappiness for a moment, she realized that more than impatience and temper lurked in his gaze.
But the thought he might be genuinely concerned for her failed to compute. Hadn’t she fallen down that rabbit hole the night before? And look what it had cost her. He didn’t care about her. The only reason he had shown her any consideration yesterday was through some warped sense of responsibility for her inexperience. And the only possible reason he could have for haring after her now was his dogged obsession with keeping the promise he had made to Dario.
“I wasn’t running away,” she murmured, suddenly weary of the argument, and clinging desperately to her composure. “I have somewhere I wanted to go.”
Because there was something she had always refused to confront and the events of last night—and this morning—had finally given her the courage at least to try.
He swore under his breath, his frustration clear. “Uh-huh? Well, next time you decide to steal a scooter and go joyriding, let Inez or one of the other staff know so I don’t have to interrupt my day to come looking for you.”
“I didn’t steal it, I was going to bring it back.” Outraged color tinged her cheeks at the injustice of the accusation and the patronizing tone. Would he ever stop treating her like an irresponsible child? She was twenty-four years old and last night she had finally felt like a grown woman for the first time in her life. But he was determined to take even that away from her. “And I didn’t tell anyone where I was going because I didn’t want anyone to know.” Especially you.
Although, she could see the folly of that decision now. Maybe she should have taken a moment to ask Inez for directions, because she’d been traveling up and down the walled roads and deserted tracks on this side of the island and she had yet to find her first graveyard. Not knowing the word for cemetery in Italian certainly hadn’t helped. But after reading his note she hadn’t really been thinking at all, she’d simply been reacting to the hurt and confusion his curt dismissal had caused. And that was the thing that angered her most of all—not with him but with herself.
When was she going to learn to stop being so impulsive? And when was she going to stop letting the low opinion of men like Jared and her so-called father Lloyd Whittaker matter to her? She thought she’d come so far in the last few months by surviving on her own and pushing herself to be resilient and self-sufficient. But Jared had managed to turn all that hard work on its head with one stunning orgasm, a few unexpected hugs and three thoughtless sentences.
She felt as if she had been slapped back to square one after a particularly brutal game of Chutes and Ladders. The thought that she might never be ready to return home to Manhattan, that she might never be more than Megan’s troublesome little sister, suddenly crippled her with anxiety.
“Where could you possibly have to go on an island you don’t know that’s important enough to put the whole villa, not to mention my business, in uproar?” Jared snarled, still channeling an enraged mountain lion who’d been poked once too often.
“I wanted to visit my mother,” she blurted out.
One dark brow shot up—the temper tantrum momentarily stopped in its tracks. “Your... Who?”
“Alexis Whittaker,” she clarified, already regretting her outburst. Which was just one more sign of
her inability to think straight when cornered. “She’s buried somewhere on this island,” she added when he continued to stare at her as if she had lost her mind. “I came here once before. The winter we buried her. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to come back.”
Although not the biggest reason. Because that was standing right in front of her, stunned into silence for once. “It’s not a particularly good memory. But I thought I’d be able to find it. That I’d remember the graveyard...if I saw something familiar.” She was rambling now but she couldn’t seem to stop, his indomitable presence making the whole idea begin to seem even more foolish. What was she even trying to do—get validation for her actions from a woman she had never even known and who had been dead for years?
“But nothing looks familiar,” she said, finally winding down. “Probably because it’s high summer now. And at the time I was only eight.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time. He just stared at her as if he were trying to solve a particularly complicated riddle.
She felt the last of her anger drain away until all that was left was the foolish girl who had woken up this morning and believed that something good had happened last night. She wasn’t a romantic and, despite her inexperience, she wasn’t naive either, so she hadn’t kidded herself what she had shared with Jared was more than sex. But still, finding the courage finally to make that physical connection with someone had meant something to her. Something she’d been dumb enough to believe had been awesome enough for both of them to be repeated. And the way he’d held her afterward had made her feel noticed, even cherished, by a man for the first time in her life.
That it had all been an illusion—conjured up by heat and pheromones—only made her feel more exposed.
He was probably trying to figure out why she would want to visit her mother’s grave, but she didn’t intend to enlighten him. Especially as she wasn’t even entirely sure herself.
“Was your mother a Catholic?”
Katie frowned at the non-sequitur, and the intensity on his face. If only she could read him as easily as he seemed to be able to read her.