‘Leave them,’ Bruno commanded. ‘Let’s retire to the sitting room and have a drink. I think I need one.’
Katy eyed the nearly finished bottle of wine, which he had single-handedly demolished.
‘A decent drink,’ he amended, reading her mind.
‘You two go ahead,’ Katy said. ‘Course, Joseph, you’ll be sticking to fruit juice…’
‘Possibly,’ Joseph grumbled. ‘Though I’m sure it’s not very good for my digestive system. Too much fruit juice isn’t, you know.’
Katy impulsively walked towards him and fondly kissed the top of his head. ‘I never knew you had a degree in medicine.’
Joseph grasped her hand and gave it a little squeeze. ‘Adorable, isn’t she?’ he said smugly. ‘I’ll stick to the fruit juice provided you don’t scuttle upstairs without saying goodnight!’
Katy was just happy to scuttle off to the kitchen and away from Bruno, and managed to take an extraordinarily long time tidying the table and washing up the dishes and then putting everything away even though she could just as easily have loaded the dishwasher.
By the time she was ready to head for the sitting room, she had convinced herself of two very important things. The first was that Bruno was not physically attracted to her, merely curious, and the second was that all she felt for him was good old-fashioned lust and the reason she had been so flustered in the first place was because lust had never been something she had experienced in her life before. It had leapt out at her from nowhere. There was no reason to feel all hot and bothered because her body was behaving in an odd way. Lust was something she could control!
There was a new spring in her step when she finally made it to the sitting room almost two hours later only to find that Bruno was there on his own and of Joseph there was no sign.
‘He was tired. I took him to bed.’ He hadn’t bothered to switch on the overhead light and as a consequence the room was bathed in shadows thrown off by the two table lamps.
‘You should have called me.’
‘I think I’m capable of getting my own godfather sorted out, Katy. Besides, you were being a martyr by spring-cleaning the house.’
‘I was not being a martyr!’ He had said he wanted a drink and he had had a few from the looks of it. He sounded completely sober, but there was a half-empty bottle of whisky on the small circular table next to him and his long body was stretched out on the sofa in an attitude of total relaxation.
He was missing Isobel, she decided, more than he would ever admit, had had too much to drink and was now in a mood to start taking digs at her. He looked as though he had been ceaselessly raking his fingers through his hair and the tousled look lent him a boyish, vulnerable air. She wanted to smooth it down and say something that would wipe that brooding expression off his face.
She also wanted to escape from the suffocating turmoil that was springing up inside her. Consequently, she neither moved forward nor did she walk out. She remained where she was in a state of suspended agitation while he continued to look at her through half-closed lids.
‘Okay, then,’ he agreed, ‘not a martyr. Maybe just avoiding me. Mmm. Yes. Avoiding me. I think I’d go for that explanation.’ He fumbled on the table for his glass and drained what was left in it while staring at her over the rim. ‘But why would you be avoiding me? An enigma, wouldn’t you agree? Unless, of course…’ he let the words drip slowly from his lips, then he flashed her a wicked, heart-stopping smile ‘…it’s because I touched you…is that the reason, Katy?’
Katy wanted to swoon. Now she knew exactly how those Victorian maidens felt. Rapidly beating heart, wobbly legs, faint perspiration.
‘Come here and sit by me and we’ll talk about it.’
‘I haven’t given it a second’s thought,’ she lied, ‘and you ought to stop drinking.’
‘I won’t touch another mouthful if you come and sit here by me.’ He raised his arms and folded them behind his head and proceeded to watch her.
Katy took a few tentative steps towards him. The closer she got, the stronger was the pull she felt to keep going, until she was standing just in front of him.
Bruno shifted slightly to the right, to make room for her, and then patted the vacated spot on the sofa.
‘Sit down. Here. Nice warm spot.’
Katy perched.
‘I’m really sorry about Isobel,’ she began, her soft heart melting at what she felt must be some hidden pain that had driven him to the bottle.
‘Why? You didn’t like her.’
‘I wouldn’t say that I didn’t like her. She was just very, very different from me. A little scary, actually. Especially being so tall.’ Katy had felt like a pygmy next to her.
‘Okay. She was scary then. So why do you feel sorry about her? Forgot that she tried to threaten me? Anyway, as I’ve told you, I had a narrow escape. You should be feeling relieved at the thought of that.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose…’ Katy looked at him, marvelling abstractedly at the length of his eyelashes, of all things. ‘Although, it’s always sad when a relationship ends, isn’t it? Course, you probably don’t feel the same way about that as most normal people,’ she confided thoughtfully, ‘since you must have been through thousands of relationships that ended.’
‘Thanks a lot for that,’ Bruno said moodily. ‘One of the things I find most enchanting with you is your ability to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A man who has had thousands of passing relationships can certainly count himself as very successful, can’t he, at the pinnacle of the totem pole?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Yes? Are you?’ Brooding black eyes scanned her face with deliberate, slow consideration and Katy nodded helplessly. He wasn’t slurring his words but he had thrown her with his burst of honesty. She nodded again, this time with a bit more conviction and watched him smile lazily back at her. ‘How sorry?’
‘Sorry about what happened and sorry about speaking, well, out of turn…’ There was something oddly exciting about the way he was staring at her. Maybe that glitter in his eyes was the drink. Katy hadn’t had much experience when it came to communicating with people under the influence of alcohol. Her parents cracked open the occasional bottle of wine when guests were over, and there was always sherry at Christmas, but she had led a quiet, sheltered life that did not include whisky-drinking.
‘Forgiven.’ He laughed softly under his breath and then reached out one hand so that he could stroke her wrist.
Katy felt the delicate touch of his finger with a rush of powerful sexual awareness and guiltily realised that she had been waiting for him to touch her. No, longing for it. That lust thing again. She parted her lips on a soft, helpless sigh and her body relaxed, as if invisible strings that had been holding it up had gone slack.
‘I should go,’ she heard herself stammer and then he was sitting up towards her. The sofa depressed and she felt herself sliding towards him, a collision of body against body.
‘Go?’ Bruno nuzzled softly into her ear. ‘That’s not what I have in mind…Oh, no, what I have in mind is taking up where we left off…’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘TAKING up where we left off?’ Katy’s heart was racing as she contemplated the possibilities of what Bruno was saying to her.
‘No good you slipping back into these voluminous dresses,’ he chided mockingly. ‘Too late to try and hide that body of yours.’ As if to emphasise the point he was making, his hand curved into her waist, then along her back, travelling upwards until it found the nape of her neck, then he pulled her towards him.
Katy half fell onto him and felt the hardness of his torso. He had been right about the voluminous dress. She had worn it as protection, something to deter any glances that might be inclined to linger.
‘I wasn’t…Bruno, no…hang on…’
‘Stop talking. Kiss me. “Kiss me, Kate”.’ He grinned at his witticism and she felt the corners of her mouth tug into a smile.
Watching her,
Bruno marvelled at how he had managed to miss the soft perfection of her lips all these months that he had been visiting his godfather and seeing her in passing. Her mouth was soft and full and delicately pink. He drew her closer and stifled a groan of pleasure as he prised them open, very gently, and felt her melt beneath him. Her tongue was hesitant, at first, but not for long. She returned his kiss with sweet surrender and her slight body curved into his. A perfect fit.
She only pulled back to say, with a frown, ‘I’m taking advantage of you.’
That almost made him laugh out loud but he remained perfectly grave. ‘I’m a big boy, Katy. I think it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t let you take advantage of me if I didn’t want it. Desperately.’
Desperately? Katy wondered if she had misheard him.
‘You’ve had too much to drink…you’re not in control…’
‘I’m in perfect control. In fact,’ he added expansively, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in as much control in my life before.’ He traced the contours of her mouth with his tongue and felt her shiver against him. ‘I haven’t been drinking here on my own all night,’ Bruno confessed. ‘One glass of whisky. The bottle was pretty much finished by the time I got to it.’ He kissed her jawline, then tilted her head back so that he could do the same to the slender column of her neck. ‘I haven’t been drowning lots of hidden pain in drink,’ he murmured. ‘Do you still feel sorry for me?’
‘No, I don’t!’ Katy responded sternly.
‘Good. I’d hate the thought of a woman making love with me because she felt sorry for me…’
His words sent a flood of hot, pulsing excitement racing through her.
‘Make love…?’
‘But not here.’ He traced her cheekbones with his fingers, then trailed them along her collar-bone, dipping under the break of her dress, which was so modestly high that they were barred entry to her soft cleavage. On one level, he certainly hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he was in control. Right now he was only just managing to hang onto that control by the skin of his teeth.
‘Not here?’ Katy whispered faintly.
‘Comfortable as this sofa is, I still prefer the thought of making love in my king-sized bed. Call me old fashioned.’
‘Oh, goodness!’
‘Is that an appropriate reaction, I wonder?’ He added quirky to her growing list of character traits.
‘But Joseph’s upstairs!’
‘And, fortunately, tucked up in his own bedroom. Shall I carry you up the stairs?’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Katy stood up and watched as Bruno followed suit. He looked a little dishevelled, with his shirt untucked from the waistband of his trousers and his feet bare. He had obviously kicked off his loafers somewhere along the line. Dishevelled but still incredibly beautiful.
Going up the stairs, he held her hand. The house was silent. There was no sound coming from Joseph’s room and there was no light peeping out from under the door. They walked quietly along the darkened corridor and entered the bedroom with which Katy was quite familiar. She had cleaned it once after he had gone, when Maggie had been off work, and she frequently popped in to make sure the dust wasn’t gathering and it was aired.
The big difference was that at no point had she ever been in it at the same time as he had.
Even vacant, his bedroom had still had the power to destabilise her. She had not once gone into it without her head filling up with images of him. Here, now, with him standing right by her side and softly shutting the door behind them, Katy almost yelped with the enormity of what she was doing. Her face felt as hot as fire and her hands were trembling. She stuck them behind her back and clasped them tightly together.
The overhead light in the bedroom was operated on a dimmer switch. Bruno had turned it down to the lowest so that the room was bathed in a mellow glow.
He began unbuttoning his shirt, watching her, and Katy stared in fascination. Warmth pooled inside her, making her breathing sluggish.
‘Look,’ she began in a voice she barely recognised, ‘there’s something I have to tell you…’ Why had she ever underestimated the power of animal attraction? Being in Bruno’s company had finally taken its toll. Under the continual impact of his sexual aura, her own natural defences had crumbled. Why else would she be standing here, with her feet rooted to the ground like blocks of lead and her disobedient body urging her to things that her mind, when it was working, would have recoiled at in horror?
Bruno’s body stilled. ‘What’s that?’
Katy looked at him in mute silence for a few seconds. ‘I expect you think that…well…I know that the kinds of circles you move in…’
‘Oh, no, you’re not about to embark on one of those never-ending, circular explanations of yours, are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Bruno said, trying to restrain himself, ‘that you need to stop beating about the bush and get to the point of what you’re going to say.’ A surge of massive frustration swept over him like a tidal wave of freezing cold water. He knew what was coming. Confronted with the reality of what was looming up in front of them, naked body against naked body, she was going to make her excuses and leave. He wondered what he would do and realised, with disgust, that he had to yank himself back from the temptation to beg. He had never begged for any woman in his life and he had never felt the inclination to. He wasn’t about to start now either. His lips narrowed into a grim line and he folded his arms across his impressive, muscular chest.
‘What I’m saying…’ At this point, Katy just wanted the floor to open up and swallow her and her embarrassment up. She licked her lips nervously and tried to focus on his face even though his magnificent body was like a magnet to her eyes. ‘What I’m saying is that I’m not like those other women…’
‘What other women?’ He took a couple of steps towards her and Katy held her ground.
‘The other women you’ve slept with in the past!’ she burst out in one breath. ‘Women like Isobel! Sophisticated, experienced women! I’m not like them, Bruno. I know you’re going to find this ridiculous but I’m a virgin!’
Bruno looked at her and nothing came out. Katy, her defences reassembling themselves with gathering speed, couldn’t help but think that this was the first time and probably the last time that she would ever see Bruno Giannella literally struck dumb.
Well, who could blame him? What woman of her age had never slept with a man before? Hadn’t even been tempted to, come to it, until now. She had never felt this weird, wonderful, burning desire for anyone that she felt for this big man standing in front of her in stunned silence.
‘Crazy, isn’t it?’ she said, just to break the unbearable silence. Of course, she knew why he hadn’t said anything. Because Bruno, man of the world that he was, master of whatever woman he wanted, a stallion in bed, no less, according to his ex-girlfriend, would not be overjoyed at the prospect of taking a virgin to bed. He probably wanted someone who knew how to make love.
‘I’m not sure,’ Bruno said in a very unsteady voice, ‘that crazy is the word I would use to describe it.’ He took a couple more steps towards her so that he was now standing inches away. Katy inhaled deeply and breathed in his unique, sexy, masculine scent.
‘What would you say, then?’ she muttered in self-derision. ‘Sad? Pathetic? Unbelievable? You don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t change things, Bruno. I know it does.’
‘Explain.’
‘Well, a man like you…’
She looked down and he tilted her chin up very gently so that he could meet her eyes. He really didn’t suppose that he should tell her what her revelation had done to him. That right now he felt like a man who’d suddenly discovered the winning lottery ticket stuck at the back of a drawer. That he wanted to crow with sheer masculine glee.
‘You suppose too much,’ he said softly instead. ‘You needn’t be afraid. I intend to be very, very gentle with you…’
‘Could we turn the lights off?’
‘Absolutely not.’ Her dress was a maidenly affair, with small pearl buttons all the way down the front and, typically, each button was done up, right up to the little cream collar that had deterred his wandering fingers earlier on in the evening. He started with the top button and his eyes didn’t leave her face as he proceeded his way down until he had reached the waist.
Then he kissed her until he felt her nerves dissipating. Her hands reached up to curl around his neck. If she needed any proof that he was turned on then all she had to do was feel him through his trousers. He pulled her close and heard her little gasp as his arousal pressed against her, hard and throbbing and urgent.
He slid the dress free of her, where it pooled around her feet, and then held her hands in his, drawing them down to her sides and feasting his hungry eyes on her body. The same body that had been driving him crazy since she had revealed herself in that severe swimsuit. It hit him that in fact he had been looking at her even before then, had been watching her movements as she’d pottered around that office where they had been working, blithely unaware of his slumberous gaze on her.
Her underwear was simple, erotically simple. Plain white cotton bra, plain white cotton briefs that dipped beneath her belly button. Bruno reached up and tugged down the straps of the bra, then slid his hands behind her back to unclasp it. He half expected her to look down but she didn’t.
The desire to cringe as her body was exposed never came. Instead, Katy felt wickedly provocative as her small breasts were finally released from their constraints, jutting out, the large nipples tightly peaked in anticipation. His eyes raked over her and, as if he couldn’t stop himself, he reached out and touched one nipple with a look of wonder on his face.
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