by Kim Lawrence
‘Look, don’t take this personally. In other circumstances I …’ As he held her eyes Miranda felt the air thicken. ‘You’re an attractive woman.’
‘And you’re not nearly so irresistible as you think you are.’
‘You kissed me,’ he was pushed to retort.
‘And you make casual, shallow sex seem some sort of noble sacrifice rather than an inability to form any sort of relationship with a woman.
‘I happen to know someone who wasted eight years of her life on someone who couldn’t commit. He didn’t have a son to blame for his insecurities. He’d cheat, she’d leave and then he’d come crawling back with some rubbish excuse and she finally woke up.’
The talk of the friend who had repeatedly gone back to a cheating boyfriend did not fool him; nobody displayed that sort of emotion about a friend, no matter how close. Miranda had been talking about herself.
She walked to the door and pushed it wide. ‘Look, if you don’t mind, Joe will be here in a minute.’
‘Joe who?’
‘Joe Chandler.’
‘Is that meant to mean something to me?’
‘The veggie-box man—you met him earlier. He asked me to go for a drink with him.’ Gianni Fitzgerald might be able to resist her, but it was good to be able to show him not everyone was so damned picky!
Gianni paused and watched her walk through the open door, then turned back, refusing to recognise the emotion he was battling to control as jealousy. He was not a jealous man.
‘And you said yes?’
‘I don’t see how that’s any of your business, but as a matter of fact I did.’
Annoyance flashed across his face. ‘Is that wise?’
Miranda stared, totally stunned by his censorious attitude and then, as she thought about it, angry. ‘Wise?’ she echoed, thinking, Not wise was kissing you. What the hell were you thinking of, Mirrie? ‘I thought I’d throw caution to the winds.’
‘And go out with a total stranger?’
‘You’re a total stranger, and what are you talking about? Joe is a perfectly nice man. Not to mention,’ she added with a small reflective smile, ‘rather attractive.’
A muscle clenched in his jaw as he fought a violent wave of gut-clenching repugnance. ‘You got dressed up for him?’ Who’s she meant to get dressed up for, Gianni? mocked the voice in his head.
‘Yes,’ she responded rather too belligerently.
‘I know there’s a school of thought that says get right back on the horse when you fall off, but sometimes it’s better to let the bruises heal.’
‘The thing about analogies,’ Miranda mused, getting angrier by the second, ‘is they only work if the person you’re talking to has the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re obviously coming out of an unhappy relationship.’
She stared at him in utter astonishment. This man’s arrogance was staggering. ‘Before you go any further I should say I don’t take advice on my love life—’ or what passed for it ‘—from total strangers.’
‘You just go out to dinner with them.’
‘Not dinner, a drink, and I happen to be a very good judge of character.’
Miranda had no hesitation in refusing the offer of a taxi from a sheepish Joe, who’d had, as he readily admitted, ‘one too many’ to get behind the wheel of his car. The cottage was less than a mile away and she anticipated enjoying the walk back.
She did. It was really relaxing walking along quiet moonlit lanes, letting her mind go blank.
Her mellow mood dispersed a little as the cottage gate came in sight. With luck Gianni would be in bed and asleep. She didn’t want another run-in with the wretched man to ruin what had been a really relaxing evening. Joe and the friends who had joined them had been relaxing and undemanding company.
The same could not be said of her housemate.
She felt the tension slide from her shoulders when she saw the house was in darkness—she was in luck. Letting herself quietly in through the back door, she murmured a soft, ‘Hi, boys,’ to the dogs, who lay in their baskets thumping their tails in sleepy greeting but not getting up.
Slipping off her shoes, she headed for the hall door. She was halfway across the room when the door of the massive fridge that sat in one corner of the room swung open, the light acting like a spotlight for that corner, illuminating, not just the fridge contents, but the man who stood in front of it with a bluish light.
Miranda released a scream then, riveted to the spot, stared at the man standing there. Gianni was wearing a pair of boxer shorts cut low on his narrow hips and nothing else.
She lifted a hand to her neck, covering the vulnerable area where a pulse was banging away frantically. Dear God, what did this man have against clothes?
‘What sort of time do you call this?’ Wasn’t that what a worried parent or a jealous lover would say when he’d been pacing the floor glancing at the clock for the last two hours?
‘Hilarious,’ she gasped, letting her head fall forward as she panted, waiting for her heart rate to slow. This might have happened sooner than it did had she not been tempted to peek through the skeins of hair that hung around her face at the man standing there.
He had the most incredible body!
There wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on his lean, rangy frame to disguise the ridges of muscular definition on his flat belly or the utterly perfect muscle formation of his chest and shoulders. His legs were long, the hair-roughened thighs powerfully muscled—it was the sort of body a light heavyweight might work years to achieve and then fall short of this sort of athletic ideal.
God, no wonder he was arrogant. He was gorgeous and he had to know it!
Gianni listened to the audible sound of her laboured breathing and let out a long silent whistle. ‘Dio, but you’re jumpy, woman … They say a guilty conscience does that to a person. What have you been up to, cara?’
The sly insinuation brought her head up with a jerk. Smoothing her hair away from her flushed face, she angled an unfriendly glare at him.
‘What the hell are you doing lurking in the dark like that? You nearly gave me a heart attack!’
‘Me …?’ He adopted an attitude of mock innocence. ‘I’m just getting a glass of milk,’ he said, raising the carton to his lips.
She watched as he proceeded to gulp down half the contents before he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slid the carton back inside the fridge.
‘That is disgusting. Have you never heard of glasses or clothes?’
His brows lifted at the addition. ‘Your night seems to have left you a little bit … tetchy. Did country boy not live up to expectations?’ he drawled.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I had a lovely evening, thank you for asking—right up to the moment I walked in and saw you.’
His brows lifted. ‘So he didn’t.’
A sound of hissing frustration issued between her clenched teeth. ‘Goodnight.’
‘You know, I really don’t think it’s polite to leave a lady looking so … unfulfilled.’
In the act of turning away, she swung back. ‘I’m totally fulfilled, thank you very much!’
His brows lifted at the spitting vehemence of her delivery. ‘Glad to hear it. So lover boy is not coming in … didn’t even walk you to the door …’ He glanced towards the door and observed with a frown, ‘I didn’t hear a car …’
‘Why—were you listening out for it? As a matter of fact I walked back.’
‘He walked you home under the stars—a nice romantic touch.’
‘God, you’re one sarcastic—’ She clamped her teeth over the insult hovering on her tongue. ‘As a matter of fact I walked home alone.’
The mocking laconic pose disintegrated as he suddenly straightened up, looking dauntingly tall and forbidding. ‘He let you walk home alone?’ He closed his eyes and swore at length in his mother tongue.
‘It’s only half a mile!’ she protested, thrown off balance by the lightning change in
his attitude.
‘Half a mile along isolated country roads with no street lights. A motorist would never have seen you, let alone avoided you, in that get-up,’ he said, nodding towards the black coat she had worn over her skirt and top.
‘There was no traffic,’ she protested weakly.
He arched a brow. ‘And you knew there wouldn’t be, did you?’
His anger seemed inexplicable to Miranda, but there was no doubt that it was genuine. ‘No, but—’
‘And of course you knew for sure that there were no gangs of drunk, drug-crazed thugs who would have been only too happy to while away the odd hour with a lone female who looks like you! And we won’t even bring homicidal maniacs into this discussion …’
Miranda blinked. He made it sound as though she’d strolled home through some inner-city red-light district in a miniskirt. ‘The only thing I saw was a cat. I was perfectly safe. This is the country.’
‘And only nice things happen in the country?’
‘No, but—’
‘Grow up, Miranda. He shouldn’t have let you walk home alone.’ His anger slipped away as his glance moved over the graceful curves of her body. The lust that replaced it was equally hard to control.
‘I’m not afraid of the dark and you’re scaring me more than anything I saw during my walk back.’
‘I?’ Gianni studied her face and looked quite shaken as he husked, ‘I had no intention of scaring you.’
‘No, just making me see bogey men in every shadow. I can see now that I should at least have worn something light, but I wasn’t planning on walking back until Joe—’
‘Got drunk?’ Gianni shook his head, his hands hanging loosely at his sides balling into fists. ‘What a loser!’ he exclaimed in disgust.
Miranda felt impelled to defend the absent Joe. ‘He’s a perfectly nice man.’
‘Who can’t hold his booze and doesn’t know what to do with a woman.’ Gianni fought to contain the explosive anger building up inside him, not sure whom he was angrier with: himself for feeling jealous of such a man, or Miranda, who was responsible for making him feel this way … Dio, what was this woman doing to him?
She lifted her chin. ‘And you do, I suppose?’ The scorn died from her eyes the moment they made direct contact with his.
The tension in the room suddenly went through the roof, along with Miranda’s pulse rate.
‘Try me, cara,’ he drawled. ‘I’ve not had any complaints yet.’
Miranda aimed for a cool cutting tone but missed by a mile. ‘I’ll pass, I don’t do casual sex with narcissistic men who spend their lives admiring themselves in the mirror.’
‘I’m not the one looking, Miranda, you are, and I’m getting the impression you like what you see.’
‘You’re disgusting!’ she choked.
‘I can be,’ he agreed with a wicked grin. ‘If that’s what you like?’
The soft insidious addendum sent a flash of heat sizzling along her nerve endings. ‘I like … I like … not you!’ she finished childishly. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her voice sinking to a fearful husky whisper as he began to stalk towards her looking like the predator he undoubtedly was. The knowledge should have disgusted her but instead of revulsion it was excitement that unfurled deep in her belly as she watched him move closer, his casual attitude not hiding his determination.
He was a couple of feet away from her when the fridge door swung closed of its own momentum, plunging the room into darkness, the gloom alleviated only by the moonlight shining through the chinks under the blinds.
She was struggling to adjust to the dim light when she heard his voice, deep and rich as dark chocolate, sinfully suggestive, come out of the darkness. ‘Just as well you’re not afraid of the dark, cara. You can look after me.’
‘I’d prefer to look after a snake,’ she countered with shaky defiance.
His laughter was closer than it had been, then as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she saw the outline of his body. He was so close, all she had to do was reach out and she could have touched him.
Shocked by how badly she wanted to do just that, Miranda tucked her hands behind her back and shook her head in bewilderment. She had never felt more scared or more excited in her life. The sexual awareness that she had always been conscious of around this man but had tried to ignore could no longer be ignored.
‘Let me look after you, Miranda. I’ll chase away the bogey men.’
‘You are the bogey man.’
She heard his soft laugh, then felt his hand on her cheek. She flinched, but did not move away as he traced a path down her cheek and left his finger there by her mouth.
He was offering her sex.
Even more shocking than this was the discovery that she was tempted. He was so gorgeous and where was the harm? He wanted nothing from her, but her body was sending some unmistakable signals that it wanted what he was offering.
Why intellectualise this?
Why pretend the fact he had ‘dominant male’ stamped through him like a stick of rock didn’t turn her on? She wasn’t looking for a life partner, a soul mate; to put it crudely—and for once she did—she wanted sex.
There was no shame in acknowledging she had needs that, after years of lying dormant, had chosen to surface big time.
Hadn’t that always been her problem? She thought too much.
She had spent years living a nunlike existence, saving herself for Oliver, and now here was a man offering her what she’d been missing out on—no strings.
She might not be able to have love, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have pleasure, and if she was going to choose someone who knew how to give pleasure—if Gianni was half as good as he thought he was—it would be difficult to find someone more qualified.
‘What about your rule?’
‘Rules are made to be broken.’
‘I don’t have casual sex with strangers.’ She made the statement as much for her own benefit as his.
‘Then tell me to go away and I will.’
The silence stretched while Miranda struggled to think through the haze of desire in her head … Then she gave up fighting.
‘I … I can’t,’ she admitted in a throaty whisper. ‘I don’t want you to go away.’
He was so close now she felt the sigh of his warm breath as it left his lips. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in the musky male scent of his warm body. He was so close now she was panting … Oh, God, panting!
What had happened to her?
She shook her head and thought, I don’t know or care but I’m damned well going to enjoy it.
‘Then I won’t.’
Gianni lowered his head and in the darkness found her lips. They were soft and trembling. Without encouragement they parted and with a groan he deepened the kiss. Miranda met his tongue with her own in an instinctively sensuous stabbing movement.
The intimate exploration was so overwhelming she struggled to cling to any sense of self. She could feel and taste him everywhere. Then with a sigh she stopped trying and impossibly it felt even better.
Her body felt soft and pliant as he dragged her up hard against him, reaching with one hand to the neck of her top and sliding his hand down over one smooth, high breast, pushing his fingers under the thin lacy covering of her bra to find her nipple hard and erect.
She gasped, a quiver running through her body as he ran his thumb across the tight bud.
Gianni bent his head, pushing her hair away and whispering in her ear. ‘You like that?’
‘Yes, don’t stop …’ She reached up to touch his skin. It felt scalding hot and damp as she spread her fingers and moved her hands up over his ridged stomach towards his chest.
He tangled his fingers in her curls and dragged her face up to his. ‘I won’t.’ He couldn’t. There was a fever in his blood that Gianni had never in his life experienced. Her hands on the bare skin of his chest left trails of fire.
‘Your skin feels incredible,’ she said, her throa
ty voice raw with wonder. He was hard, his skin the texture of warm satin. ‘You feel—oh, God!’ she moaned, unable to press herself close enough. ‘So good.’
He pressed a kiss to the base of her throat, pushing her slightly away. Her protest died as his fingers tugged at the buttons of her blouse, clumsy in his urgency to expose her body.
Their fingers touched as she tried to assist him. He murmured encouragement against her mouth as he continued to kiss her with a bruising intensity.
A frantic moment later her shirt was gone, flung over his shoulders; her bra quickly followed. She immediately stepped into him, raising herself up on her toes to draw his head down to her, crushing her breasts up flat against him and crying out as he pressed his erection hard against her pelvis.
They were still kissing when he picked her up and carried her from the darkened room as though she weighed nothing.
He carried her, not to the room next to Liam’s, but up the next flight to her room in the eaves. Still kissing her, he walked backwards through the door into the tiny bedroom.
Miranda had left the window open and not closed the curtains before she left and the room was filled with moonlight and the smell of the night-scented stock that drifted in on the night breeze that felt cool against her overheated skin.
She opened her eyes as he laid her on the bed. The sight of the big man who knelt over her sent a heavy pulse of languid longing through her body.
A tiny sob escaped her lips.
His hooded eyes flared, the darkness igniting into flame as they swept over her body. Before his eyes locked on to hers she lay there breathing hard as he unfastened the belt on her skirt. He slid down the zip, bending to kiss the tiny indent above her belly button before he slid the skirt down over her hips.
A moment later her silky pants followed.
His eyes hadn’t left hers for a moment. They did now, and the almost feral growl of appreciation that vibrated in his throat as he looked down at her naked body sent a pulse of lust slamming through her so intense that for a moment she struggled to catch her breath.
She closed her eyes. What was happening was so far out of her comfort zone she couldn’t anticipate what her body would do next. She could feel what little control she had slipping away.