Sicilian Nights Omnibus

by Penny Jordan

  ‘You have a very compassionate nature,’ she heard Falcon saying as he followed her. ‘And I think you are right. Certainly as an adult it is pity I feel for my mother, rather than the despair her death caused me as a boy. She used to say that producing us was her duty and that she herself was a sacrifice.’

  Annie had to fight hard not to betray her shock. Poor woman. She must have been dreadfully unhappy to have spoken to her son like that, instead of protecting him from her own unhappiness. She would never do that to Ollie. Never! She wanted him to grow up whole and happy, and free of any sense of guilt about her or about himself.

  * * *

  They had dinner. Warmed goat cheese with tomatoes and herbs to start with, and then a roast chicken and pasta dish that was mouthwateringly delicious.

  Annie had already learned from Maria that most of the staff at the castello were local, and that their families had lived and worked on Leopardi land for countless generations—even the chef.

  She had drunk another glass of wine with her meal, and now she and Falcon had finished the piping hot coffee the little maid had brought them. Although Annie had regretfully had to refuse the chocolate petit fours that had been with the coffee—not just because she was full, but because she was also feeling very nervous. All through the meal Falcon had answered her curious questions about the obviously feudal nature of the area, and the relationship between his father the old Prince and the people who looked on him almost as though he were still their ruler. Not once had he made any reference to the fact that she had not as yet given him her decision.

  ‘My father’s attitude towards the land and the people is feudal,’ Falcon told her now. ‘And that is a matter of great concern to me and to my brothers. We have all been fortunate in having benefited financially through our mother’s family, and we have all become financially successful in the modern world. The opportunity to live in that modern world is one I am committed to giving to our people, despite my father’s wish to keep them locked in the past. And speaking of people being locked in the past...’ He stood up. ‘A walk in the gardens will, I think, help us to digest our dinner. And whilst we are walking you can give me your decision on the offer I made before I left for Florence.’

  Annie’s breath escaped her lungs in a leaky gasp.

  ‘What is it?’ Falcon asked as she too stood up.

  ‘I thought that perhaps you’d changed your mind about that, and that that was why you hadn’t mentioned it,’ Annie confessed.

  ‘You thought or you hoped?’ he challenged her, even as his light touch—and it was merely a touch, quickly removed—guided her towards the steps that led down into the gardens.

  It was darker here than it had been on the terrace. A prickle of sensation quivered over her skin. The night was full of hidden dangers—or were they hidden promises? What on earth had made her think that?

  The moon, new and bright, gave off just enough light to show the outline of the mountains, silvering Leopardi land, the olive groves and the fields closer to the castello. Her son was part of all of this—but he was part of her, as well. Somewhere unseen a bird screeched, making her jump and miss a step. Instantly Falcon moved closer to catch her, one hand splayed across the middle of her back the other encircling her wrist.

  Had he turned her in towards his own body or had she done that for herself? Annie didn’t know. She did know that she was acutely aware of him. She could smell the scent of his skin, its familiarity immediately transporting her back to the first time they had met.

  ‘Are you warm enough?’

  Had he felt the rash of goosebumps that had suddenly come up under her skin? He must have done. They weren’t caused by cold, though. The evening air was wonderfully balmy and warm.

  ‘It’s late,’ she told him unsteadily, as she looked imploringly towards the castello.

  ‘Too late to change your mind,’ Falcon told her.

  He had moved closer to her—much closer. They were standing face to face. One of his hands was still splayed out across her back, its firm pressure bringing her towards him, whilst the other hand...

  Annie had to swallow very hard. The fingertips of the other hand were slowly stroking her bare arm in a caress that drifted from her inner wrist all the way up to her elbow. Tongues of fire licked through her veins. She was trembling openly now, completely unable to conceal her reaction to him.

  She still made a brave attempt to face him down, though, reminding him shakily, ‘I haven’t given you my decision yet.’

  He was so close to her that she could feel his chest shaking as he laughed. The warmth of his amusement gusted round her, his breath grazing her cheek and making her turn and lift her head as though she wanted to capture it with her lips.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ he corrected her. ‘You told me when I refilled your wineglass and you trembled; you told me when you looked at my mouth over dinner; just now when you shivered when I touched you. You told me then that you are ready to be aroused by me. Your body has signalled to mine its curiosity and its interest.’

  Annie opened her mouth to object, to tell him that he was wrong, but the unseen bird screeched again and instead she gasped and moved closer to Falcon.

  It was the wrong thing to do. His arm was encircling her now, holding her against his body, whilst her own body trembled helplessly beneath the slow caress of his fingertips on her arm.

  Somehow, without her knowing what she was doing, she had gripped his other hand, curling her fingers into the muscle as she clung to him.

  ‘How does this feel?’ he asked her softly as his knuckles brushed her arm lightly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annie lied. But of course she did. It felt shockingly and dangerously erotic.

  Beneath her dress she could feel her nipples tightening, whilst heat curled through her lower body and the insides of her thighs began to ache, the feeling there spreading from deep inside her body.

  She badly wanted to close her eyes and simply lean into Falcon, so that he could hold her and caress her, those magical knowing hands of his touching all those places that were now aching for his touch.

  Panic hit her and she pulled back from him. Everything that Colin had told her and warned her about suddenly flooded into her head, filling her with self disgust and shock. The woman she wanted to be and the girl she had fought relentlessly with one another for possession of her mind.

  Falcon had stepped back from her, his hand holding her own as he directed her deeper still into the garden. The danger had passed and she was safe. But was safe what she really wanted to be? Hadn’t there been a moment back there—more than merely a moment—when she had been anticipating the touch of his mouth on her own with greedy longing?

  ‘You are a woman it is extremely easy for a man to want,’ Falcon told her.

  His voice reached her out of the darkness and had her stopping, walking to turn and confront him with her emotional response.

  ‘You don’t have to say things like that to me. In fact, I would rather that you didn’t. I’m not a complete fool, even if I am laughably sexually inexperienced. I know perfectly well that you’re just trying to be kind and to...to boost my confidence. A man like you would never find me extremely easy to want.’

  The moonlight fell directly on Falcon’s face, highlighting its sensually male structure and sending a flood surge of aching, sweet need pounding through her. What was happening to her? Whatever it was it, was happening far too fast.

  ‘By your own admission you know nothing about the needs and desires of my sex. Therefore you are not qualified to know that I would never find you extremely easy to want.’ Falcon swept aside her argument, his voice sharpening as he added, ‘The discovery that you have the ability to arouse me simply by doing nothing other than letting me see and feel your response to me is as unfamiliar to me as it is to you.’

  ‘I...I�
��m flattered that...that you...’

  ‘That I find you desirable? That being here in the moonlight with you arouses me? We must take things slowly if I am not to lose my head and thus lose my efficacy as your teacher.’

  His face was shadowed and hidden from her now, but Annie could tell from his voice that he was smiling—which must mean that the eventuality to which he was referring, namely him losing his head, was simply not going to happen. And that was a relief to her. Of course it was. The last thing she wanted was for Falcon to become so aroused by their intimacy that he lost control and made proper, real passionate love to her—wasn’t it?

  ‘I ought to go in. I don’t like leaving Ollie on his own.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I asked Maria to keep an eye on him. I knew that maternal heart of yours would be anxious.’

  Before Annie could thank him he continued.

  ‘In a week or so’s time, once you have settled in and if you are agreeable, I thought I would take a day off to show you and Oliver something of the island.’

  A week or so’s time seemed a safely vague distance away, so it was easy for her to say, half shyly, ‘Thank you. I would like that.’ After all it was the truth. She would like to see something of the island.

  They were deep in the garden now, hidden from the moonlight by the branches of a tree, and yet Falcon still managed to find her forehead accurately as he deposited a light kiss there, and told her, ‘Now you can relax. Because the first lesson is almost over.’

  ‘I just hope you don’t mean to set me any tests,’ Annie responded feelingly, in her relief, and then realised her mistake when Falcon laughed.

  ‘Oh, I fully intend to do that,’ he assured her. ‘And to see how much you have been paying attention to what I have been doing by getting you to repeat my caresses for you on me. But not yet.’

  He was going to expect her to caress him—to send those same quivers of helpless mindless physical delight zinging through his body that he had sent through hers. Impossible!

  ‘There is just one thing more I intend to do tonight, before I let you escape from your instruction.’

  One more thing? Annie’s head jerked towards him, and as though that was exactly what he had intended he cupped the side of her face with his palm and then stroked his thumb across her half-parted lips, brushing softly to and fro against them whilst her senses reeled and her mind slipped away, allowing her body and her sensuality to take control.

  Falcon’s arm was round her, supporting her, whilst his thumb probed between her parted lips. Without even having to think about it Annie touched his thumb with the tip of her tongue, exploring its texture and its taste, circling it and stroking it, growing bolder as she realised how powerful it made her feel to take that control.

  Lost in the excitement of what she was doing, she didn’t even realise at first that Falcon had removed his thumb and replaced it with his mouth until he started to kiss her.

  There was no chance for her to deny him and no point, either. Her lips, she herself, were both already open to him, and to the raw sexuality of his kiss. He was cupping her face with both of his hands now, caressing her skin as he took the kiss deeper, his tongue probing the soft sweetness of her mouth whilst his fingers spread to her ears and the responsive area just behind them.

  Annie heard herself moan into Falcon’s kiss. She felt herself writhe and then press eagerly into his body. She suffered the savaging of disappointment and a sense of loss when he removed his mouth from her own—and then was flung headlong into the sweetness of the pleasure that came when his lips caressed their way along her throat from her ear to her shoulder, and then back along her collarbone. His dark head bent over her, encouraging her to slide her fingers into the heavenly thickness of his hair.

  It was like being on a roller coaster.

  She could feel her heart thudding so heavily that it seemed to be beating outside her body. And then she realised that the beat she could feel drumming so hard wasn’t coming from her own heart but from Falcon’s. The sweetest pleasure and triumph pierced her, catching her off guard with its intensity. Falcon was enjoying kissing her. Her—a woman who had thought herself not a proper woman at all.

  Gratitude and exhilaration filled her, but was quickly forgotten when Falcon kissed her again, taking her mouth and covering it with his own, finding her tongue and teasing it into an erotically intimate dance with his own whilst his hands moved down over her body, his palms just skimming her breasts.

  Immediately Annie tensed, her delight in the moment broken by the sharpness of her sudden recognition that things were moving too fast.

  As though Falcon himself recognised that fact he released her, leaning his forehead against her own for a second before saying huskily, ‘It is just as well this dress of yours does not possess a zip. Because if it did right now I’d be caressing your breasts, learning them with my hands and my lips. There is something almost unbearably erotic about the sight of moonlight on a woman’s naked body, caressing it with silver pathways.’

  Annie shuddered wildly and pulled back from him.

  ‘I really must go in.’

  ‘Yes,’ Falcon agreed meaningfully. ‘I think you must—unless you want me to take this evening’s lesson far further than I had originally planned.’

  He wasn’t really asking her if she wanted what he had just described to her, was he? Annie thought dizzily. He couldn’t be. Could he? Her senses swung between fear and excitement. They were a long way from that stage yet, she reassured herself. Indeed, she wasn’t even sure she would be able to go that far.

  * * *

  Annie couldn’t sleep. She had tried—she had tried very hard. But every time she closed her eyes it was as though she was back in the garden with Falcon. In fact, so vivid were the images conjured up behind her closed eyelids that she could almost feel him, as well as see him. His warmth against her own body, his touch on her skin, his scent, his kiss, his voice sensitising her already over-sensitised mind when he told her what he would do to her.

  It was no use. Annie pushed back the covers and slid her feet out of the bed and onto the floor. It was so warm tonight that even the thin cotton tee-shirt-style nightdress she was wearing felt unpleasant and unwanted against her skin. Because what she really wanted was the touch of Falcon’s hands?

  This was ridiculous. She was glad, of course, that she was rediscovering her sexuality. She just hadn’t expected that what she would feel would be so...so intense. She had imagined she would feel nervous and uncertain, too anxious to really enjoy what was happening, but it was as though somehow Falcon had cast some magic spell on her that had cut through those expected feelings.

  She walked to the nursery, where Ollie was fast asleep—as she herself should be and no doubt Falcon was.

  * * *

  Falcon stared unseeingly at the computer screen in front of him. Unable to sleep, he had decided he might as well work on one of his new architectural commissions.

  Falcon loved his work. His love of the beauty of Florence’s buildings was, he believed, his mother’s gift to him, since Florence had been her home. Annie would enjoy Florence, and he would enjoy her pleasure in it. As he had enjoyed her pleasure this evening...

  It was no use lying to himself. The truth was that he had been caught off guard by the intensity of his own desire for her—aroused, no doubt, by the sweetness of her response to him.

  He sat back in his chair and exhaled slowly. The object of the exercise was not his pleasure but Annie’s rediscovery of her lost sexuality. And if he had experienced an arousal and desire with her tonight that he had felt might get out of control then he must ensure that he did not do so again. In future he must experience those things only to the extent that her knowledge of his response would aid her progress. If he could not do that then he would, in his own eyes, be as culpable and as guilty of abusing her a
s her stepbrother.

  He stood up and walked over to the window. His private apartment was in the original part of the castello, which he had remodelled sympathetically to create for himself very modern living quarters in what was essentially a twelfth-century building. The walls had been stripped back to their natural stone, where appropriate, and limestone floors had been laid on the ground floor of the two-storey apartment. Damage to the outer wall in one area had allowed him, with modern building techniques, to replace the crumbling wall with a two-storey, floor-to-ceiling glass ‘wall’, which looked out onto a limestone patio, beyond which an infinity pool melted visually into the sea itself.

  Within the area he had renovated there had been enough space to create an inner room, with glass and polished plaster walls, which contained a small modern kitchen again with views towards the sea.

  A matt-finish metal staircase led up to a galleried landing and three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and dressing room area. The apartment was furnished with the very best of modern Italian furniture in natural products like leather and wood, as well as steel and modern textiles, and artwork.

  The apartment was a clean open space that breathed light and openness. As an antidote to his father’s love of secrecy and control? Falcon frowned. He was digging too deep within himself when there was no need. Better that he thought about Annie than his own childhood.

  He doubted that Annie would totally approve of his apartment. She would think it child-unfriendly. Her ideal would no doubt be somewhere more like the villa outside Florence his second brother had bought for his new wife—a large, elegant family home that would happily accommodate any number of children in safety and comfort.

  It was his duty, though, as the eldest son to maintain a presence here. When their father died, the people would expect him to be here.

  But it was Annie and Oliver and their needs that were preoccupying him right now, rather than those of his people.