by Lynne Graham
A faint frown-line had appeared between Damiano’s winged ebony brows. She registered that she had disconcerted him, had roved wildly off whatever script he had expected her to pursue. ‘What—?’
Eden folded her arms in a defensive movement and straightened her slim shoulders. ‘Look, it was unpleasant enough finding out that Mark wasn’t the wonderful friend I thought he was. I don’t need you demanding to hear it all, so that I can feel a right idiot all over again!’
‘You’ve decided to end the friendship?’ Damiano seemed to be having a problem grasping that reality. ‘When did you decide that? Right there this minute when it dawned on you that I’m angry?’
Her shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, boy, are you paranoid…’
Damiano went rigid, faint colour arching across the hard slant of his high cheekbones. ‘I merely requested that you explain yourself—’
‘And I politely refused to go into any greater detail. Mark’s just not important enough for us to be arguing over him.’ Eden meant that assurance with every proud fibre of her being.
‘Santa cielo…I am not arguing…where the blazes are you going?’ Damiano raked at her in a lion’s roar as she began walking back in the direction of the front doors.
‘I thought maybe if I went out and then came back in again, you might give me a nicer welcome.’
A dropped feather could have sounded like a thundering avalanche in the rushing silence which followed.
Eden heard Damiano move behind her but she was still quite unprepared to find herself being suddenly snatched right off her feet and up into his powerful arms. For a moment, the world tilted crazily. Then she met the mesmeric lure of his burnished golden eyes. Simultaneously she ran out of breath and rational thought. An instant burst of wanton heat ignited inside her, sending her heartbeat crashing, her pulses pounding.
A scorching smile slashed Damiano’s lean, powerful face. ‘This is the kind of welcome I should l have given you, tesoro mio.’
He pressed his mouth to the tiny pulse flickering like crazy below her delicate collar-bone. Her throat extended, her entire body jerked. She lifted a shaking hand to curve it to his dark head and then his mouth found hers. A huge brilliant fireworks display blazed up in the darkness behind her lowered eyelids. She was so hot, so excited, she clutched wildly at him. He lowered her down onto a hard, cold surface, closed his hands over her knees and parted them so that he could haul her back into even closer contact.
A hoarse little cry of response was wrenched from her as he let his long fingers glide up her slender thighs beneath her dress. She was shivering, shaking, alight with a hunger that burned. Damiano rested his hands on her slim hips and lifted his head to gaze down at her, dark, deep-set eyes shimmering gold, strong face hard with raw male need, beautiful mouth almost ruthless in its line.
‘So now you show me that you don’t need the vodka,’ Damiano murmured in thickened invitation.
For a split second, her veil of desire was pierced by an inner screech of shock. What? Here? Now? On a marble table? And then Eden collided with those dark golden eyes that had haunted her dreams from the very hour of their first meeting. She literally felt her body melt. Awareness slid away again. The world could have ended right there and then and she wouldn’t have cared.
‘I don’t mean here,’ Damiano husked, laughter roughening his rich, deep, sexy drawl.
He tugged her off the table and wound her fingers calmly into his to urge her through the doorway which he had appeared in earlier. Her legs felt weak and wobbly supports. Yet her every skin cell felt almost painfully alive. Sexual tension was twisting her into a deliciously tight knot. Their footsteps echoed as they passed through yet another vast room, full of marble columns, glittering crystal chandeliers and huge oil paintings. As Damiano led her beneath an ornate portal which opened onto the fantastic double flight of stairs which wound gracefully up to the first floor, she was gazing in astonishment at their palatial surroundings.
Upstairs, Damiano walked her into a room that at first glance struck her as the size of an aircraft hangar. A hangar with a bed, that was. And what a bed, overhung by a giant gold coronet from which glorious brocade hangings descended into extravagant folds down onto an exquisite rug. ‘You can live the fairy tale like the little princess.’
‘You being here with me…’ Eden muttered unevenly. ‘That’s enough of a fairy tale.’
Damiano dealt her a slumbrous sexy look from beneath black spiky lashes. He settled his hands to her slim shoulders and turned her slowly and carefully round. As he ran the zip down on her dress, her breath feathered in her throat. Light was flooding through the tall windows, light so bright she could see dust motes dancing in the air. And she felt terribly shy and self-conscious but she didn’t feel like rushing across the room to close the shutters and plunge them into darkness.
Once she had tormented herself with secret humiliating comparisons between Annabel’s long-legged voluptuous shape and her own infinitely slighter and smaller attractions. The urge to keep her seeming deficiencies covered from view had risen to obsessive proportions. But in allowing herself to think in that way, she had forgotten the only thing that really mattered. Damiano had married her; Damiano had chosen her, not Annabel Stavely.
He eased her dress from one slight, taut shoulder, making a production out of the process. She shut her eyes tight. ‘Santo Cielo…’ Damiano swore huskily above her head. ‘I’m burning for you, cara.’
He lifted her hair and bent her head forward and let his expert mouth trail across the exposed nape of her neck. She quivered, every sense leaping. ‘Oh…’
‘This will be so good,’ Damiano promised with husky sensuality.
The very sound of his voice could turn her boneless. A muted little gasp escaped her as her dress drifted down to her ankles. She fought the instinct to cross shielding arms over herself. She could feel the tips of her breasts hardening into straining little points within her bra. She could feel the wave of heat travelling over her and her knees started to wobble.
‘You are doing so well,’ Damiano purred appreciatively. ‘You’re quivering like a racehorse ready to bolt but you’re still in the same room.’
‘No vodka,’ she mumbled, trying to match him in humour but her voice came out all shaky.
‘Open your eyes, cara,’ Damiano urged as he lifted her clear of the tangle of cloth round her feet and spun her back to him. ‘Enjoy me admiring you.’
He was pushing too far too fast. She knew she had small breasts and hips that were just a little too full for the rest of her and legs that were just legs, not especially long or especially anything, sturdy enough to be useful, not flashy enough to attract attention. ‘I can’t!’
‘Would you prefer to sleep alone in that bed tonight?’
Her lashes lifted high on stricken green eyes. ‘No!’ she gasped with even greater force.
‘Gotcha…’ Damiano drawled with smouldering satisfaction, brilliant dark golden eyes scanning her blushing face. ‘I cheated. You have no chance of sleeping alone.’
Her brow indented. ‘No…?’
Bending down, he swept her up again into his arms and strode over to the bed to settle her there. She kicked off her shoes and began scrabbling at the bed linen to get under it.
‘Ah…ah…’ Damiano allowed her to get under cover and then, hooking long brown fingers round the fine linen sheet, he flipped the bedding deftly back into a fold at the footboard. ‘It’s a sort of knee-jerk reaction, isn’t it? But a little modesty goes a long way with me, cara.’
Rather than remain splayed out in only her bra and pants, she sat up again and hugged her knees, hands tightly clasped. She was striving desperately to think of something witty or cool to say. ‘I…I, well—’
‘Shut up,’ Damiano broke in with tender amusement. ‘You may not like your body but I love it!’
She studied his stunningly attractive features and felt that melting sensation down deep inside that just overwhelmed her. She didn�
�t place much credence in what he said but she knew he wanted her. She had felt the hard urgency of him against her, could not doubt the physical reality of his desire. She watched him peel off his shirt. Her lashes lowered, carefully screening the directness of her gaze, but she was as hopelessly mesmerised by his potent male beauty as she had always been. He had no inhibitions and she adored that blatant, blazing self-assurance he emanated, so very different from her own.
As he unzipped his chinos, exposing the taut, hard flatness of his stomach bisected by a silky dark furrow of hair, a tight little stab of sexual awareness twisted low in her tummy. He was all male, full of dynamic energy and hot-blooded intensity. Shimmying her hips back deeper into the shadows cast by the drapes festooning the bed, Eden watched the chinos being cast aside with keen interest. She studied the long flow of his smooth brown back, the lean masculine hips in pale boxer shorts, the long hair-roughened thighs. She did not look away as she had once done. Indeed she was hot with curiosity to see him totally stripped but terrified that he might notice.
Damiano disposed of the boxer shorts. Her face flamed. Aroused he was distinctly intimidating but it was of the variety of intimidation that filled her with hot, quivery sensations. Suddenly ashamed of what she recognised as pure lust within herself, she dropped her head, no longer able to see anything but Damiano’s beautifully shaped brown feet approaching the bed.
The mattress gave slightly under his weight. The silence hummed. She sat there, head lowered over knees.
‘You’re such a little cheat,’ Damiano condemned with a throaty chuckle as he reached for her and tumbled her down against the comfortable pillows.
‘Sorry?’ Eden spluttered, disconcerted by the swiftness of that move.
Rolling over, Damiano slid a long hard masculine thigh between hers and held her captive beneath his superior weight. He trailed a mocking forefinger along the curve of her soft lower lip and made it impossible for her to avoid his intent scrutiny. ‘I saw you watching me.’
He was just inches away. She reddened fiercely. Her mouth ran dry.
‘And…’ Damiano dragged out the word ‘…I also think you like what you saw—’
‘No—?’
‘No?’ Damiano questioned, raising a sardonic dark brow.
‘I m-mean yes, but—’
‘Don’t want to hear the “but”.’ With a husky growl of very male gratification, Damiano teased at her mouth with his own, lighting a trail of fire to run through her shivering body. Those light, frustrating kisses merely stoked her growing tension. She squirmed under him seeking greater force, her own hunger demanding more.
‘So tell me you want me,’ Damiano invited thickly.
‘What?’ she framed blankly, fingers curling into his broad shoulders with a frustration she could not suppress.
‘I want to hear the words…’ Damiano confided, sliding down the bed and, by so doing, revealing to her for the first time that he had already somehow contrived to remove her bra without her noticing.
Dismay flashed through her. ‘Damiano!’
‘No, cara…’ His hands clamped down over her wrists before she could attempt to cover her bare breasts. ‘You’re beautiful…you are really beautiful and I need to look at you just as much as you like to look at me,’ he spelt out in a devastatingly effective demand for equal rights.
She trembled, feeling so horrendously vulnerable, staring down at her pale breasts with their shamelessly swollen pink nipples. And then she saw Damiano surveying the same view like a hungry tiger, hot golden eyes pinned to her with a visual intensity that shook her. He had already released her wrists but she had little difficulty in resisting her once compulsive need to conceal herself from him. She was now watching him in total fascination. She arched her back slightly, shifted her hips, feeling like a madly seductive stranger beneath such erotic male appreciation.
He was just looking and she was already starting to burn again. He lifted a hand that was noticeably unsteady and curved it to her super-sensitive flesh. He lowered his proud dark head and let the tip of his tongue flick a pouting peak and her whole body just surged up in response. ‘I want you!’ she moaned, helpless in the grip of that devastating wave of sexual hunger.
Damiano rewarded her with a wolfish smile that made her heart flip over and filled her with such a flood of love that she felt as fluid as water. ‘You’re all mine,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘You’re the only woman I have ever been with who has only ever been mine. I really get a high out of that.’
He brought his mouth down on hers with an explosive passion that she needed as much as he did. Heartbeat thundering in her eardrums, she gasped as he stroked her breasts and she dug her fingers into the dark silk luxuriance of his hair. She couldn’t get enough of that hard, demanding mouth. She strained against him, controlled by the heat and the strength of her own craving, every defence finally abandoned.
‘Please…’ She gasped, struggling to get breath back into her lungs but desperate to get his hot urgent mouth back on hers again.
‘You’ve changed so much,’ Damiano ground out, his breathing even more fractured than her own as he skimmed an impatient hand down over her quivering length and deftly rearranged her so that he could remove her briefs.
She had never been so conscious of being naked but the daylight had nothing to do with it. Erotic anticipation now fired her. She was reaching for him even before he was reaching for her again. Tiny broken sounds were wrenched from her as he pushed her back against the pillows and employed his lips and his tongue on her tingling breasts with a hard, sensual expertise that was entirely new to her. And, new as that more forceful approach was, it drove her crazy with excitement.
‘I never thought I would see you like this…out of your mind with desire for me!’ Damiano extended with raw appreciation, black hair tousled, tough cheekbones scored with feverish colour. ‘Eden…Eden…’
And even the way he raggedly groaned her name made her react. She was all heat and constant movement. The burning fever that had taken control of her was way beyond anything she had ever experienced. With a sure hand, he found the damp, pulsing heart of her and she cried out loud on the incredible surge of excitement he unleashed.
Glittering golden eyes invaded hers. He was watching her every reaction. Disconcertion tried to penetrate the blinding, all-pervasive sway of passion and for a split second she attempted to regain some measure of control. But she was way beyond that ability and dimly registering that shocked her too, only his dominant control over her was too great by then.
‘I…I can’t help it…’ She tried to say, not really knowing whether she was trying to apologise or not and, if she was, what she might be attempting to say sorry for.
‘I know…’
She was enslaved, enthralled by the passion, her writhing body entirely ruled by his knowing touch. And in no time at all that oh, so skilled touch became near agonising torment for she wanted…she wanted so much. And the hunger was so powerful it was eating her alive and her hands were clinging to him, her hips rising, the ache of emptiness a torment.
‘Please…’ she begged.
In one lithe movement, Damiano came over her, tipped her back, a devouring need more than equal to her own blazing in his smouldering golden gaze. As he entered her yielding flesh, she uttered a high-pitched moan and jerked in sensual shock from that invasion. Her excitement was at such a pitch by then that she thought she might pass out from the sheer overload of pleasure. The powerful response of her own body gripped her now. Heart crashing, he drove her to the heights she had never known existed. Stunned by the wild ecstatic intensity that shattered her into a million pieces, she sobbed with joyful release and slowly went back into free fall.
Eden’s eyes were awash with tears but wide with shock at the same time. Never ever had she imagined she might experience such glorious pleasure.
Damiano released her from his weight and hauled her back into intimate connection with his damp, hot frame. He kissed her breat
hless and held her back from him, scanning her still shaken face with questioning intensity. ‘You truly didn’t realise that you were missing anything five years ago,’ he breathed on the back of a rueful laugh.
‘You mean…it’s always supposed to be like that?’ she gasped, too taken aback by the idea to be self-conscious.
‘I used to think of spiking your pure orange to make you let go in bed but I knew you would never forgive me.’ Damiano splayed long brown fingers round her cheekbones, gazing deep into her incredulous green eyes. ‘You just would not relax. You had so many hang-ups. You hit my male ego right where it hurts. The only woman I couldn’t satisfy was my wife…’
‘I was quite happy with what…well…you know,’ she mumbled, thinking in a positive daze at what she had just learned. How could she have known there was more when she had never experienced anything more until now? She remembered pleasure but a pleasure that was frankly mild in comparison with what she had just enjoyed. She remembered liking the start better than the finish and vague feelings of dissatisfaction but nothing she hadn’t accepted as normal and natural. From that first painful initiation, she had stubbornly decided that making love would always be something he received more pleasure from than she did.
But there was more to it than that, Eden recognised in sudden shame. She had had resentments of her own from very early in their marriage. The marital home in which she felt like an intruder, the family who had regarded her as a social inferior, Annabel, the ex-fiancée, who wouldn’t quit flaunting her own preferential status. She had blamed Damiano for her unhappiness and had made no attempt to overcome her inhibitions. Damiano, she registered with shaken new self-awareness, had not been the only one set on a war of attrition…
Damiano curved her to him so that she was plastered to every powerful angle of his indolent length. ‘Sex was a taboo subject. You once said that it was bad enough having to do that sort of thing without being expected to talk about it as well,’ he groaned.