He slumped back into his chair to consider, and reached for his glass. He hadn’t offered her any brandy, he realized belatedly. His thoughts had been occupied elsewhere. Now though, in the peaceful quiet of his study, there were no distractions. He could confront his changing perspectives.
Marriage had left him hard and bitter. Dried up whatever tenderness he’d once possessed. Although since his divorce he hadn’t gone so far as to deny himself the pleasure of a woman, he never allowed her to touch him, except in the most superficial way. And he never led her to expect more than he was prepared to give.
Funny thing, though. Talking to Eve about Marcia tonight hadn’t left the usual disagreeable residue in his mouth. Instead he felt purged. Able to roll the vintage Louis XIII Remy Martin over tongue, and savor the cognac’s sweet burn. Able to embrace life again as it should be lived: with the vigor and courage of a man in his prime.
But with Eve? Was he ready for her? His body knew the answer, but his heart…how dependable a guide was it?
He rested his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes. He could deal with captains of industry, with millionaires and moguls. Could go toe to toe with them, be as hard-nosed as it took to win, to be in control of whatever situation they threw at him.
Even Marcia hadn’t cost him more than he was able to pay. At the time, his pride might have taken a bit of a beating, but he was too well-armed, his defenses too massively secure, for her to cause any lasting damage.
Eve’s vulnerability, though, stripped him bare. Laid waste to his strength. It frightened him because it moved him too much.
He shifted in the chair. Fear was not a familiar or welcome companion. Yet ever since she’d shown up with Nicola, it had made its elusive presence felt in sneak attacks when his back was turned.
He hadn’t expected to fall in love with his daughter. Yet she’d taken his heart in her tiny, careless hands and wouldn’t give it back. He worried about her. Lost sleep over her.
He hadn’t expected to find his thoughts turning to family, to permanence with a woman. Yet the prospect of Eve leaving at summer’s end filled him with emptiness, and the idea he’d once harbored, of using her for his own selfish ends, left him feeling physically ill.
He wanted her in the purest sense a man could want a woman. He wanted her and his daughter in his life, for now, for always.
And sitting there stewing about it, examining it from every angle and coming up with the same conclusion every time, was doing nothing to secure either one.
She’d intended to climb into bed, determined that closing her eyes would automatically shut off her thoughts, and that would be enough to still the quiet raging of her body. But peace of mind was not to be had. Midnight chiming from some distant church tower found her pacing restlessly in her lamplit sitting room. Only one thing could silence the expectation strumming along her nerve endings, and when at last she heard the knock at her door, all she knew was a radiant sense of relief that the torture was about to end.
He offered no excuse or apology, but simply strode into the room, locked the door, and leaned with his back against it. He was breathing hard. His tie was gone, and his shirt popped free of its buttons, leaving his bronzed chest bare. His hair was a mess, as if he’d grabbed it by the fistful and tried to yank it out at the roots. His eyes smoldered.
For a long minute, they did nothing but stare at one another in gnawing hunger, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Pent-up longing charged the air like so many lightning bolts run amok. Turned her stomach upside-down. Sent her pulse cartwheeling out of control. Bathed her inner thighs in the fine, sweet dew of passion.
Disconcerted, she tried to draw her gaze away and couldn’t. It was as if she were invisibly hot-wired to him. The atmosphere sizzled, the pressure built to unbearable heights. Finally, he shoved himself away from the door and, without a word, took her in his arms and kissed her. She kissed him back and it was all the permission he needed.
She wore only a nightgown and she was glad. Glad that it covered so little, and that he could scatter untamed kisses from her eyelids to her throat. Glad that his hands could wander at will over her shoulders and slide the fabric down her arms until the garment slithered into a cool cotton puddle at her feet.
“I couldn’t stay away,” he muttered hoarsely.
If, at first, she’d been unsure of what to say, how to react to the situation, now she knew with stunning certainly exactly what she had to do. Weaving her fingers through his hair, she cupped the back of his head and drew his mouth down to meet hers. “I’m glad,” she said. “Take me to bed, Gabriel.”
He needed no further encouragement. Swinging her into his arms, he covered the distance to the other room in less time than it took the distant church clock to chime the quarter hour. There was no more talking after that, just the rasp of a zipper ripped open with frantic impatience, the rustle and soft thud of clothing falling to the floor.
A shaft of pale moonlight pierced the room, just enough to reveal him to her in all his proud, naked glory. She had seen most of him before, of course, her first week at the villa. But only from a distance, and it seemed a lifetime ago. Now, up close and completely naked, he was magnificent. Awe-inspiring. Larger than life in every respect.
And patient to a fault! Her limited experience with sex had left an impression of something to be dealt with as quickly as possible, and if the end result was one of vague dissatisfaction, well that was just the nature of the beast. Men had orgasms—Will Powers whimpered like a baby when he came—and some women had them, too. But many didn’t, and she’d long since accepted that she belonged to the latter group.
But Gabriel didn’t know that. Her first clue that he wasn’t about to get down to business in a hurry and settle for the merely ordinary was when, instead of climbing on top of her and finding release with all due speed, he instead stretched out beside her and tracked the outline of her mouth with his finger.
The sensory aftershock almost had her gasping aloud. Her skin broke out in a flurry of goose bumps that ran the length of her to gather in a quivering mass in the pit of her stomach.
Next, he explored her ear. That ordinary, taken-for-granted organ bloomed like a flower under his ministrations, demonstrating a capacity for sensation she’d never suspected. She shivered with pleasure as he traced the outer shell, but was completely unprepared for the response he invoked when he leaned forward and dipped his tongue into the inner well.
A bolt of pleasure catapulted straight to the feminine heart of her, causing her flesh to contract in an involuntary spasm. Only when it was much too late to pretend it was accidental did she realize her hands were racing over his torso with mortifying hunger, following the path of dark hair over the muscled curve of his chest, and past the hard ridges of his diaphragm to the flat board of his belly.
Heavenly days, another inch or two and she’d have been fondling his penis—while he was still paying attention to parts of her not just above her waist, but above her neck!
Horrified, she snatched her hands away and clenched her fists against her chest. What had happened to the passive creature who’d had to work so hard to keep her mind on the here and now with Will? Who’d accepted his routine moves with a certain ho-hum tolerance, and offered the same in return?
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel!” she blurted out.
He lifted his head and smiled the smile of an angel—a dark angel, to be sure, with more than a hint of the devil playing around his mouth. “For what, la mia bella? For giving, as well as receiving pleasure? Why be sorry about that?”
“Because…” Because what? Because she hadn’t asked permission? Because she didn’t know him well enough to touch him intimately? If so, what was she doing in bed with him?
“You’re nervous,” he observed, letting his hand drift down her throat to her cleavage. “Do you have any idea how beautiful it is in a woman, that she welcomes her lover with such shy modesty?”
As he spoke, t
he pads of his fingers feathered concentric circles around the perimeter of her breast in a rhythm at once so hypnotic and exciting that she thought she’d scream from the sheer tactile bliss of it. “Is that what you are?” she heard herself ask, in a voice she barely recognized it. “My lover?”
“Do you have any doubt?”
She stared at him, the reality of his being there, in her bed, seducing her, still not fully registering. “I’m not sure.”
“Then I must convince you. With this…and this…”
His mouth hovered tormentingly over hers, imprinting too brief, too sweet kisses over it, then slid with sudden shocking effect to close over her nipple and capture it lightly between his teeth.
The breath caught in her throat, and she squirmed in a tiny paroxysm of ecstasy so acute that she couldn’t contain a moan. As though fearing she might try to escape, he spanned her waist and rolled her onto her back.
“You are very beautiful, carissima,” he murmured, his breath whispering over her rib cage, warm and damp and tantalizing.
Yet despite finding herself suspended in a taut web of sensual expectation, she was completely unprepared for his mouth to skim past her navel and settle with stunning impact at the juncture of her thighs. Oh, the blushing heat, then! The instinctive clamping together of her knees, the jolt of embarrassment!
And oh, the shockingly willing relaxation of her thighs as he cajoled her with his tongue! The sultry, simmering escalation of tension as he probed the damp folds of her flesh and with unerring instinct taught her how little she really knew about her body. Her heart missed a beat and then her world quite literally exploded, sending all the bits and pieces of it flying into the stratosphere.
She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed a scream. Clutched with desperate fingers at his hair, his shoulders. Uttered his name on a high, keening note, begging him to stop…begging him not to…begging for more. And knew, when those same high-flying bits and pieces finally floated back to earth and claimed their place again that, although none were missing, neither did they fit as they once had. She was not the same. She never would never be, ever again.
The realization made her burst into tears.
Dismayed, he lifted his head. “Per carita, la mia bella, non piangere—don’t cry, my love! We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want—”
She held open her arms. “Oh, I want!” she sobbed joyfully. “I want very much, Gabriel!”
He inched his body up over hers, and braced himself on his elbows so that he could see her face. “You’re sure?” he asked, doubt still painting his voice. “I haven’t hurt you?”
“You have freed me,” she cried. “And I want you so badly that I ache to feel you inside me.”
He drew her hand down between their two bodies and closed it around the silken weight of him. “Do you doubt for a minute that I want you just as badly?”
She shook her head, afraid to speak because the only words bubbling up inside her were I love you! and she wasn’t so blissed out that she’d allow herself to say the one thing guaranteed to chase him away. Instead she curled her other hand around his neck, pulled his mouth down to hers, and tilted her hips up to meet his.
The tip of his flesh nudged hers and hesitated, and a stillness crept over her; a timeless breath of anticipation. She knew a moment of searing, exquisite tension mingled with a deep and yearning need. Then he guided himself home and the only thing that mattered was how perfectly they came together, how exactly their bodies harmonized.
She felt his breath at her ear, heard the murmured words he uttered in his mother tongue and knew he spoke the language of love as perhaps only an Italian could—with a lilting cadence that matched the increasing rhythm of their entwined bodies.
That, by itself, would have been enough to give a sparkle of stars to her life that would never fade. But Gabriel wasn’t a man willing to settle for mere stars. He gave her the moon, bringing it down from the heavens to shower her yet again with a magic beyond anything she’d ever imagined. She soared up to meet it, and knew he flew with her. Knew because she felt the spasms contorting his body even as her own contracted around him. Knew because she felt the hot spill of his seed flooding inside her, and the thudding of his heart at her breast.
She knew because, when at last he lifted his head and looked at her again, she nearly wept at the look of wonder on his face. For the moment, for now, that was enough.
At length, he rolled aside and said regretfully, “I should go. It wouldn’t do, I’m afraid, for Beryl to find me here in the morning.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said, curbing the urge to cling to him.
He swung his legs to the floor and reached for his clothing. Pulled on his pants and shirt, stuffed his socks into his pocket, and carried his shoes. “You’ll join me for breakfast, cara?”
“Yes,” she said, winding the sheet around herself and following him to the door.
He dropped a kiss on her nose, another on her lips. “Then I’ll see you at nine.”
It was only two o’clock. Seven long hours before they’d be together again. She didn’t know how she stand it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOMEWHERE between midnight and dawn, the euphoria vanished and took all her confidence with it. The second her eyes opened to another brilliant Mediterranean morning, doubts bombarded her mind.
What if he was already regretting everything, and wishing he’d never come to her suite? What if he begged off breakfast with her, and every other shared engagement between now and the end of her visit?
Fine thing! she thought, brushing her teeth with a vehemence they didn’t deserve. One night of utter, complete bliss, and I pay for it the next day with my pride in ruins, while he either makes himself scarce or tries to let me down gently.
But if that was the price, had it been worth it?
She lifted her head and stared at herself in the mirror. Apart from her mouth, bee-stung from his kisses, and her body, aching from his lovemaking, she did not, at first glance, appear so very different. But closer inspection showed an awareness in her eyes, the kind that came from a woman who’d finally found ultimate sexual and emotional fulfillment.
So, yes, oh, yes! Making love with Gabriel was worth every miserable second it might cost her, and she’d do it again in a heartbeat, given the chance.
The question was, would he?
Heart pit-a-pattering nervously, she trooped down to face him across the breakfast table, determined to preserve a dignified front, no matter how he received her.
Indifferently, as though to pretend last night had never happened? She could do indifference, and live to talk about it, once the hurting subsided.
Ruefully, with the excuse that he’d had too much to drink and couldn’t quite remember all the details, but was terribly sorry if he’d taken advantage of her? She could still do indifference, even if the truth left her crushed to the core.
But if he tried to make a joke of it, although she might succeed in masking her pain on the outside, inside she’d wither and die. To have given him everything she was or ever hoped to be, and have it turned into a laughing matter, would kill her—not literally, perhaps, but she’d be left so emotionally stunted that she’d never recover.
“You’re late, signorina,” he announced bossily, springing to his feet when she entered the room, fully braced for rejection.
“It’s only seven minutes after nine.”
“And I’ve been waiting since a quarter to.” Forestalling her attempt to slither into her chair before she collapsed, he swept her into his arms. “Twenty-two minutes you’ve kept me waiting, and every one torture. How are you this morning, la mia inamorata? Wishing you’d never opened the door to me last night?”
Giddy with relief, she sank against him. “Not a chance,” she said, lifting her face for his kiss.
He obliged with a thoroughness and enthusiasm that swept away any lingering doubts she might have. Indeed, there was no telling where the kiss might have le
d if Leola, the maid, hadn’t suddenly appeared with toast and coffee.
Schooling his features into something approaching their usual imperturbability, Gabriel ushered Eve to her chair, then took a seat across from her. But she saw the faint bars of color slashed across his cheekbones, the sultry smolder in his eyes, and knew he wasn’t nearly as self-possessed as he tried to appear.
“Remind me to keep my distance from you unless there’s a locked door between us and the rest of the world,” he said, the minute Leola left. “I have a reputation to uphold in this household, and I’m not sure that young woman could cope with the sight of her employer and his lady making love on the breakfast table.”
“I’m not sure I like the idea much, either,” Eve said, struggling to keep a straight face. “It wouldn’t be very comfortable.”
He grinned, and it occurred to her he looked younger and more carefree than she’d ever seen him. “Probably not, but you have to admit the idea holds a certain kinky charm!”
“You don’t strike me as the kinky type, Gabriel,” she replied, smiling despite herself at his use of a word decidedly un-Italian.
“How do I strike you, then?”
She gave the question some thought before answering, “As a man of many layers who doesn’t reveal himself easily or quickly. Every day I learn something new about you.”
“And you like what you learn?”
Happiness, pure and simple, exploded inside her, effervescent as champagne bubbles. “Very much.”
“Same here. You bring light and laughter into my life when I’d given up on both. If Beryl will baby-sit, will you spend today with me? We could do a little sightseeing, if you like.”
“If Beryl’s willing to baby-sit, I should go shopping for clothes before our theater date with the Ripley-Joneses. You were right when you told me I’d need to add to my wardrobe. I should have listened to you.”
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