by Penny Jordan
Before she knew what she was doing, the yellow tomato left her hand and was flying at his head.
He fielded it like a pro, his reflexes catlike. His reaction of astonished disbelief came more slowly as he looked at the orb smashed into his palm. Very deliberately he set it aside and wiped his hand on his shirt, lifting his head in a way of a predator locking onto his prey. Retribution was a ferocious light in his outraged expression.
Lauren’s heart stopped. All her blood drained into her toes and a cold sweat chased it. She was as flabbergasted as he was and the way he seemed to gather and glow with challenge melted her into a puddle of apprehension.
“I—I—” she stammered.
He began walking toward her and she tried to retreat, backing into the fridge door and knocking condiments over in their trays while her nerveless fingers lost their grip on the cloth bag. It fell to the floor. More tomatoes rolled out toward his menacing steps while she managed to shuffle around the door and clatter it closed, taking refuge at one end of the island, putting it between them as he came up to the other end, threat in every line of his aggressive stance.
Part of her knew this standoff was insanely childish, but he looked not just furious, but intent. She was trapped and a frisson of something unidentifiable went through her. Not real fear, but the kind that chased you through a haunted house, making you want to laugh while you were screaming your head off.
“What are you doing hiding behind furniture? You wanted a fight, didn’t you?” he taunted in a voice that sent a sensual slither down her spine. “Or were you inviting something else?”
“I was inviting you to get lost, but you can’t stand for a woman to resist you, can you?” She practically threw the words out.
“If you at least tried to resist, cara, we might not be in this situation.”
“Who is chasing who right now? I don’t want anything to do with you. You’re behaving like an idiot.”
His head went back in insult while a hint of desperation shadowed the eyes that stayed fixed on her. “Do I really have to chase a woman who wants to be caught?”
Her heart did a backflip while she protested, “Get over yourself!”
At the same time her heart raced with something more like anticipation than fear, even though she was very scared how she’d react if he touched her.
He made a sudden fake to her left. She feinted in a mirror dodge that started him down one side of the island. She took her chances running down the opposite side.
Paolo was not only competitive, but strong, athletic, and ruthless. Before she’d taken four steps, he had vaulted onto and slid over the island, landing before her so she would have crashed into him if he hadn’t caught her by the arms to cushion the impact.
“You—”
He smothered her cry of anger with his mouth.
She shouldn’t have been shocked. He was cutthroat enough to prove a point in this ruthless way, even if he did hate her. He didn’t have to resort to violence when he could demean her with her own uncontrollable response to him.
The devastating crush of his mouth on hers was a stamp of ownership, one full of all-knowing familiarity. He took for granted he’d elicit a response, and he did. Despite her admonishments to herself that she ought to fight him, should bite his bottom lip and beat her fists on his chest, something deeply vulnerable gave way inside her.
Weak tears smarted at the backs of her eyes, but they came from wanting this so badly and knowing it was nothing but a point to be proven for him while she was flowering like a desert plant tasting water after a drought. With an internal shudder, she gave in to him.
He groaned in victory and maneuvered her into a closer alignment with his hard angles, backing her into the fridge so he could press his weight into her.
She released a sigh of deep relief and she climbed her hands up to his neck, weaving her fingers into his short, silky hair, encouraging him with the pressure of her touch against his warm scalp to kiss her harder. Deeper. She opened her mouth unreservedly to his and their tongues tangled in delicious reunion.
It wasn’t enough. When he nudged his knee between her thighs, she let him in, giving over to his natural need to dominate without a second thought. She ached to feel him take over her body.
He ceased massaging her hip to slither his touch restlessly into her clothing. His expertise made her heart contract with both delight and a poignant awareness of how practiced he was. She broke out in shivery bumps from the sweet caress of his palm over her navel, measuring the expansion of her waistline before he stroked up her rib cage.
He was only going through the motions to taunt her, she reminded herself. It was galling to be so incapable of resisting him, but she couldn’t escape the grip of desire for his touch. She wanted to weep, she felt so defenseless.
He growled something approving as his hand splayed over the growing abundance of her breast. Unerringly, he found her nipple with his thumb, circling and inciting sensations through the cup of her bra that were so intense they were almost painful. Lauren groaned in protest and wriggled against him. Paolo firmed his hold on her and intensified their kiss while he slid his touch inside her bra, his caress the work of a connoisseur that brought the tip to a screaming pitch of sensitivity.
Unbelievably, a shower of tingling sensations raced down her abdomen and into her loins, gathering into a knot of joyful anticipation. She clenched internal muscles, trying to resist what was happening, but her body knew what it wanted.
She was going to climax right here, fully clothed in the kitchen.
Aghast, she fought free of his kiss and covered his hand to still his fingers, gasping, “Paolo, stop. Now. Please.”
“I adore the way you feel when you’re aroused, cara.” His strong hand resisted the stilling press of her own while his breath stirred the hair at her temple, fanning the burning need inside her. “Dio! I’ve never known a woman so responsive. Let me take you to bed.”
“No!” She covered her face to hide that she was near tears and pivoted away, leaning her shoulder heavily into the cold wall of the fridge door, dislodging his touch so his hand fell to her waist. He continued to stand behind her, his grip twitching through degrees of strength on the sensitized skin of her waist, as though he wanted to grip her harder and was fighting the urge. Desire to turn back into him nearly overwhelmed her.
“Lauren, you want this. You want me.”
“But I don’t want to prove I’m the easiest woman you’ve ever met! What a horrid thing to say to someone. Shall I tell you how you rank in my vast experience?”
His hand dropped away and he retreated a step so cool air swirled down her back, making her shiver. “That isn’t what I was saying.”
“Yes, you were. You kissed me to prove I can’t control how I react to you, and that’s just mean. I’ve tried not to be attracted to you, Paolo. God knows I’ve tried. I know I behaved badly in Charleston. That’s why I don’t expect you to marry me. But taking advantage of my weakness so you can notch your belt is not nice. And refusing to admit Ryan was cheating was cruel. I could be divorced and married to a man who genuinely loves me, expecting his child, rather than wading through this mess.”
Paolo took everything she said like a series of heart punches, taken aback by her claim that he was only toying with her. Did she really not have any idea how powerfully attracted to her he was? He might have been a playboy once, but this wasn’t like that.
Yet he’d thought the same of her. He’d written off her signals of interest as deliberate flirtation, but as he looked at the back of her bowed neck, so vulnerable and conquered, he remembered the innocent who’d sat beside him in a bar five years ago, so uncomfortable with her own sexuality she’d never stopped tugging at her short skirt or low neckline.
He suddenly saw the truth. Lauren had been fighting this same attraction he’d bee
n struggling against for the very same reason: they’d had spouses to consider.
That he’d been so successful in hiding the true depth of his attraction took him aback, especially today. She ought to realize by twenty-five how alluring she was.
Unless her husband had never been home to tell her. If said husband had done the exact opposite, stayed away and had affairs, it was no shock at all that Lauren would have little awareness of her appeal.
Remorse moved through Paolo. He knew how it felt to be lied to. His trust in women was skewed to this day, nearly impossible to win. Apparently, Lauren was equally suspicious and he didn’t like how unsteady that made him feel.
Paolo tipped back his head for a cleansing breath before moving away from her to fetch two glasses from the cupboard. When he came back to use the ice machine on the door of the refrigerator, Lauren eyed him warily and sidled to make room.
He filled one with filtered water and handed it to her. For himself, he reached into another cupboard where the hard liquor was kept and poured something from the first bottle that came to hand. It spilled through him in a bracing burn, not cooling his blood, but clearing his mind enough that he could think.
And all he could think was that he had to have her.
First, though, he had to erase that haunted, white-lipped look off her face. She looked dazed and shell-shocked. Tension outlined her eyes, keeping her gaze from meeting his, and she choked a little as she sipped her water.
“I knew you were a virgin before I spoke to you,” he told her.
She darted a confused look his way, her brow crinkling briefly with annoyance. “Don’t rub it in. I know I’m not sophisticated. Did you have a good laugh with Ryan?”
“Quite the opposite. I was afraid for you. That’s why I approached you. To keep the creeps in that bar from taking advantage of you.”
That’s what he’d told himself anyway, using it to justify a drink with a stranger when he was about to marry another woman. He thumbed the rim of his glass.
“You don’t have a clue how striking you are, do you? That men want you? That backpacker, for instance?” He jerked his head in the direction of the village.
She snorted, shaking her head in dismissal. “He wanted a shower and a clean bed. He wanted to use me for that.”
“Case in point,” he muttered, letting her see his mild disgust, not the least bit reassured by her faint blush and frown of suspicion.
“You’re teasing me.”
“No, Lauren, I’m being as honest as I know how. Did you hear the part where I said I was trying to get away from you at your wedding? I’ve always wanted you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LAUREN HELD HIS gaze until the dark centers of his eyes seemed to glow with heat. Her toes curled and emotion welled up in her, bursting for release.
Alarmed, she looked away and reminded herself to draw a breath. With a dry swallow, she escaped by crouching to pick up the scattered groceries.
“I find that hard to believe. For starters, you’re a man who enjoys a challenge and I don’t present much of one. As you pointed out, I was the one chasing you at the wedding.” Cringing at the memory, she squinted her eyes shut. The cloth bag rested in a heap on her thigh. “I didn’t go out there to kiss you, though. Please believe that, Paolo. You were just so angry and upset and I felt like it was my fault you had to witness a wedding when it was the last thing you believed in anymore. I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“I wasn’t.” The husky edge on his voice fluttered her nerves with disturbing sensuality.
“I know. It was stupid of me to ask.” She shook out the bag and filled it with the produce she gathered.
“No, it was kind, Lauren. It was sweet and I repaid you by kissing you and asking you to leave with me. That was stupid.”
She stayed on her knees, tilting only her eyes up to the man towering over her, his broad shoulders heavy with self-recrimination.
“You didn’t want to be there. It was an imposition. You wanted to be left alone and I didn’t respect that, so you gave me a mental shake.”
“No,” he contradicted very gravely. “I was serious when I asked you to leave with me. I went outside to cool my head because I’d been watching you all day. When you followed me, I gave in to temptation. If you had slapped me, I would have backed off, but—”
“I know. I’m—” She curled hands that rose to cover her face, leaving her fists against her hot cheeks while she stared up at him in hypnotic chagrin. To this day she remembered every second of the way he’d turned, his expression pained and defeated. She’d instinctively reached out and he’d caught her hand and drawn her inexorably into him.
She hadn’t recognized they were going to kiss. It had just happened. He had covered her mouth with his and pulled a response from her that shattered everything she’d known about herself. Still hovering between the girl who wondered about sex and the young woman awakening to her own sexuality, she’d suddenly glimpsed the raw power inside herself and it had scared her. Truly scared her.
As she’d pulled back, he’d feathered a masculine command across her lips. Vieni con me.
She’d understood the Italian words as though it was her primary language and the desire to comply had been dangerously thick in her blood. Leave with me.
And then Ryan’s chilly voice had asked, “What are you doing?”
For one heartbeat Paolo’s grip on her had tightened. She’d understood what it meant to be a kill between two hungry wolves.
Or a female between two alphas.
Her domestic breeding had kicked in at that point and she’d suddenly seen what this looked like from the outside, from Ryan’s perspective and the handful of family who’d gathered behind him. A bride in her lace regalia embracing another man, her lips still swollen from the pressure of his kiss, her cheeks flushed with arousal.
She’d been appalled with herself and quickly done everything in her power to excuse and minimize what had happened. Paolo was drunk. He was angry at marriage and her, and was expressing it by messing with her.
And she had moved back to Ryan’s side because he was the safe choice. When he kissed her, she felt a warm glow, not like she was falling into the lava of an erupting volcano. Ryan only came as far into her heart as she let him; Paolo would steal it and own it and probably break it.
Lauren lowered her gaze, trying to believe she’d made the right choice that day even though it smacked of severe cowardice.
“I’m trying to quit apologizing all the time, but I really didn’t mean to behave like that.” His ego didn’t need to hear that yet another female was gaga over him. “I don’t know what came over me, letting you kiss me like that.”
“Lust,” he said pointedly, making her heart dip with horrid embarrassment, as if a protective veil had been yanked away to reveal her nudity. Then he added, “I’d like to blame my kissing you on my broken marriage or the fact my father had passed away two weeks before, but you and I have chemistry, Lauren.”
A spike of pleasurable heat clenched in her belly. She wanted to look away, so self-conscious her skin hurt, but she hung on every word.
“That doesn’t excuse asking you to leave with me, though. Who the hell does that? To his best friend? I was sick with myself when Ryan caught us. It never should have happened and I swore to him it never would again.”
Finally her gaze dropped to the floor, but she didn’t see anything but the cold, distant looks Paolo had been throwing her ever since. That was why. Their night in Charleston had broken that promise and he was a man who didn’t break promises.
“My marriage, everything about my relationship with my ex-wife, was a trail of arrogant decisions,” he muttered. “My situation at the time, giving up what I wanted in order to take over the bank, couldn’t be turned to my advantage. I didn’t want to believe it a
nd, yes, wanted to assert my own will, but throwing away common sense and kissing you was the wrong way to do it. I damaged a lifelong friendship and knew I had to make changes within myself.”
Her stomach twisted in anxiety. Paolo was far too competitive to lose, especially to himself. That determination to master himself meant he would fight showing further weakness where she was concerned. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. It galled him. Lessened him.
She felt tears smart behind her eyes, not wanting to be an instrument of his downfall. He would always resent her for it.
“After behaving like that at his wedding, what would Ryan have thought a few years later if I had told you that yes, I suspected he was cheating?” Paolo asked with quiet fervor. “I didn’t have proof. He would have thought I was making a play for you, especially because I could hardly keep my eyes off you that night, either. If you hadn’t gone home early and left us to drink ourselves blind, I don’t know what I would have done. All I knew was that I couldn’t destroy his marriage.”
The admission held so much bitterness, she flinched. Her fingers were numb and icy, her legs stiff and aching as she stood and set the bag on the island, not looking at Paolo as she digested his rationalizations for not telling her the truth.
“I felt guilty, too,” she acknowledged. “I had kissed you back and shouldn’t have. That’s why I talked myself out of believing he was cheating a million times, dismissing certain signs...” She drew a long, deep breath and released it in a grievous sigh. “Sometimes things happen that shouldn’t. I knew that.”
“Esattamente. Sometimes there is a physical connection that can’t be helped.”
Pressure built behind Lauren’s eyes as she kept her gaze fixed across the room, not wanting Paolo to see that for her, it wasn’t strictly physical. There was an emotional component of attraction and admiration and desire to be noticed and valued. She wanted him to feel something for her besides unwanted sexual attraction.