by Kim Lawrence
It was just sex.
Maybe, but it was the best sex he had ever had. No woman had ever responded with such uninhibited sensuality to him. Her vibrancy, her vitality, her earthy little laugh had bewitched him.
Poppy walked towards the sofa that Luca had pulled up to the fire. She could see the top of his dark head above the high back and his hand on the arm, the slim metal-banded watch he wore gleaming against his bronzed skin.
She shivered, feeling suddenly unaccountably shy as she moved forward. How could you be shy with someone who had pretty much explored every inch of your body?
Luca moved across the sofa to make room for her as she approached.
‘What time is it?’
‘Does it matter?’
She shrugged and sank down beside him on the saggy sofa, noticing his wet hair for the first time. ‘Have you been outside?’
‘Only to the log store.’ He nodded towards the neat stack beside the inglenook. ‘It’s pretty wild out there.’
He surveyed her with hooded eyes and murmured, ‘So were you.’
The colour flew to her face. ‘I … I …’ She finally bowed her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said, before experiencing a sudden flurry of insecurity and tacking on, ‘I think …?’
Luca laughed, stopping when it occurred to him this was the most relaxed he had felt in a long time … sitting around doing nothing and relaxing. He had leisure time—a man needed balance in his life—but it never occurred to him to waste that time idly sitting by fires.
It had only taken the storm of the century to make him sit back and relax.
‘You think right.’
Poppy relaxed slightly. ‘You seem to have made yourself at home.’ Her gesture took in the slab of cheese and the loaf of bread and packet of butter set on a wooden board. ‘You never learnt to make a sandwich?’
‘If pushed my culinary skills stretch that far, however the bread is not the freshest so I thought perhaps we could toast it?’ He waved the toasting fork and nodded in the direction of the leaping flames. ‘You used to like that?’
‘I did. This is nice, Luca.’ It was heaven.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Yes!’ Actually ravenous would be a more accurate description. ‘So have you been awake long?’
‘A while. I have been going through some of Aunt Isabel’s correspondence and what an interesting filing system she has,’ he added, nodding towards papers and then the plastic carrier bags he had already been sifting through. There were an equal number he had not yet begun to sort. ‘She hadn’t even opened most of the letters from the council.’ He found such an attitude hard to comprehend.
‘I think she burnt a lot of the early ones,’ Poppy admitted unhappily. ‘If only she’d said something sooner. My dad gave me the name of a solicitor. I suppose you know lawyers?’
‘A few,’ he admitted, thinking of his highly qualified and overpaid legal department who would drop everything at a word from him. ‘And if necessary I will call in the big guns, but from what I have read I think we should be able to handle this.’
‘So how long will that take, do you think?’
‘It’s hard to tell, but don’t worry—I love this place. I’ll make sure she doesn’t lose it.’
Poppy looked at him curiously. ‘I always wondered, Luca, didn’t your parents ever mind you spending the summers here?’ At the time she had never questioned his presence, just taking it for granted.
‘My father travelled a lot with work and my mother always went with him on all his business trips. By the time I was ten the novelty of being able to order what I liked from room service had worn off. I think they were relieved when what had been intended to be a one-off became a custom.
‘Have a drink.’
Poppy looked from the glass in his hand to him and shook her head.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get you drunk.’
‘You don’t need to,’ she told him bluntly. Presumably she was not telling him anything he didn’t already know. Not that he had even tried to kiss her yet …
Should she take the initiative?
‘I don’t actually like whisky,’ she admitted.
His brows lifted. ‘This is a twenty-year-old malt.’
His unfeigned horror made Poppy’s lips twitch. ‘Is that good?’ she wondered with a pretended innocence.
It might be a taste she had never acquired but there wasn’t actually much Poppy didn’t know about whisky, after being dragged around tours of most of the distilleries in the country by her father.
He laughed and allowed his gaze to linger on her soft lips. ‘And you half Scottish—it’s sacrilege.’
Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘So hang me.’
‘I’d prefer to—’ He bent forward and fitted his mouth to hers. The moment of contact Poppy just went up in flames. ‘That,’ he completed some time later.
Poppy gave a dazed nod and unfurled her clenched fingers from the front of his sweater. Her dilated darkened eyes on his face with unconcealed longing, she struggled for breath.
They sat there staring hungrily at one another until Luca said, ‘You need to eat first.’
Her eyes widened in protest. ‘But!’
He was tempted, then he remembered the moment last night when she had terrified him by appearing to lose consciousness for a moment in the height of passion and firmed his resolve. ‘Eat first.’
Poppy didn’t ask what came after, she knew, and her body ached for it. ‘Hold on …’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Hold on, Gran usually keeps a …’
Gianluca watched her run across the room. The grace and fluidity of her impetuous dash reminded him of a dancer, one of those fey creatures with the big eyes in the Degas painting.
She reached a large ugly bureau and stopped and, dropping to her knees, opened one of the doors and peered through the accumulated junk—Gran never threw anything away on the principle it might one day be handy.
‘I thought she kept some here.’
Gianluca had adjusted his position automatically so that he could get a better view of her delicious bottom, then, realising what he was doing, he leaned back in his seat with a scowl. He was acting like a schoolboy.
‘There should be, yes.’ Poppy gave a triumphant grunt as she extracted a dusty bottle from the back of the cupboard and waved it above her head. Going to the drawer above, she located the corkscrew and shoved it in the pocket of her jeans. Popping a stack of paper cups from the cupboard on top of the bottle, she tucked it under her arm before returning to the fire, pausing along the way to grab a few cushions off a chair.
‘That is wine?’ Gianluca asked, eyeing the bottle clutched triumphantly to her bosom with some suspicion.
‘Gran’s home-made wine.’ She read the handwritten label on the bottle out loud. ‘Blackberry, great—that’s almost as good as her parsnip,’ she enthused.
Gianluca studied her face. Dio, but she was serious. ‘Wow, this is our lucky day.’
She heard the sarcasm. ‘God, a wine snob …’ She artfully stifled a fake yawn.
‘I prefer my wine less vegetable based,’ he admitted. ‘And paper cups …?’ His pained glance took in the flimsy carton she clutched.
‘It saves on washing up.’
‘So does eating with your fingers.’
‘I never eat fish and chips any other way.’ Her glance lingering on the firm contours of his wide mobile mouth, she dropped the cushions on the floor in front of the fire and took up a graceful cross-legged pose on them, displaying the sort of elasticity that had delighted him in the bedroom.
‘The having-women-worship-at-my-feet thing just never gets old.’
Poppy stole a look at him through her eyelashes—on the gorgeous and sexy scale he was off the chart. ‘In your dreams.’
Gianluca acknowledged her mutter with a lopsided, wildly attractive grin and picked up the toasting fork.
‘Ladies first,’ he said, handing it to her.
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‘Always the gentleman,’ she murmured, not quite meeting his eyes as she took it off him.
She was very hungry.
Finally replete, Poppy put the toasting fork on the hearth and settled back on the cushions she had arranged on the floor in front of the crackling fire. She lifted a hand to touch the cheek turned to the fire—a tactical retreat seemed called for unless she wanted to roast.
‘What are you doing?’ She reminded him of a cat finding a comfortable spot to sleep in.
‘I’m turning around—this side of my face is burning,’ she said, pointing to the cheek in question.
‘So you are going to roast the other to even things up. It’s a plan,’ he admitted, amused. ‘Or you could always sit up here.’
Poppy gave a slow smile and flashed him a challenging look from under the sweep of her lashes. ‘Want to come get me?’
‘I might be persuaded,’ he agreed, watching through narrowed eyes as she licked the butter off her fingers before angling her head towards the flame, shaking out her loose hair and tilting her head to free the strands that had become trapped in the neck of her sweater. The waves fell over her shoulder and down her slender back, the flames turning the paler highlights to rich polished gold.
The unstudied sensuality of her actions sent a lick of fresh lust through his body like a forest fire, raising his core temperature by several degrees. He only realised that he was almost panting when he saw the mist on the glass he had raised to his lips.
He took a long swallow and put it down hard enough to make some of the twenty-year-old malt slop over onto the table.
Maybe it was the isolation factor or maybe there was something in the water, but he just couldn’t get enough of her.
He reached out a hand and she took it, allowing him to tug her to her feet. Instead of taking the seat beside him, she positioned herself on his lap, facing him, her knees either side of his thighs as she shuffled in closer.
‘It’s a pity that your jeans have dried,’ she mused with regret as she ran her spread palms slowly up the iron-hard contours of his thighs.
Luca shifted in his seat and swallowed.
‘I liked the kilt. Mind you, there’s nowhere for you to hide in these, is there?’ she mused, running one finger across the swelling bulge of his rock-hard erection.
‘P-Poppy!’
She gave a slow sensual smile and adopted an innocent expression. ‘Is there a problem?’
He grinned back. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
Poppy let out a startled shriek as she found herself tipped backwards then, without quite knowing how, she found herself lying flat on her back among the tumbled cushions.
Luca was kneeling straddled across her like some pagan god, his dark gleaming eyes holding hers as he slowly slipped the buckle on his belt. She licked her dry lips, her heart thudding in anticipation.
‘You have no idea at all, do you?’ he slurred. ‘What you do to a man.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I’m more an actions-speak-louder-than-words type of guy and at this moment I’m in a kind of … on-top mood. If that’s all right with you?’
Poppy reached up to assist him with the recalcitrant jeans murmuring a fervent, ‘Very all right.’
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN LUCA decided an hour or so later that they should transfer back to bed Poppy pointed out they had only recently left it.
‘We can’t just stay in bed all day,’ she felt obliged to protest.
Luca retrieved his sweater from the corner where it had landed and fought his way into it, it took him longer to put it on than it had taken to remove it. ‘Why?’ he asked as he opened a folded throw and draped it across her bare shoulders.
‘Well, it’s …’
He raised a brow.
‘Well, people just don’t,’ she finished lamely. She was just going through the motions with her protest and they both knew. ‘And I don’t even know what time it is.’
And if he started to kiss her she wouldn’t even know what her name was or where she began and he ended … Luca was in her bloodstream like a narcotic and she was well and truly hooked.
Poppy hardly recognised herself. In the space of twenty-four hours she had morphed from a wary virgin into some sex-crazed vamp who could not keep her hands off Luca. She had done things that she would have previously considered shocking and not felt even slightly shocked.
‘Here.’ He slid the metal-banded watch over his hand and onto hers. It hung loose around her delicate narrow wrist. ‘Now you will always know what time it is in several time zones and also you can dive.’
‘Yes, that’s going to be incredibly useful,’ she remarked drily as she held up her wrist to stop it sliding off.
‘You might not have noticed but the temperature has dropped by several degrees and, though it pains me to say this—’ his dark hooded glance made an appreciative sweep over the delicious contours of her firm body ‘—you really ought to get dressed.’
On cue Poppy shivered. ‘Where are my clothes?’
Luca handed her the pink sweater. ‘I think you could actually fly a kite in here.’ He glanced towards the section of broken windows.
‘Where’s my bra?’
He shrugged and she pulled the sweater over her head with an exasperated grunt.
‘The point is this room is impossible to heat. We could shift to the kitchen but the seating arrangement is a little basic for my taste. The suggestion to move to the bedroom is purely practical. I’m not inviting you to an orgy, though that is of course available on request—all you have to do is ask.’
‘And what makes you think I won’t?’ Shocked by her boldness, she gave a small laugh. Only yesterday his comment would have covered her in confusion.
Luca laughed too, a deep, delicious, throaty sound, then stopped, his expression becoming quizzical as he tipped his head to one side in a listening attitude.
‘Did you hear that?’ He glanced back at her eyes, narrowed.
Poppy shrugged and pulled her hair from the neck of her sweater before pushing it back with both hands from her face. ‘What?’ All she could hear was the wind and rain.
He shook his head in dismissal before continuing, ‘I just thought that the bedroom seems a more comfortable arrangement. But it is your choice.’
‘The bedroom sounds good,’ she admitted, pulling her jeans over her slim hips. Her socks and bra appeared to have totally disappeared. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘There it is again.’ The indent above his masterful nose deepened.
Poppy listened, then shook her head. ‘I don’t hear anything. I can only find one sock,’ she complained, holding it up.
‘I’m going to check it out.’
Her head came up with a jerk. ‘No!’
His startled eyes zeroed in on her face.
Poppy shook her head. ‘You can’t go out, it’s awful …’
‘I’m not afraid of the rain.’
‘That’s the problem!’
He elevated a brow and looked amused. ‘You want me to be afraid of the rain.’
‘It’s not a joke, Luca. You’re not afraid of anything,’ she accused bitterly. ‘And you think you’re invulnerable, that makes you do s-stupid things.’ If anything happened to him she could literally not bear it.
‘Relax, I’m just going outside … nothing is going to happen,’ he soothed, sounding amused.
‘Oh, you’re psychic now too, are you?’ Her fingernails bit half-moons in her palms as she levelled a frustrated glare at his face. ‘Or have you come to some sort of agreement with the roof slates and they’ve agreed not to fall off while you’re wandering around?’
Luca shook his head and laid a hand on her forehead. ‘No temperature.’
Poppy shrugged him away with an angry snort.
‘You’re wildly overreacting here, cara.’
‘I am not overreacting …’ She stopped; this time she heard the cry too. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she decided.
Going with him was to her way of thinking infinitely preferable to sitting here waiting for his return.
‘No, you are not.’
She glared at him. ‘No …?’
They argued back and forth and somehow, she was not quite sure how, Luca won and Poppy was left alone to pace the floor while she waited for his return. Tortured by a succession of vivid nightmare images of him lying crushed and broken. She would give him five minutes … five, then that was it, she was going out there!
She didn’t have to—before the time was up the door swung open and a wet and windblown Luca stepped in along with assorted storm debris that blew in with him.
Poppy rushed to close the door behind him.
‘Did you see anything?’ She stopped, noticing for the first time that instead of wearing the heavy army surplus greatcoat she had found in the boot room and made him wear, he was carrying it in his arms.
Before she could ask him why it had seemed a good idea to strip off outside he laid the coat on the floor … It moved.
‘What—? Oh, my gosh, it’s a cat!’ Poppy exclaimed as a small head poked out. The bedraggled creature let out a pitiful cry. ‘Oh, you poor sweet thing.’
Before he could react Poppy was on her knees beside the animal. Luca started forward, arm outstretched. ‘No, don’t touch, it’s …’ he began, then stopped, shaking his head ruefully as the spitting bundle of fury that had scratched him by way of gratitude began to purr as Poppy stroked its mangy head. ‘Vicious,’ he finished drily.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘It had got locked in the log store.’
‘Goodness it must be terrified. Were you scared, sweetheart? And hungry.’
Luca was sent to the pantry to find food and milk while the animal, who clearly knew a soft touch when it saw one, continued to worm its way into Poppy’s affection.
Poppy stood beside him and watched as the animal wolfed down a plate of canned salmon and drank a bowl of milk dry.
‘The poor little thing—she was starving. I wonder where she comes from. Is someone missing you …?’
He elevated a dark brow. ‘Are you talking to me, or the cat?’