by Lynne Graham
A sudden lurch in the stomach region made Lizzie tense and she crammed a stricken hand to her mouth, mumbling, ‘Cesare...’
To give him his due, Cesare was not slow on the uptake and he strode through the nearest door at speed and deposited her in a bathroom.
Lizzie was ingloriously ill. He pushed her hair out of the way, gave her a cloth, extended a toothbrush, which he unwrapped, and politely ignored her repetitive apologies for her behaviour. When she couldn’t stand up again, he removed her shoes for her and supported her over to the sink.
‘I don’t make a habit of this,’ she declared, rinsing her mouth several times over while hanging onto the vanity unit.
‘I should hope not, bellezza mia.’
‘What does that mean? The Italian bit?’
And he told her that it meant ‘my beauty’.
‘But that’s a downright lie,’ she protested, studying her bleary-eyed reflection in dismay. The make-up girl’s artistry and the hairdresser’s skill were no longer apparent in the flushed face, smudged eyeliner and tousled hair she now saw in the mirror.
‘You need to lie down,’ Cesare asserted, lifting her again so that the bathroom spun and then the bedroom that followed.
Lizzie lay flat and dead still on the bed, afraid to move lest her surroundings began revolving again. ‘Where’s Archie? I want Archie.’
‘Archie stays downstairs.’ Cesare reminded her of the household rule, announced by Primo, his imperturbable manservant, on the day she moved in.
‘But that’s just mean... He always sleeps with me,’ she mumbled.
Cesare almost groaned out loud. She lay splayed across his bed, clearly trusting him when he didn’t trust himself because she was displaying a wanton amount of bare slender thigh.
‘If I can’t have Archie for company, I’ll have you,’ Lizzie muttered. ‘Lie down.’
Cesare snatched up the phone and issued a terse instruction. Within the space of a minute, Primo arrived at the door with Archie. Cesare clasped Archie and carried him over to the bed, whereupon the dog curled up obediently at Lizzie’s feet with his head resting across her ankles.
‘You should get into bed...you can’t sleep in your clothes,’ Cesare told her.
‘Why not?’
Cesare released his breath in an exasperated hiss and came down on the bed beside her to run her zip down.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered curiously as he smoothed the straps of the dress down off her slim shoulders.
‘Making you more comfortable.’ Business arrangement, business arrangement, bloody business arrangement, Cesare was dutifully repeating inside his head as he eased her out of the dress to expose a filmy and provocative bra and panties set in turquoise lace. He wasn’t looking, he wasn’t reacting, he told himself doggedly while his dark golden gaze clung of its own volition to the surprisingly full, plump curves swelling the lace cups, revealing pale pink nipples that made his mouth water and the shadowy vee at her crotch. He yanked the sheet over Lizzie’s prone length so fast that she rolled and, having been disturbed and crammed in below the sheet without warning, Archie also loosed a whimper of complaint.
Lizzie stretched out a searching hand, her eyes closed. The room was going round and round and round behind her lowered eyelids and she felt lost and nauseous. ‘Where you going?’
Weary after a day spent travelling and his last-minute sprint to deal with Lizzie, Cesare surrendered to the obvious. If he left her alone, might she wander off? Sleep on the floor? Have an accident? Stumble into the wrong bedroom? And what if she was sick again? ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ He stripped down to his boxers and lay down on the other side of the bed. A small, callused hand closed over the thumb of his right hand and held on tight. He wasn’t used to sharing a bed and he liked his own space.
Lizzie settled up against a warm solid shape while Archie tunnelled below the sheet to settle down by a less restive set of feet.
Lizzie wakened with a desperate thirst at some timeless hour of the night while it was still dark. She slid her feet off the side of the bed, her soles finding the floor, and slowly straightened. A wave of dizziness immediately engulfed her and she compressed her lips hard, sober enough now to be furious with herself. Despite having hardly eaten all day she had foolishly downed all that alcohol and got carried away by the party atmosphere. Suppressing a groan of frustration, she fumbled for the switch on the bedside light and then stared in bewilderment round the unfamiliar room before focusing on the male sharing the wide bed with her.
Cesare was half naked and lying on top of the sheet she had been lying beneath. He was beautifully built with a broad bronzed torso and corded abdomen that rippled with lean muscle. One long, powerful, hair-roughened thigh was partially raised, the other flat. Unshaven, he exuded a rough, edgy masculinity that made her breath hitch in her throat as she peered down at him in the lamplight. His lashes were like black silk fans and almost long enough to touch his amazing cheekbones.
She remembered asking him if he wanted to kiss her, absolutely angling for his attention, and she almost screamed out loud at that demeaning memory. She headed for the bathroom with hot cheeks and a frustrated sense of self-loathing and shame that she could have been so silly. Had she asked him to stay with her as well? For goodness’ sake, it was obviously his bedroom and he had only brought her there the night before because it was the nearest option when she felt sick. Now he had seen her in her underwear and she was mortified, although not as mortified as she would have been had he removed that as well. Her head throbbing, she drank about a gallon of cold water and freshened up as best she could without her own toiletries. She crept out of the bathroom in search of something to wear so that she could return to her own room.
Tiptoeing like a cat burglar, she opened the door into a massive wardrobe and eased back a sliding door to yank a man’s white shirt off a hanger. The bra was digging into her midriff and she released the catch and removed it and the panties, wondering if she dared go for a shower. Donning the shirt, she rolled up the sleeves and buttoned it.
Being around Cesare made her feel out of control but was that so surprising? She hadn’t dated since Andrew, hadn’t seen the point, and before him there had only been a handful of unremarkable men. In recent times, she had had no social outlets and had only occasionally left the farm. It cost money to socialise and there had been none to spare. Being with Cesare’s light-hearted sisters had been so much fun that she had forgotten to monitor how much she was drinking. One glimpse of Cesare when she was in that weakened condition had had the same effect on her as a hit man shooting her directly between the eyes. He was a very good-looking male, that was all. Noticing the fact simply meant she was female and alive and not that she wanted to pursue anything with him.
Hovering by the bed, Lizzie tried to work out how to get Archie out from below the sheet without either hurting him or waking Cesare.
‘What are you doing?’ Cesare husked as she yanked at the sheet to try and reach her dog. Blinking up at her with frowning dark eyes, he lifted a muscular arm to check the gold watch he still wore. ‘Inferno! It’s three in the morning.’
‘I should go back to my own room.’
‘Don’t wake up the whole household. Stay and go back to sleep,’ Cesare advised her drily, flipping onto his side in a display of indifference that made her grit her teeth.
Would she wake anyone up? Stifling a sound of frustration, Lizzie doused the light and snaked back below the sheet.
Early morning was sending pale light through the blinds when she next surfaced, feeling considerably healthier than she had earlier but decidedly overheated. An arm was draped round her ribcage and she was locked intimately close to a very male body, a very aroused male body. A surge of heat that had nothing to do with his higher temperature pooled in Lizzie’s pelvis. She eased over onto her back and looked u
p unwarily into heavily fringed eyes the colour of melted bronze. Her throat ran dry, her breathing ruptured.
‘You’re a very restless sleeper, cara mia,’ Cesare censured softly, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘I had to clamp you in one place to get peace.’
‘Oh...’ Lizzie framed dry-mouthed, entranced by her view of his lean, darkly handsome features in the golden dawn light, even her hearing beguiled by his melodic accent.
‘Archie, on the other hand, sleeps like the dead and doesn’t move at all,’ Cesare quipped. ‘I’ve never had a dog in my bed before.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
‘First and last,’ he stressed. ‘Unfortunately you wouldn’t settle without him last night.’
‘I’m sorry I drank too much.’ Colour slowly rose to drench her porcelain skin as he stared down at her. ‘Was I really awful?’
Long fingers stroked her taut ribcage, making her violently aware of the breasts swelling mere inches above. ‘No, you were bright and breezy until the alcohol took its toll.’
Her breathing pattern fractured as she felt her nipples pinch tight while a hot, achy sensation hollowed between her legs. ‘I’m not used to drinking like that,’ she muttered jaggedly.
His golden eyes smouldered down at her and a wicked grin slanted his shapely lips, ensuring that the rate of her heartbeat accelerated. ‘Don’t make a habit of it.’
‘Of course, I won’t,’ she began with a frown, tightening every muscle in an urgent, almost panic-stricken attempt to smother the sexual responses trickling through her and awakening every skin cell.
Cesare, who planned everything in Machiavellian detail, had not planned to kiss Lizzie. Having decided not to touch her, he fully expected to abide by that prohibition because he virtually never gave way to impulses. Unhappily for him, the burning desire to pin Lizzie to the bed and have wild, sweaty sex with her had no rational base: it was driven by pure instinct. And when she shifted her hips below the shirt that had most definitely ridden up to ensure that bare skin met bare skin, Cesare was lost.
One minute, Lizzie was drowning in dark golden eyes framed by lashes longer than her own and downright jealous of the fact, and the next Cesare brought his mouth crashing down on hers with the kind of raw, driving passion that she was defenceless against. It was glorious and the taste of his tongue delving deep into the moist interior of her mouth was unsurpassable and an intoxication in its own right.
He traced the pointed bud of a straining nipple and her spine undulated of its own accord, sensation piercing straight to her pelvis. Her breasts had suddenly become achingly sensitive to the palms cupping them and the fingers tugging gently on the prominent tips. That felt amazingly good. A stifled gasp was wrenched from low in her throat and her spine arched, her body rising up to cradle his in an involuntary move of welcome as old as time. He skated his fingers along a slender thigh to discover the hot wet core of her, sliding between the delicate folds to moisturise the tiny bud of thrumming nerve endings above with a skilled fingertip.
Lizzie tore her lips from his to cry out, hungry beyond bearing for that sensual touch and plunging her fingers into his tousled black hair to hold him to her. She was no more capable of thinking about what she was doing than she was of stopping breathing on command. Her heart was thumping, her ragged gasping breaths audible, her entire body was tingling madly with seething heat and need. With his free hand, he ripped at the buttons of the shirt. The shirt fell partially open, exposing the rounded fullness of a breast crowned by a pale pink nipple. He closed his mouth there, teasing the distended bud with the flick of his tongue and the graze of his teeth while his fingers stoked an erotic blaze at her feminine core. She shuddered, talon claws of fierce need biting into her, shock assailing her that anything physical could feel so intense that she could neither fight it nor control it.
‘I love the way you respond to me, mi piace,’ Cesare growled with satisfaction while switching his attention between her pouting breasts and sending fantastic ripples of ravishing sensation right down to her unbearably hot core.
Lizzie couldn’t find her voice, her breath or a single functioning brain cell. Her entire being was welded to his every caress, wanting, needing more. And kissing an erotic path down over her flat, quivering stomach, Cesare gave her much more and she didn’t have the strength of will to deny him.
With ruthless cool he zeroed in on the tender heart of her with every weapon in his erotic mastery, stroking delicate flesh with his tongue and his mouth and his expert fingers. Lizzie careened into shock at the intimacy and then moaned below the onslaught of wicked, delirious excitement. Intense pleasure followed, sweeping her up into a wild, yearning climb towards a peak that she felt she would never reach. But that climb was unstoppable. Suddenly her body wasn’t her own any more and she was flying like a comet into the sun in a climax so powerful it brought shaken tears of reaction to her eyes.
Still ragingly aroused, Cesare sprang out of bed, his fists angrily clenched. What the hell had he been thinking of? No matter how great the temptation, he should never have touched her. They had a business agreement and a planned marriage of convenience ahead of them. They were not lovers, not friends with benefits. He did not want to muddy the waters with the kind of physical intimacy that women often assumed meant more than it did. If he wasn’t careful, he might find himself more married than he had ever wanted to be, he acknowledged grimly.
Paralysed by a crazy sense of peace in the aftermath of orgasm, Lizzie closed her eyes, her body still trembling from the sweet aftermath of agonising pleasure. The mattress gave but she didn’t open her eyes again until a phone rang, shattering her dream state. The phone fell silent in answer to a man’s voice speaking Italian. Her lashes lifted then and she stared at Cesare while he paced the floor, mobile phone clamped to his ear. He still wore his boxers and his state of arousal was blindingly obvious. An almost painful tide of colour burned her face.
He tossed the phone down by the bed. ‘Do you want the shower first?’
That prosaic question made Lizzie frantically pull the edges of the shirt she wore closed and she sat up in an agony of discomfiture. ‘I’ll go back to my own room.’
As she scrambled out of bed and reached for Archie, Cesare murmured without any expression at all, ‘We made a mistake and we won’t repeat it.’
Clutching Archie in an awkward hold, Lizzie attempted to pick up her discarded clothing one-handed. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ she prompted shakily.
‘It was just sex...nothing worth fussing over,’ Cesare opined in a tone that was as cold as a winter shower on her overheated skin. ‘Look, I’ll see you downstairs in an hour. I have some papers you have to sign before I leave.’
‘You’re going away again?’ she asked in surprise, fighting the roar of temper rising from a secret place deep down inside her.
‘We have forty-eight hours to go before the wedding and I intend to use it,’ he advanced calmly, deep-set dark eyes hooded, wide, sensual mouth clenched hard.
Just sex...nothing worth fussing over? Lizzie mulled that putdown over while she showered. She wasn’t hurt by his dismissal, of course she wasn’t. A mistake that would not be repeated. Didn’t she feel the same way as he did? What had happened shouldn’t have happened. It was much more sensible if they stayed uninvolved and detached. So, if he had left her feeling a little crushed and foolish, it was her own fault for acting like an idiot and inviting such a denouement. If she couldn’t quite shake off the sense of intimacy he had imbued her with, it was only because she had been more intimate with him than she had ever been with anyone else but that was a secret not for sharing...
CHAPTER FIVE
LIZZIE FASTENED THE cropped trousers and straightened the lilac cashmere sweater she wore with it. Her feet shod in flat ballerina pumps, her face lightly made up, she bore not the smallest resembla
nce to the woman she had been a mere week earlier.
Of course she was now in possession of a vast wardrobe and owned a choice of outfits for every conceivable occasion. Most probably many of the garments would never be worn because she could not imagine Cesare taking her sailing or out to dinner or indeed to the kind of dressy venue where she would require a full-length gown. The wardrobe was totally wasteful in its size and probable expense but she had already learned that once Cesare had instructed his underlings that she was to be dressed from head to toe in designer fashion, his orders were carried out without question.
A pity she was a little more rebellious in that line, Lizzie acknowledged wryly. A lifetime of counting the pennies meant that extravagance made her feel guilty. Breakfast in bed made her feel even guiltier although, to be honest, any excuse to escape the ghastly prospect of having to breakfast alone with Cesare had been extremely welcome.
After all, she had made a huge fool of herself the night before, hadn’t she?
Lizzie inwardly cringed, colour marking her cheeks afresh. It would be a very long time, if ever, before she contrived to forget how she had writhed in ecstasy in Cesare’s bed. But mercifully, they hadn’t actually got as far as having full sex, she reminded herself bracingly, and she assumed that that reality would make it a little easier for her to reinstate normal boundaries between them. She was no natural wanton, never had been, had simply let alcohol, curiosity and temptation steer her briefly in the wrong direction. She wasn’t like her mother either because she was not prone to sudden blinding infatuations. For years, there had been no other man for her but Andrew, a reality that had made the slow death of their relationship all the more painful to endure because it had started out with such high hopes.
It offended her sense of decency, however, that the intimacy she had shrunk from exploring with Andrew, whom she had loved, could be so very tempting when offered by a male like Cesare Sabatino, who had no respect for her at all. Cesare didn’t give two hoots what happened to her or how she felt about any issue. Cesare merely wanted to use her to regain the island of Lionos and he thought that paying her richly for the privilege should take care of any doubts she might have.