by Lynne Graham
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ Cesare urged, stunning dark golden eyes shimmering in the candlelight against his bronzed skin.
He was so...hot, he was literally on fire, Lizzie reflected dizzily. And she was married to him, about to share a bed with him...and she was fretting, shrinking, sighing over the fact? What was wrong with her? That chemistry he had mentioned was in overdrive, lighting her up from the inside out with a prickling, tingling energy that her body could no longer contain. In an abrupt movement, she rose from the table and walked to the edge of the terrace to study the lights of the fortified village on the other side of the valley.
Her heart was as locked up tight as that village, hidden behind high defensive walls, she reminded herself bracingly. Having sex with Cesare didn’t mean she was about to get silly ideas about him and start pining when he was no longer available. She had watched her mother careen blindly from one man to the next, hooked on love, her drug of choice. Lizzie had loved once and learned her lesson. If she couldn’t even make it work with Andrew, there was little chance of it working with anyone else. She would have a baby to love though, she told herself in consolation.
‘You’re very tense, cara.’ Cesare sighed, stilling behind her and gently resting his hands on her taut shoulders. Her delicate frame was dwarfed by his. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do...’
That he could read her nervous tension that accurately mortified Lizzie. In truth the problem was that she wanted him too much and feared the strength of that yearning. He turned her slowly round into the circle of his arms and she looked up at him and her knees went weak and her heart leapt in helpless response.
‘I know that,’ she asserted valiantly, wondering why he found the sudden change in their relationship so much easier. Were men just built that way? Was he more adaptable than she was? Or more relaxed at the concept of a marriage in which the only glue keeping them together would be sex and the hope of parenthood? Just sex, nothing worth fussing over, he had said after he got out of a bed where he had literally rocked her world. It was true that the only pleasure had been hers but his cold-blooded, practical take on what had happened between them had still knocked her for six. Yet she still couldn’t drag her gaze from his beautifully shaped, passionate mouth.
Cesare studied her with veiled eyes, black lashes rimming the glint of smouldering gold. Desire was lancing through him with lightning-force potency, sending tiny ripples of tension through his big, powerful frame. He couldn’t take his eyes off her lush mouth and the pouting crowns of her small breasts, which stirred softly below the fine silk of her top every time she shifted position.
It was years since Cesare had been so aware of a woman and he loathed the edgy bite of frustrated hunger that made him tense. He wanted to have sex with her and persuade his libido and his brain that, after all, she was just like any other woman he had bedded. He hadn’t been with anyone since the day he had first met her and that bothered him. He hadn’t wanted Celine when he’d had the opportunity and no other woman had since attracted his attention. Of course the problem was doubtless that his affair with Celine had run its natural course and left him bored. Lizzie was new and different, which had obvious appeal. There was even something strangely, weirdly sexy about the idea of getting her pregnant. He wasn’t sure what it was but he knew that just the thought of it made him hard and ready. Given even the smallest encouragement, he would’ve ditched Maria’s wedding banquet of a meal and headed straight for the bedroom.
Shaking off that foolish thought, Cesare gazed down at his bride with the sudden piquant recognition that she was his wife. His legal wife, his to have and to hold, his to protect. Without further ado, he pulled her close and kissed her, a husky growl sounding in the back of his throat when her firm little breasts brushed against his chest. She liked being carried; he remembered that and smiled. He hoisted her up into his arms and Archie scrambled up from his position of repose by the sun-warmed wall and barked in consternation at the sight of them.
‘Keep quiet, Archie,’ Cesare groaned. ‘You can’t come between a man and his wife...and I warn you, Lizzie, he’s not sleeping with us tonight or any other night.’
Lizzie was challenged enough to think of sleeping with Cesare and her mouth was still tingling from the hungry pressure of his mouth. As he carried her upstairs she decided that she was turning into a shameless hussy. A gasp escaped her lips when she saw the bedroom, which had been transformed into a bower of candlelight and flowers while they had been dining. Candles flickered light from metal lanterns set round the room and lush vases of pristine white flowers completed the magical effect.
‘Did you organise this?’ Lizzie asked in wonderment when he settled her down at the foot of the bed.
Cesare laughed. ‘No. Maria has waited a long time for me to find a wife and I think she’s celebrating.’
Sudden shyness reclaimed Lizzie as he gazed down at her, the lights picking out the hollows below his high cheekbones, lending him an enigmatic quality. In that lambent light, he was truly beautiful, sleek and dark, exotic and compellingly male. With sure hands he pushed her hair back from her face, letting the long, silky strands flow down her back. He tipped up her face and claimed another kiss, feeding from the sweetness of her mouth with hungry fervour, crushing her soft full lips below his while her fingers clung to his shoulders.
‘I’ve been thinking about this from the first moment I saw you,’ Cesare growled against her reddened mouth, his dark deep voice vibrating down her spinal cord, the very essence of masculinity.
‘You do talk nonsense sometimes and please don’t tell me that’s a compliment that I should gratefully receive. The first time you saw me I was in my dungarees and looked a complete mess!’ Lizzie protested on the back of a rueful laugh.
‘There’s no accounting for taste or the male libido,’ Cesare quipped, impervious to her disagreement. ‘I saw your face, your skin, your eyes...it was enough, delizia mia.’
‘I like it when you talk Italian,’ Lizzie confided breathlessly. ‘You could be reciting the multiplication tables but it wouldn’t matter. It’s your accent, your voice, the pitch you use.’
Surprised by that unexpected burst of loquaciousness, Cesare grinned, a slanting wicked grin that utterly transformed his lean, darkly handsome face, wiping away the cool vigilance and control that was usually etched there. ‘What I like most about you is that you surprise me all the time.’
‘Right now I’m surprising me,’ Lizzie told him truthfully, uncertainty darkening her hazel eyes as it crossed her mind that she was behaving impulsively, not something she made a habit of after growing up with an impetuous mother. But then she was not her mother, she reminded herself squarely, and at the age of twenty-four was surely old enough to make her own decisions.
He took her mouth in a long, intoxicating kiss and sober thought became too much of a challenge. A tension of a very different kind began to lace her body. She became ridiculously conscious of the silk rubbing against her swollen nipples and the dampness at her feminine core. Her body was responding to the chemistry between her and Cesare with a life of its own, blossoming like a flower suddenly brought into bloom by the sunshine. Only chemistry, just sex, she reflected in an abbreviated fashion as she warded off her insecurities. There was nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing she need avoid to protect herself. Dimly she was registering at some level of her brain that her mother’s disastrous affairs had made her far too reluctant to take a risk on a man.
Her silk top fell in a colourful splash of silk to the wooden floor and, with a ragged sigh of appreciation, Cesare closed his hands to the pert swell of her breasts, his thumbs expertly capturing and massaging the protruding pink peaks until they were taut and throbbing and the very breath was catching in her tightening throat. Her hips dug into the mattress beneath her, seeking to sate the hollow ache tugging at her pelvis.
Lizzie only needed that invitation and she tugged at his shirt, delicate fingers stroking over his taut, muscular shoulders, adoring the heat and strength of him. He put his mouth to her neck and skimmed the tip of his tongue along her delicate collarbone and then, gently lowering her flat on the bed, he roamed down over her ribcage, sending delicious little jolts of desire through her each time he captured the tender peaks of her breasts.
Passion had claimed Lizzie. Her temperature was rocketing higher and higher, a sheen of perspiration on her brow, and her heart was hammering so fast it felt as if it were at the foot of her throat. Her hand delving into his luxuriant black hair, she pulled him up to her and kissed him with all the urgent hunger racing through her. He pushed her skirt up above her knees and trailed his fingers slowly up her inner thighs. Every inch of her felt stretched taut with the extreme wanting that had taken her over and she gritted her teeth as he anchored his fingers to her knickers and trailed them off. She wanted his touch so bad it hurt and she squirmed in a fever of need.
‘I’m trying to go slow,’ Cesare bit out raggedly, ‘but I feel like an express train.’
‘Talking too much,’ she told him, her teeth chattering together at the unwelcome pause.
With an almighty effort, Cesare stepped back from the source of temptation. Haste wasn’t cool, especially not the first time. He didn’t think a woman had ever responded with that much passion to him and it was setting him on fire with overriding need. He told her that in Italian and she gave him a blissful smile, evidently glorying in the sound of his language or his voice or whatever it was that she liked. He stripped off the shirt, unzipped his chinos, pushed off everything in one urgent forceful assault on his clothing. Naked, he came back to her, revelling in the way her eyes locked to him and the sudden blush that warmed her porcelain complexion. He couldn’t recall when he had last been with a woman who blushed. And in the bedroom? Never.
Lizzie was transfixed. There he was in all his glory, her every piece of curiosity answered in one fell swoop. He scooped her up in his arms, pulled off the skirt that was her only remaining garment and settled her down, equally naked, in the centre of the turned-back bed.
Lizzie froze. ‘I think we need to put out the candles!’ she exclaimed, her entire body burning with embarrassment as she grasped in desperation for the sheet, which was out of reach.
In the very act of surveying her pale slender curves with rapt attention Cesare raised stunning golden eyes to study her in growing wonderment. ‘I’ve already seen you naked,’ he reminded her gently.
‘That’s different...I was too hung-over to be shy!’ Lizzie pointed out loudly.
Cesare grinned and with a stretch of a long brown arm flipped up the sheet. ‘This is not likely to hold me back,’ he warned her.
As the cool cotton settled over her quivering length Lizzie lost some of her tension. Resting on one arm, she found Cesare gazing down at her with slumberous dark golden eyes. He rubbed a slightly stubbled jaw against her cheek in a sensual gesture on his path to her ready mouth.
One kiss melted into the next but as his hands roved skilfully over her, lingering on pulse points and teasing erogenous zones, lying still beneath his ministrations became tougher and tougher. Her nipples throbbed from his attentions, sending arrows of fire down to the tender, pulsing heart of her.
He stroked her and her spine arched. ‘You’re so wet, so ready for me,’ Cesare husked.
A tiny shiver racked her slight frame, all the heat coalescing in the swollen, delicate tissue between her thighs. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, striving to stay in control and not betray how new it all was to her. But with every ravishing caress, he seduced her away from control. Soft gasps parted her lips, her neck extending, tendons clenching as the stimulation became almost too much to bear.
‘You know this will be a first for me, cara,’ Cesare confided, running the tip of his tongue across a turgid rose-pink nipple.
Lizzie could hardly find her voice. ‘What will?’
‘Sex without a condom...I’ve never done that before and it excites me,’ he admitted huskily, shifting against her thigh, letting her feel the smooth, hard length of his erection.
Lizzie was trying not to think about the size of him in that department. She was a modern woman, well acquainted with averages and gossip and popular report. Being a virgin didn’t mean she was entirely ignorant, she told herself in consolation, striving not to stress as her excitement built and built. Hands biting into his strong shoulders, she lifted her hips upward, succumbing to an almost uncontrollable urge to get closer to him. He toyed with her lush, damp opening, honeyed quivers of sensations rippling through her womb, and circled the tiny bud of her arousal until almost without warning a wild, seething force of irresistible sensation engulfed her like a flood. Her eyes flew wide and she bucked and jerked and sobbed in the grip of rush after rush of intense and enthralling pleasure.
He tipped her up, hooking her legs over his shoulders in a move that unnerved her. He plunged into her tight channel and for a moment she was preoccupied with the sense of fullness, the certain knowledge that this was exactly what her body had craved throughout his teasing foreplay. In fact everything was wonderful until the hot glide of his flesh within hers sank deeper and a sudden sharp, tearing pain made her stiffen and cry out in dismay.
Cesare froze as though a fire alarm had gone off and stared down at her, dark golden eyes like hungry golden flames in his lean bronzed face. ‘You can’t be...’
Enraged by her own bodily weakness and chagrin, Lizzie dealt him a look that would have dropped a grizzly bear at ten paces. ‘Well, don’t stop now.’
‘You’re a virgin?’ Cesare emphasised, his incredulity unconcealed as he held himself at an angle above her, muscles straining in his bulging forearms.
‘How’s that your business?’ Lizzie slung back argumentatively.
Cesare swore long and low in his own language and cursed her stubbornness. He burned for her but he was fighting his hunger with all his might. It struck him as unjust that the hot, tight hold of her body on his gave him pure pleasure while she had only experienced pure pain.
‘It’s my business,’ he told her grimly. ‘I think this is my cue to back off.’
‘No... No!’ Lizzie exclaimed in consternation. ‘You don’t get to go that far and then stop... I want to know what it’s like...’
In receipt of that plaintive plea, Cesare groaned out loud, belatedly recognising that marriage was proving a much bigger challenge than he had expected. She was experimenting with him, he thought in all-male horror.
‘Please...’ Lizzie added, tugging him down to her, pale fingers framing his cheekbones as she reached without success for his beautiful, passionate mouth.
In the mood to be easily encouraged, Cesare shifted his hips, his entire attention nailed to her flushed and expressive face so that he could register the smallest wince she might make. Instead Lizzie smiled up at him with a look of wonderment that was uniquely soothing to his momentarily threatened male ego.
Lizzie closed her eyes again, mortified at the fuss she had made, the lengths she had had to go to to persuade him to continue. She had always believed that a man found it hard to stop in the middle of sex, so the fact that he had offered to withdraw altogether did not strike her as a compliment. But she had wanted to know, had wanted so badly to know what all the fuss was about.
He moved against her and tingling, driving sensation awakened in her pelvis again. She relaxed a little. The slow, almost provocative thrusts became enticing and she relaxed completely, indeed began to arch up to greet him with an enthusiasm she had never expected to feel. His skilled acceleration delivered sensation like nothing she had ever experienced and her excitement
soared to delirious heights that climbed and climbed until she reached a peak and soared effortlessly over it and then down and down into the cocoon of lethargy and satiation, exhaustion pulling at her every sense.
Cesare settled her back down on the pillows and smoothed her tangled hair off her damp brow. His hand trembled a little because he was struggling to do two opposing things: firstly treat Lizzie like the bride she was and, secondly, suppress the anger tearing at him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I’d be your first lover?’ he demanded in a roughened undertone.
His tone, his exasperation, cut through Lizzie in her sensitive state like the sudden painful slice of a knife and she sat up abruptly, clutching the sheet to her chest. ‘I didn’t see that it was anything to do with you.’
‘In other words, you chose to deliberately conceal it,’ he condemned, leaping out of bed in one lithe, powerful movement. ‘How the hell could you still be a virgin when you were once engaged?’
‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, Cesare Sabatino!’ Lizzie yelled back at him furiously, but she was trembling with an innate fear she could not have expressed at that moment. ‘As for why I was still a virgin, that’s private.’
‘You’re married to me now, cara. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to expect an answer to something so basic.’
‘When you have the right to ask me private questions, I’ll let you know,’ Lizzie slung back flatly, snaking out of the far side of the bed to avoid him and yanking the sheet free of the mattress with a violent jerk to wrap it round her body. ‘Now, I’m going for a bath.’
‘Lizzie...’ Cesare ground out in frustration to her rigid back as she reached for the door of the en suite.
‘I’m not feeling nice, wifely or the slightest bit chatty right now, so please excuse me,’ Lizzie breathed icily and stepped into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind her within seconds.