by Lucy Monroe
So, he’d noticed.
“Am I?” She turned back to the cards and saw where she could uncover an ace. She did it. She was even better at solitaire than gin rummy. She’d played a lot of it growing up.
Gentle fingers played softly over the bare skin of her shoulders. “What is it, tesoro mio? Are you upset by Zia’s kiss? It was nothing, I assure you. All is over between us. She was joking with me.”
He sounded so sincere and Hope had this really craven desire to lean back into his touch. “That’s not the way it looked to me.”
“So, this is about Zia’s forwardness?” The masculine complacency in his voice grated on Hope’s nerves. He liked the idea of her being jealous, the fiend.
“This is about nothing. I felt like coming inside. End of story.” Was prevarication becoming a habit?
“And playing a game of cards with an inveterate rake?” The complacency was gone.
“Giuseppe is very nice.”
“Si. He kissed your hand and told you that you are beautiful.” The fingers on her shoulders were tense now, but they weren’t hurting her. “You liked this.”
If he had sounded angry, she might have remained defiant, but he didn’t. He sounded confused and disappointed. In her.
“I’d rather you did it,” she admitted. Darn that champagne anyway. The next thing she knew she would be telling him she loved him.
He pulled her up from the chair and around to face her. She kept her eyes focused on the hair-covered bronzed skin of his chest rather than looking up. It was damaging to her breathing pattern, but better for her pride. She didn’t want to see his smug reaction to her admission.
He took her smaller hand in his large, dark one. Lifting it toward him and bending at the same time, he touched his lips to the back of her knuckles. “You are very beautiful.”
Then he said it in Italian. He also told her she was sweet, the woman he wanted to marry and that her skin tasted like honey.
She was entranced by the litany of praise.
But he did not stop with words. He kissed each of her fingertips with tiny biting kisses, repeating the word bellisima after each kiss. Her eyes slid shut as sensation washed over her and then he pulled her into his body, saying something else in Italian. It sounded like, “I knew this would happen,” but that made no sense.
She stopped trying to figure it out when he tilted her head up and covered her mouth with his.
The first touch of his lips sliding against hers had the impact of a knockout drug on her willpower.
She’d been starved for the taste of him for days and flicked her tongue out to sample his lips without thought. He groaned and she found herself in his arms, their lips and bodies locked passionately together. It was like that time at his apartment in Athens, but better. She knew what to expect now, what pleasure awaited her in his arms.
She wound her arms around his neck and pulled herself up his body, standing on her very tiptoes, pressing herself as close to him as possible.
He swung her up into his arms, never breaking the kiss. She opened her mouth, inviting him inside and he took the invitation with the power of an invading army. He decimated her every defense and left her helpless against his desire and her own.
He was moving. She didn’t care where he was taking her. She just wanted him to keep doing what he was doing, showing her he wanted her more than other women. Because he certainly hadn’t responded to Zia this way when she’d tricked him into that kiss by the poolside.
Shadows played across Hope’s closed eyelids as the sounds of the party faded completely from her hearing. Then there was the sound of a door closing behind them. But still he didn’t lift his mouth from hers and she didn’t open her eyes. Awash with sensation, her sensory receptors were inundated with pleasure.
The solid feel of a bed beneath her told her he had brought her into a guest room. The feel of his more than solid body on top of hers told her he intended to stay. Her legs instinctively parted, making room for him against her most sensitive flesh. Wearing only their swimsuits, masculine hair covered limbs slid against feminine softness. The sensitive flesh of her inner thighs thrilled to the press of hard, sculpted muscles.
The hands she’d so desperately wanted to touch her were all over her skin, leaving a trail of hot desire in their wake.
She moaned and arched up toward him, pressing her womanhood against his hardness. She trembled. Intimate in a way she could not have imagined, though he was not inside her, she felt possessed. Swollen and hotly lubricated tissues ached to be appeased with a more direct caress.
His mouth broke from hers to trail hot, openmouthed kisses down her neck and across the skin exposed above the line of her tankini top. “You are no shrimp, cara. You are perfect.” He pressed his body into hers, sending further sensation sweeping through the core of her. “We are perfect together.”
She was breathing too hard to reply, her body on fire for more of his touch, her mind an inferno of erotic thoughts.
“Admit it, Hope. I do not overwhelm you. I excite you.”
Did he need the words? Wasn’t her body’s response enough for him to see that she’d been spouting off earlier?
He rocked into her in an exciting imitation of the mating act.
She arched her pelvis, every sliding contact between his hardness and her sensitized nerve endings sending jolt after jolt of pleasure zinging through her.
He lifted away from her, withdrawing his body from the direct contact she craved.
She gasped, trying to reconnect with his body, but strong hands held her to the bed. “You have this with no other man. Your body wants me. Say it.”
“Yes,” she practically screamed. “You’re perfect for me.”
It wasn’t such an admission. He’d already said she was the perfect size for him, but still, she felt she’d given something away. Admitted to a need that made her vulnerable to him.
Her words had a profound impact on his self-control and without really knowing how it happened, she lost her bikini. He disposed of his black shorts. Then it really was his naked flesh moving against hers.
She cried out with the joy of it and then screamed when his mouth fit itself over one turgid nipple. He suckled and she flew apart, her body straining for a release it had never known.
“Please, Luciano. I can’t stand this.” She felt like she was going to die, so rapid was her heartbeat, so shallow her breathing. Her muscles locked in painful rigidity as she strained toward him and the pleasure his touches promised.
His hand fondled her intimately, as he had that night in Athens. “You belong to me, cara.”
She stared up at him through vision hazed by passion. “Yes. But it goes both ways,” she managed to pant, needing him to know this was not a one-way street.
He growled his approval as he stroked her in a tortuous pattern against her pleasure spot. Within seconds she was shuddering under him in a fulfillment that both elated and terrified her. Her body truly did not belong to her in that space of time. He owned it with the gratification he gave her, the emotions that pleasure evoked in her.
“Luciano!”
He reared up above her, his dark eyes burning with triumph and unslaked desire. Aligning his erect flesh with her pulsing wetness, his jaw went rigid with tension. “I could take you now. Santo cielo! I want to take you now.”
“Yes.” Oh, yes. Now. She wanted to receive him, to take him as primitively as his eyes told her he wanted it to be.
“But I won’t.” His voice was guttural with feeling, his face tight with strain and sweat beading his temple.
“You won’t?” she asked stupidly, finding his denial incomprehensible.
He was literally on the verge of joining their bodies. How could he stop now?
“I do not seduce virgins.” His words came out from between gritted teeth, each one a bullet of strained sound.
“But I want you, Luciano.”
His forehead dropped against hers, the heat emanating from him bakin
g in its intensity. “I want you also, piccola mia, but in a marriage bed.”
Her eyes were squeezed shut, her body aching for his possession. “What are you saying?”
“Agree to marry me, Hope, or go home to Boston. I cannot stand this torment of the body any longer.” He shivered above her, the tip of his shaft caressing sensitized and swollen flesh.
Then he threw himself on his back away from her, the evidence of his arousal testimony to his words. The fierce grip of his fingers on the bedspread proof of just how close to the edge of control he was.
But it was marriage or nothing. No. Not nothing. Not by a long stretch. He’d fulfilled her. Taken the edge off of her need, giving her the first sexual release of her life, but without marriage, he would take nothing for himself and would not give himself completely.
“Isn’t it the woman who is supposed to demand marriage?” It wasn’t just a weak attempt at humor. It was also an expression of how bewildering she found her current situation.
He didn’t answer.
She supposed he thought he’d said it all.
Maybe he had. She loved him. So much. She wanted him almost as much as she loved him. He wanted her too. She looked at his still erect flesh. A lot. He wanted her a lot. He liked her too, had respected her enough to pursue her in the traditional way. Was liking, respect and desire enough?
She sat up, curling her knees into her chest and effecting as much modesty as possible without her clothes on. His hardness had not abated, but his breathing was growing calmer. She looked away, embarrassed by the intimacy of seeing him like this. She wanted to know the miracle of being connected to him in the most personal way any woman could know a man, but she didn’t doubt he would stand by his ultimatum.
Marriage, or nothing.
“Luciano,” she said tentatively.
“Si?”
“Um…” How did a woman ask this kind of question? “Do you believe in fidelity?”
He sat up and glared at her, supremely unconcerned by his nudity. “Once we are married, there will be no other man.”
Was he really that dense? “I meant you. If I marry you, will I have to worry about you taking a mistress?”
“No.” There was a rock-solid certainty in his expression that she could not doubt.
“Do you have a mistress now?” She had to ask.
“I told you there was no other woman.”
“But some men don’t consider wives and mistresses in the same class. They think having one does not preclude having the other.” She’d seen it often enough among the rich compatriots of her grandfather and knew that wealthy Italian men were particularly susceptible. Or so it seemed.
“I am not these men. I want no woman but you.”
“Always?” she asked, finding it very difficult to believe he wanted to cleave to her for a lifetime and forsake all other women.
He reached out and cupped her cheek. “Always. You will be my wife, the mother of my children. I will not shame you in this way.”
Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them away. “All right,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“You will marry me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
His thumb rubbed the wetness from under her eye. “You are crying. Tell me why.”
“I’m not sure. I’m scared,” she admitted to both him and herself. “You don’t love me, but you want to marry me.”
“And you love me.”
Was there any point in denying it? She’d just agreed to become his wife. “Yes.”
“I am glad of this, cara. You have nothing to fear in giving yourself to me. I will treasure your love.”
But not return it.
Was that something so different? She’d practically lived her whole life without being truly loved. Her grandfather had been duty bound to care for her, but until very recently, he hadn’t even acted particularly fond of her. At least Luciano really wanted her. He could have anyone and he’d chosen her. That had to prove something.
She forced herself to smile. The man she loved wanted to marry her. He wanted to have children with her and he had promised her fidelity. He respected her, he liked her and he desired her, she reminded herself. Perhaps from that, within the intimacy of marriage, love would grow.
“I guess we’d better get dressed,” she said, not nearly so complacent as he about their state of undress when she did not have passion to dull her normal thinking process.
He stayed her movement toward the edge of the bed. “I too want an assurance from you.”
“What?”
“No more being alone with other men.” He was all conquering male.
She sighed. “We were only playing cards, Luciano. You must know it wasn’t anything more.”
“I know this, but I did not like finding you alone with Giuseppe. He is a womanizer of the first order.”
“Well, he was a gentleman with me. He may be a flirt, but I don’t think he would go after a woman who was attached to someone else.”
Luciano didn’t look impressed by her belief. “Promise me.”
“You’re being ridiculous. What do you want me to do, run from the room if I’m alone and another man comes into it?”
When he looked like he might agree, she glared at him. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Face it, you were so busy with your friends, you didn’t even notice I was gone.” The memory of Zia’s overly warm greeting still rankled. “We had time for me to beat him at gin rummy before you even came looking. I don’t think you should complain too loudly about me finding my own entertainment.”
“I believed you were with Martina. When she came back to the pool with other friends and without you, I immediately began looking for you.”
“I wouldn’t have left in the first place if you hadn’t let your ex-girlfriend kiss you.”
“I did not let her kiss me. She just did it.”
Hope had to give him that. And he had pulled away very quickly. “You touched her when you wouldn’t even put sunscreen on my back,” she accused. “When was the last time you kissed my cheeks in greeting? You treat me like the untouchable woman.”
His brow rose in mockery. “Do you wonder at this? I touch you and five minutes later, we are naked on a bed together.”
“Are you saying you’ve been avoiding touching me because you want me that much?” It was a novel concept, one that was infinitely good for her feminine ego.
“I promised you I would not seduce you.”
And the most casual touching put that promise at risk. At least that was what he was implying. Knowing he was that physically vulnerable to her assuaged some of her fear at marriage to a man who did not love her.
“And now you want a promise I won’t spend time alone with other men.”
“Si.”
Luciano hadn’t liked finding her with David that day in Athens and even less discovering her alone with Giuseppe. She should understand that because she wouldn’t like the reverse either. Only she’d made him promise her fidelity. Perhaps he had his own insecurities. The idea was almost laughable, but the strangely intent expression in his eyes was not.
“I won’t make a habit of being alone with other men and I will never be unfaithful to you.” It was the best she could do, because she wasn’t going to go running from a room if a man walked into it and she wasn’t going to make a promise she couldn’t keep.
He seemed satisfied and nodded. “We will marry in two weeks time.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“BUT why does he wish to see you before the ceremony? This is not normal.” The older woman rang her hands. “Ai, ai, ai. American men, they are not rational.”
Hope stifled a smile. Her future mother-in-law had very definite views of what constituted proper male and female behavior. Hope’s grandfather had confounded her several times over the past two weeks, wanting to approve the wedding dress, insisting on consultation with the chef for the reception and a host of other equally odd, to her
mind, requests.
She patted Claudia di Valerio’s arm. “It’s all right. He just wants to see. He won’t touch anything.”
Her grandfather had been ecstatic at the news of her upcoming marriage and had flown over immediately to take part in the preparations, much to Luciano’s mother’s dismay. She was not used to having a man around giving orders in the domestic arena, but Joshua Reynolds wanted to be involved on every level of planning the wedding.
Luciano might be bossy, but he wasn’t quite the controller Joshua Reynolds was. When her grandfather was interested in a project, he wanted final sayso over every aspect. For some reason, he’d decided to take an interest in Hope’s wedding. Assuming it was part of the strange change in his behavior since the heart attack, Hope dealt with his interference with more equanimity than her future mother-in-law.
Claudia rolled her eyes and crossed herself before opening the bedroom door. “Come in, then.”
The old man came into the room, his expression as happy as Hope had ever seen it. He stopped in front of her. “You look beautiful, Hope. So much like your grandmother on our wedding day.”
She’d never known her grandmother, but it pleased her for her grandfather to make the comparison.
His expression turned regretful. “I neglected her shamefully. Your mother too, but I’ve learned my lesson. I want better for you. I want you to be happy. Marrying Luciano makes you happy, doesn’t it, child?”
“Yes.” A little uncertain still about her future, but full of joy at the prospect of spending it with him. “Very happy.”
At this both the old man and Claudia beamed with pleasure. For once, they were in one accord.
“Then it was worth it. I did the right thing.”
Did he mean sending Luciano to visit her in Athens? She had to agree. “Yes.”
He turned to Claudia. “I suppose you have a timetable for this shindig?”
Luciano’s mother bristled with annoyance. “It will happen when it happens. I have planned the events, but a wedding cannot be rushed to fit a businessman’s schedule.”
Surprisingly, Joshua meekly agreed and left the room.
“I think you scared him, Mamma.” Martina grinned from the other side of the room where she had been laying out Hope’s going away outfit.