by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
‘No, cara mia, I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life. And we both know that I am not talking about the moon or the damn canal, but about you.’
Reaching out, he took hold of her wrist, drawing her slowly but irresistibly forwards into the light of the street lamp. And there was nowhere she could look but into his strongly carved face, its planes and features thrown into sharp relief, the slash of his cheekbones, the dark pools of his eyes accentuated by the fall of the moonlight.
‘I have waited so long for this moment that I cannot truly believe it is real. That you are here, back with me, where you belong.’
‘Vincenzo…’
Amy tried to interrupt but her voice had no strength. Her throat seemed to have dried in the lazy, languorous heat that was licking along her veins, radiating from the point at which his hand curled around her wrist. It suffused her whole body with a warmth that made her feel as if she were bathed in the blaze of the noonday sun instead of the cool, pale light of the moon.
‘Do you know how it has been for me these past four years? I have been a married man, but a married man with no wife. I put my ring on the hand of the most beautiful, most desirable woman I had ever met. I spent one night with her. One hot, passionate, sensual night—the sort of night I remember in my dreams and wake soaked in sweat—aching—hungry…’
‘Don’t…’
Amy shifted restlessly from one foot to the other and back again, her clouded gaze still locked with his, seeing the burn of memory in the depths of his eyes.
And that memory flared in her own thoughts too, playing out a series of erotic images on the screen of her mind. Images of hunger and yearning, of kisses, caresses that made her shiver just to remember them. Of the warm, bronze satin of Vincenzo’s skin; the silken slide of his ebony hair under her clutching fingertips. The tangle of his muscular, hair-roughened limbs with the smooth nakedness of her own. The need that began as an ache low down in her body and then spiralled swiftly out of control, suffusing every inch of her, taking possession of her body, until she was nothing but one raw, screaming pulse of hunger…
‘One night,’ Vincenzo repeated, his voice cracking on the words. ‘One night of ecstasy, and since then—nothing. Not a damn thing! Can you imagine how that felt?’
‘Imagine? I don’t have to imagine. I lived through it, too.’
Every aching, tormenting second of loss. Every moment of yearning, of hunger, of emptiness. Every sleepless night when she had lain awake, staring at the ceiling of her room with burning, dry eyes, too desolate, too broken even to find the release of tears.
But she had loved him and known the agony of the loss of that love. All Vincenzo was talking about was the physical deprivation—the sexual frustration that had eaten at him.
‘Then you’ll know it was not enough!’
Vincenzo’s dark head lowered until his forehead rested on the smooth silkiness of her hair, his breath softly warm against her skin.
‘Never, ever enough.’
Standing like this, it was impossible to look away again. She was held transfixed by his eyes, drawn into the deep, burning pools, drowning in them.
‘I cannot live on my memories for four years, Amy. And if you feel the same, then neither can you.’
It wasn’t her memories that were troubling her now. It was something that was very definitely in the present. The molten burn of Vincenzo’s gaze, the faint sound of his breathing, the clean, intensely personal scent of his skin. He was so close; so very, very close. She could feel the warmth of his body enclose her like the finest heated silk.
‘It’s been—hard…’
What was she saying? She didn’t want him to hear this!
She had vowed to herself that she would never reveal a thing to Vincenzo. That she would never, ever let him see just how badly he had hurt her, just what she had been through since she had left him and gone home to England. And yet now it seemed that every time she opened her mouth another admission slid out that betrayed her, scraping off another protective layer of skin and leaving her even more exposed and vulnerable than before.
She must have had rather more of the delicious champagne cocktails than was wise, loosening her tongue dangerously as a result.
‘What I want is right here, right now,’ Vincenzo told her huskily. ‘But I need to know that you feel the same.’
The smallest movement of his head was all that it took to bring his mouth into contact with hers. The soft touch of his lips was like the lick of flame over the delicate skin, setting off a searing electrical charge that pulsed along every already shockingly sensitised nerve.
‘So tell me, cara mia…’ he murmured against her mouth, his lips tracing the outline of hers in tiny, delicate kisses. ‘Tell me what you want and I will give it to you. Tell me what you thought of in those long dark nights…’
His lips took hers again in another, more demanding kiss, one that opened her mouth, let his tongue slide intimately over the delicate surfaces exposed to it. Strong hands were in her hair, tangling in the silken strands, drawing her head back so that he could deepen the caress.
It wasn’t the champagne that had intoxicated her—nothing so simple. Instead it was Vincenzo himself and the lean strength of his body, the heady mixture of the scent of his skin and the tang of bergamot in his aftershave. The husky enticement of his words that went straight to her heart with a force more potent than any of the most unadulterated spirit.
‘Cenzo…’
The name escaped her on a soft moan, feeling alien on her tongue. The long-ago, almost forgotten, intimately familiar, affectionate shortening of his name that he would only allow his immediate family to use. His immediate family—and his wife.
‘Si, carissima.’
It was the softest of whispers and he moved closer as he spoke, crushing her up against the pillar of the street lamp, the metal cold and hard at her back.
But the front of her body was all warmth, all fire, and another, very different form of hardness, heated velvet and steel, was pressed into the cradle of her hips, communicating in the most basic, most primitively eloquent way the potent force of his physical need for her. The stinging points of her breasts were up against the hard wall of his chest, the strength of his legs imprisoned her slender limbs as yet another of those sensually, drugging kisses drained the strength from her body.
Without the support of the lamp at her back, she was sure she would collapse, sinking to the ground in a mindless heap. And her thoughts too seemed to have blown a fuse, incapable of being forced into any sort of coherent order.
‘I know how you feel…’ Vincenzo whispered in her ear, strong white teeth softly nibbling at the delicate outer edge so that she writhed against him in instinctive response. ‘Your body speaks to me eloquently, so you don’t have to say a word. But I want you body and soul, so you must tell me. You must say what you want, tell me everything…’
‘Cenzo…’
Amy had no idea at all what she was going to say, whether to accede or to deny him. But even as she spoke, out on the canal a crowded vaporetto moved past in a blur of light and sound, a faint ripple of applause and laughter reaching to them across the water.
Immediately his long body froze, his proud head coming up slightly. With his cheek still against hers, the sudden tension in his strong jaw communicating his abrupt change of mood, Vincenzo cursed softly in Italian.
‘Per Dio, this is not the time or the place.’
After the scorching intensity of his passionate undertones just moments earlier, the thread of laughter in his voice was shocking, unbelievable.
‘Amy, bellissima mia, we must continue this elsewhere. Somewhere more suitable for what I have in mind.’
With his hands on the lamp-post, he levered himself backwards away from her, the darkly mesmeric power of his eyes still holding her captive as forcefully as his physical strength had done just moments before. Without the warm power of his body between her and the night, the rush of col
d air over her hotly sensitised flesh was a burning shock that made Amy cry out in agitation and distress.
‘Hush, cara, hush,’ he soothed, the shake in his voice a disturbing blend of understanding, amusement, and dangerous triumph. ‘I know how you feel, but this is not the end—it is a beginning.’
With a gesture that had an old-worldly courtliness that matched their surroundings perfectly, he held out his hand to her, watching, waiting—willing her, she was convinced, to put her own into it.
‘Come home with me. Come back to my house and let me show you how it can be, now that you are here with me at last. Let me make you forget those long, cold nights, teach you how it should have been, how it could be again…’
It was impossible to think; impossible to question. She could only react, following the most primal instincts that had possession of all her senses. And those instincts pushed her to lift a shaking hand, to lace her trembling fingers with Vincenzo’s firm, sure ones, and feel their strength close about her.
And when he moved she could only follow, stumbling after him on high, delicate heels. It was either that or fall flat on her face, because without his strength to support her she couldn’t move or function. She even feared she might actually have to force herself to breathe, so complete was her abandonment of herself to his control.
What remained of their journey was completed in silence; only Vincenzo’s hurried stride, so swift and long that Amy had to trot inelegantly in order to keep up with it, betrayed anything about his mental state, the urgency of feeling that had him in its grip. But when they reached the house they had barely set foot inside, the door still closing behind them, before he swung her back into his arms and took her mouth with a searing sexual impatience.
‘I swore I would wait,’ he muttered against her mouth. ‘I promised—but I cannot keep that promise any longer. Amy—’
Once more, what he had been about to say was choked off as he plundered her lips with a ferocity that made her head swim, and Amy found she was kissing him back, offering touch for touch, caress for caress.
Her hands tugged the silk tie loose at his throat, wrenching the buttons beneath it open with fingers made clumsy with need. In the same moment, the velvet evening coat was pushed from her shoulders, the heat of Vincenzo’s mouth burning the exposed skin as he trailed kisses towards the base of her throat where a wild pulse throbbed desperately.
‘Cenzo!’ His name was a sound of longing, a litany of need on her lips. ‘Cenzo…Cenzo…’
She broke off on a shaken cry of delight as she felt the heated hardness of his palms against her breasts, cupping their soft weight through the rich velvet of her dress. Pleasure burned an aching path of need down the length of her body, to centre in a molten pool deep inside at the juncture of her thighs. She couldn’t hold back a low, keening sound of response as she writhed against him, pressing herself close against the swollen evidence of his forceful arousal.
‘Per Dio!’ Vincenzo choked, the words rough and hard at the base of his throat.
Abruptly she was released again, his dark head shaking from side to side in amazement at his own reaction.
‘Look what you do to me,’ he muttered thickly. ‘You make me forget who I am, where I am.’
With a half rueful, half disbelieving smile, he looked down into her navy eyes, seeing the desire and hunger that burned there, mirroring his own.
‘Upstairs?’ he questioned roughly and Amy needed no elaboration or explanation as to what the single, husky word might mean.
‘Upstairs…’
She was frankly surprised that her voice worked. Everything else in her body seemed to have shut down, ceasing to function, so that she couldn’t move away from the spot where he had left her, couldn’t focus on anything but him. Without his arms around her, his touch on her skin, she felt lost, bereft in a way that was like a scream of pain in her soul. The blazing arousal that his kisses and caresses had awoken still had her in its power, refusing to recede so that she trembled in the force of its grip.
‘I’m taking you upstairs,’ Vincenzo said on a very different note, one that was all urgency and impatience, the aching need inside making the word crack in the middle. ‘No argument.’
The words had barely left his tongue before she was gathered into his arms, lifted off her feet and carried up the stairs; Vincenzo found his way with a sure-footed confidence that was belied by the way his gaze was still locked with hers, his eyes never leaving her face for a second.
On the landing, her door was the first they came to, and he kicked it open with a force and lack of ceremony that betrayed only too clearly the ferocity of the passion that had him in its grip. The velvet evening coat had slid off and been discarded somewhere along their route, her fine leather shoes falling to the floor with a thud as he crossed the room to be booted away with supreme indifference to where they finally ended up.
His hands were already reaching for the zip at the back of her dress, even as he deposited her on the soft blue quilt with such force that the breath escaped from her lungs in a muffled gasp.
‘This has to go,’ he muttered harshly, his breathing raw and uneven, a wild flash of colour marking the wide, slanting cheekbones. ‘I want to see you…really see you. I want you naked…’
It was what she wanted too, and she wriggled energetically on the bed, helping him pull the tight-fitting dress from her body. In the struggle she heard something tear savagely but she was beyond feeling even a pang of regret for the expensive garment, able only to feel thankful that she was now free of its constricting folds. As he tossed aside the crumpled velvet, Vincenzo’s breath hissed in through his teeth as his dark eyes surveyed her slender body lying pillowed on the downy quilt, the tiny scraps of lace at her breasts and hips, and the finest of black stockings her only covering.
‘Dio!’
The sound was wrenched from him with shocking force and she saw the way his throat worked as he swallowed hard.
‘You are even more beautiful than I remember…’
Kneeling on the bed, he leaned back, burning eyes searing over every exposed inch, his hooded gaze heavy with sensual appreciation.
‘More beautiful than in my dreams, and there you were a fantasy come true. No!’
He moved swiftly to stop her as, in a sudden agony of embarrassment at being exposed like this, being the subject of such a deliberate, calculated scrutiny, Amy tried to fold her arms across the creamy swell of breasts pushed provocatively up and together by the smoky grey lace and lycra of her bra.
‘No!’ he repeated more emphatically, his accent growing thicker than she had ever heard it on the single word as he caught and imprisoned her hands.
Hard fingers closed around both wrists, forcing them up above her head and holding them down on the pillows, the beautiful shape of his mouth curving into a smile of darkly sensual delight.
‘Never cover yourself up in front of me, Amy, innamorata,’ he commanded harshly. ‘Never try to hide the beauty of your body from my eyes. I am your husband, and as your husband I have the right to see every glorious inch of you…’
His eyes blazed with burning satisfaction.
‘To do more than see…’
Slowly he reached out with his free hand and trailed tantalising fingertips across the smooth skin of her forehead, down past her eye, along the soft curve of her cheek.
‘I can touch you here…and here…’
That tormenting hand moved lower, caressed her shoulder, taking with it the delicate strap of her bra, sliding it down her arm until the lace that curved around her breast loosened, slipped, exposing the hard, tight bud of her nipple.
‘And here…’
‘Vincenzo!’ Amy gasped, writhing in the grip of a pleasure so sharp it was dangerously close to pain as a long, tanned index finger moved to circle the responsive peak, his touch sending shockwaves of rapture reverberating along every nerve.
‘Do you like that, sweetheart?’ His voice was a tiger’s purr, rich wi
th triumph. ‘Well there’s more where that came from. How about if I touch you here?’
This time it was the flat palm of his hand, hot and hard, that slithered fully into the cup of the bra, lifting her breast with its pouting nipple to meet the warm moist caress of his mouth. Amy could only fling back her head and moan aloud as his tongue traced the same erotic path that his fingertip had followed just seconds before, his teeth delicately grazing the tender skin, rousing a stinging pleasure that threatened to shatter her self control completely.
‘Buono,’ Vincenzo murmured, lifting his dark head, and looking straight into her flushed face. ‘And this?’
‘This’ was to take the whole tip of her breast into the heat of his mouth, suckling softly until she arched her back, mutely inviting a fiercer, more passionate caress. The warm breath of Vincenzo’s laughter feathered across her sensitised skin, sending shivers of response down her spine.
‘You like that, cara?’ he questioned, when she was unable to hold back the incoherent murmurs of protest at the way he had taken his mouth away, depriving her of the pleasure that had gripped her. ‘Is that what you dreamed of in those long lonely nights? Was that where you longed for my touch? Or perhaps it was here…’
Once more his teasing fingers moved over her skin, tracing hot erotic patterns across the tops of her breasts, flushed now with the heated blood that had risen to the surface in response to her hectic breathing. Weakly, impotently, Amy fought against his restraining grip, only to freeze again as she registered the track his hand was taking, its path unmistakable, its ultimate destination painfully clear.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stilled, waiting, unable to move. His dark eyes locking with hers, Vincenzo watched every flicker of response, every tiny, uncontrollable reaction in her face as his caresses moved lower.
A second later he deliberately slid his hand up and away from the burning centre of her femininity, bringing a choking cry of protest from her lips. His expression intent, he paused, changed direction yet again, let it drift down, then up…