In sleep she had been able to study him with an intensity she was certain he would not have tolerated had he been awake. And the sight of him had been endlessly fascinating.
The hard mouth had softened into a half-smile, giving his face an unthinkable illusion of vulnerability. The dark lashes which framed those dazzling blue eyes had been like two soft, ivory curves brushing the seamless olive of his skin. His jaw held more than a trace of darkness and she found herself wondering if he was the kind of man who had to shave morning and evening. Very probably.
She had resisted the desire to stroke a wondering fingertip all over the hard contours of his face—it was so beautiful in repose. She sighed, a sadness washing over her as she closed her eyes with a hopeless kind of yearning.
Giovanni’s eyes snapped open and he turned to look at her, unprepared for her wanton loveliness as she lay stretched out on her side facing him, her head pillowed on her arm, with the rich hair spilling all over the pale flesh of her upper body.
So glorious in her nakedness, he thought with a wrench. The long limbs and the tiny waist and the breasts which were so startlingly lush and heavy. Their rosy centres were peaking and he had to stifle the urge to reach out to cup one and gently circle the flat of his hand there. When he touched her he could not think straight, and he needed to think straight.
‘Kate?’ he said softly.
She effected to stir, and to stretch, carefully composing her face so that he would not see a woman who had been enslaved—by a man who treated her in such cavalier fashion. ‘Hello,’ she said, her voice as soft as his, as her eyelids fluttered open.
His blood pounded. Diu! One word and he wanted her all over again! All his good intentions fell by the wayside. ‘You want that we go to bed?’ he asked her lazily, his English unusually fractured by the stir of his senses. ‘Or shall we stay here?’
Either, or both. That was what she wanted. Or anything else he cared to offer her. But Kate knew that she badly needed to assert some kind of control over her behaviour. She had been wayward. Overly compliant. He was a proud and arrogant man, who, so far, had only to snap his fingers for her to accede to his will. And wouldn’t that only make him prouder, more arrogant still?
She sat up, as much to escape that horizontal scrutiny as to assert herself. ‘I need to take a shower,’ she said crisply, conveniently neglecting to mention that she had been soaking in a long bath just before his arrival. But that had been before he…before he…
He saw her sudden, swift rise in colour and knew that he could make her change her mind. He sat up, too—so that he was facing her.
‘Together?’ His voice grew husky. ‘I could do with a shower myself.’ He felt the urgent throb of need, and looked down at himself, peeling the spent condom off his renewed hardness. ‘See what you do to me?’ he questioned ruefully.
Oh, yes, she saw. Just what was he planning? she wondered angrily. Another frantic bout of sex in the shower before he disappeared from her life again? She supposed that she should be grateful he hadn’t left immediately, and then wondered whether that was why she had kept watch over him—to ensure that he didn’t.
No. The reason had been much more fundamental and primitive than an urge to check that he didn’t desert her. She had wanted nothing more than to drink in his beauty and to revel in the power of a strong, virile body—which had moved her in a way that no man ever had done before.
She met the provocative taunt in his eyes. ‘Boasting, Giovanni?’
She looked proud at that moment, he realised. Proud and defiant as she tilted her chin at him, the green eyes flashing emerald fire. The ache grew. ‘I don’t need to boast, Kate,’ he mocked. ‘And if there is any boast to be made then it should be yours, not mine—for you are the one responsible for my growing desire, cara.’
‘Because I’m here?’ she challenged, deliberately averting her eyes from just how much his desire was growing. ‘Would any woman do if I wasn’t?’
‘Much as I do not wish to pander to your ego,’ he retorted softly, ‘it might flatter you to know that I have never been unfaithful before.’
‘Flatter me?’ She let out a short laugh. ‘Isn’t flattery supposed to include terms of endearment? And you’re a little short on those, Giovanni.’
‘I never say anything I don’t mean,’ he answered insolently. ‘And extravagant compliments aren’t paramount in my mind right now.’
Kate was unprepared for the sharp tang of pain which contracted her heart. ‘Thanks a bunch.’
Giovanni looked at her thoughtfully. He had angered her—and what point was there in angering her when he still wanted her so badly? He had put his own anger on hold for that very reason. His disbelief, too—because if he stopped to think about how he had detonated the whole structure of his life because of his inexplicable need for this woman…
No, not need, he told himself fiercely. Desire was not the same as need. ‘I told you that you had very beautiful eyes,’ he remarked, with a slow smile.
He had also said some fairly comprehensive things about her breasts and her long legs—but shuddered comments about her physical attributes at the height of passion did not constitute endearment. Not in Kate’s book. ‘Quickly! Let me go and write it down before I forget!’ she said sarcastically, and then her senses flared into life again as he reached his hand out to cup her chin.
‘Kate,’ he said softly. ‘Why are we arguing after what we have just shared together?’
She bit her lip. Should she be silent and passive? Or let him know what was really on her mind? Thinking that she didn’t have a lot to lose, she said quietly, ‘We’ve shared very little except for sex, Giovanni—’
‘Exceptionally good sex,’ he demurred.
The best. The very best—but sex wasn’t what she was talking about. She wanted more than that, unrealistic though it might be. ‘Sex isn’t everything.’
‘No, but it’s a pretty big part of everything.’ And it had taught him just what he had been missing… ‘What else did you have in mind?’ he countered coolly.
She saw his face close and heard his voice become remote. The very last thing she wanted was to come over as some clinging vine. She had given herself to him freely, so she had no right to play the blushing virgin now.
She gave a shrug, as though she hadn’t really thought about it, as though she didn’t really care one way or the other. ‘To sit and have talked over dinner some time might have been nice.’
He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but her use of the past tense both intrigued and tantalised him. He had come here today wanting this. Knowing that she would give him this. And had thought that one more time in her arms would be enough. That afterwards he would be able to think of her as nothing more than a bitter-sweet memory. But he had been wrong. It hadn’t been enough—no way near enough. ‘You’re making it sound as though it’s over, Kate.’
‘Over?’ She stared into his blue eyes with genuine surprise. ‘Oh, come on, Giovanni—it never really began, did it?’
‘Not in the most conventional of ways, no,’ he agreed, and Anna’s pain swam uncomfortably into the forefront of his mind. ‘But surely that doesn’t rule out it carrying on?’
‘But you live in Sicily, and I live in London,’ she pointed out, even as some kind of delirious kind of hope flared into life inside her.
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. Surely she couldn’t be that naïve? She was an independent woman who was clearly at ease with her own sexuality; surely she must know how these things worked?
‘I wasn’t talking about dating,’ he said roughly.
The flare of hope was extinguished, but she kept her expression of interest quite steady. ‘Oh? Then how are we supposed to “carry on”, as you put it?’
‘I could take a couple of weeks off work,’ he told her softly. ‘Call my secretary and have her cancel all my engagements.’
And maybe in a way it would be best to absent himself from Sicily. Before he had left for London he h
ad told Anna to damn his name as much as it gave her satisfaction to do so. He knew that he deserved it. But Anna had shaken her smooth, dark head and looked at him with sad eyes as she told him that she would say nothing bad about him. That a man she had loved and wanted to share the rest of her life with could not have suddenly become a villain overnight.
That had been the worst part of all. He had seen her attitude change from one of bitter hurt to one of sweet generosity and an attempt at understanding and forgiving what had happened. And he had recognised in that moment just what had motivated the change. Anna didn’t want it to be over, he realised. She was telling him what she thought he wanted to hear, in the hope that he would go back to her. Tacitly, she was telling him that many, many women turned a blind eye to their men’s transgressions, and many men revelled in this and exploited it. But Giovanni had just discovered he was not one of them.
He had betrayed Anna, and in so doing, it had made him realise what was missing from his relationship. He had also betrayed the fundamental trust on which their relationship had been based. And the relationship had floundered.
And all because of the naked woman who sat before him, her smooth, high bottom resting indolently on silver satin. She had tempted him and he had succumbed. She had offered him forbidden fruit and he had eaten it. A pulse began to patter at his temple.
‘So how about I do that?’ he murmured, trying by sheer force of will to deny the heat in his loins. ‘Stay around for a couple of weeks and you can show me London.’
Two weeks! He certainly wasn’t offering her anything in the way of permanence, was he? She saw how one hard, hair-roughened thigh had come up to shield his manhood from her, but not before she had seen how aroused he had become. She thought women weren’t supposed to get turned on by that kind of thing, but Kate found that she was. Very.
‘You want me to show you London?’ she asked unsteadily.
She must know how these games were played. He doubted if she would want to hear the unvarnished truth—that he wanted to lose himself in her body for just as long as it took for the fire to leave his veins.
‘I’d love you to show me London,’ he smiled.
It was the smile that did it. The first real smile she had ever seen curve his lips into an irresistible invitation. If he smiled like that he could ask her to show him around a municipal car-park and she would have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
‘I think that can be arranged.’ She smiled back at him prettily. ‘Where are you staying?’
He frowned. Again, so naïve—or was that all some kind of act? She was, he guessed, around twenty-seven, though she seemed to have honed her sexual prowess to resemble a woman in her forties.
He went for broke. ‘Usually I stay at the Granchester—unless you’re offering me a bed here, Kate?’
Then she understood what he was getting at. This was a game to be played, an erotic and exciting game. She pretended to consider it, while her heart raced. ‘It would make more sense, certainly,’ she said slowly. ‘Otherwise, I’d just have to pick you up from the hotel every morning, wouldn’t I?’
His blue eyes flashed. ‘Of course it all depends…’
‘On what?’
Another smile. A more predatory smile this time. Much more predatory. ‘On how many bedrooms you have.’
She struggled to adopt an insouciant air, even as she felt the honeyed rush of desire. ‘Just the one.’ She swallowed.
‘Oh. That decides it, then. I’ll arrange to have my bags sent over from the hotel.’ He gave a dark smile which sent shivers down her spine. ‘But let us waste no more time talking of accommodation, Kate,’ he murmured. ‘Didn’t you say something about taking a shower?’
She framed her lips to say ‘alone’, then shut them again. He was here. For two weeks. As her lover. She gave a shiver of anticipation. Why bother denying herself what she most wanted?
She rose elegantly to her feet and stared down at him, the raw look of approbation which he washed over her making her revel in her nakedness. ‘Will you wash my back for me, Giovanni?’ she questioned innocently.
Heat flooded him, and he snaked his hand around her ankle, whispered his fingertips up behind her knee to her inner thigh, and then found her where she was still as molten moist as before. Kate’s knees gave way and she sank back down to the carpet.
‘The shower?’ she said weakly and she saw the look of dark intent on his face as he reached for the packet of condoms once more.
‘Will wait,’ he growled, and began to kiss her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KATE got her shower in the end, and so did Giovanni, because he joined her, just as he had said he would, and she found herself wondering whether this was a man who always got exactly what he wanted.
She had never had a shower like it in her life and she had never given herself so freely to a man before. It was as though she was powerless to do anything other than to react to the mastery of his body.
He slowly soaped every bit of her—indecently slowly, so that she heard herself moaning in protest beneath his touch. His fingers lingered on her breasts, and on the tiny swell of her belly, before sliding in between her thighs to bring her to a shuddering orgasm right there in the shower.
Then it was her turn. She stroked her way over his firm flesh, heated by a renewed need herself as he sprang into vibrant life beneath her fingertips.
His eyes glittered as he realised what she was trying to do. ‘No,’ came the silken rebuttal, before he lifted her up to thrust into her over and over again, while her legs straddled him, her soft thighs pressing into the hard jut of his hips.
‘Giovanni!’ she gasped.
‘That’s my name,’ he agreed in a grim kind of voice, uncharacteristically feeling himself teetering on the brink of control, and resenting it even as he gloried in it. His mouth hardened as he reined in his desire.
Kate had never been made love to in a shower before, and the contrast between his hot, hard entry and the gushing water that flooded down on them only seemed to intensify her pleasure. She would have liked him to kiss her, but the confined space made kissing difficult. Maybe he liked that, she thought with a sudden wave of sadness—because kissing brought with it a certain kind of tenderness; but then he drove into her even harder and thought gave way to pure, beautiful sensation.
She opened her mouth at the moment of fulfilment and warm water rained into it, at the very same time as Giovanni dissolved with a low, rasping moan of completion.
His face looked darkly serious as he lifted her away from him, the blue eyes giving nothing away.
‘Are you always this generous a lover, cara?’ he asked sombrely, the deep voice sounding almost shaken.
She hid her face by bending to pick up the soap, which had flown from someone’s grip—hers or his, she couldn’t remember. His question seemed to imply that she carried on like this with hundreds of men—oh, if only he knew how small was the number of lovers in her life!
‘I hope so,’ she prevaricated, and saw his mouth tighten.
He wondered why it filled him with the white-hot heat of fury to imagine her like this with another man. Why should he have unrealistic expectations of a woman like this?
Anna had been a virgin, had known only him as her lover, and he had always held back just a little, for fear of shocking her.
Yet with Kate he was at his most inhibitedly rampant. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Novelty value, he told himself angrily, that was all it was. Two weeks of non-stop sex should be able to cure him of that.
But, in the meantime, they had run out of certain essential supplies.
‘Let me wash your hair for you, cara,’ he coaxed in velvet entreaty. ‘And then…”
‘Then?’ The question came out breathlessly, because, supper forgotten, all she wanted to do was to take him to her bed. What on earth was happening to her?
‘We need to go out.’
‘Out?’ she pouted.
He gave a low laug
h, and ran his finger over the swollen contours of her mouth, the laugh becoming one of delight when she nipped at the tip with her teeth like a tiny animal. ‘Yes, out, my beautiful, wanton Kate.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Very,’ he answered truthfully, because he had skipped lunch.
‘Well, I have plenty of food in. Champagne, too,’ she added hopefully, as an incentive.
He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He did not want to drink champagne with her. Why celebrate a fundamental flaw in his character, which he was only just discovering? That this woman had a certain power over him, that she had taken something from him which he had not intended to give? ‘But there is one vital provision we have run out of,’ he told her softly.
‘What?’
For answer he took her hand and guided it between his legs until it touched the silky surface of the rubber which was still in place.
‘We have used three already,’ he told her, on a silken boast.
She felt a detached feeling of disappointment as she let her head rest on his wet shoulder. Of course that was all he was thinking of—that was all they had ever shared, wasn’t it? ‘The chemist it is, then,’ she said, her voice muffled against his skin.
But he heard the disappointment, and frowned. He lifted her face and looked down into it, thinking how curiously vulnerable her bare, wet face seemed—and what a contrast to the firebrand she had been in his arms. ‘You want to have dinner, don’t you?’ he said softly. ‘So go and get ready. We’ll buy what we need and then I’ll take you out to eat.’
And Kate was unprepared for the great leap of excitement in her heart as she pulled the shower door open.
It isn’t a date, she told herself fiercely as she wrapped a towel round her and walked through to the bedroom. It’s just a meal—the fuel we need for what is doubtless going to be a marathon bout of delicious sensation.
But she dressed as if she was going on a date.
The first time she had met him she’d been working—and on the two occasions she had seen him since she had been surprised by him at the flat. Tonight she had been wearing nothing but a satin robe and there had been no opportunity to prepare herself, to make sure that she looked her best.
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