by Penny Jordan
As though Falcon himself recognised that fact he released her, leaning his forehead against her own for a second before saying huskily, ‘It is just as well this dress of yours does not possess a zip. Because if it did right now I’d be caressing your breasts, learning them with my hands and my lips. There is something almost unbearably erotic about the sight of moonlight on a woman’s naked body, caressing it with silver pathways.’
Annie shuddered wildly and pulled back from him.
‘I really must go in.’
‘Yes,’ Falcon agreed meaningfully. ‘I think you must—unless you want me to take this evening’s lesson far further than I had originally planned.’
He wasn’t really asking her if she wanted what he had just described to her, was he? Annie thought dizzily. He couldn’t be. Could he? Her senses swung between fear and excitement. They were a long way from that stage yet, she reassured herself. Indeed, she wasn’t even sure she would be able to go that far.
Annie couldn’t sleep. She had tried—she had tried very hard. But every time she closed her eyes it was as though she was back in the garden with Falcon. In fact, so vivid were the images conjured up behind her closed eyelids that she could almost feel him, as well as see him. His warmth against her own body, his touch on her skin, his scent, his kiss, his voice sensitising her already over-sensitised mind when he told her what he would do to her.
It was no use. Annie pushed back the covers and slid her feet out of the bed and onto the floor. It was so warm tonight that even the thin cotton tee-shirt-style nightdress she was wearing felt unpleasant and unwanted against her skin. Because what she really wanted was the touch of Falcon’s hands?
This was ridiculous. She was glad, of course, that she was rediscovering her sexuality. She just hadn’t expected that what she would feel would be so…so intense. She had imagined she would feel nervous and uncertain, too anxious to really enjoy what was happening, but it was as though somehow Falcon had cast some magic spell on her that had cut through those expected feelings.
She walked to the nursery, where Ollie was fast asleep—as she herself should be and no doubt Falcon was.
Falcon stared unseeingly at the computer screen in front of him. Unable to sleep, he had decided he might as well work on one of his new architectural commissions.
Falcon loved his work. His love of the beauty of Florence’s buildings was, he believed, his mother’s gift to him, since Florence had been her home. Annie would enjoy Florence, and he would enjoy her pleasure in it. As he had enjoyed her pleasure this evening…
It was no use lying to himself. The truth was that he had been caught off guard by the intensity of his own desire for her—aroused, no doubt, by the sweetness of her response to him.
He sat back in his chair and exhaled slowly. The object of the exercise was not his pleasure but Annie’s rediscovery of her lost sexuality. And if he had experienced an arousal and desire with her tonight that he had felt might get out of control then he must ensure that he did not do so again. In future he must experience those things only to the extent that her knowledge of his response would aid her progress. If he could not do that then he would, in his own eyes, be as culpable and as guilty of abusing her as her stepbrother.
He stood up and walked over to the window. His private apartment was in the original part of the castello, which he had remodelled sympathetically to create for himself very modern living quarters in what was essentially a twelfth-century building. The walls had been stripped back to their natural stone, where appropriate, and limestone floors had been laid on the ground floor of the two-storey apartment. Damage to the outer wall in one area had allowed him, with modern building techniques, to replace the crumbling wall with a two-storey, floor-to-ceiling glass ‘wall’, which looked out onto a limestone patio, beyond which an infinity pool melted visually into the sea itself.
Within the area he had renovated there had been enough space to create an inner room, with glass and polished plaster walls, which contained a small modern kitchen again with views towards the sea.
A matt-finish metal staircase led up to a galleried landing and three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and dressing room area. The apartment was furnished with the very best of modern Italian furniture in natural products like leather and wood, as well as steel and modern textiles, and artwork.
The apartment was a clean open space that breathed light and openness. As an antidote to his father’s love of secrecy and control? Falcon frowned. He was digging too deep within himself when there was no need. Better that he thought about Annie than his own childhood.
He doubted that Annie would totally approve of his apartment. She would think it child-unfriendly. Her ideal would no doubt be somewhere more like the villa outside Florence his second brother had bought for his new wife—a large, elegant family home that would happily accommodate any number of children in safety and comfort.
It was his duty, though, as the eldest son to maintain a presence here. When their father died, the people would expect him to be here.
But it was Annie and Oliver and their needs that were preoccupying him right now, rather than those of his people.
Annie. She was invading his thoughts and his senses more deeply and more intensely than he had been prepared for. But that wasn’t her fault.
It had been obvious to him that she was devoid of the least idea of how much it had aroused him to feel her body trembling so wildly just because he had caressed her. A reaction like that could go to a man’s head far too easily, and could make her far too vulnerable.
His body was aching. It had been a long time since he had had a relationship. The effect of too many women throwing themselves at him rather too often and too hard during his twenties had left him picky about the women he dated, and cynical about the likelihood of actually finding love and the right kind of wife in one woman. On a practical level it was important that his wife understood his commitment to his people, and that she was willing to share that commitment with him. But it was equally important to him that his marriage should be one in which husband and wife were faithful to one another. His father’s affair had left him with an abhorrence of marital infidelity. His brothers were lucky. They had had the good fortune to fall in love and be loved in return.
He, on the other hand, had to balance his own needs with the needs of the Leopardi name and its people. Passion and practicality. Could they ever go together? Or must one always be sacrificed in order to have the other?
If so, he must favour practicality for the benefit of others over passion for the benefit of himself.
His body still ached with unsatisfied need.
If he closed his eyes it would be all too easy to picture Annie—not as she had been in the garden, but far more intimately, here with him now, clothed only in moonlight, silvering her breasts and dipping shadows between them, turning her nipples as dark as olives, stroking silken pathways along her body. She would taste of night air and warm skin, her breathing shaken by tremors of desire. She would cry out to him as he kissed her and held her. And he would…
He would do nothing other than remember what his role was in her life, Falcon told himself harshly.
‘I thought this evening we would concentrate on the small things a man might do to show that he is attracted to a woman.’
They had finished dinner. Ollie was asleep—Annie had been up to check on him—and her nerves were so on edge she was sure that Falcon must notice. It was five days since he had kissed her. Five whole days. And there hadn’t been a single one of them when she hadn’t relived that kiss over and over again.
‘The small things?’ Annie repeated. She must not feel disappointed. She must not wish that he would kiss her again. She must not!
‘Yes,’ Falcon confirmed. ‘Such as the way a man might hold the gaze of a woman he admires for that little bit longer, looking at her like so.’
His hand under her chin gently turned her face towards his own and slightly upwards, so that his ga
ze fell directly onto her upturned face and she could see the slow, concentrated way in which he allowed it to almost physically caress her skin.
Tension prickled along her nerve-endings; her heart started to race. She could almost feel the heavy weight of his concentration on her mouth. It was impossible for her to stop her lips from parting, and impossible not to look helplessly into his eyes. He was looking at her in a way that made her catch her breath. The blood was pounding in her ears and a mixture of weakness and excitement was pouring through her.
Falcon knew he had to break the spell he himself had woven, which now trapped him within its sensual mystery. Just looking at Annie’s mouth made him want to feel it beneath his own—to feel too the sweetness of her previous response.
This wasn’t what he had planned. The object was to encourage her to explore and enjoy her sensuality—not for him to become aroused.
Somehow he managed to drag his gaze away. Although there was nothing he could do about the powerful thumping of his heart.
Annie watched him, torn between disappointment and relief as she saw him win his battle for control.
‘I can see how…how erotic something like that could be,’ she told him, striving to sound calm and businesslike—after all, what they were doing was a sort of businesslike venture.
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it, that something so…Well, something that’s just a look really can have such a powerful effect?’ She hesitated, and then told him honestly, ‘You make it all seem so natural and…and that it’s all right to feel…to want…’ She couldn’t risk putting into words exactly what he had made her feel, so instead she finished quickly, ‘It’s not shameful and wrong, like Colin used to say it was.’
‘No man worthy of the name would ever make a woman feel ashamed of her sensuality.’ Falcon’s voice was constricted with the force of his feelings. Her trusting admission had reminded him of the role he had elected to play. His hand dropped away from her face. It might be better in future if he conducted at least some of her lessons in public, where he would surely not be in so much danger from his own reactions.
‘Bring swimming things,’ Falcon had said to her yesterday, when he had asked her if she still wanted to see a little more of the island. But it had simply not occurred to Annie that he would bring her and Ollie somewhere as achingly smart and exclusive as this hotel where they had had lunch, after a drive during which Falcon had not only driven at a safe and comfortable speed but had also given her an expert commentary on their surroundings and their architectural past.
She should surely be getting used to the intimacy of being around him now? she told herself. And to all those small touches that came when he pulled out a chair for her, or helped her in any way—the smiles that accompanied the compliments he paid her. All were designed, she knew, to boost her confidence in herself as a woman.
She was getting used to them, and she did feel comfortable in his presence—but at the same time she also felt confused by the way she herself so often felt. The way she ached inside for him to kiss her again, and her sense of loss when he didn’t.
Today, though, they were having a day out with Ollie.
The hotel he had brought them to was close to the town of Taormina, famous for its historical buildings—including the ruins of a Greek theatre—and for its proximity to Mount Etna. Before lunch they had had time to walk down the main street, Falcon insisting on pushing Ollie’s buggy, whilst he pointed out various sites of interest to her—including the glamorous Caffè Wunderbar, where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had sipped cocktails.
Falcon had even told her, leaning closer to her to murmur the words in her ear that, ‘D.H. Lawrence holidayed here with his wife.’ He had based Mellors the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley’s Lover on a boatman from the town, whom Lawrence’s wife had seduced. ‘Taormina was famous at one time for the effect it had on visiting Englishwomen. You must tell me later if there is any truth in that rumour.’
He had been smiling at her as he spoke, a lazy smile of such intimacy that she had quickly forgotten the small pang of aloneness she had felt earlier, glimpsing a couple ambling along the street totally wrapped up in one another. In fact, having Falcon’s concentrated attention fixed on her had made her feel she was in so much danger of becoming dizzy that she had reached out to steady herself, placing her hand on the handle of the buggy, only to have it immediately covered by Falcon’s hand closing around it.
It was strange, the effect such small gestures could have. She had wanted to pull her hand away—if only to stop her heart from pounding so heavily—but she had reminded herself that Falcon was trying to teach her what it felt like to experience all those things she should have experienced naturally as she grew from a teenager to a young woman.
Because he’d still had his hand over hers, Falcon had been forced to move closer to her as they’d walked along together, and that had meant that she had been acutely conscious of his thigh brushing hers and of his closeness to her. When they had had to cross a road he had released her hand, but her relief had been short-lived because instead he had placed his arm around her waist, guiding her politely across the road.
‘You look terrified,’ he had told her once they were safely across. ‘This kind of physical intimacy is supposed to be a pleasure. When a man takes every opportunity he can to be close to you, in mundane everyday matters of life and in public, it signifies not just his physical desire for you but also his desire to claim and protect you. If you want his attention then the way to show him would be to lean in a little bit closer to him.’ His arm had urged her closer as he had spoken.
‘And relax your body so that it moves with his. Then he will probably do something like this.’ His hand had moved to the curve of her waist, discreetly caressing it.
Discreet so far as any possible onlookers were concerned. The effect his touch had had on the internal workings of her body had been anything but discreet. Warmth from his hand had spread all over her body, making her breasts grow heavy and her nipples tighten and ache. It had pooled with devastating effect low within her, and her mind had created mental images and physical longings that had made her face burn with self-consciousness.
Was that physical desire? She had felt as though Falcon had unlocked a place within her—the turning of its key unleashing almost frighteningly powerful urges. Like the urge she had experienced during lunch, when Falcon had put his hand on her knee to attract her attention whilst she had been spooning baby food into Ollie’s eager mouth, so that he could tell her something. It had been an urge that had meant she would gladly have turned to him in silent invitation for him to slide his hand along the bare length of her thigh.
And he had known what she had been feeling. She was sure of it, Annie thought now, from the shelter of their private tented poolside cabana at the same exclusive hotel where they had had lunch.
Annie had seen photographs of such places in the glossy magazines she’d flicked through in doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms, but she’d never expected to experience the reality of one of them for herself.
Their lunch had been served at a private table under the shade of an umbrella, on signature china with heavy designer cutlery, crystal glasses and beautifully laundered linen.
In the baby changing room provided for guests she’d found everything the most fussy and spoiled mother and baby could ever want—although she had noticed that the two other babies in the changing room were accompanied by uniformed nannies and not their mothers.
Now, having changed into her swimsuit whilst Falcon minded Ollie, she was lying in the shade on the most comfortable lounger imaginable, whilst Ollie played happily within her watchful view.
Falcon had gone for a swim—which was perhaps just as well, she admitted, given the effect the constant sight of him clothed in a pair of admittedly perfectly respectable brightly coloured shorts of the type most of the other men also seemed to be wearing had been having on her.
Her swimsuit and its matching
prettily embroidered kaftan had been chosen by the personal shopper. Annie hadn’t so much as tried them on, convinced that she would never wear any of the clothes the shopper had selected, never mind something as revealing as the swimsuit, but she was forced to admit now that it might have been wiser if she had.
In its elegant box the pewter-coloured swimsuit had looked innocuous enough, even a little dull, but once on it had wrapped itself around her curves in a way that, whilst covering her very respectably, had somehow or other managed to create the most sensual of body shapes—and surely a greater length of leg than she really possessed. It had been a relief to slip on the matching pewter kaftan, which thankfully covered her from her throat to her knees.
Now, though, the privacy of the cabana and the relaxing effect of her lunchtime glass of wine had combined to coax her into removing the kaftan and luxuriating in the wonderful warmth of the sun—easily felt despite the shade.
Tired out after his busy day, Ollie was starting to close his eyes. Smiling at her son, Annie got up off her lounger and picked him up, hugging and kissing him before settling him in his buggy for a sleep.
She had just finished tucking Ollie in when Falcon returned to the cabana from his swim, the sun catching shoulders surely as broad and powerful as those of any Olympic swimmer, tanned as his whole body was, in a beautiful golden brown. There was something about the close proximity of so much semi-naked masculinity that was making it very difficult for her to breathe, Annie admitted to herself.
Not wanting to be caught by Falcon gazing wide-eyed at his broad shoulders and powerful arms, she let her attention slide lower—only to realise her mistake far too late, when it became trapped in watching drops of water from the pool roll down his chest.
She couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t move, couldn’t think—but she could certainly feel, and what she was feeling was telling her in no uncertain terms that Falcon had well and truly unleashed her natural instincts. The weight of the water had pulled his shorts low down on his hips, and the sight of the dark arrowing of his body hair was making her feel slightly light headed. Or was it the thudding pound of her heart that was doing that? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was her relief when Falcon reached for a towel and started to dry himself.