by Penny Jordan
‘I saw you putting sunscreen on Oliver earlier. I hope you’ve put some on yourself,’ he said when he had finished drying his body and was rubbing at his hair.
‘Yes. Yes, I have,’ Annie told him quickly. She could feel her temperature soaring at the same speed with which her heartbeat was accelerating at the thought of having Falcon offer to perform that task for her.
‘Good.’ He reached down and picked up the sunscreen she had placed by her sun lounger and handed it to her, requesting, ‘Do my back for me, will you?’
What could she say? If she refused he was bound to want to know why—and besides, this was exactly the kind of thing that a woman of her age should be used to doing. Falcon would make allowances for her, she reassured herself as she nodded her head in acquiescence, her throat suddenly too dry for her to be able to trust herself to speak. He knew, after all, that she had no experience of this kind of personal intimacy.
He had presented his back to her now, and was standing with his hands on his hips, waiting.
Her hands were trembling so much she dropped the bottle of lotion, and then struggled to uncap it, causing Falcon to turn round and take it from her, telling her wryly, ‘Hold out your hand.’ He squeezed a small amount of the lotion into her palm, before turning his back to her a second time.
She started at the back of his neck, suffering the shock of the silky hot feel of his skin against her lotion-slick hands as she worked the cream into his skin as slowly and as carefully as though it had been Ollie’s baby skin she was protecting. Beneath her fingertips his shoulders were every bit as strongly muscled as they had looked, and it was hard for her not to give in to the unexpected temptation to trace the shape of his bones with her fingertip. How extraordinary and amazing and life-affirming it was to know that one day her son, her baby, would be like this—a man whom women would admire and desire and love, just as they must Falcon.
Her body stiffened. How many women had there been? How many had he loved back? Why was that sharp pain skewering her heart?
Falcon’s voce—‘Something wrong?’—brought her back to reality.
‘I’ve run out of lotion,’ she told him.
The cap was still off the bottle, but strangely she felt no inclination to point that fact out to him when he picked it up and tipped some more into her waiting hand.
‘I’m not Oliver, you know,’ he told her. ‘In a real man and woman situation there would be nothing wrong and a whole lot right in caressing me as a potential lover whilst you’re doing that.’
Immediately Annie stiffened.
‘I’m not used to things like this,’ she reminded him defensively. It hurt to know that he thought her touch too clinical to be arousing, even though she told herself that it ought not to.
‘Perhaps it would be better if I gave you a small demonstration?’ Falcon suggested.
Before she could say anything he had poured some of the lotion into his own hand and was turning her around.
She was wearing her hair up in a knot for coolness, and she could feel the warmth of Falcon’s breath as he leaned closer to her. Was he going to kiss her? Her stomach turned liquid with a longing that turned to disappointment when he didn’t. Only for that disappointment to go up in flames of fresh sensual excitement when he eased the straps of her swimsuit down. Frantically she clutched the front of it to her breasts, whilst Falcon began to slowly stroke and circle trails of hot desire on the vulnerable flesh of her bare back.
How could something as simple as putting on sun cream be so unbearably erotic? Annie felt as though she had entered a whole new world of sensation and discovery. What Falcon was doing was giving her a master class in the art of sensual massage, she recognized, as her body took fire and her inhibitions were burned away.
Long before he had reached the base of her spine her body was urging her to beg him to remove her swimsuit completely and take her in his arms. Surely it wasn’t possible for her to be feeling like this so quickly, so easily, and so…so intensely? Perhaps Colin had been right when he had warned her all those years ago that there was something about her that meant she needed protecting from her own too-sexual nature?
As though somehow her thoughts and fears had communicated themselves to Falcon, he turned her around to face him, his hands firm and cool on her upper arms, holding her safe, making her feel safe.
‘You are aroused and that is exactly what I intended to happen,’ he told her calmly. ‘It’s a completely natural reaction to my deliberately erotic stimulation of your body and your senses. It’s nothing to feel ashamed of or concerned about. Rather, you should feel proud of your inbuilt ability to be the woman nature designed you to be. No matter what your stepbrother might have told you, responding sensually to a man who has aroused your desire does not make you bad or promiscuous or any of the other things I suspect he said to poison you against yourself.’
‘Thank you for saying that.’ Annie could feel tears threatening to sting her eyes. ‘I was questioning how…how appropriate it was for me to feel what…what I was feeling so quickly and so—so very much.’
‘It was entirely appropriate. And, if it makes you feel happier, I have to confess that I was equally aroused myself.’
Annie looked at him uncertainly before venturing to ask, ‘Is that good or bad?’
‘It’s both good and bad,’ Falcon answered enigmatically, slanting her one of those sidelong looks of assessment that made her bones melt and her pulse race. She had used up more than her allowance of courage for one day. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him just what his response meant.
‘Now,’ Falcon announced briskly, handing her the lotion, ‘it’s your turn to practise on me what I have just shown you.’
‘You mean, you want me to make you feel the way you just made me feel?’ The words were out before she could call them back, leaving her feeling wretchedly gauche and foolish, but Falcon seemed not to notice, simply nodding his head and agreeing.
‘I certainly want you to try. I promise you that when you do meet a man with whom you want to have sex you will want not just to arouse him with your touch but to touch him simply for the pleasure it will give you. And you will feel much more confident doing so if you know what you are doing.’
She knew that he was right. But even so she could feel herself baulking at what he had told her he wanted her to do.
There was no point in arguing, though. Falcon had already stretched himself out full-length on his front on one of the loungers, his head pillowed on his forearms.
Annie tried not to feel alarmed, but to think instead of what she was doing as a practical exercise. Falcon had started at the back of her neck, causing delicious little thrills of pleasure to course through her and then to cascade down her body as he worked his way down it. She must try to mirror his movements.
She felt awkward at first, not sure how to touch him or where, simply copying what he had done to her. But within a very short space of time her own pleasure—the pleasure she was deriving from touching him—took over, totally obliterating her earlier self-consciousness.
When she heard Falcon exhale sharply as she stroked her fingertips down his spine, a thrill of triumph shot through her, emboldening her to slowly caress the taut flesh ether side of the base of his spine, using both hands as she moved out towards his hips, loving the feel of male flesh and muscle and bone beneath her touch.
In fact, such was her pleasure in what she was doing that at one point she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his skin, hesitantly at first, and then with more confidence as she heard the sound that escaped from his lungs—more of a slight groan than a mere breath, its pent-up sexual tension increasing the ache in her own lower body. If he’d been wearing briefer swimming shorts, or even just a towel, she’d have been able to move lower, to stroke the dark haired breadth of his powerful thighs.
That part of her that contained the mystery and the mechanics of the female orgasm quivered and fluttered and then ached into a pulsing life t
hat froze her into complete shock—just at the same time as Falcon turned over and reached for her, lifting her with one easy movement from her position kneeling beside the lounger to lie against his body.
Like sheet lightning the most exquisite pleasure burst through her in an almost unbearable ache of delight that had her both appalled by her own runaway reaction to him, wanting to pull back, and yet so eager for more that she desperately wanted to press herself closer to him.
His lips were close to her ear, and when he murmured in it, ‘Very good…’ fresh quivers of arousal hurled themselves through her body. ‘But one word of warning. When you do this for real, it might be better to ascertain how strong your partner’s self-control is before you start. Especially if you are in a public place. Because right now you have aroused me to a very improper state for where we are, and I have to award you full marks and the continuation of your lesson this evening in my apartment.’
Did his words mean what she thought they meant? That tonight he would take things to their natural conclusion? She wanted to protest, to tell him that things were moving too fast and that she wasn’t ready, but his hand was over her heart, measuring its frantic beat. How could she deny that was what she wanted when her own heartbeat was giving her away and telling him the truth?
Fortunately she had a cast iron excuse to delay things.
‘I can’t leave Ollie,’ she told him truthfully. Her son was her first concern at all times and in all ways.
‘You won’t need to leave him. You can bring him with you. I’m sure that he won’t mind sleeping in a travel cot for once. I asked Maria to make sure that she ordered one just in case you ever wanted to accompany me to Florence.’
The gate was closed, the die cast, the decision made. Tonight she would lie naked in Falcon’s arms in Falcon’s bed, and he would teach her body all that it needed to know to be free. She had to say something.
She half stumbled into speech. ‘You love Florence, don’t you?’ It was an attempt to cling on to some edge of social normality—a difficult task when she was lying half naked on top of him and his arm was holding her firmly against his body.
‘Yes.’ Falcon reached for her hand, closing her fingers over her palm and looking down at it as though he wanted to guard his words and his emotions. ‘Which is why my father was probably right to claim when I was a child that I was not enough of a Leopardi to succeed him—that I was more my mother’s child than his. Unfortunately for him, and for me, I am his eldest son. Therefore, no matter how much he would have liked to put Antonio in my place, nothing short of my death and the deaths of both my brothers could have achieved that. As a boy I used to fear that—’
He broke off, but Annie guessed what he had been about to say. ‘You were afraid that your father might try to harm you?’
‘I was afraid for my brothers,’ he admitted.
His hand was still curled round her palm, and without thinking she placed her other hand on top of it in a gesture of silent comfort.
‘That must have been dreadful for you.’ She could easily imagine how dreadful. He had such a strongly developed sense of duty and responsibility towards others that it was only natural that as the eldest he should have felt protective of his brothers even if their family life had been a happy one. But when she added the burden of the tensions and fears he had just admitted to, it filled Annie with a protective surge of almost maternal emotion to think of what Falcon the boy had had to endure.
‘My father would never have hurt them—or me, of course. He spoke merely out of the frustration of his excessive love for Antonio. It is not without irony, though, he felt that the son he did lose should have been his favourite. It is my opinion that the responsibility for Antonio’s faults of character can be placed at our father’s door. He spoiled and indulged Antonio from the moment of his birth—and, worse, taught and encouraged him to copy his own attitude of contempt towards the three of us. He allowed Antonio to grow up believing he was invincible, beyond any form of law or retribution. He was in many ways the orchestrator and the cause of Antonio’s death, and it is my belief that he knows that.’
‘Sometimes I worry that Ollie might have inherited some of Antonio’s…failings,’ Annie admitted, putting into words for the first time a fear that haunted the deepest recesses of her own heart.
‘Oliver is himself,’ Falcon assured her, immediately and with firm authority. ‘He has you to love and protect him, and if you will allow me, until such time as you do find a man with whom you wish to share your life and bear more children, I would like to stand as his protector and the male influence in his life. You need not fear that my love for him will be tainted by his relationship to Antonio. He is a child of my blood—Leopardi blood—and that is all that matters to me. He will have my love for as long as I am alive to give it to him.’
Tears filled Annie’s eyes. She had never imagined that a man as male as Falcon could speak like this, and be so in accord with her own emotions.
‘My father had hoped to discover a grandson that he could mould in his lost son’s image. But I am not a boy any longer, I am a man, and I will not allow him to ruin Oliver as he did Antonio.’
Annie moved imperceptibly closer to him, alarmed by the thought of the Prince trying to control her precious son.
‘Maria told me that you are not expecting your father to live very much longer.’
‘We were warned that he would not have much more time, but the new medication he is on seems to have give him a fresh lease of life. Despite all the pain he has caused us, I know that neither I or my brothers want his death.’
‘No, of course not,’ Annie agreed instantly.
Her hand still rested comfortingly on Falcon’s. He looked up at her, and then said softly, ‘I was right about you. You are a very seductive woman.’
Annie looked down at their hands.
‘No, not that,’ Falcon told her. ‘It is your compassion and your tenderness that make you seductive—not just the passion you keep so firmly hidden away. But tonight we shall see it revealed as its own fiercely sweet self.’
Annie could feel herself starting to tremble. She didn’t resist when Falcon released her hand and then lifted his own newly free hand to the back of her head, so that he could pull her down towards him to kiss her.
It was only the briefest of kisses—just the mere brush of his lips against hers—but it was enough to tell her just how eagerly her body would respond to him later.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANNIE had had a full tour of Falcon’s apartment, and was genuinely impressed, and filled with admiration for everything about it—especially the double-height floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the living room and the master bedroom.
‘There are no curtains,’ she had commented in surprise. She had noticed this lack as she and Falcon had stood side by side, looking out across the clifftop to the sea beyond. Falcon had insisted on holding Ollie, who had been grizzling a little bit—preparatory, Annie thought, to cutting a new tooth. He had smiled widely with delight the minute Falcon had taken him in his arms.
‘No, this corner of the castello, very private,’ Falcon had agreed. ‘I like the freedom of lying in bed and watching the night sky—just as I like the freedom of being able to walk naked around my own personal space, and swim naked in my pool. They are simple pleasures, but very meaningful to those who cherish them. There is nothing to compare with the cloak of the night sky on one’s naked body, like the touch of velvet, or the silken brush of water against bare skin.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Annie had told him, uncomfortably aware of just what the images his words were drawing inside her head were doing to her body.
‘Well, tonight you can know, if you wish,’ he had said softly. Which had had her running for the safety of banal conversation rather than the bold acceptance of his offer which her body had demanded.
To her astonishment Falcon had cooked their dinner himself—a delicious fresh fish dish, served with stuffed vegetables and
pasta in a delicately textured sauce, although he had freely admitted the chef had prepared it for him earlier.
‘What will the staff think about me having dinner alone here with you?’ she had asked, a little apprehensively.
His answer had been a dismissive, confident shrug.
‘They will think that I have invited you to have dinner with me in my private quarters. Nothing more—nothing less.’
Did that mean that he regularly entertained women here? she had wondered. And had then had to question just why she had felt such a savage surge of emotion at that thought.
Now she had put Ollie to bed in his travel cot in the dressing room off Falcon’s bedroom, so that she would hear him if he woke up. She knew that Falcon would be waiting for her to continue what they had started earlier, but inexplicably—or perhaps sensibly she didn’t know—she felt self-consciously reluctant to go to him. But, having come this far, she must do so—there could be no going back. Not if she wanted to be the mother Ollie deserved to have.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the dressing room door and stepped into the bedroom—which was empty.
Confused, she looked uncertainly around the room—and then tensed as Falcon emerged from the bathroom, wearing a robe.
‘I’m going to have a swim. Why don’t you join me?’
Did he mean a naked swim? Was he wearing anything under that robe?
Her heart was thudding, and that fluttering, pulsing wanton aching that she had felt earlier had started up again.
‘I’d better stay here in case Ollie wakes up,’ she answered feebly.
A staircase led down from the bedroom to the patio and pool area below, and Annie vowed that she would not watch Falcon to see whether or not he was planning to swim in the nude. Instead she determinedly went back down the stairs to retrieve the white wine spritzer she had abandoned earlier, when she had come to put Ollie to bed.