by Lynne Graham
‘We should separate and return to the hall for ten or fifteen minutes…practise discretion,’ Andreo ground out half under his breath, while gazing stormily down into her beautiful face, his reluctance to part from her palpable, ‘but I don’t want to let you out of my sight for a second in case I lose you, cara.’
Unaccustomed to being treated like a femme fatale whom no mere male could resist, Pippa just giggled, convinced that he was teasing her. Hands snapping to her elbows, Andreo backed her into the phone cubicle behind her and hauled her close.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped in stark disconcertion.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Andreo enquired in a husky, ragged undertone, languorous golden eyes hot with invitation on hers.
Held in intimate contact with every lean, hard angle of his big, powerful frame, Pippa discovered in shock that she just wanted to be even closer to him, indeed so close that she might qualify as an extra layer of his skin. This time around she understood why her breasts felt heavy and almost swollen. She recognised her own desire for him and her face burned with mortification but nothing could kill the raw, wicked longing quivering through her in a thousand tiny stinging needles as her body came alive in ways entirely new to her.
‘Philly…?’
Tempted beyond all bearing by promptings that she had never been forced to deal with before, Pippa let her arms slide up to link round his strong brown neck and eased closer into the hard, unyielding strength of him. With a stifled Italian curse, Andreo succumbed to that frank invitation with all the volatile passion that lay at the heart of his nature.
Pippa might have been new to passion but no victim could have been more eager to seek her fate. He took her softly parted lips under his and thrust them apart with the forceful onslaught of his. The sweet, unbearably rousing invasion of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth made her heart give a heavy thud and tightened her every muscle. All of a sudden her entire body was alive and throbbing with near-painful excitement and greedy for more of what she had never had.
With a reflexive shudder at the amount of strength it demanded from him and rigid with fierce desire, Andreo yanked himself back from her. Heavily lidded golden eyes swept her bemused face and lingered on the soft, swollen red of her ripe mouth. ‘Ten minutes…and you stay within view the whole time,’ he warned thickly. ‘Then we leave together.’
Blinking like a woman emerging from a dark spell of enchantment, Pippa let herself be walked back across the foyer and finally into the busy hall. The clumps of chattering people seemed to evaporate from their path at magical speed and Andreo only came to a halt when they reached a vacant corner table. There he snapped his fingers to hail a passing waiter and order her a drink. Momentarily, his imperious show of command took her aback.
‘Now don’t move from here until I come back, cara mia,’ Andreo instructed in a low-pitched drawl. ‘It would be so easy for us to lose each other in this crush.’
‘Are you worth waiting for?’ Pippa heard herself enquire in a teasing undertone for she could only be amused at being spoken to as though she were a feckless child likely to wander off and get lost without his guidance.
‘Don’t laugh. This is not funny.’ Andreo was angry that she could seem unconcerned at the same risk and equally infuriated by his own lack of cool. He wanted her. But the level of that wanting was already more than he felt comfortable with. As his mobile phone broke into Marco’s colourful signature tune again, he worked out how best to pin her down in the short term.
‘Do you think you could help my little brother with his homework again?’ he asked. ‘He speaks excellent English.’
Touched by that request, Pippa grinned and extended her hand for his phone. Sipping at her drink, she talked Marco through what remained of his assignment while she watched Andreo on the other side of the room watch her in turn. Every time she saw that proud dark head angle in her direction, scorching dark golden eyes burning up the distance between them, her mouth ran dry and her heart raced. Venstar bigwigs surrounded him and the portly little man she had earlier identified as D’Alessio, but in that almost anonymous sea of people she was conscious of only one very individual male: Andreo.
Everything she was feeling was so outrageously new to her. Nothing had ever seemed so wonderful and miraculous as the simple fact that Andreo appeared to be as impressed by her as she was by him. No matter how hard she tried to reclaim her usual sterling common sense, it was overwhelmed by the outrageously girlish giddy excitement leaping and dancing through her bloodstream.
She had not known a guy could kiss like that. She had not known that a guy could actually make her feel like that. Oh, yes, she had heard women describe certain men as irresistible, but she had scorned the belief that any male could have such an extreme effect on her. But even while she had disbelieved those claims, she had always secretly longed to be proven wrong, she acknowledged dizzily. And when Andreo had kissed her every skin cell in her body had responded with breathtaking enthusiasm. All that had kept her upright was the reality that she had had her arms wrapped round him and he was strong enough to bear her weight.
While she studied Andreo from afar her blue eyes sparkled with wondering satisfaction when he immediately directed his gaze to her as though some sixth sense had warned him of her appraisal. His charismatic smile set fireworks off inside her tummy and made her heart thump as frantically fast as though she had run a marathon.
‘Will you give me your phone number?’ Marco prompted in a wheedling tone. ‘You’re much better at explaining this stuff than Andreo is.’
Lounging back against the edge of the table, her burnished fall of hair fiery as flames against her fair, delicate skin, the vibrant blue dress a simple understated frame for her superb long-legged figure, Pippa was attracting a great deal of both male and female attention. But not one of the star-struck men admiring her would have dared to approach her while Andreo D’Alessio watched her with such blatant possessiveness in his arrogant gaze and a flashing intimate smile on his firm, hard mouth.
Pippa had just finished talking to Marco when Andreo rejoined her. Drawing level with her, he barely broke his stride as he closed a lean brown hand over hers to urge her towards the exit. She heard the buzz of speculative voices break out as they passed by together. But then he was incredibly handsome and, as nobody had approached her while she’d been alone at the table, it seemed fair to assume that none of her colleagues had recognised her without her curls, her spectacles and her serviceable suits.
When the lift doors closed on them, she leant back against the cool metal wall because the fresh air-conditioned atmosphere was making her head swim to a dismaying degree.
‘You still haven’t told me why you suspect Andreo D’Alessio of being prejudiced against women in the workplace…’
In disconcertion, Pippa blinked. ‘I thought you’d have forgotten about that by now—’
‘I never forget anything,’ Andreo confided.
‘Well, do your best to forget that,’ Pippa mumbled ruefully. ‘I was indiscreet—’
‘You can trust me,’ Andreo purred.
‘A little bird told me your namesake—’
‘My namesake? The little guy who reminded you of a leprechaun?’
Reassured by that light-hearted sally, Pippa nodded and tried with some difficulty to concentrate. ‘The word is that the big boss only likes pretty women to make it up the promotion ladder—’
‘That’s a four-letter word, cara!’ Andreo incised in bold disagreement.
When it came to their mutual employer, he was evidently very strong on the loyalty front. As that was an old-fashioned quality that she admired, she could not think less of him for it. Lashes carefully lowered, for she wanted the topic closed, she murmured soothingly, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘I know I’m right.’ Andreo continued with conviction.
Pippa almost smiled at his absolute certainty.
Andreo reached out and used her own
hands to draw her close to him again. ‘I like the way you feel against me, carissima…’
Powerfully aware of his abrasive masculinity and the hard muscular strength of him, she rested against him, suddenly weak with wanting. ‘Me too…I mean, I like being close to you too.’
He laughed with husky appreciation, slid long fingers into the thick fall of her hair to tug her head back and look at her again. Beneath the harsh lights in the lift, the clarity of her blue eyes mesmerised him for he could read every passing thought: the shy uncertainty laced with the stubborn bravado of her pride and deeper still…the feverish hunger for him that she could not hide.
He devoured her mouth with an urgency that left her reeling. She could not spare the time or the energy to breathe and she lost herself in the earthy taste of him, revelling in the eagerness of her own desire. When he straightened to walk her out of the lift again, she let her head rest against his broad shoulder while she drank in air to aid her starved lungs.
Her mind was in turmoil. She could barely believe that what she was feeling was real but was at the same time impossibly greedy for that no-longer-connected-to-planet-earth sensation to continue. He employed a card to open a door that led into a very luxurious suite.
Not having until that moment taken the time to consider where he was taking her, Pippa was aghast to appreciate that he had accommodation in the hotel itself and that she had unthinkingly allowed him to bring her back up there with him.
‘Are you expecting me to stay the night with you?’ Pippa demanded in dismay.
CHAPTER THREE
ANDREO dealt Pippa a level challenging appraisal. ‘That’s entirely your decision.’
Colour swept Pippa’s face and she could have bitten her tongue out in embarrassment. Of course that was her decision! It was a good half-century since women had been raised to think that what a man expected a woman should invariably try to deliver. She walked over to the tall windows that overlooked the spectacular city skyline but she could only think of how foolish she must have sounded to him. Like a nervous virgin who had never been alone with a man in a hotel suite before? All the heat drained from below her fair skin to leave her pale.
Unfortunately, Hilary had only managed to make her over on the outside with a smooth sophisticated façade and inside she was still the same old Pippa Stevenson, she acknowledged. Pippa, who had attended an all girls’ school and whose evenings and weekends had been filled with extra classes and academic study, rather than social events and flirting. Boys had always seemed as remote and strange to her as alien entities and she had never learned what to say or how to behave around them. At the age of seventeen she had been humiliated by the young man she’d been infatuated with and, from that day on, hurt pride had become her strongest source of protection.
Time might have moved on but once bitten twice shy had proved to be her motto. Since then she might as well have been living on a single sex planet, she conceded ruefully, for she had never again risked pain or rejection. For almost six years she had been her father’s carer and while it was true that the older man had demanded that she devote all her free time to his needs and his interests, it was equally true that she had not offered much of a protest. It had been easier to be a dutiful daughter and accept without question that she was the ‘big strapping lass’ her parent had often called her and highly unlikely to appeal to any man. From the age of twelve, when she had first shot up in height to tower over all her classmates like a lanky beanpole, Pippa had loathed her extra inches and had pointlessly longed to be small and dainty like her pretty mother.
But now, for the first time, she shook free of that memory without regret and reminded herself that Andreo appeared to admire her just as she was. She stole a covert glance at him and collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and her mouth ran dry. He was breathtakingly handsome.
Andreo watched her, for she was so still that she might have been a living breathing statue. Her feathery lashes lowered above the pale perfect line of her cheekbones and she looked incredibly vulnerable. It was obvious that she was having second thoughts. Was there another guy in her life? Someone to whom she felt she owed loyalty? Whatever, he chose patience over the risk of losing her altogether. ‘Perhaps I should just take you home,’ he murmured evenly.
Pippa went rigid, for that unexpected offer only heightened her tension. Go home? It would be the sensible thing to do. Yet her whole being rebelled against the concept. Sensible Pippa. When had she ever been anything else? And where had it got her? She had become a workaholic with no social life and no man had looked twice at her either. When had she ever felt for any male what she was feeling now?
‘Is there anyone else?’ Andreo breathed, his tension palpable.
‘No…’ She drew in a slow steadying breath. ‘You?’
‘No.’ The blonde who had last shared Andreo’s bed was modelling in Mexico and he saw no reason to confess that the lady had become yesterday’s news at the exact same instant that he’d seen her successor before him.
The atmosphere buzzed.
‘I don’t believe that I’ve ever wanted any woman as much as I want you, bella mia,’ Andreo confided with raw honesty.
‘I want to stay…’ Pippa whispered in a rush and, shaken though she was by the force of her own craving for him, she was equally entrapped by the simple acknowledgement that she still had a whole new dimension of life to explore. Her body seemed to be developing responses all of its own. The fabric of her dress felt abrasive against the taut peaks of her breasts and there was a swollen heaviness low in her pelvis that made it a challenge for her to remain still.
‘You won’t regret it.’ His slashing smile of satisfaction was sufficient reward for her agreement. Her heart hammered so hard inside her ribcage that she felt dizzy. He was so beautiful and when he looked at her she felt beautiful too. She crossed the room on lower limbs that felt as unreliable in the support stakes as bendy twigs. She was trembling but she reached for his silk tie like a woman who meant business, a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.
Averse to her clumsy approach, his wretched tie refused to cooperate and went into a tight, immoveable knot. Just when she was on the brink of screaming for a pair of scissors, lean brown fingers intervened and jerked loose the knot with apparent ease. He cast the tie aside and drew her raised hands into his own to fold her back into his arms. She was as boneless as a rag doll until he crushed her into the hard, muscular wall of his chest, one masculine hand knotting into her bright hair to angle her head back. Then she shivered, stretched up to him, helpless in the thrall of her own wild anticipation.
His expert mouth swooped down to taste hers again and a soft moan of encouragement broke low in her throat. He traced her lips, penetrated them and a series of little gasps were torn from her as she clung to him to stay upright. He bent down and swept her up into his arms.
‘Aren’t I too heavy?’ she mumbled through swollen, stinging lips and a sense of wonderment as dangerous as a hypnotic spell. He was, she was convinced, ‘the one’, the one special guy who she had always hoped and prayed might be waiting out there for her. The guy she was going to fall madly in love with. The guy who was hopefully going to fall madly in love with her. Well, maybe not madly, she adjusted hurriedly, fearful of hoping for too much and ending up with precisely nothing as a punishment for daring to be so ambitious. Even if he fell just a little bit in love with her, she would be content, she swore to herself.
‘Light as a doll, cara mia…I’m just an unrepentant show-off,’ Andreo teased as he strode into the elegant contemporary bedroom next door and set her down again onto her own feet.
One of her shoes had fallen off and she kicked off the other, but he had already stepped back from her to unbutton his shirt. Eyes wide, she became his audience. Her toes curled in the luxury carpet while she watched as the shirt fell open to display a sleek bronze wedge of masculine torso, his powerful pectoral muscles delineated by a triangle of rough dark curls. Her tummy flipped
and she felt alarmingly short of breath and very hot. Knees wobbling, she backed up until her legs hit the edge of the bed and she sank down on the luxurious mattress.
‘What…?’ A wicked smile slanted over his wide, sensual mouth and golden eyes gleamed from below dense black lashes. ‘Did you want to take off the shirt for me?’
‘No…er…I’m not into shirts,’ Pippa framed, dry-mouthed and serious, for she had decided there was nothing less cool than struggling with male apparel.
‘You can always practise on my tie, cara,’ Andreo teased with intense amusement for he had found her lack of dexterity and the inexperience implied by that trait endearing.
‘Is that a fact?’ Pippa strove to match his mood with a quip while acknowledging that his sheer masculine presence both thrilled and intimidated her.
‘Any time…’ Andreo husked, strolling forward with all the formidable and yet daunting grace of a prowling tiger to lean down and close his large hands over her smaller ones and raise her upright.
That close to him her nostrils flared on the clean, husky male scent of his lithe, lean physique. She quivered, a curl of heat igniting low in her stomach. Shorn of her shoes as she now was, he struck her as awesomely tall and broad.
‘Santo Cielo…you’ve shrunk a little,’ Andreo mocked. ‘But promise me that you will always wear those heels around me. Seeing you top all the guys around me gives me a high—’
‘It…does?’
‘Sì. You looked as disdainful as a queen too.’ He shed his shirt and reached behind her with complete calm to unzip her dress for her.
‘Couldn’t we put the lights out?’ Pippa mumbled in as humorous a tone as she could manage, the cooler air brushing her spine merely reminding her that when the dress went she had only one more layer left to hide behind.
Andreo actually laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, bella mia!’