by Lynne Graham
Perspiration beaded her short upper lip. ‘I guess I was…’
He skimmed the straps down from her taut shoulders and let her slinky little blue dress fall to the carpet. He spread long fingers to frame her cheekbones. ‘You are stunning…’
But Pippa had already closed her eyes sooner than risk seeing his disappointment when he saw how thin and flat-chested she was when stripped back to her bra and briefs. Nerves strung high, she shivered and he gathered her up into his arms and came down onto the bed with her cradled across his hard thighs. He tasted her mouth long and slow and the forbidden heat in her tummy flickered up again in spite of her tension.
‘Sexy…’ Andreo growled, appreciating the satin-smooth softness of her delicate white skin.
Nobody had ever called her that before and the temptation was too great: her lashes lifted on bemused eyes as blue as sapphires. ‘Sexy?’
‘Very…’ He found everything about her sexy: her hair, her eyes, her height, her incandescent smile, the air of fragility that she exuded that gave him a curious urge to open doors for her, the sort of courteous but unfashionable stuff he normally only did in the radius of his female relatives.
Mesmerised by the intensity of his dark golden appraisal, she missed out on the deft movement with which he unclipped her bra. ‘Honestly…?’
As her firm little breasts were bared his breathing fractured. Air chilled the tightly beaded tips and she looked down at her own bare flesh in dismay before bringing her hands up to cover herself from his intent appraisal. ‘Lights…’ she said in a wobbly voice.
‘I love your body…’ Andreo told her.
Feverish colour flooded her cheeks as she scrambled off him and dived with more haste than elegance below the fancy quilted spread and tugged it back up to her chin.
Andreo elevated a level dark brow and surveyed her with a frown. Her cinnamon hair was fanned out like polished silk round her face, which was hot pink to her hairline. Her eyes were evasive.
‘I think I need a drink,’ she gasped, amazed that after all the alcohol she had imbibed she still felt almost as sober as the proverbial judge.
Andreo sprang upright and strolled over to the mini bar to withdraw a chilled mineral water. Opening it, he emptied it into a crystal tumbler and wandered back to extend it to her.
Clutching the spread to her, Pippa accepted the glass. She did not have the nerve to tell him that she had expected to receive an alcoholic beverage. ‘You must be thinking I’m a little strange,’ she muttered in a rush.
‘Why would I think that?’ Drinking water from the bottle he had helped himself to, Andreo rested his lean hips on the edge of the cabinet opposite while he contemplated her tense and embarrassed face.
No way was she having another intoxicating drink. He liked his partners to know what day it was. But there was another guy in her life, he was sure of it. That was why she was so jumpy. His competitive spirit soared into the ascendant. He would talk his way into that bed with her tonight. He might only get this one chance to pull her and once the deed was done, it would squash the competition. And if she didn’t squash the competition after the event, he most assuredly would take care of that necessity for her. He didn’t share and she was his. Dio mio, never before had he kissed a woman in a public bar or been so challenged to restrain his overwhelming hunger to possess her. Together they were hotter than a volcano and if she didn’t yet appreciate that fact, he would soon teach her to do so.
The silence stretched and with the galling cool of an expert interrogator he made no attempt to break it.
Pippa sat up in a driven motion and hugged the spread beneath her arms. ‘There’s something I ought to mention…’
Andreo tensed. He really did not want to hear about the other man. Everything she told him would linger in his memory and annoy him. He didn’t know how he knew that. He didn’t even know why he was thinking that, for he had never been one of those weird possessive types. But he did know that he did not want to hear the low-down on her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. ‘I don’t believe in exchanging stories about other lovers.’
‘Neither do I…and I’m not even sure I should make such an issue of this…but—’ Pippa sucked in a jerky breath and shot him an anxious glance ‘—it seems only fair to warn you that I haven’t done this much.’
Andreo was touched. He didn’t want to hurt her pride so there was no easy way of telling her that she had made her relative lack of experience pretty obvious. He was fine with that. But then he was a very open-minded guy, he reflected.
‘In fact…’ Pippa hesitated, worrying at her full lower lip with her teeth, her quiet voice dropping lower and lower in level until he was leaning forward without realising it to catch her words. ‘…to be really, really frank, I haven’t done this at all…’
His winged black brows pleated. ‘Say that again…’
‘Ever,’ Pippa concluded.
‘You’re telling me that you’ve never spent the night with a guy you’ve just met before?’
‘Yes, but not just that,’ Pippa interposed a shade irritably for he was being exceedingly slow on the uptake when she wanted him to get the message faster than the speed of light. ‘Apart from the fact that I’m not promiscuous—’
‘Hey…hold it there, I was not making a judgement,’ Andreo slotted in, lying in his teeth for he never, ever got involved with women who slept around.
‘But that…well, that I’ve never slept with a guy before…I’m, er, you know…’ Pippa shot an almost pleading glance at Andreo but, while showing every sign of granting her one hundred per cent of his attention, he did not seem about to help her out ‘…a virgin…’
‘A…a what?’ Andreo frowned in evident bewilderment. ‘Did you just say what I thought you said?’
Bearing a close resemblance to a stone image at that point, Pippa nodded, twin high spots of self-conscious colour blooming over her cheekbones. He looked really shocked and she had not been prepared for that reaction.
‘But you’re not a teenager.’ Andreo seemed to be sinking into deeper shock with every second that passed.
‘So?’
A virgin. She was a virgin. He was blowing it. He ought to be taking this confession in his stride, not staring at her as if she had just leapt fully formed out of a medieval painting. She looked so anxious and she was blushing like mad and something inside him just twisted. In one bold movement, he rose upright and moved forward to come down on the bed beside her.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Andreo asserted, fishing below the spread to gather her back into his arms but with rather more circumspection that he had utilised moments earlier.
It was not a problem, he told himself. Why should it be a problem?
‘Honestly?’ she pressed unevenly.
Lust fought with innate decency inside Andreo and the guy he liked to think he was surfaced for the first time in longer than he cared to recall. ‘You need to think about this—’
‘No, I don’t.’ Pippa closed her arms tightly round him and resisted the urge to scream that she had spent all her adult years thinking and thinking and thinking and hardly ever just doing. The very feel of his long, lean body next to hers made her heart speed up. She gazed into dark golden eyes enhanced by spiky black lashes and breathing normally became a distinct challenge. In fact just looking at him unleashed a flock of butterflies in her tummy and that was followed up by a wanton, warm, melting sensation that pierced deep enough to make her blush and squirm.
‘Why me?’ Andreo framed, inching down the spread while he kept her preoccupied and burying his hungry mouth against the delicate ridge of her collar-bone where a tiny pulse was flickering like crazy. The very scent of her soft skin enthralled him.
Jerking, she gasped in oxygen like a drowning swimmer and then buried her face in the cropped luxuriance of his black hair. Her entire body was humming like a race car engine revving up and she couldn’t concentrate. ‘I don’t know…’
‘Yes, you do…’ Andreo co
untered.
And he was right, she registered in dim surprise. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything or anybody: it was that basic.
Andreo thrust the spread from his path and paused to admire the succulent pink nipples he had uncovered. ‘You’re exquisite…’ And he rubbed those stiff, swollen buds with knowing fingers before lowering his dark head to lave them with his tongue.
Her spine arched up to him and she cried out in sensual shock at the sheer intensity of sensation. Her fingers dug into his hair and she flung her head back. He toyed with the tender tips while he kissed her again with erotic thoroughness, very much a male staking a claim and taking his time. She wrapped her arms tight round him, crushing her sensitised, tingling breasts into the hard, abrasive wall of his chest and letting her hands trace the breadth of his muscular shoulders and the long, silky smooth line of his strong back.
‘I promise I’ll make it good, cara,’ Andreo swore, pulling back from her and springing upright to shed his well cut trousers.
Soft mouth voluptuous and red from the hungry urgency of his, she stared at him. From his superb torso to his taut, flat stomach, lean hips and powerful thighs, he was all hard muscle and sleek bronzed skin: magnificently male. His boxer shorts could not conceal the virile evidence of his male arousal. Untouched by an atom of her self-conscious shyness, he skimmed off that final garment and all the curiosity she had never owned up to possessing was fully met. Eyes wide, face burning, she dropped her head again. For goodness’ sake, how on earth…?
He tossed back the spread beneath which she had again taken refuge. She connected with smouldering dark golden eyes and suddenly she was stretching up to welcome him back to her, her body tight and hot and restive in ways she did not even understand.
‘How virginal is virginal?’ Andreo husked.
‘On a scale of one to ten…ten being the ultimate…probably almost ten,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Your skin is as translucent as porcelain.’ Andreo explored the pert mounds of her small breasts, lingered to tease her distended pink nipples with his expert mouth. ‘You’re so delicate, so sensitive there. I love that.’
She couldn’t lie still beneath his ministrations. Heart thundering, she arched into his caresses, eager for more, shameless in pursuit of that ever more seductive pleasure that built and built to a level that was almost a torment. ‘Kiss me…’
He savoured her lips, let his tongue tangle with hers, laughed with earthy appreciation as she dragged him down to her with impatient hands, hungry for the weight of him over her, the firm, hard pressure of his mouth, and denied it.
‘You said you’d never wanted anyone as much as me…’ she reminded him shakily. ‘Was that a lie?’
‘I want you to feel the same passion but you’re too impatient,’ Andreo growled, sliding a hand beneath her restive legs to tug up her knees and remove her briefs. ‘We have all night, bella mia.’
Her hips shifted against the sheet as she sought helplessly to quell the ache at the very centre of her. She was insanely aware of every sensitised inch of her throbbing body: the straining buds of her breasts still wet from his attentions, the swollen dampness between her thighs. She pushed up against his big, powerful frame, adoring the unyielding contours of bone and rippling muscle below his bronzed skin, wildly conscious of the rock-hard rigidity of his bold erection.
Golden eyes glittering, Andreo lifted away from her as though she had burned him, aggressive jawline set at an angle. ‘I intend this to be special.’
It was as if a fever had hold of her and her temperature were out of control. She wanted so desperately to touch him and all that had been holding her back was fear of doing something wrong. She headed back into the heat and strength of him and let her mouth trail from a muscular shoulder down over his hair-roughened chest. There she paused to snatch in an erratic breath and lick and kiss her path across his taut ribcage where…he closed his hand into her hair and dragged her back up to him before she could really start experimenting.
‘Independent woman,’ he whispered in a tone of raw discovery.
He was a control freak but he was gorgeous, she thought dizzily. She studied the black hair she had disarranged, the riveting eyes, high, proud cheekbones, arrogant nose and classic and willful masculine mouth and inside she turned boneless. ‘So I’ll lie back and think of…?’
‘Me…you think about me,’ Andreo instructed with complete seriousness and he kissed her and refused to consider why he had said something so naff.
He reacquainted himself with her slender, seductive curves. In the process, she gasped air in shallow bursts and he forced her to stop thinking and just feel and what she felt was extraordinary in its very intensity. His fingers flirted with the damp curls at the junction of her slim, restive thighs and she moaned out loud, her hips rising off the mattress in a yearning movement as old as time.
‘Oh, please…!’ she gasped.
At last, he touched her where she most needed to be touched, exploring the moist, silken heat at the heart of her where the ache was a torment. Heat and wanton pleasure engulfed her as he utilised a lean finger to probe her tight depths, opening her for his skilled caresses until she felt like honey heated to boiling point and on the brink of spontaneous combustion. It was the sweetest torture she had ever withstood because just when she believed the heights of pleasure could not climb any higher, he would prove her wrong.
‘I’m mad for you,’ Andreo groaned, rising over her and tipping her back from him in one smooth motion.
She felt him, hard and smooth and demanding, enter her. The sharp, rending pain took her aback and her blue eyes flew wide in dismay.
Andreo stilled as a whimper of protest was dredged from her. ‘Shall I stop?’
‘No…’ There was too much of him and she had known that and she shut her eyes tight, waiting until the pain of his intrusion had lessened yet savouring the wonderfully erotic feel of him inside her.
‘I don’t think I’m supposed to be enjoying myself this much when you’re not,’ he muttered in ragged masculine apology.
And she almost laughed and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going to fall in love with him if she hadn’t already. ‘It’s OK…’ she whispered shakily.
‘Amore…’ Andreo pressed his lips to her damp brow. ‘You’re very brave—’
‘Greedy for you,’ she confided guiltily, rising up to him to invite a deeper invasion, controlled by her own desperate need for fulfillment.
He surged into her again and she arched and gasped in shock at the rich, sensual tide of sensation. He prolonged her pleasure with every art he had ever learned. Hot and hungry for him, she succumbed to his pagan rhythm with helpless abandon. The burn low in her pelvis had become a tight knot of delirious excitement, dragging her higher and higher until her heart was thundering in her ears. She hit a pinnacle and drowning pleasure rocked her with wave after wave of ecstasy. As he drove himself into a shuddering release, she held him tight, dazed and oddly proud and incredibly happy. She had had a wonderful time trashing her sensible former self and she had not a single regret.
She dozed off to sleep without realising it. Sliding back into bed, Andreo shook her awake again. ‘It’s only midnight,’ he told her in teasing reproof. ‘How can you be so tired this early?’
Snuggling back into him, Pippa went pink and avoided his too-shrewd gaze. She knew that it had to be the amount of alcohol she had consumed that was making her brain feel as if it were filled with cotton wool and her eyelids behave as though they had lead weights attached to them. ‘Sorry…’
Andreo arranged her back against the pillow and smoothed her tumbled hair back from her brows. ‘What we just shared was fantastic for me but I have a confession to make…’
Her lashes swept up on his serious expression and her heart sank. ‘You’re married?’
‘Dio mio…’
His angry look of reproof soothed her fears so she moved to what was the next-worst scenar
io in her mind. ‘Cheating on your girlfriend?’
‘I don’t cheat,’ Andreo declared loftily, choosing to overlook the reality that a purist might deem him still, in the strictest sense, involved with Lili because he flatly refused to dump anyone by phone.
‘Then what…?’
He grimaced. ‘The condom broke. Too much enthusiasm on my part…I very much doubt that there will be any repercussions but I thought I ought to warn you.’
Pippa lay very still. ‘The…er…broke?’
Andreo employed several rather more apt and descriptive expressions that made her face heat with embarrassment.
‘I have a clean bill of health. No need to worry about that angle. I’ve always taken precautions,’ he continued levelly. ‘But obviously there is a risk that I could have made you pregnant.’
The very sound of that unexpected word, ‘pregnant’, shook Pippa rigid. An embarrassed little laugh escaped her because she could not begin to imagine so far-reaching a consequence as a little baby resulting from a defective condom. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine…it’s not that easy to get pregnant. There’s two women in my section attending an infertility clinic,’ she extended in a rush of abstracted confidence. ‘It seems that these days quite a few women have problems conceiving.’
When Pippa had laughed, Andreo’s blue-shadowed aggressive jawline had clenched. ‘The women who marry into my family don’t have problems of that nature.’
Pippa pushed her face into a bare brown muscular shoulder to hide her helpless grin. So, he was the contemporary equivalent of a caveman, who confused fertility with virility, was he? That was so sweet. She had to resist an inexplicable urge to hug him tight. ‘Are you fond of children?’ she asked, her amusement suffering a sudden check.
‘I’m one of five…what do you think?’
He was ducking the issue but, just as her amusement had vanished, she had no desire to probe more deeply. She had only been ten years old when she had decided that she wouldn’t ever want to have children. In her teen years, she had been quite open about the fact but had too often found herself under attack and forced to defend what were essentially private views on the subject. He might well feel as she did, mightn’t he? Perhaps he had had a miserable childhood as well and, like her, shrank from the risk of inflicting similar suffering on a child of his own…