by Lynne Graham
That first sensual onslaught blew her away. His tongue delved between her lips in an elemental imitation of a much more sexual possession. Clinging to him, she shivered in the circle of his strong arms like a leaf in a high wind.
‘I never knew I could feel like this…’ Pippa whispered helplessly.
His lean, strong face was taut with intent. His shirt hung unbuttoned and loose to reveal a bronzed wedge of hair-roughened chest. He tasted her swollen mouth again while he reached behind her to undo her bra. When he lifted his proud dark head to look at her, her hands whipped up to cover herself but he caught them in his and drew them down again.
‘I want to look at you,’ he told her boldly.
Never had she been so conscious of being naked as she was standing there in front of Andreo, her bare breasts crested by shamelessly swollen pink nipples. ‘Andreo…’
‘Dio mio…you’re even more exquisite than I remembered.’ He sank down on the side of the bed and pulled her down onto his thighs.
At the first touch of his expert fingers on the tender crests straining for his attention, she gasped, weak and quivering with wanting. He closed a hand to the silken explosion of curls at the back of her head and tipped her over one arm. The heat of his mouth hungrily engulfed the throbbing pink buds to tug on the sensitive peaks. His hand cupped and shaped her pouting breasts, rubbing and teasing the stiff crests. The tormenting pleasure of his knowing exploration made her back arch. She moaned her response and speared shaking fingers into his cropped black hair.
He lifted her up and brought her down on the bed. Standing over her, he ran down the zip on his well-cut trousers. She lay there watching him, slim hips shifting in a restive motion against the spread below her. She was unbearably aware of the swollen moist heat at the heart of her. In one impatient movement, he dispensed with both trousers and boxers and the breath snarled up in her throat when she registered the extent of his fierce arousal.
‘I want you so much, cara.’ Like a lithe bronzed warrior ready for action, he came down on the bed beside her and skimmed a possessive hand over her tummy to trail along the edge of the modest white panties she wore. Leaning over her, he rearranged her so that he could remove that final garment. The hot gold of his eyes wandered at a leisurely pace over her rose-tipped breasts and the cluster of copper curls crowning her womanhood. There was a quiet sure confidence and sensual threat about his every move that made her burn and crave.
‘You should wear jewel colours and silk. I shall buy you gorgeous lingerie, amore,’ he murmured huskily.
‘I wouldn’t wear it…’ she told him, shocked.
‘You don’t know all that I could make you do yet.’ A slashing grin curved his beautiful mouth as he voiced that bold belief. ‘Where did the wild adventuress at the party go?’
‘Sorry?’
Golden eyes mocked her self-conscious colour. ‘You stayed a good girl a long time…why me?’
The wicked amusement in his darkly attractive features was incredibly seductive. ‘I like the way you kiss…’
Andreo drifted down closer, helplessly drawn by the warmth of her appreciation. ‘Anything else, amore?’
A dreamy smile slid across her softened mouth. Just the whole incredible package, she thought helplessly and she wrapped her arms around him. ‘I’m not telling…’
‘Are you sure of that?’ He shifted against her in a sinuous movement that sent her heart racing and her body quivering with wanton longing. She stretched up, the tender points of her breasts grazed by the rough black curls outlining his powerful pectoral muscles.
‘You like that,’ Andreo purred like a prowling, playful tiger, outlining her lower lip with the tip of his tongue and then penetrating between with a delicious force that stole everything she possessed.
‘And that,’ she confirmed shakily.
He ran his hand over her tummy to the nest of curls below and let his fingertips flirt there until she slid her thighs apart with a needy little moan. He stared down at her with smouldering sexy eyes of pure satisfaction. ‘Do you know what I like best? That I’m the only guy you’ve ever had,’ he confessed with primal force. ‘You wouldn’t believe how exciting I find that, carissima.’
‘That’s old-fashioned…’ But even though she tried not to be, indeed reminded herself that theirs was only a casual affair, she was pleased by that confession. She was grateful that she hadn’t ended up with a male who found her inexperience a bore.
‘Maybe I’m an old-fashioned guy…deep down where it doesn’t show,’ Andreo affixed hastily, suddenly wondering where that strange thought had been born. Old-fashioned…him…since when? Since he had looked around his rarefied social circle and worked out that almost all the men had slept with the exact same women? Since he had decided that he did not want to marry a female who had trekked through all his friends’ bedrooms as well?
‘It doesn’t show,’ she whispered, shifting up to his caressing hand in helpless encouragement.
He skimmed the tiny sensitive spot below her feminine mound and dallied there with tormenting expertise. Suddenly she was no longer up to the challenge of speech. Breathing in irregular little fits and starts, her writhing body was on fire with a need that he alone controlled.
‘Andreo…’ she framed, awesomely aware of the rigid hardness of his straining sex against her thigh, shivering with desire as the sweet, agonising ache of her craving became more than she could withstand in silence.
‘It’s OK…I can’t wait either,’ he breathed raggedly.
Rising over her, he sank his bold shaft into the slick wet heat of her and released a wondering groan of satisfaction. ‘Amore…’
Madly excited by him, she arched up to meet his powerful thrust. She couldn’t get enough of him. Nothing had ever felt so good to her or so right. She tried to hold back the animalistic little cries wrenched from her as he drove her to his stormy sexual rhythm, but she couldn’t. He sent her spiralling into a convulsive climax. Ecstasy sent her hurtling into wave on wave of exquisite sensation. His magnificent body shuddered and he vented a harsh groan of masculine satisfaction at the height of his own climax.
‘You make me feel incredible, amore,’ Andreo purred, stretching over her and then freeing her from his weight, only to haul her back to him with one strong arm. ‘I want to have you again and again and again…I feel so greedy.’
Giddy, she hugged him tight until the world settled round her again and then she lay there sleepily smiling while he smoothed her tousled hair, told her how amazingly sexy those curls were and dropped tender kisses on any part of her within reach. She looked up at him with dazed eyes and there was a kind of fear in her then that she had not felt in years and years. What she had just experienced with him had been earth shattering passion and glorious fulfillment but sixth sense told her that she ought to ration herself on him.
‘You’re a very restful woman,’ he teased, lifting her off the bed to accompany him into the opulent bathroom. ‘Very mysterious too. Where, for instance, did you learn to speak colloquial French?’
‘From my mother…she was born and bred in Paris.’
‘Was the Frenchman who phoned you a relative?’
Pippa frowned in surprise. ‘No, he’s married to a friend. I’ve never quite taken to him—’
‘But didn’t I hear you arranging to meet him next week?’
‘He asked me to visit his wife’s favourite maternity shop with him and help him choose some outfits as a surprise for her.’ Pippa sighed. ‘I just couldn’t credit that she was expecting yet another kid. That’ll be number three and she’s only twenty-three…’
Andreo had relaxed but he was ashamed of his own suspicions about her relationship with her friend’s husband. He decided that he had met far too many calculating women, who would go to any lengths to capture a rich man whether they wanted him or not.
Pippa watched him switch on the power shower in the big cubicle and simply reach for her again. He acted as if he owned her but what
shook her most was that she liked him acting that way. He was protective and, when he wanted to be, gentle in a way she had never associated with his sex, especially with a guy who was so innately masculine and aggressive at other times. He made her feel like a cross between a spun glass ornament in need of constant care and a sexual enchantress because he couldn’t even share the shower with her without getting aroused again.
He was her perfect dream guy. She had not been wrong about that. He was gorgeous, fantastic in bed and he treated her as though she was as irresistible as Cleopatra. It was no wonder she was already halfway to being infatuated. Given very little encouragement, she thought in shrinking dismay, she would fall head over heels in love with him and make a complete ass of herself!
‘We’ll order in some food…I don’t think I could be trusted in a public place with you yet, bella mia.’ Having enfolded her in a fleecy towel, he lifted her hands and pressed his lips to the centre of each palm, looking down at her from beneath dense black lashes longer than her own with a provocative gleam in his teasing gaze. ‘But I’ve got you all evening and all night…’
Pippa tensed, imagining sleeping in his arms, waking up with him and deciding that she could not indulge herself in that amount of intimacy with him. ‘I’m not staying the night,’ she told him in a rush.
‘Why not?’ One arm carelessly curved round her, Andreo was already punching out a number on the phone by the bed.
‘I don’t stay the night…I mean, I…prefer to go home to my own bed,’ she declared.
Andreo slung the phone back down. ‘How would you know what you prefer? I’ve got to be the first guy you’ve stayed with—’
‘I just prefer it…OK?’ She worried at her lower lip anxiously.
His strong bone structure taut, Andreo veiled his fulminating gaze and wondered if his own sins were coming home to roost. As a rule, he never invited his lovers to stay the night. Staying over added a whole different dimension to a relationship and he liked to keep things casual. So why had he invited her?
‘No problem.’ Jawline at an aggressive angle, Andreo ordered in Thai food without asking her what she wanted.
Luckily, Pippa adored Thai food. Sitting cross-legged on a big swanky sofa, clad in a towelling robe, she ate with appetite and she asked Andreo how he had come to have a brother so much younger than he was.
‘Marco was a surprise package when my mother was in her forties. My father died when he was five, so Marco turns to me a lot,’ Andreo said. ‘We have three older sisters, all married, all very given to spoiling little brothers and he was turning into a horrible precocious brat. So I persuaded Mama to send him away to school. He’s much improved.’
‘What was it like being one of five children?’ she prompted curiously.
‘Fun…it would’ve been more fun, though, if a couple of the bossy sisters had been boys,’ he drawled with mockery. ‘Some day I’d like a big family.’
Pippa gave him a startled look. ‘I don’t want kids at all,’ she confided without thinking, reacting to her own surprise that a guy like Andreo D’Alessio could admit to such an unfashionable ambition.
Andreo was frowning. ‘You don’t want kids…any?’
Feeling awkward, she added with rather forced amusement, ‘I’m more into my career.’
‘So what are you planning to do if I have got you pregnant?’ Andreo enquired with a derisive edge to his dark, deep drawl.
Pippa paled. ‘That’s not going to happen…why are you saying that?’
‘Because after that mishap on the contraceptive front the night before last, it’s a distinct possibility and I’d appreciate knowing right now up front,’ Andreo incised with angry emphasis, ‘what the score is likely to be if you do conceive!’
Pippa pushed away her plate and scrambled off the sofa. Her restive fingers worked feverishly at the robe’s over-long sleeves, which were threatening to engulf her hands. ‘I don’t like this conversation.’
‘Per meraviglia! You think I do? But I’ve asked a fair question,’ Andreo bit out rawly.
Furious with him, mortified and feeling threatened by the subject under discussion, Pippa spun on her heel and headed back to the bedroom. Gathering up her clothes in haste, she hurried into the bathroom.
Before she could get the door shut, however, Andreo appeared, lean, powerful face set hard. ‘I think that you could give me an answer…’
‘How can I answer a crazy question like that?’ Pippa almost sobbed at him in her discomfiture and distress. She had made what was for her a casual admission and had without the smallest warning found herself plunged deep into moral issues that she had never had to consider before. His contemptuous attitude both hurt and infuriated her.
Locking the door behind her, she pulled on her clothes, tears lashing her eyes.
When she emerged, Andreo had also got dressed. Drop dead gorgeous in a silver-grey shirt and black cargo trousers, he strode forward, a look of cool exasperation in his scrutiny. ‘This is insane, cara—’
‘Well, don’t look at me when you say that! I want to go home…I’ve called a taxi.’ Sidestepping him, Pippa fled out into the hall.
‘I’m not letting you go like this. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything…but how was I to know it was such a controversial subject?’ Andreo threw up lean brown hands to accentuate his astonishment. ‘Most women like babies!’
Pippa wanted to slap him. ‘I like babies too…I just don’t want one of my own!’
Andreo strode across the wide glossy hall floor and rested his hands on her rigid shoulders. She was trembling. ‘You’ll change your mind—’
‘No, I won’t!’ she told him fiercely.
She pulled away from him. Her mind had already thrown her way back to memories she rarely visited and lodged on a painful image of her mother crying and calling herself a rotten mother because she had been unable to make theirs a happy home.
Andreo settled scorching golden eyes on Pippa’s pale, frozen profile. The intercom by the front door buzzed.
‘That’ll be my taxi…’
‘Walk out now and I won’t phone you tomorrow,’ Andreo threatened without hesitation. ‘If you walk, we’re finished.’
To her everlasting shame, Pippa stopped dead in her tracks.
Andreo spoke into the intercom and said that she would be down in a few minutes.
Coming to a halt behind her, he closed both arms round her. She went stiff, resisting him with every fibre of her will-power, but the weakening started like a melting sensation deep down inside her. She wanted this guy. She wanted to be with him and she wanted his good opinion too, which was why it hurt to lose it over an issue that struck her as being as crazily remote as the risk of pregnancy. ‘I’ve already told you…it’s not that easy to fall pregnant…are you listening to me?’ she demanded sharply.
‘Sì. I’m listening.’
‘My mother was never able to conceive again after she had me and my grandmother tried for ten years before she had my mother!’ she protested feverishly.
‘That doesn’t mean that you’re likely to have similar problems.’
As the fierce tension holding her rigid began to give she curved back into his lean, powerful frame. She was of too practical a nature to sustain an argument about a situation that she could not imagine developing. Andreo slowly turned her round to face him. He splayed long fingers to her taut cheekbones. ‘You scare me…you scare yourself, amore—’
She didn’t know why but the wretched tears just broke free then and cascaded down her cheeks. With a driven groan, he hauled her close and she choked back a sob, drinking in the gloriously familiar scent of him like an addict. ‘You’re too serious,’ she told him chokily. ‘Just looking for trouble is like asking for it.’
Molten gold eyes assailed hers. ‘Come back to bed…’
‘My taxi…’
He pressed her down on the fancy wrought-iron chaise longue ornamenting the hall and called the doorman in the foyer. She sat there s
hivering, shocked at the woman she was somehow changing into against her own volition. She had said she was going home. She should have carried through on what she had said she would do. Andreo swung back to her, all male, powered by resolute determination that mocked her own. While he’d been on the phone, he had unbuttoned his shirt again. He stood there in front of her and simply shed his clothes where he stood.
‘I want to go home for the night,’ she mumbled unsteadily, sounding like a little child trying to talk herself into running away.
Slowly he raised her to her feet. She hovered, letting him peel off her garments one by one.
‘No, you don’t…you want to be with me, amore. Walking away was tearing you up,’ Andreo reminded her with lethal assurance, and then he bent and caught her up into his arms to power back towards the bedroom. ‘Week nights, you can go home, but weekends you’re mine from start to finish. Sorry, but that’s how it is.’
‘It’s a Thursday,’ she muttered weakly into the smooth brown shoulder she was already pressing her lips against.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear that…’
‘It’s Thursday.’
In the act of arranging her on the bed with the care of a connoisseur, Andreo elevated an incredulous black brow at that announcement. ‘You need to consult a calendar, cara mia.’
‘It feels like a Friday night,’ she whispered in sudden decision, surrendering to his sheer animal vibrancy and ferocious resolve and amply rewarded by his lazy smile of approbation.
Pippa plucked a coral-pink rose from Andreo’s latest floral offering and wedged it into the buttonhole on her new blue jacket. Matched with a slim short skirt and fitted to her small waist, it gave her figure a flattering definition that she was unused to seeing.
Her terraced home was awash with flowers that perfumed every room. At least once every couple of nights she had made a supreme effort to tear herself from Andreo’s side around dawn and visit home to obtain fresh clothes. She would always bring back all the flowers he gave her and arrange them into vases. In the hall mirror she studied her reflection, absorbing the happiness in her eyes and the silly smile that just the thought of Andreo summoned up. Tension compressed her lips then instead. Indeed she gave herself a stern look. In little more than thirty six hours she would be flying off to France, not only to enjoy her holiday with Tabby and Christien, but also to take her first step towards forging a fresh existence. But leaving Andreo promised to be the toughest thing she had ever had to do…