by Lynne Graham
With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, Angelo lifted his head and let his hand close over the pouting curve of her breasts, teasing at the prominent peaks. The barrier set up by her clothes impelled a low moan of frustration from her. She wanted to touch him so badly she could hardly bear it and splayed her fingers across his hard, flat stomach, revelling in the feel of his warm bare skin.
‘Don’t do that,’ Angelo groaned, pushing away her hand and lifting her into abrasive connection with his fierce erection. He crushed her full, soft lips below his and plundered the damp interior of her mouth with an explicit sensual force that left her trembling.
‘Angelo—’
‘Later...all that you want but not now, cara,’ he growled, hauling her up into his arms and tipping her down onto the arm of a sofa to yank at the zip on her jeans and wrench them off with more impatience than cool.
She tumbled back into the cushions, passion-glazed china-blue eyes locked to him in surprise as he stripped her of her jeans and her panties just at the point when she had naively assumed he would take her upstairs. Her cheeks flamed red as fire but her entire body was hot and throbbing and desperately on edge and she made no complaint. Indeed she locked her arms round his neck for support while he discovered the moist, soft welcome between her thighs. With a guttural sound of uninhibited masculine pleasure, he buried himself to the hilt inside her.
Her back arching at the shockingly erotic impact of his entrance, Gwenna cried out. Smouldering tawny eyes welded to her, Angelo withdrew, slowly rotated his hips and then slammed back into her. Pleasure exploded along her nerve-endings in a blinding wave. She lost any sense of time, all ability to reason. Wicked excitement controlled her. He pushed her vest and her bra out of his path and stroked the painfully beaded tips of her breasts until she was whimpering she knew not what. From that point there wasn’t a moment where she regained control or even came close. She was squirming, writhing, begging him not to stop, possessed by a greedy blaze of elemental need. At an intoxicating high of delirious pleasure she was gripped by wild convulsions of ecstatic release. Shell-shocked by the jolting, all-encompassing power of that experience, she clung to him in the aftermath.
‘You’re amazing, gioia mia.’ Angelo surveyed her with rampant appreciation and dropped a teasing kiss on her brow. So what if he had never done fidelity before? He had never spared much thought for his sexual relationships, but he was becoming powerfully aware that she had an extra-special something that brought a whole new dimension to their every encounter. He should be congratulating himself on his amazing perception. Had he not recognised her extraordinary appeal the very first moment he met her? Hamilton’s daughter she might be, but she was also a triumph worth a harem of ten. Smiling, he vaulted lithely upright and rearranged his clothing.
Like a sleepwalker, Gwenna scrambled up on unsteady legs, wrenching at her vest with one hand and going for her discarded jeans with the other. They hadn’t even got undressed, never mind made it as far as a bedroom. She was embarrassed, hopelessly unsure of how to behave. Her mind was in total turmoil. Everything she had believed she knew about herself was being turned upside down. But she fought off her misgivings and reminded herself that Angelo seemed to be making a genuine effort.
After all, hadn’t he come looking for her this evening? He had been annoyed to find her with Toby. Had he been jealous? Perhaps Angelo was not quite as cold and unfeeling as his womanising reputation. Hadn’t he told her that she should be proud of the fact that he wanted her so much? Worrying at her full lower lip, she studied the sofa and reflected that he had not been exaggerating on that score. Maybe she was ridiculously old-fashioned. Maybe she needed to loosen up a little and stop fretting about the moralities. Although it was obvious that a promise of fidelity was a major undertaking for him, he had given it to her, she reminded herself bracingly. No longer was everything on his terms.
‘We need a shower.’ With that husky, mocking assurance, Angelo closed a lean hand over hers and walked her upstairs.
Gwenna was in a daze—a happy daze, and that acknowledgement stunned her. Her fingers trembled in his and his grip tightened. She had the feeling he didn’t want to let go of her and she liked that. He was making her feel things she didn’t understand, making her think things that struck her as unwise. It was just the impact of all the physical stuff that was confusing her, she reasoned, hurriedly squashing an almost overwhelming sense of vulnerability.
Her mobile phone rang two steps inside the door of a palatial bedroom. She dug it out to answer and walked away from Angelo the minute she recognised Toby’s familiar voice. ‘Yes, of course, I’m all right,’ she muttered in some embarrassment.
Angelo froze, dark eyes flaring angrily as he worked out who had called her. Here she was in his bedroom and she was just chatting to the guy as though that was all right, acceptable, even normal. His perfect white teeth gritted when she gave him an apologetic glance and finished the conversation with the gentle assurance that she would be in touch soon. She smothered a yawn with a polite hand.
‘I don’t think you should be accepting calls from him.’
Delft-blue eyes met his in honest surprise. ‘Why not? Toby’s my oldest friend.’
‘You’re in love with him,’ Angelo spelt out with stinging cool.
‘But nothing’s going to happen. Toby doesn’t think of me that way.’ Embarrassment and uncertainty, however, were claiming her. She always tried to be fair, always endeavoured to look at opposing points of view. It occurred to her that in the light of the fuss she had made about fidelity, Angelo probably thought he had every right to object to her friendship with Toby.
‘But I don’t like it,’ Angelo countered flatly.
Absorbing the smouldering aspect of Angelo’s intent gaze, Gwenna was surprised to feel an unexpected twinge of amusement. She dipped her head to hide it. He was so possessive, so incredibly passionate. He was not at all the cold, callous and insensitive guy she had once believed. ‘I can see your point,’ she answered with determined tact.
The savage tension in Angelo’s broad shoulders eased. He took her into a vast en suite bathroom and undressed her. Each garment was removed with subtle caresses and an exquisitely skilled sensuality that made her quiver and burn. The bright lights made her feel desperately shy but not even that could suppress the helpless tingle of arousal he roused. The lush, swollen heart of her ached but it didn’t stop her wanting him, didn’t stop the hunger rising to a torturous peak of need. He took her in the shower. She shut her eyes tight, surrendering to the melting ripples of slow burning erotic pleasure and the shivering, whimpering rapture of delirious relief. Afterwards, she just wanted to sleep and could hardly stand upright. He wrapped her in a fleecy towel.
‘I wish you would stay awake, passione mia, ‘Angelo complained.
‘Can’t...hardly slept last night,’ she mumbled, all the stresses of the past forty-eight hours finally taking their toll. Her eyelids felt as though weights were attached to them.
He eased her between cool sheets and she waited for him to join her. Instead she heard a door open and she peered sleepily across the room at him, noting that his sleek bronzed length was clad only in boxers. ‘Where are you going?’
‘My room is through here.’ He was poised on the threshold of the room next door.
Her pale brow indented. ‘But—’
The smooth brown breadth of his muscular shoulders shifted in a casual shrug. ‘I always sleep alone. I’ll see you in the morning.’
The door closed. I always sleep alone. She had spent a lifetime sleeping alone too and could not comprehend why she should now feel rejected by his withdrawal. Exhaustion soon kicked in, however, to blur her troubled thoughts and sink her into a deep slumber.
She woke with a start, unsure of her surroundings and of what might have wakened her. In a rush she remembered that she was in Angelo’s house an
d she fumbled for the light switch by the bed. She was sitting up when she heard a disturbing sound from his room. A cry? Without further thought she slid out of bed and snatched up the shirt he had left in a careless heap. Hastily donning it, she opened the communicating door between their rooms.
In the dawn light filtering through the shutters she could see Angelo tossing and turning in the big bed. He was moaning something in his own language. The sheer terror in his voice grabbed her by the throat, shook her up and sent her flying straight to his side. She scrambled up on the mattress to get within reach of him and rested a soothing hand on his shoulder. His skin was as hot as fire.
‘Angelo...wake up!’ she whispered urgently, shaking him slightly.
Angelo wrenched himself up in a sudden movement that startled her. He was trembling, muttering in Italian. With a gruff exclamation, he raked rough fingers through his dishevelled black hair and he turned to study her with a frown that drew his sleek ebony brows together. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You were having a bad dream—’
‘I don’t get them—’
‘You cried out and woke me up!’
‘I couldn’t have,’ Angelo growled, dark eyes defensive, the fierce tension in his big powerful frame communicating itself to her.
Gwenna loosed a rueful sigh. Evidently, macho men didn’t have bad dreams. In the dim light he was a dazzling bronzed vision of raw masculine appeal. With his hair ruffled and blue-black stubble outlining the aggressive set of his jaw line he looked startlingly handsome, but it was the grim cast of his lustrous eyes that made Gwenna shimmy closer on her bottom and wrap her arms round him. ‘I get nightmares sometimes...’
‘Really?’ Angelo said very drily, but she noticed he didn’t push her away.
Gwenna rested her chin on his shoulder, absently drinking in the warm and already familiar scent of his skin. ‘I wasn’t there when it happened but I used to dream I saw my mother’s car crash. Then when I was at boarding-school—’
Angelo tensed. ‘When was that?’
‘I was ten when Dad first set up home with Eva and her daughters. Unfortunately, Penelope and Wanda didn’t take to me and, for the sake of peace, I was sent off to school. I hated it.’
‘Why...were you bullied?’
‘For waking the other girls up with my nightmares and being a terrible cry-baby.’ Gwenna winced in remembered shame over her past weakness. ‘I was horribly homesick—’
Angelo reached behind him with a long arm and tipped her round and deftly forward into his lap. ‘I was too, but I didn’t have a home to go to any more.’
‘You boarded too?’
‘My mother was dead and her generous employer paid for my education at an exclusive school. I didn’t fit in. Sardinian mothers spoil their sons. I spoke lousy English, and I was a science geek and very small—’
Gwenna squinted up at his shadowy profile. ‘Small?’ she interrupted in disbelief.
Angelo nodded. ‘Tiny...I didn’t shoot up until I was well into my teens.’
‘Were you bullied too?’
‘Of course not.’
But Gwenna caught a certain intonation in his dark-timbred drawl and sighed. ‘Yes, you were. I can tell.’
‘How? With your crystal ball, bella mia?’ Long, taunting fingers explored beneath the shirt she wore and she shivered, her breath catching in her throat. He cupped a pouting breast and in coaxing its tender pink nipple to straining prominence he provoked a gasp from between her lips.
‘Stop trying to distract me...’ she muttered breathlessly.
Angelo swung her down onto the bed beside him and shifted over her in one lithe motion, angling his hips into the soft cradle between her thighs to acquaint her with his thrusting hardness. Scorching eyes scorned her reproachful scrutiny. ‘Is that what I’m doing?’
‘But I want to know...I really want to know what happened to you to make you sound so scared!’ she protested.
His fabulous bone structure clenched hard and he was pale. ‘I was burned with cigarettes, kicked where it most hurts and beaten up.’
‘Oh my word...’ She was overcome by horror and consternation, and her eyes glistened, awash with moisture. ‘Angelo...that’s awful. And you still dream about it?’
‘Sì...’ Even as he wondered why the hell he had told her, Angelo was surveying her reaction in fascination.
Gwenna struggled to fight off the tears of sympathy without much success. She gulped, swallowed, sniffed and finally linked her arms tightly round him and hugged him hard. She was thinking of that bewildered and bright little boy, suddenly deprived of a loving mother and plunged into an alien environment.
‘It made me tough...I was too soft, bellezza mia. It was good for me—’
‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ Gwenna gasped, sucking in a steadying breath of oxygen. ‘I mean, I was just teased and scolded. But you were brutalized—’
‘Do you think I deserve a sympathy shag?’ Angelo enquired in silken interruption.
Her clogged lashes lifted on troubled blue eyes. ‘Sometimes you can be really offensive.’
Almost imperceptible colour scored his superb cheekbones.
‘And the answer is no...not because I’m annoyed with you but because—and I find this very embarrassing—I think I would find it rather uncomfortable right now.’ Grinding to a mortified halt as she referred to the fact that she was rather sore, she bit her lip and turned her face away.
Angelo hadn’t thought of that possibility and guilt came out of nowhere and attacked him full force. It was less then forty-eight hours since she had been a virgin and he had been pretty demanding as well as passionate. Either he had a cold shower or he introduced her to a more creative way of satisfying his high sex drive.
‘I can be a selfish bastard,’ he remarked and waited confidently for her to argue that description.
But it did not even occur to Gwenna to contradict him for a statement she considered accurate. ‘Maybe we could...later.’
‘Later I’ll be in New York, cara mia,’ Angelo groaned in frustration, releasing her reluctantly from his weight but tugging her into his arms, fully intent on attacking her learning curve.
Gwenna squinted at the face of the clock by the bed and gasped. ‘My goodness, is that the time?’
‘It’s only half past six,’ Angelo told her gently.
‘In less than an hour it’ll be feeding time at the pet hotel and I don’t want to be late,’ she lamented, pulling free and rolling over to vacate his bed at a frantic pace. ‘The staff don’t mind me going to give Piglet breakfast because he wouldn’t eat otherwise. But they do like me to fit in with their routine and they don’t like visitors between eight and nine in the morning.’
Barely able to credit that harried explanation, Angelo sat up. ‘Give me a moment,’ he urged tautly. ‘Are you telling me that you’re running over there every single morning to feed that animal?’
‘Evenings too...he has a very tiny tummy,’ Gwenna told him defensively. ‘You should see him on the webcam in his kennel...he’s so depressed, it would break your heart. He won’t even look at the TV or play ball any more.’
Her departure from his room was hasty. Angelo cursed vehemently while he took a cold shower and strode out of the wet room determined to get a look at Piglet malingering on the webcam. And there he was, the clever little tyke, curled up on his gilded four-poster bed with his head sunk between paws, little round eyes dull and his ridiculous bat ears drooping. In no need of canine acting lessons, he was the very picture of full-blown doggy misery.
But Gwenna was devoted to her pet. Totally devoted and obsessed, Angelo reflected dourly. And why not? How much love and attention had she got from her sleazy father and a mother who had probably only had her in an effort to destroy her lover’s marriage? He lifted the phone
. When Gwenna got out of his bed at dawn to trek across the city simply to feed the dog, it was time to release Piglet from captivity.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ANGELO surveyed the huge crowded room with concealed dissatisfaction. He wondered why it was that when fate gave him what he believed he had always wanted he should find it so irritating. Clingy women who remained welded to him like superglue in company had always exasperated him.
In the course of a month, he had learned that Gwenna did not cling, shadow him round the room or continually seek ways to attract his attention. In fact, he sometimes felt like handcuffing her to his wrist or tagging her with a satellite-navigation system he could use to locate her when he wanted her back by his side. When she got talking to his guests, she lost track of time. She was wildly popular with the garden enthusiasts and had to be regularly rescued from those who took advantage of her horticultural knowledge to request free advice and even personal visits.
‘Where is she?’ Angelo was finally forced to ask Franco.
A few minutes later, his chief of security at his heels, he strode out to the rear terrace of his impressive London abode and looked down into the garden below. Her iridescent blue evening gown trailing across the damp grass in her wake, Gwenna was showing off a flowering wall plant to a man and a woman. The man was a notoriously lecherous Swiss banker. That he should even be close to Gwenna set Angelo’s teeth on edge.
Franco cleared his throat. ‘You know, boss...Miss Hamilton doesn’t know she might be rattling your cage.’