by Lynne Graham
Halfway up the stairs, Lucca paused to plunder the swollen pink welcome of her ripe mouth. He had never felt a hunger so intense. He needed to be with her. He was with her. He refused to think beyond that as he laid her down on the bed. ‘Vivi…’ he breathed in a throaty tone that made her ache.
‘I’m glad you wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ she whispered, her voice gruff from the amount of crying she had done.
His gorgeous eyes were darker than the sky on a stormy night. He lifted a not-quite-steady lean brown hand and let long, lean fingers score very lightly down one soft cheek. ‘When I want something, I go for it, cara mia.’
‘Don’t stop wanting me,’ she muttered, taut as a bowstring.
‘You’d have to tell me how…’ Lucca confided in a roughened drawl.
‘I will hardly do that.’ Energised by that admission of his, she sat up and began, with all the awkwardness of someone who had never taken on such a role before, to slide his jacket off his wide shoulders.
His bold gaze locked to hers, he shrugged out of the jacket in a fluid, sexy movement. Breathing in deep, emboldened by partial success, she embarked on his tie with hands that felt infuriatingly clumsy. ‘I’m not very good at this,’ she warned him.
‘You can practise on me as often as you like, but tonight such refinements would be wasted on me,’ Lucca asserted huskily, discarding his tie and ripping at his shirt with unashamed impatience. With it hanging loose to reveal a muscular bronzed slice of hair-roughened chest, he scooped her off the mattress to stand her up between his spread thighs.
His expert mouth claiming hers in a series of tantalising rough and then soft kisses stole her concentration. The faint drag of his teeth on her soft, full lower lip and the thrust of his tongue made her shiver in sensual shock and gasp. Meanwhile, almost without her knowledge and certainly without her input, she was being undressed. Her corduroy jeans were shimmied down over her slender hips, but she had no idea where they went after that because what Lucca was doing to her mouth was a wicked enticement of her every sense.
‘I love your mouth,’ he groaned, soft as silk, his breath fanning the smooth skin of her midriff as he bent his dark head to trail a soothing kiss there before he eased up the tee shirt over her narrow ribcage. ‘I love your skin…but most of all I love to look at you, bella mia.’
‘I don’t know why…’ she said shyly as he drew her down to him.
His dark golden eyes arrowed with lingering masculine appreciation over the pale pouting thrust of her small rose-tipped breasts. ‘For me…you are perfection,’ he breathed thickly. ‘Chemistry like this doesn’t die just because you want it to.’
‘Did you want it to?’ Vivien whispered, hurt by that concept.
Lucca gave her a stunned look of incomprehension. ‘Che altro…what else? When you left me, of course I wanted my hunger for you to die. It was like you had taken half of me away as well,’ he countered in a roughened undertone. ‘How was I to live like that?’
Her heart twisted inside her. Moisture prickled the back of her eyes and her throat hurt. But before she could think about what she’d just learned when she’d least expected to, Lucca tangled one hand into the fall of her pale golden hair and ravished her mouth with a raw, explosive passion that left her dizzy.
He smoothed possessive hands over her sensitive breasts and she shivered. He let his thumbs play in gentle, teasing circles over the tender buds eager for his attention. Heat lay coiled like a river of fire at the core of her. Her hips shifted up in a tiny rising motion. The ache of want began then, at first lending a delicious, bittersweet edge to response but minute by minute he pushed back the boundaries until the extent of her own anticipation made patience impossible.
The skim of his tongue over her delicate skin made her twist and whimper. He scored a light, knowing fingertip over the taut, damp triangle of fabric stretched tight between her thighs. Suddenly she was hotter than she could bear and pushing up against him with eagerness and a longing beyond anything she had ever felt in her life before.
‘Lucca…’ Stretching up, she found his handsome mouth again all on her own and tasted him. A pulse beat of restive desire was taking her by storm.
With an earthy sound low in his throat, he drew up her legs and peeled off her panties. He stroked the wet silk heart of her, established his welcome and she moaned out loud, unable to stay still. Again she reached up to let the pink tip of her tongue flicker across the outline of his wide, sensual lips and then dip between, driven by the shameless craving to urge him on.
‘I surrender, bella mia,’ Lucca growled, pressing her slim shoulders flat to the pillows, lean, strong face stamped with raw, male hunger.
‘Don’t make me wait,’ she whispered, taken aback by her own daring, but controlled by a need that was too tormenting for her to fight.
‘I couldn’t…’ A stormy flash of fierce elemental gold flared in his arresting gaze. Lifting himself back from her, he unzipped his well-cut trousers. His rampant arousal was clearly delineated by the fine expensive fabric. Her face was hot as he came back to her. All male and licensed to be impatient, he parted her thighs and found his place with a ground-out sigh of satisfaction. ‘Night after night, you’ve haunted my dreams, and now I’m living my wildest fantasy, gioia mia.’
He shifted with pure masculine provocation to acquaint her with his raw male power. In a bold movement, wholly attuned to the dominance that she yearned for in that instant, he plunged hard into the slick, tight depths of her. The pleasure was immediate, overwhelming. She jerked, her spine arching as she loosed a low, keening cry.
‘Is it good?’ Lucca stared down at her with a blaze of primitive satisfaction in his assessing scrutiny of her delicate pointed face. ‘I want it to be so good you can’t stay away from me.’
‘Lock me up…throw away the key!’ she gasped wildly.
‘No, bella mia,’ He shifted his lean hips in a smooth circling motion, teasing her with his strength and control. ‘You know the rules. You must choose of your own free will to be with me.’
‘I choose…oh, I choose to be with you,’ she framed, shakily but fiercely.
Shoulder muscles bulging, he swooped down to claim a devouring kiss that sent the blood racing at breakneck speed through her veins. She felt possessed on every level and it was the most electrifying sensation that she had ever known. Then he lifted his arrogant dark head again. His exotic dark golden eyes raked over her with savage approval.
He sank into her deeper and faster. She arched up to him in surrender and welcome. In a breathless urgent gasp, she cried his name. The roller coaster of breakneck excitement was racing through her again. The ache of tormented hunger swelled, driving her on out of control to a shattering peak she had never touched before. The equivalent of a rocket display took off inside her. She hit the heights of ecstasy and then swan-dived down and down and down onto the mental equivalent of a fluffy feather bed. She felt as if she could fly, but the reassuring weight of Lucca’s big, powerful body held her entrapped.
Being trapped had never felt so good. He hugged her close with the easy affection that had once been so natural between them. Happiness engulfed her and she strung an exuberant line of kisses along one wide bronzed shoulder before carefully following suit along the other. Lucca smiled into the tumbled silk of her hair, breathing in the fresh, clean, camomile scent of it. He found her hands and held them both tight and then lifted one lazily to his indolent mouth and pressed a single gentle kiss to her palm.
‘Vivi…’ he murmured softly.
‘I want you to know that I chose you a long time ago,’ Vivien murmured eagerly.
His lean, powerful length tensed almost imperceptibly. His tousled dark head came up, the brilliance of his gaze enhanced by the density of his inky lashes. ‘Try not to forget that you also chose to ditch me when the going got tough.’
Vivien lost colour. ‘I didn’t…it wasn’t like that!’
‘So watch out, bella mia,’ Lucca breat
hed, smoother than silk sliding on silk. ‘Next time, I’ll do the ditching.’
Her glowing happiness died as if someone had switched off an interior light. She turned her head away.
Lucca studied her forlorn aspect with the intensity of a highly suspicious male. She looked so quiet and acted so shy and undemanding. He would have been prepared to swear that she had not a devious bone in her tiny body. But somehow, when it came to getting her own way, she was the equivalent of an armoured battering ram. She could be terrifyingly effective and he had never yet worked out how she achieved her results.
Her unsung triumphs were many more than she would ever guess. When he had first asked her out, he had only wanted an affair, but he had been hooked into an exclusive arrangement straight off and choosing a diamond ring by the next full moon. Shattered by the speed of his own capitulation, he had planned to stay engaged for years and years. However, her refusal to move in with him had sent wedding bells flying to the top of his agenda. When he’d said he was too busy to take a honeymoon, she’d said that if he was returning to work immediately, so must she and, oh, yes, by the way…she would have to do a two-week-long stint with students at some remote cottage in the chilly Scottish Highlands. He had arranged the honeymoon the same day. All those subtle feminine victories in mind, Lucca levered himself back from her, sprang off the bed and strode into the bathroom.
He was about to get in the shower when Vivien entered the bathroom.
‘So do it now,’ she told him curtly.
Lucca frowned in sincere incomprehension. ‘Do…what?’
‘Ditch me.’ Sea-green eyes challenged him. ‘Go ahead…I’m waiting.’
‘But I don’t want to ditch you!’ Lucca spelt out, sardonic as he could be.
‘Then, Lucca…I’ll do it for you,’ Vivien countered, sweeter than saccharine in tone. ‘You’re ditched.’
‘Dannazione! What are you playing at?’ Lucca raked at her with wrathful incredulity.
‘I don’t like threats. Don’t you dare talk about ditching me just because I made the mistake of letting you into my bed again!’ Vivien warned him hotly.
With another bitten-back swear word, Lucca yanked a towel from the rail and knotted it round his lean hips. He thrust spread fingers through his cropped black hair, which would have been as luxuriantly curly as his son’s had he not kept it short. ‘I was teasing you…’
Fingernails biting painful crescents into her palm, Vivien stood her ground. ‘If I drove you to the edge of a cliff and abandoned you above a thousand-foot drop, would you consider that “teasing“?’
Dark blood flared over his fabulous cheekbones. ‘Who told you I didn’t like heights?’
‘Your sister.’ Vivien winced, her lovely face taking on a guilty cast. ‘I’d never have let you know I knew if you hadn’t said what you did. Especially not after you were so incredibly brave climbing up onto the balcony.’
Lucca endeavoured to hang onto his grim expression and failed. She had hit back at him and now she was beating herself up for it. A wicked grin chased the bleak aspect and tugged at the corners of his beautiful mouth. ‘Are you going to tell people? Hold it over me every time I annoy you?’
Vivien slowly shook her fair head. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you.’
Lucca closed his hands over hers and tugged her close. ‘For just a minute or two, being with you again spooked me, bella mia.’
As in once burned, twice shy? As in, I can’t stick this woman? As in, What on earth am I doing with her again? A frantic need to know exactly what he had meant by that word ‘spooked’ gripped Vivien. But it was not the time to subject him to an interrogation.
‘It’s been a very emotional evening,’ she conceded.
Slumberous heat flamed in his golden appraisal. ‘We need to relax,’ he told her, untying the wrap she had put on and trailing it off.
‘Lucca!’ she gasped.
‘If you think that is shocking…’ gorgeous eyes glinting, he dropped his towel ‘…wait until you see what I can get up to in the shower.’
Around dawn he eased out of bed without waking her and pulled on his clothes. Hooking his jacket over his finger, he surveyed her peaceful profile. Fabian Garsdale was surely out of the picture now. He strolled across the landing, surveyed his sleeping son with immense pride and went downstairs. Jock whined from behind the kitchen door. Lucca hesitated and then suppressed a groan.
Jock was just waiting to pounce. It took some pretty nifty footwork to prevent the little terrier getting in a nip and, frustrated by his lack of success, Jock pulled his falling-over stunt. Lucca located the biscuit tin and extracted a chocolate biscuit, which he wafted above the still animal. Scrambling up, Jock displayed amazing powers of recovery and snatched at the biscuit. When the biscuit remained out of reach, he uttered a bark of furious protest.
‘We have to come to a deal,’ Lucca told his tormentor, squatting down to meet defiant black eyes set in a shock of long, dusty dark hair. Lucca was reminded of an aggressive floor mop. ‘A deal that involves bribery and corruption in return for my safe passage. Here…’
Bristling with distrust, Jock accepted the biscuit and bore it off under the table. Lucca had never had a pet as a child. He regarded Vivien’s dysfunctional dog in much the same way as he would have regarded any new project or challenge. But when Jock abandoned the biscuit to noisily mark Lucca’s departure with a flurry of unimpressed barking, Lucca started laughing.
‘’You can go back to sleep now…enjoy a lie-in to recuperate, cara mia, ‘Lucca teased with the all-male satisfaction of a guy who had just ravished a woman within an inch of her life.
Her body indolent after that overdose of pleasure, Vivien lifted languid arms and wound them round his neck. ‘Lie-ins are wonderful. Can I assume that you’re planning to get Marco up and give him his breakfast?’
Newly aware of the astonishing amount of time and effort that Marco’s needs took up at the start of the day, Lucca almost groaned out loud at that question.
A sunny smile of helpless amusement lit up Vivien’s face. ‘I was only joking…I just wanted to see your reaction!’
‘Witch!’ Lucca growled with mock annoyance, brilliant golden eyes welded to her lovely laughing face and lingering. At the back of his gaze there was a shadow of concern. Their divorce was final. He had been notified yesterday and he had intended to mention it casually last night. But then he had wondered if she already knew and was preserving a diplomatic silence. He had finally decided that it would be wiser to leave her solicitor to pass on that news. Personalising the announcement might be a mistake, he reasoned. He did not want to upset her.
Conscious of the tension that had tautened his big muscular length, Vivien looked up into his lean bronzed face, heart skipping a beat at his lethal dark attraction. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Wrong? Nothing.’ Shrugging a wide brown shoulder to emphasise that determined negative, Lucca rolled over and sprang out of bed.
So, he was sleeping with his ex-wife! She was happy, Marco was happy and he was happy. Their sleeping arrangements were their own private business. Even so, possibly he should send her some flowers today so that she would know that he appreciated her. Flowers in exchange for a wedding ring, a derisive inner voice enquired. Lucca gritted his teeth.
Perhaps he would also make time to call in at Tiffany’s and buy her some diamonds…something spectacular…a necklace or a bracelet. But she wasn’t really into jewellery. She would say thank you and put it in a drawer and forget about it again. He would have taken her out to dinner but he didn’t want the paparazzi jumping all over them and printing inflammatory stuff in the tabloids that might distress her. He would buy her the most magnificent fern he could find. That would impress, wouldn’t it? Something she could stick under a microscope and study if she liked.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ Vivien asked gently, bemused by his most unusual abstraction.
‘No, I was just thinking. What we need…what you need,�
�� Lucca corrected his phraseology hurriedly and wondered what the hell was wrong with his brain and his usually rock-solid nerves, ‘is a nanny to help out with Marco.’
Vivien pretended not to have noticed that slip that revealed that Lucca was once again thinking of them as a couple, but she wanted to grin from ear to ear. ‘Rosa Peroli, the nanny who worked part-time for me in Oxford, did say she wouldn’t mind trying out city life.’
His brows pleated in surprise. ‘Is Rosa Italian?’
Vivien smiled. ‘Her parents are and she speaks the language fluently. I thought it was good for Marco to hear Italian spoken in his home as well.’
Lucca was taken aback by that information. Even when the bitterness between them had been at its worst, Vivien had chosen to respect their son’s mixed cultural inheritance by employing a nanny of Italian extraction. He had misjudged Vivien. ‘She sounds perfect.’
While he was in the shower, Vivien surveyed her untidy bedroom with immense contentment, her green eyes softening with love and sentimental thoughts. Two of Lucca’s shirts lay discarded on the floor along with a black tee shirt and a pair of denim jeans that had looked stupendously sexy on him, she reflected dreamily. Three business suits hung from the picture rail. A male hairbrush lay on the dresser beside his mobile. A state of the art little PC, his keys and a file were piled up on the chest of drawers. Various newspapers in Italian and English were scattered throughout the room. He was used to servants, who picked up after him, laundered his linen and dealt with every household task. He really did generate an awful lot of work on the domestic front. And the truth was, the very sight of one of his shirts thrown on the floor made her ecstatically happy.