‘Everything changed after Alex died,’ Cordelia said. ‘I’d planned on going to university, even though I knew that Dad would have to resist phoning twice a day to make sure I was all right. I think he always felt, deep down, that he should have been able to protect my mum, that he should have been there with her when she went to London, then she wouldn’t have been hit by that car and everything would have been all right. If he couldn’t protect Mum, then he would devote his life to protecting me. But going to university?’ She sighed. ‘I’d worked out that it was just something I had to do. Alex was destined to help Dad in the fishing business and eventually take it over. It was all he’d ever wanted to do whereas I...’
‘Whereas you...?’
‘I had dreams of leaving here, seeing what was out there. It would have been the right thing to do for me and for my dad. Instead, those dreams died with Alex. I had no choice but to step into his shoes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad life, but there’s a big world out there and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never get to see it.’
She opened her eyes to find that he was still staring down at her and she smiled.
‘I’m not about to start weeping and wailing on you,’ she said.
‘I have no objection to a weeping and wailing woman,’ Luca lied. He could have expanded. He could have told her that weeping and wailing set his teeth on edge. He’d had his fill of watching the antics of his father’s ex-wives, the emotional dramas played out for public consumption when the marriages began to unravel. He could remember one memorable occasion when one of his father’s birthday celebrations had descended into full-blown farce when an inebriated wife number three had decided to spill the beans on everything she hated about men, and about his father in particular. So weeping and wailing? No chance.
‘Liar.’ But the smile was more heartfelt this time. ‘Men hate women crying on them.’
‘You speak from experience? Some guy turn on you because you cried?’
‘No!’ She couldn’t resist any longer and she reached out and stroked the side of his face and noticed that her fingers were trembling. It was only a stroke, but it felt as daring as if she’d done a striptease. Her nipples were pinched into tight, sensitive buds and heat had bloomed between her thighs.
The warm sun, the champagne, the sharing of these confidences...and this enigmatic stranger. The mix was heady and combustible.
‘No guys?’ He held still her hand and then opened it and, eyes still on her, he kissed her palm, then licked it, the delicate trace of his tongue on her skin.
She sighed and trembled, caught between an urge to pull back because this was dangerous territory and a need to go further because she’d never done a dangerous thing in her entire life and the temptation was overpowering.
She felt as if she’d spent so long looking through a pane of glass at a world filled with exciting possibilities that the chance to go past that glass and actually have a taste of that excitement was too much to resist.
She shifted, her breathing quickening, invitation playing on her parted lips.
‘I’ve told you all about myself,’ she whispered shakily. ‘It’s your turn to tell me all about yourself.’
‘I’ve done nothing but tell you about myself for the past few days...’ How to redefine the truth? That was the thought that ran through Luca’s head, but he swept aside that momentary discomfort.
‘I guess the work is seasonal, which is why you can afford to take time off and stay here...’
When are you going to go?
She found that the prospect of him leaving made her feel weirdly hollow inside.
‘There are more optimum months for harvesting the grapes...that’s true...’
‘And what do you do when you’re not picking them? Do you travel? Visit family? Who do you live with in Italy?’
‘That’s a lot of questions, tesoro...’
‘I’m curious about you. For so many reasons, I’m stuck here. You can’t blame me for asking questions.’ She looked at him wistfully, imagining his world, which would be so different from hers. A world without obligations and responsibilities, where work was something that could be picked up and dropped on a whim. Maybe he did other, odd jobs, aside from the grape picking, although she doubted it because his knowledge of the wine industry was so detailed. He obviously loved what he did.
‘No, I can’t,’ Luca told her honestly. ‘But guilt is no way to lead your life, cara. You’re too young to think that you’re stuck somewhere without hope of escape, looking at places on a map and assuming you’ll never get to visit any of them.’
‘You’ve met my father. You’ve seen for yourself that I can’t just waltz off in the sunset...’
Luca shrugged. Yes, he had met Clive Ramsey, a weathered man in his sixties whose life revolved around his daughter and the sea. He’d lost his wife and he’d never really moved on. Just another example of what a waste of time love was. It got its hooks into you and from that point on, you were on a road to nowhere. Luca struggled to think of a single example of all that starry-eyed, fairy-tale rubbish soppy movies promoted.
In fairness, Clive hadn’t been around much. The fishing season was at its height and he was gone most days and many nights, trawling for crab and lobster, leaving the running of the house and his business to the daughter he clearly couldn’t do without. Luca was sure things would have been different had her brother lived, but now, as she’d told him, she’d had no choice but to step up to the plate.
He suddenly had an overwhelming urge to take her away and show her all those faraway sights she had only ever dreamed about.
‘We’re talking too much,’ he murmured, bringing things back down to familiar terrain. ‘Let’s just enjoy being here.’
Cordelia smiled, heart swelling with excitement. There was nothing she yearned for more than to enjoy the moment for what it was. She wanted so much for him to touch her, really touch her, but her lack of experience was crippling.
He was attracted to her. She knew he was, unbelievable as it was. That was a start in the right direction.
‘No one ever comes to this cove,’ she confided nervously. ‘At least not during the day...’
‘Shame. It’s exquisite.’
‘It’s because you need a boat to get here. It’s inaccessible from land. Not that many people have boats that they can just take out for the fun of it.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘I feel it. Right now. Lucky, I mean...’ she said breathlessly. She shifted onto her side and shuffled a bit closer in what she hoped were movements barely visible to the naked eye.
She fought down a wave of nervous nausea and ran her hands softly over his stomach, enjoying the feel of muscled strength under her fingers.
She saw the look of astonishment in his eyes and was tempted to pull her hand away, but she didn’t because something inside her knew that if she didn’t seize this moment, it would never be there for the taking again.
‘Cordelia...’ Luca said in a roughened undertone, shifting but not doing what he knew he should be doing, namely removing himself from temptation. He hadn’t been able to resist touching that satiny smooth skin but alarm bells in his head were louder than the church bells in his local village.
‘I really like you...’ she admitted, blushing furiously but maintaining eye contact.
Luca groaned and clenched his jaw hard. He was rock hard. If he glanced down, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to miss the sizeable bulge underneath the still slightly damp trunks. Nor would she. If she’d been more brazen, it would have been easy to pull away, however attractive he found her, but her innocence, the courage to say what she had, which he could tell was costing her dear, her damned back story, was lethally persuasive.
She reached out for his hand and he felt the tremor in her fingers. He heard himself say something softly under his breath when s
he placed his hand on her breast and then, shockingly, reached to stroke his thigh.
Not courageous enough to touch what clearly needed touching, but it didn’t matter because what she was doing was sending his body into explosive overdrive. Those little circular motions with her finger, gentle and delicate. They made him wonder what it would feel like to have her tongue there, and that elicited another guttural groan of desire.
‘This...’ He struggled to sound normal. ‘Not a good idea...’
She immediately removed her hand. ‘I was wrong. You don’t fancy me. I understand.’
Luca couldn’t answer. Instead, he grasped her hand and returned it to his thigh.
‘I’ve never wanted any woman more in my life,’ he confessed shakily. ‘But...’
‘But I guess you’re more accustomed to sexy, dark-haired Italian women...’
‘You need to look in the mirror a little more often, la mia bellezza.’
He drew her close, pressed her against him while the sun poured down like honey and the impossibly blue sea stifled all the perfectly sound thoughts in his head, hypnotising him into wanting one thing and one thing only. Her.
By way of response, Cordelia nuzzled his neck and then tentatively covered his thigh with her own. She could feel his hard erection pulsing against her belly and she desperately wanted to put her hand over it, feel it moving, but when she actually thought of doing that, she felt faint.
She had zero experience when it came to men. At least, none of her fumbling adventures, such as they’d been, were worth writing home about.
She hadn’t avoided sex. She’d never had any puritanical ideals to turn it into some kind of prize to be handed to the right guy. No, as luck would have it, she’d just had the one semi-serious boyfriend and they hadn’t ended up in bed. Now she knew why. She hadn’t been turned on. She hadn’t had the foggiest idea what being turned on was all about. Because this was what it felt like to be turned on. This was what had been missing from the equation.
This and so many other things.
This was excitement. Heart-stopping, pulse-racing, nerve-jangling excitement and if he wanted her, then she couldn’t begin to describe just how much she wanted him.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE FELL BACK compliantly when he pushed her gently so that he could lever himself up to stare down at her. His breathing was a heavy rasp and his eyes were dark with passion, unfocused, as though he had been transported to another world.
He ran his hand along her side and then up along her ribcage. The almost dry swimsuit was an irritant, a scratchy barrier between them that Cordelia wanted to yank off but, again, her lack of experience was paralysing. She didn’t have the confidence to take the reins and she wondered whether that lack of confidence and experience would be a turn-off for him.
He was so...sexy. So dark, so exotic, so unbelievably, sinfully compelling. You didn’t have to let your imagination wander too far to realise that he wouldn’t have lived a life deprived of adoring women and it wasn’t just about his looks. Over the past few days, she had seen the three-dimensional man who had not been in evidence when he’d been in and out of sleep for the first couple of days after she had rescued him.
He was dry, witty, funny and a brilliant listener. He had painted such vivid images in her head of the bright Italian sun streaming down on acre upon acre of carefully cultivated vineyards. He could describe the colour and texture of the fat, juicy grapes with the detail of a poet and his adventures...the places he’d visited! Cordelia could only assume that he used the pay he made working in the wine industry to travel the world when the harvesting season came to an end.
In every way, shape and form his life was a window to a faraway world she could only dream of.
And here he was, with her, and the need to have this man and enjoy this moment was overpowering.
She tentatively drew his hand to her breast and felt him shudder against her.
When he made a half-hearted motion to remove it, she held it fast and was filled with a sense of reckless daring.
‘Cordelia,’ he groaned under his breath. ‘Like I said...this isn’t a good idea...’
‘Why? If you fancy me and I fancy you, why isn’t it a good idea?’
‘A million reasons,’ he murmured, but he was touching her, massaging the full weight of her breast in his big hand and then slipping a finger under the strap of the swimsuit so that he could slowly draw it down.
Her eyelids fluttered shut and she sighed and then arched up as the swimsuit was pulled down. She twisted and moaned and linked her fingers behind his head and drew him lower. She could feel the conflict inside him but she knew that temptation was stronger than the voice of reason. Inexperienced she might be, but she knew that with unerring, feminine certainty. He wanted her and he couldn’t help himself and that filled her with a sense of heady power.
Everything about this man was an eye-opener and she was loving it.
His mouth circled her nipple and he flicked his tongue over the stiffened bud and began teasing it into such fierce arousal that a hum of sensation began between her thighs, growing in intensity until she was rubbing her legs together in an attempt to control it.
She was desperate for his hand to be there and, as if reading her mind, he cupped her between her legs. When she wriggled against the palm of his hand, he obligingly and gently pressed down.
Her body was behaving in all sorts of wild and wonderful ways.
Not knowing what she was supposed to do with him, she slid her hand over his muscled thigh and shuddered.
‘All in good time.’ Luca’s voice was husky and only just the right side of controlled.
He nuzzled her breast and then moved to the other and laved it with his tongue.
It was unbearable. She parted her legs and trembled when he immediately slid his hand under the stretchy Lycra of the swimsuit, distorting it as he began to rub her there.
He removed his hand and then began easing the swimsuit off her, all the while licking her nipple and suckling on her breast. She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t think at all.
She just wanted him on her and in her and she wanted it in a hurry.
Her hands scrabbled at his swimming trunks.
Luca stilled. There was enough common sense still left in him to realise that this was not in the plan. Yes, he’d looked at her and discovered that his libido could reach heights he could never have anticipated, but he’d fast worked out that that was only partially to do with the fact that she was attractive.
Maybe more than just attractive.
He’d worked out that it was due to a combination of things, not least the fact that he was away from normality, away from the trappings of power and wealth that had always defined him and away from the people who lived in that rarefied world. He was a free man here and so everything was heightened, including the mystifying power of his attraction to the woman lying in this slice of empty paradise.
So many responsibilities awaited his return that freedom had never tasted sweeter.
Was it, therefore, so surprising that he could barely string two coherent thoughts together when he was around the woman?
He’d replaced his computer on day four when he’d headed out to get himself a handful of new clothes to replace the ones he had borrowed from her father. He’d hit the nearest town, headed for an Internet café and rebooted his working life, but even the pressing emails and endless reports and the lucrative deals with companies abroad awaiting his attention couldn’t quite manage to distract him from whatever spell had been weaved on him.
Luca was loving it all. Accustomed as he was to a life of staggering control and predictability, he was thoroughly enjoying the sensation of letting himself go.
Which didn’t mean that he’d turned into the village idiot! He always used protection but right now, right here...
For the first time in his life, the thrill of the gamble was greater than the pull of common sense. He knew what he should do and what he shouldn’t but there was a weakness inside him, driving him on to take a chance, just this once.
She was still naked and so, so beautiful and he still had an erection as hard as a rod of steel.
He felt the slickness between her legs because he just couldn’t not go there.
‘Okay.’
‘You’re a siren.’ His groan was unsteady. ‘I can picture you sitting on a rock out there, calling to sailors. They wouldn’t stand a chance.’
He levered himself down, trailing his tongue along her body and tasting the salt from the sea. Her breasts and stomach were paler, emphasising the rich pink of her nipples, each tipped with stiffened buds the colour of claret. He played briefly with one nipple, teasing it between two fingers, but then he moved to circle her slender waist with his hands. He stroked her hips with the pads of his thumbs, then he moved even lower to gently peel apart the groove between her thighs that sheathed the pulsing of her clitoris.
He licked it, tasted her honeyed sweetness and felt himself swell even more at her little whimpers and soft, startled moans and the way she moved against his mouth, bumping up and down and wriggling, keeping his head in place because her fingers were curled into his over-long hair, and panting.
‘Please...’ she breathed and that simple plea scattered that well-intentioned voice of reason to the four winds.
He couldn’t resist.
Not when she was like this, her slender legs spread apart, open to him like a flower, inviting him to come inside. Reason, logic, forward-thinking... His brain shut down, leaving him at the mercy of sensation.
Shaking with desire, Luca stood up to rid himself of his swimming trunks, pausing only to smile at the rapt attention on her face.
Cordelia smiled back. Was it an alluring, siren-like smile, or a nervous I’ve-never-done-this-before smile?
Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal (Once Upon a Temptation, Book 5) Page 4