Harlequin Presents--July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Natalie Anderson

  ‘You know why not.’

  He held her gaze for a long, throbbing moment. ‘Let’s pretend I’m not a client right now. Just for a couple of days—a week.’

  ‘But you don’t have time to waste and—’

  ‘I can afford a week or two.’ His hands came down to settle on her hips, bringing her closer to the tall, hard frame of his body. The body that had possessed her and thrilled her and was now making it hard—nay, impossible—for her to rustle up the willpower to say no.

  ‘You mean...continue our fling?’

  His finger stroked from her ear to the bottom of her chin in a caress that made every knob of her spine shiver in reaction. ‘I want you.’ His statement was blunt, bold, and it spoke to every cell in her flesh, causing her to vibrate with desire deep and low in her core. ‘And I know you want me.’ He brought her even closer, his body so hard against her belly she almost came on the spot.

  Emmie drew in a rattling breath and released it in a shuddering stream. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in me denying it?’

  His smile was knowing, his gaze glinting. ‘I could kiss you right now and prove it.’ His gaze lowered to her mouth and her heart leapt in anticipation. ‘But I’m going to make you wait until tonight.’

  Disappointment flooded through her. He was going to make her wait? Tonight was hours away. ‘Tonight? What’s happening tonight?’

  He stroked a slow-moving finger across her tingling mouth, the top lip and then the lower one, ramping up her need for him with every sexy graze of his finger. His gaze was still as dark as a midnight sky, the sparks of male desire like winking stars from an outer galaxy. ‘I think you know what’s going to happen.’ He dropped his hand from her face and stepped back. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight. Bring a toothbrush and a change of clothes.’

  Emmie arched one eyebrow. ‘What about a nightgown?’

  He gave her a smouldering look that made every intimate muscle in her body fizz like shaken champagne. ‘You won’t need it.’ And, without another word, he left.

  * * *

  Matteo had to stop himself from turning up at Emmie’s house an hour earlier than he’d said. Anticipation thundered through his blood, the need to make love to her again driving every other thought out of his head. He knew he was acting out of character by putting to one side his mission to fulfil the terms of his father’s will, but he was compelled to explore the blistering sensuality between himself and Emmie Woodcroft. How he had stopped himself from kissing her in her office earlier today still surprised him. Who knew he had such iron-clad self-control? She had tested it, though, tested it almost beyond its endurance.

  Emmie was the most alluring woman he had ever met and the thought of making love to her again made him ache and pound with need. He was unable to get the memory of their passionate lovemaking out of his mind. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke, the last thing he thought of before he slept, and it filled his thoughts throughout the day. He was a man obsessed and he had to get control of it otherwise he was going to lose even more valuable time.

  Matteo was determined not to fall in love, but he had nothing against having a short fling with Emmie in order to convince her to consider his proposal, because the combustible chemistry between them was beyond anything he had experienced before.

  They had only had one night together and that wasn’t enough. No way was it enough. The disappointment he’d felt when she’d left him that day at his villa had made him all the more determined to see her again. She had stirred a bone-deep longing in him that was making it difficult to think about anything but making love to her again.

  But he was acutely aware of the time frame in his father’s will that added a whole other level of urgency to his relationship with Emmie.

  One that was impossible to ignore.

  CHAPTER TEN

  EMMIE OPENED THE door to Matteo right on the dot of eight p.m. ‘Hi.’ She was strangely tongue-tied, feeling as shy as a girl going on her first date. ‘I—I just have to get my toiletries bag. Make yourself at home and...’

  Matteo stepped over the threshold and closed the door, taking her by the upper arms before she could step away to collect her things. He brought his mouth down on hers in a blistering kiss that lifted every hair on her head and sent sparks of electricity shooting through her blood. His tongue entered her mouth in a bold thrust that had distinctly erotic overtones, the flickers and darts of tongue-play making every female hormone in her body do a happy dance, like an over-pumped cheerleading squad. His hands moved from her upper arms to glide down to her hips, bringing her closer to the proud jut of his arousal. Desire flooded her being, dousing her in molten flames of lust that licked at every inch of her flesh.

  He finally lifted his mouth off hers and gave one of his crooked smiles. ‘I would have done that earlier today, but I wasn’t sure your receptionist would be able to handle it if she happened to come in on us having red-hot sex on your desk.’

  Emmie licked the salty taste of his lips from her own, a frisson passing over her body at the sexy scene he had just planted in her mind. ‘I’m not sure I would have been able to handle it either. Desk sex sounds a little uncomfortable.’

  His eyes smouldered. ‘I’d make sure it wasn’t.’

  That she could well believe. Emmie linked her arms around his neck and planted a soft kiss to his lips. ‘I’ll hold you to that some time but not here. The desk I have in my home office is an heirloom ladies’ writing desk that used to belong to my great-grandmother. She would probably spin in her grave if I used it in such a way.’

  Matteo smiled and placed his hands on the curve of her bottom, his hardened length stirring her female flesh into a madcap frenzy. His mouth came back down to just above hers. ‘Do you know how crazy with desire you make me? I can’t think of anything but how much I want to be inside you again.’

  Emmie gave an involuntary shudder, her body already hot and damp with desire. ‘You drive me more than a little crazy too.’

  He closed the distance between their mouths, his lips moulding to hers in a mind-altering kiss that swept her up into a vortex of thundering longing. Need pulsated throughout her lower body, a desperate, clawing need that made her feel hollow and empty without his thick, hard presence. Now that she had experienced his possession, her body craved it like a drug. Needed to feel the ecstasy of his earth-shattering lovemaking.

  Matteo placed one hand in the small of her back and the other slipped up behind her head, his fingers tangling in her hair, sending shivers cascading down her spine. His kiss became more urgent, more intense, more spellbinding. Emmie groaned against his mouth, delighting in the hard pressure that signalled his desperate need for her—the same need that was consuming her.

  Matteo finally tore his mouth away, his breathing heavy, his eyes shining brightly with unbridled lust. ‘As much as I’d like to finish this here and now, I have a special evening planned for you.’ He gave a rueful twist of his mouth and added, ‘Besides, I’m mussing up your hair and make-up and giving you beard rash.’ He touched a gentle finger to her chin.

  What could be more special than being ravished inside her front doorway? Never had such thrilling excitement thundered through her blood. Never had she experienced such giddy anticipation. ‘I gotta admire your self-control,’ Emmie said. ‘It’s a whole lot better than mine.’

  Matteo smiled and brushed her cheek with his bent knuckles in a light-as-air caress. ‘Go and get your things. I’ll wait for you here.’

  Emmie scooted away to get her toiletries bag, her heart still thudding like a mad thing in her chest, her lips still tingling from his kiss, desire still pounding in her body. She caught a glimpse of herself in her bathroom mirror and was a little shocked at what she saw reflected back at her. Her hair was tousled where Matteo’s hands had played with it, her eyes were bright as headlamps and her lips were swollen, without the coating
of lip-gloss she had applied earlier that evening. And there was a reddened patch on her chin where his stubble had grazed her. She touched it with her finger, her stomach freefalling at the thought of his stubbly face buried between her thighs.

  Emmie took a breath and released it in a shuddering stream. She had not thought it possible to be so madly attracted to a man that nothing else would matter other than getting naked with him as soon as humanly possible. If anyone had told her even a couple of weeks ago that she would be in such a giddy state of arousal, she would have rolled about the floor laughing. But now all she could think about was rolling around a bed, a floor and, yes, even a desk with Matteo Vitale.

  And the sooner, the better.

  * * *

  A short while later, Matteo led Emmie into the restaurant he’d booked in Mayfair. He had been in two minds over whether to skip dinner altogether and go straight back to his house and make passionate love to her. But he wanted this evening to be special because he’d been thinking about her lack of dating experience.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about being her first lover since she’d been a teenager. Honoured? Privileged? Touched? None of those words adequately summed up how he felt. He mostly dated women with loads of experience, so it was certainly a novel experience to sleep with someone who was practically a virgin. He was used to worldly women who played the same game as him—casual dates with no-strings sex.

  Emmie was hardly worldly, but she wasn’t unsophisticated. She was naturally elegant, and poised and articulate. And, while she hadn’t had a lot of sexual experience, he would never have guessed from her responses to him. She responded with such enthusiasm, receiving him as if her body had been designed especially for him and his for her.

  The more time he spent with her, the more he longed to know about her. Emmie was the first woman he had wanted to get to know on a deeper level. His relationships in the past had been short, some might even go as far to describe them as shallow. Even his relationship with his late wife had hardly been what anyone could call close. It had been a convenient solution to marry for the sake of their surprise pregnancy.

  It saddened him that he had been unable to return Abriana’s feelings for him. She had deserved better, but how could he have given her what he hadn’t had? His ability to form a deep and loving attachment had no doubt been blighted by the walk-out of his mother when he’d been such a young age. Which was why he had been so careful not to raise anyone’s expectations in relationships since.

  Matteo cupped Emmie’s elbow as they made their way to their table. Her petite frame brushed against him. The flowery notes of her perfume drifted past his nostrils and a wave of desire washed over him in a hot tide. She glanced up at him with a small smile and he fantasised about kissing her soft lips again. She had covered the beard rash with some make-up but just knowing it was still there made his groin tighten.

  ‘Here we go.’ He pulled out a chair for her and waited for her to be seated. He rested his hands on the tops of her shoulders for a moment before going to his own chair opposite.

  ‘This is nice,’ Emmie said, glancing round at the other tables which were situated some distance from theirs. ‘Oh, there’s a dance floor...’ Her teeth sank into her lower lip.

  ‘You like dancing?’

  Her cheeks grew pink and she made a business of spreading her napkin over her lap, her gaze not quite meeting his. ‘I love it but I’m hopeless at it. I’d have to be tipsy to get on a dance floor and, since I don’t drink, that’s not going to happen any time soon.’

  ‘Did you ever drink alcohol?’

  ‘If you can call having a sip or two of vodka at a party when I was sixteen drinking, then yes, I used to.’

  ‘But nothing since?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t mind other people drinking in moderation but it’s not for me.’ She waited a beat and added in an altered tone, ‘I’m too scared...’

  ‘Of making a fool of yourself?’

  Emmie met his gaze with a sombre one. ‘Of getting cancer.’

  A knife-like pain suddenly hit him in the chest. Emmie was terrified of getting cancer again.

  He could only imagine how hard it would be to live with the threat of it hanging over her. He knew about the carcinogenic properties of excessive alcohol use and that even drinking in moderation contained some element of risk. He was a moderate drinker himself. He hadn’t been drunk or even tipsy since he’d been a teenager, and even then, it had only been the once. He admired her stance. It showed discipline and the ability to resist peer pressure. But it also showed how much her cancer diagnosis had impacted her. ‘It sounds like you made the right choice, then.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t ever want to go through chemo again. It was ghastly.’ She gave a little shudder and picked up her glass of water. ‘Let’s talk about something else. I hate thinking about that time in my life.’

  ‘But in a way, it’s made you who you are today.’

  ‘Yes, but I often wonder who I might have been if I hadn’t got sick,’ Emmie said, frowning slightly as she looked at the ice cubes in her glass. ‘And if my parents wouldn’t have split up and my sister get an eating disorder.’ She glanced up at him and asked, ‘Do you ever wonder what you would be like now if your mother hadn’t left when she did?’

  Matteo gave a one-shoulder shrug. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Do you think it’s affected you in any way?’

  ‘A bit, perhaps.’

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Emmie asked, and without waiting for him to answer continued, ‘You find emotional intimacy difficult because you were abandoned as a young child by a primary carer. And, since your father struggled when your mother left, you taught yourself to be independent and emotionally distant. But you can train yourself to be more open emotionally. It’s hard, but it can be done. Otherwise relationships, particularly intimate ones, will always be fraught with difficulty.’

  ‘But what if I don’t want that sort of relationship?’ Matteo said with a cynical smile. ‘What if I’m perfectly happy with being independent and emotionally distant?’

  ‘But you’re not.’

  Matteo arched an eyebrow. ‘So you believe, but you’ve only known me a week or so.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m pretty good at reading people.’

  ‘So...’ He glanced at her mouth before meeting her gaze once more. ‘Tell me what I’m thinking right at this very moment.’

  Emmie’s cheeks went a deeper shade of pink. ‘You’re uncomfortable with my line of questioning, so you’re trying to distract me.’

  ‘And how I am distracting you, hmm?’

  ‘By looking at me as if you want to forget about dinner and go straight to your place and have mind-blowing sex. Am I right?’

  Matteo smiled. ‘You’re good.’

  Emmie smiled back. ‘It’s how I make my living.’ Her smile slowly faded, her gaze fell away, and she began to make a circular pattern with her fingertip on the tablecloth near her glass. ‘I’ve made a shortlist of candidates for you to—’

  ‘I thought we agreed to forget about that for the next few days?’ Matteo asked. The thought of dating anyone else while he was indulging in a fling with Emmie seemed a little weird, if not downright distasteful. He couldn’t imagine wanting to talk to another woman, let alone date anyone else. Nor did he want his so-called fling with Emmie to be over any time soon, which was unusual in itself. He was normally formulating an exit strategy on the second date. But not with Emmie.

  ‘Fine but, given the time pressure, I need to have a plan in place. It takes time to get to know someone and—’

  ‘Not according to what you said a few moments ago,’ Matteo said with a sardonic look. ‘You claim to know everything about me and we only met less than a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s me. Someone else might not have the same ability to see you for who y
ou are. They might be turned off, like Karena Thorsby was, thinking you were intimidating—which you are, by the way.’

  ‘But it doesn’t seem to bother you.’

  She shrugged and gave him a crooked smile. ‘You know what I thought when I first met you? You reminded me of a wolf with a wounded paw.’

  Matteo held up both his hands. ‘As you see, no wounds.’

  ‘You hide your pain because to reveal it to anyone would make you feel too vulnerable. Like a lot of men, you see vulnerability as a weakness, but I see it as a strength. Admitting you haven’t got it all together and need the support of others is an admirable quality.’ Emmie leaned forward across the table and placed a hand on his chest, right over the top of his heart. She looked directly into his eyes with her own periwinkle-blue ones. ‘There’s your wound.’

  He held her gaze for a long beat, the warmth of her hand seeping into all the cold corners of his chest, threatening to melt the cage of ice around his heart. Or maybe it wasn’t the physical touch of her hand that threatened to chip away the thick layer of ice. It was the way she looked at him—really looked at him. Emmie wasn’t someone who was satisfied with what she saw on the outside. She went deeper, the way he did as a forensic accountant. Looking for discrepancies, looking for clues, looking for things that didn’t add up. She had looked at him that way from the very first day, seeing through his emotional armour like a security scanner, somehow intuiting that all was not right in his life.

  Over the short time he had known her, he had told her more about himself than he had told anyone and, yes, it did make him feel vulnerable. When she’d stumbled across the graves of his wife and child he had opened up his world of pain to her, and he had been touched that she seemed to understand in a way few people could.

  Matteo captured her hand and brought it up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to each of her fingertips. ‘And where is your wound, cara mia?’