by Jennie Lucas
Edoardo let the silence be his answer.
She swallowed a couple of times, an agitated look in her eyes. ‘It meant nothing,’ she said. ‘It was probably just hormones or something. It happens to women as well as men, you know.’
‘Lust.’
She gave him an irritated frown. ‘Do you have to be so...blunt?’
‘No point dressing it up in fancy euphemisms,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the hots for me. I’m gagging for you. The thing is, what are we going to do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, folding her arms even tighter across her chest. ‘We’re going to do nothing, because it’s wrong.’
He gave her a wicked smile. ‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.’
She flung herself away. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’
He waited until she was almost out of the door before he spoke. ‘If you can’t sleep, you know where to find me. I’ll be happy to be of service.’
She gave him an arctic blast with her gaze by way of answer and then disappeared.
* * *
Bella was still shaking with reaction when she got to her bedroom. She closed the door and wished there was a lock on it. Not for Edoardo, but for herself. She didn’t trust herself not to wander down the long corridor to where his bedroom was and take him up on his offer to “service” her.
She groaned in self-recrimination. How could she have been so stupid to get so close to him again? He had danger written all over him; it was like a tattoo on his body only she could see.
His touch had set her flesh alight. She had not been able to control her reaction to him. It had taken over her common sense, her principles and morals.
She had wanted him.
She still wanted him.
The pulse of her blood was still reverberating through her body like a tiny bell struck by a sledgehammer. She could still feel where his long, thick finger had been. If she squeezed her thighs together, she could recreate the delicious sensation of him touching her so boldly, so possessively. And that was just his finger! What if he were to...?
No.
She slammed the brakes on her traitorous imaginings. She could not, would not, go there. He was off-limits for a host of reasons.
He was her enemy.
He only wanted her to prove a point.
She was a trophy he wanted to collect just like a big-game hunter. He would hang her up on his wall of sexual conquests. He would mock her as soon as he had finished with her.
He didn’t have a heart. He was not capable of feeling anything for her other than lust.
Bella wrenched herself out of her clothes, tossing them to the floor as she stomped to the en suite. But showering did nothing to quell the aching, pulsing need of her flesh. If anything, it made it worse. She was hyper-aware of her body, of all its nerves and sensations and needs. It was as if her skin had turned itself inside out.
She wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her bedroom, but it was impossible to even think of sleeping. She looked at the bed, and her brain immediately conjured up an image of Edoardo lying there waiting for her. He was so tall he would have taken up most of the mattress. In his arms downstairs she had felt tiny and dainty, feminine and all hot, sensual woman.
She imagined him naked on her bed, his muscled body lean, cut, carved and aroused.
She let out a stiff curse, veered away from the bed and looked out of the window. The moon was high in the sky, casting a silvery glow over the rolling fields. She rested her forehead against the glass of the window and closed her eyes and groaned.
She heard a sound of a door opening and closing downstairs and opened her eyes. She watched as Edoardo took Fergus outside for his last comfort stop. He waited near the parterre garden, his tall figure so still and silent as the dog went about his business in the shadows.
Bella was transfixed.
The moonlight captured Edoardo’s arresting features in relief. He looked like a dark knight or warrior fighting some internal battle of his own. His jaw was locked tight and his fists were thrust into the pockets of his trousers. His broad shoulders were fixed in position, the length of his spine straight and grimly determined. His brow was heavily furrowed, tense in fierce concentration.
Then, as if he sensed her watching him, he turned and locked gazes with her.
Bella felt the shock of the visual connection like a punch to her solar plexus. Her heart kicked like a horse’s hoof against her breastbone. Her breathing stalled and her mouth went dry.
His eyes read her mind as surely as his hands and mouth had read her body only half an hour ago.
She jumped back from the window like someone leaping away from a roaring blaze. She clutched at her chest, sure her heart was going to flop like a goldfish tossed out of its bowl and land on the carpet at her feet.
What was wrong with her?
She wasn’t a teenage girl experiencing her first crush. She was an adult, a mature, sensible adult who was about to become engaged to a man she loved and admired. She had no right to be lusting after a man she didn’t even like.
It was shocking.
It was immoral.
It was tempting.
She grabbed twin handfuls of her hair and castigated herself. ‘No. No. No.’
She heard the stairs creaking as Edoardo’s firm tread came up to her floor. Her heart skipped another beat. She held her breath, her body poised, every nerve super-alert, her self-control and resolve gone to some far-off place she couldn’t access even if she wanted to.
But then there was silence.
Nothing but an empty, hollow silence, apart from the lone hooting of an owl as it flew past her window, the sound of its wings moving through the air like a velvet cape being swished around someone’s shoulders.
CHAPTER SIX
BELLA wasn’t sure what woke her. She hadn’t even realised she had been asleep, but she must have been because when she opened her eyes and checked the clock, it was close to four in the morning. She pushed back the covers and sat up, straining her ears in the eerie silence.
She didn’t hear a thing for a full minute or so and then she heard a faint groan. Her skin lifted in goose bumps, as if a ghost’s hand had touched her.
Don’t be silly, she chided herself as she reached for her wrap. Haverton Manor does not have any resident ghosts. At least, none that she knew of.
She tiptoed out into the corridor and immediately noticed a sliver of muted light shining from beneath Edoardo’s door at the other end of the passage. She chewed at her lip, wondering if it was wise to go any further. But then she heard the groan again, louder this time, and it was definitely coming from inside his room.
She pushed her reservations aside and padded down to his door, softly tapping on it as she leant her ear to the woodwork. ‘Edoardo?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
There was a rustle of sheets being wrestled with. ‘Go back to bed,’ he said, but his voice didn’t quite have the stern authority she was used to hearing in it.
She turned the doorknob before she could change her mind and stepped over the threshold. Her eyes went to his figure lying in a tangle of sheets, the pallor of his face almost the same shade of white. ‘Are you ill?’ she asked.
He cranked open one eye and told her to get out with an expletive graphically sandwiched between the curt command.
Bella turned on the major light near the door but he immediately swore again and put his forearm across his eyes. ‘Turn off the damn light!’ he growled.
She flicked the switch off and came over to the bed where the light from his bedside lamp was shining with a pallid glow. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Get the hell out of here.’
‘But you’re sick.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said through g
ritted teeth.
Bella rolled her eyes and leaned forward to put a hand on his brow but he must have sensed her coming for him and blocked her by grabbing her wrist with his other hand. He opened his eyes to narrow squints and glared at her. ‘I told you to get the hell out of here.’
She felt the bruising crush of his fingers around her wrist and winced. ‘You’re hurting me.’
He dropped her wrist. ‘Sorry.’ He let out a serrated sigh and covered his eyes again. ‘Just leave me alone...please?’
Bella sat gently on the edge of the bed next to his thighs. ‘Migraine?’ she asked softly.
His whole body sank against the mattress. ‘It’ll pass,’ he said on another weak sigh. ‘They always do.’
‘You get them often?’
‘Now and again.’
‘I’ve never seen you sick before,’ she said.
He cranked open one eye again. ‘Enjoy the show,’ he said dryly.
She placed a hand on his brow, frowning at how clammy it was. ‘Have you taken anything for it?’ she asked.
‘Paracetamol.’
‘That’s hardly going to do much,’ she said. ‘You need something stronger. What if I call an after-hours doctor?’
‘No.’
‘But—’
‘No,’ he said, glaring at her again. ‘Will you quit it with the sweet little nurse routine and get the hell out?’
‘I’m not leaving you like this,’ she said. ‘You could fall and knock yourself out or something.’
He flopped back down, but within a few seconds he suddenly reared up and, almost shoving her aside, stumbled to the en suite, not even stopping to close the door. Bella winced in empathy as he was violently, wretchedly sick. She gently pushed the door back, rinsed a face cloth under the tap and silently passed it to him where he was huddled over the toilet bowl.
‘You don’t give up easily, do you?’ he said but there was no sting in it.
‘I choose my battles,’ she said and rinsed out another face cloth.
He took it from her once he had flushed the toilet. ‘Thanks,’ he said a little gruffly.
‘My pleasure.’
He gave her a look. ‘I bet you’re enjoying this.’
Bella frowned at him. ‘Why would I enjoy seeing you, or anyone, suffer?’
He hauled himself upright and took a moment to steady himself against the basin. She could see the outline of every muscle of his back and shoulders beneath the thin cotton T-shirt he was wearing. The boxer shorts left most of his long legs bare, the muscles strongly corded with regular and strenuous exercise. ‘There are people in this world who would enjoy nothing more,’ he said with a bitter twist of his mouth. ‘It’s sport for them. Cheap entertainment.’
‘I hope I never meet someone like that,’ she said, giving an involuntary shudder.
He looked at her for a long moment. She sensed he was looking at her but not actually seeing her. His eyes had a far-away look, a shadowed look. But then he blinked, turned away and moved back to the bedroom on legs that didn’t seem all that steady.
Bella came up alongside him and put an arm around his lean waist. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let me help you.’ She led him back to the bed and, while he was still standing, quickly straightened the mangled linen.
He closed his eyes once he was lying flat. ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll have to kill you,’ he said after a moment’s silence.
She smiled, and before she could stop the impulse, she briefly touched the ends of her fingers against his where they were lying on the mattress close to her thigh. ‘You’ll have to catch me first.’
He gave a soft little grunt without opening his eyes. ‘That will be the easy part,’ he said and within half a minute he was soundly asleep.
* * *
Bella woke again as the sun touched her face in a golden slant from the window. She stretched her legs—and encountered a hair-roughened one. Her eyes flew open as she realised she was in bed with Edoardo.
You’re in bed with Edoardo Silveri!
The words were like a neon sign flashing inside her head.
Had she slept with him? Had she actually had sex with him? She squeezed her thighs together and was momentarily reassured. But why, then, was she lying in his arms with her legs caught up with his?
OK, let’s be sensible about this, she thought. There’s got to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she was lying with her legs entangled with his. She was still in her piglet pyjamas. All the buttons were still done up. Maybe she’d just drifted to sleep and unconsciously reached for him. Or maybe he had reached for her. Why, then, hadn’t she woken up and moved out of reach?
Could she somehow wriggle away and leave without him waking?
Before she could get her scrambled thoughts together, he turned and looked at her.
‘So you slept with me after all,’ he said.
‘I did not!’
He smiled a smile that tugged on something deep inside her belly, like a small needle pulling on a tiny thread. ‘You did too,’ he said. ‘I heard you snoring.’
‘I do not snore.’
He picked up a lock of her hair and slowly wound it around one of his fingers. She couldn’t help noticing it was the same finger he had slipped inside her the evening before. She felt her inner core give a little tremor of remembered pleasure. ‘You snuffle,’ he said.
‘Snuffle?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘That doesn’t sound much better.’
He gave her hair a gentle tug, his eyes holding hers in an erotic lock. ‘Come here,’ he commanded.
Bella let her breath out in a fluttery rush that felt like the pages of a book being rapidly thumbed inside her chest. ‘Don’t do this, Edoardo,’ she said.
His eyes read the message her mind was relaying, not the one her mouth had just uttered so breathlessly. ‘You want me,’ he said. ‘You curled yourself around me during the night. I could have taken you then and there.’
‘I’m about to become engaged to another man,’ Bella said, but right at that very moment she wasn’t sure if she was reminding him or herself.
‘Call it off.’
She looked at his mouth, her belly turning over itself as she thought of how it had felt to have those sensual lips moving against hers. She forced her gaze back to his blue-green one. ‘I can’t call it off,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to call it off.’
He tugged on the tether of her hair; it was part pleasure and part pain. But wasn’t that just typical of what she felt for him—a confusing mix of emotions she didn’t want to examine in too much detail? She hated him and yet her body wanted him as it had wanted no one else. His mouth came closer and closer, stopping just above hers. ‘I could talk you into it,’ he said. ‘All it would take is one little kiss.’
Bella put a finger against his lips, the graze of his stubble sending a dart of longing straight to her core. ‘I can’t.’
He opened his mouth and sucked her finger into his mouth, gently snagging it with his teeth as his eyes held hers in a silent challenge that made her insides quiver like not-quite-set jelly.
A sweeping wave of red-hot desire coursed through her.
She felt her body gravitate towards him like a magnet attracting metal. Temptation was like a surging tide she had to swim against without the use of limbs. She felt the hard ridge of his erection against her belly and ached to hold it in her hand, to stroke him, to explore him, to taste him. Her hand moved forward but then she snatched it back, shocked at her own wantonness. ‘Let me go,’ she said, pulling at the lock of hair still tethered to his finger. ‘Please?’
His eyes smouldered with unmet needs. She felt the echo of them like a drum beat in her body. He slowly unwound her hair until there was nothing connecting them but the desire that throbbed like soundwaves i
n the air.
He got off the bed and hauled the T-shirt he was wearing over his head.
‘What are you doing?’ Bella asked, pulling her knees up to her chest as she sat up on the bed.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he said and stepped out of his boxer shorts.
Her eyes widened at the sight of him so gloriously male and so potently aroused. She gulped and quickly covered her eyes with her hands. ‘For God’s sake, can you stop parading yourself around like a peacock?’
He gave a mocking laugh. ‘Stop acting like a shy little virgin,’ he said.
Bella didn’t know why but she felt like a virgin when she was with him. His wealth of experience was so much broader than hers. She knew it just by looking at him. She sensed it in her body. He only had to look at her with those blue-green eyes of his and all her nerves and senses would go off like rescue flares.
She didn’t open her eyes until she heard the en suite door close. She quickly scrambled off the bed and bolted, not stopping until her bedroom door was shut tight against the temptation of his touch.
* * *
Edoardo worked outdoors all day in spite of the freezing weather. He wanted Bella so badly it was like a persistent ache in his body. Lying next to her last night had been a form of torture. He had wanted to cover her body with his, to thrust into her softness and finally claim her as his. She had crawled all over him during the night, her soft little hands reaching for him, her warm, sweet breath dancing all over his chest as she snuggled close. It had been so hard not to peel those ridiculous pyjamas from her body and plant kisses all over her skin. He had wanted to explore her in intimate detail, to caress her breasts, to taste them again, to roll his tongue over those tight little nipples. He had wanted to slip his finger inside her hot moistness, to feel the delicious clench of her body, to taste her saltiness with his tongue.
But instead he had stared fixedly at the moonlight reflected on the ceiling as he had slowly run his fingers through the gossamer silk of her hair while she slept.
He never spent the whole night with anyone. It was a rule he had never broken. His nightmares were both terrifying and dangerous. He was always so frightened he might hurt someone by lashing out while he was reliving the horror of his childhood.
