by Lynne Graham
In the sardonic act of wondering whether or not that little book had been left out quite by accident for his perusal, Luciano flung it aside. He had decided to view his sojourn at Ballybawn as a much-needed period of enforced relaxation in a novel and bracing environment, and in the morning he was calling in every builder, plumber, glazier, roofer and electrician he could find.
It was wonderful what a difference a few hours could make to one’s convictions, Luciano mused. His loan to Kerry’s grandparents had not been misspent: it had been eaten alive by pressing need. All he had to do was figure out a cool way of backing himself out of the tight corner he had put himself in so that he could give them back the home from hell. Of course, he would have to make at least part of it habitable, not only because it was a crime to put tenants at risk but also for his own occasional visits and comfort. Kerry would be very grateful. He would figure as the soul of forgiving generosity.
While he wondered how long it would take him to seduce her into his bed to keep him warm, a noise intruded on his concentration: it was a dog howling. Springing out of bed in exasperation, Luciano strode from his room stark naked to give the dog the benefit of his opinion on baying to the moon. However, having opened the door, he discovered too late that the canine contingent had sneaked up a level and had just been waiting their chance. All three hounds hurtled past him in their frantic eagerness to gain entry to his room. He watched in astonishment as the dogs flopped down on their bellies and shot below the bed at impressive speed.
‘You’re not staying,’ Luciano warned them.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard another, longer bout of that same keening cry and it provoked a chorus of anxious doggy whines in response. It was a woman crying and with such solid walls and doors the sound could only be carrying up to his room through the chimney. Kerry was sobbing her heart out and frightening the dogs.
‘I wouldn’t give you house room,’ he told the spineless animals shivering beneath the four-poster as he pulled on his jeans at speed. ‘You’re supposed to be guard dogs and you’re hiding just because of a stupid echo!’
Heading barefoot down to the floor below and fast chilling in the unbelievably icy temperature of the stairwell, Luciano thrust open the door and strode straight into Kerry’s room. It was in darkness but the torch illuminated her bed.
‘I can hear you crying…’ he murmured with a buoyancy he only just managed to keep out of his voice. ‘It’s not reasonable to expect me to listen to that and do nothing.’
‘Wha…at?’ Kerry mumbled sleepily, pushing herself up on one elbow and then squinting against the unkind beam of light engulfing her.
‘Don’t waste your time trying to convince me that you were asleep, cara,’ Luciano urged.
‘Well, I’m not asleep now because you woke me up,’ Kerry answered in bewilderment as she reached for the matches to light the storm lantern by her bed. ‘Why did you do that?’
Luciano spread wide impatient arms in emphasis. ‘Dio mio! I could hear you crying from the floor above—’
‘But I haven’t been crying.’ What on earth was he doing in her bedroom in the middle of the night? And why was he spouting some cock-and-bull story about having heard her crying when she had been fast asleep?
As the glow from the lantern began to slowly cast dim light, Luciano lowered the torch that had been blinding her. Taken aback to then note that his lithe, lean masculine frame was only clad in jeans, she studied his bare brown torso where lean, corded muscle rippled below smooth, bronzed skin and a riot of short dark curls sprinkled his chest. Involuntarily, her gaze wandered over his sleek, taut midriff and lingered. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe and she could feel her wretched face burning like a bonfire with embarrassment.
‘You…were…crying,’ Luciano ground out in exasperation, brilliant golden eyes probing her blushing visage for evidence.
‘Over you again…I suppose?’ Kerry found it almost soothing to recognise that on one level Luciano had not changed a jot: he was the centre of his own world and he had always assumed that he was the centre of hers too.
‘I heard you, but if you want to deny it, go ahead. But I would be obliged if you would remove the dogs from under my bed—’
‘Sorry…?’ Kerry frowned.
‘You heard me.’ Luciano dealt her a fulminating look before he left the room.
Not content with waking her up, he was now acting as if it was her fault that the dogs were in his room, but he must have let them in! Scrambling angrily out of bed and safe in the knowledge that her nightie was about as revealing as a shroud, she sped up the twisting stairwell and stalked into his room.
‘Out!’ she launched at the trio of long, pointed noses peering out guiltily at her from below the high bed. In any other mood, she would have laughed at the picture the dogs made, for Finn, Bab and Conn might be the size of little ponies but they were still only puppies. One by one the littermates emerged, cast a last look of regret at the fire they were used to sleeping beside and slunk out.
‘Just keep your door shut,’ she advised Luciano sharply, bright blue eyes enhanced by the furious flush on her cheeks. ‘And stay on this side of it…don’t wake me up in the middle of the night with daft stories!’
Aggressive jawline clenched while his brilliant gaze continued to scan the extraordinary voluminous confection of white cotton and lace covering her from throat to toe, Luciano breathed, ‘Dio mio! It was not a daft story. I heard someone sobbing—’
‘It’s a windy night and the rafters creak and groan.’ Now painfully conscious of his wondering appraisal of her antique nightdress, Kerry stiffened, feeling foolish. As she realised that she would have given her right arm to have startled his expectations of her with sexy satin instead, she was so angry with herself for even caring that she added with withering scorn, ‘Or maybe our fabled Florrie is haunting you…Florrie’s got to have it in for unfaithful men!’
That she should throw that same charge at him again sent dark fury hurtling through Luciano. Before she could walk out, he sent the door crashing shut with the heel of his hand. ‘Is hit and run all you’re good for? Or have you got the backbone to face facts?’
Already regretting having tossed that incendiary final comment, Kerry was disconcerted by his furious reaction and forced to a halt. She folded her arms with a jerk. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my backbone—’
‘But there’s a lot wrong with that narrow little mind of yours!’ Lean, strong face grim, Luciano’s dark golden eyes smouldered over her. ‘Do you think if some previous lover of yours had shown up the way Rochelle did when we were engaged that I would have reacted in the same way as you? That I would have resented and blamed you for a past encounter that nothing could change? You let her come between us. You encouraged her behaviour by overreacting to her every move—’
‘I didn’t see you rejecting her!’ Kerry accused heatedly, his every censorious word cutting through her defensive barriers.
‘I told her to cool it…but, believe it or not, it wasn’t a crime for her to speak to me in an office environment. She likes to play games and you were a very responsive target. The minute she appeared, you started behaving like a jealous kid,’ Luciano derided. ‘Porca miseria…our engagement seemed to mean nothing to you. Then you wanted some perfect fantasy guy who had never lived until he’d met you—’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Struggling to control the tempestuous surge of her emotions, Kerry sent him a stark look of reproach. ‘I just needed to know that you loved me. Without that, I couldn’t feel secure and I couldn’t believe that you could find me more attractive than her…’
Luciano had stilled and faint perceptible colour had burnished his hard cheekbones. His shimmering golden eyes were no longer seeking to strike aggressive sparks off hers but veiled by his dense black lashes. In the tense silence, he parted his lips as though he was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it and sealed them closed again.
Biting pain scythed through K
erry at the confirmation of what she had long suspected. He had never loved her. He had liked her, perhaps fancied her a certain amount too, but that had been about it. ‘Were you really naive enough to think that I would eventually inherit my father’s wine stores?’
A preoccupied air about him, his arrogant dark head came up, a questioning frown etched between his winged brows. ‘Of course not. When I told your father that I was going to ask you to marry me, he went out of his way to inform me that you wouldn’t be featuring much in his will. I was angry that he should imply that I would care either way.’ Belated comprehension hardened Luciano’s fabulous bone structure, outrage narrowing his gaze. ‘Is that what you thought?’
Her eyes fell from his in sudden shame.
His pride was lacerated by that insult to his integrity. ‘How stupid can you be?’ Luciano demanded. ‘I was so crazy about you I lost my wits! For what other reason would I have gone looking for a poppy field in which to propose?’
Kerry froze, lifted her lashes, focused on his enraged dark features and had not a doubt in her head that she was hearing the whole, the absolute and ultimate truth: I was crazy about you. That declaration rang like a jubilee chorus of bells in her ears, for it freed her from a suspicion that had murdered her self-esteem. In the grip of those heightened emotions, her eyes shining, she moved closer. ‘So why couldn’t you have told me that then? It would’ve made such a difference.’
‘You shouldn’t have needed to be told.’ Luciano was furious that temper had betrayed him into making that revealing admission but he was already getting distracted by her proximity. It disturbed him that even in that weird tent thing she was wearing she still looked incredibly feminine, and then his glittering gaze zeroed in on her full, soft mouth and a different kind of tension altogether seized him.
‘Were you ashamed of it?’ she whispered in confusion.
‘What is this? An interrogation?’ But Luciano had already lost his angry focus on what for him had been the main issue of his integrity.
‘I just want to know…’ Kerry collided unwarily with his drugging golden eyes and was caught and held. It was so quiet in the room that all she could hear was the rush of her own breathing and the crackle of the fire in the hearth.
‘Know what?’ Luciano framed thickly, lifting his hand to let his forefinger trace the voluptuous curve of her lower lip, all recollection of the previous dialogue wiped from a mind taken over by far more primal images.
Although it was the merest, briefest touch, her heartbeat went haywire. Locked into his mesmeric scrutiny, she quivered with the force of the longing that had come out of nowhere and taken her prisoner. Her breasts stirred, the sensitive tips abraded by the coarse cotton of her nightdress, and a dulled ache clenched tight at the very heart of her. The slow, heavy pulse in the atmosphere made the tip of her tongue steal out to moisten her dry lower lip in a nervous flicker.
In one sudden movement, Luciano reached for her, spreading his hands to her narrow ribcage to propel her right off her feet, up into his arms, so that he could bring his hard, hungry lips crashing down on hers. A muffled gasp of shock sounded in her throat but the explosion of inner heat that seized her when his tongue probed the moist recesses of her tender mouth with ruthless masculine expertise only made her cling to his broad shoulders, her head swimming, all awareness of time and place torn from her. When she surfaced from that devastating kiss, Luciano was in the act of tumbling her down on the bed.
Molten golden eyes flaming over her, lean, dark, handsome features taut with desire, he breathed in a roughened undertone, ‘Share my bed tonight. Let me make love to you…’
CHAPTER FIVE
IN A daze, Kerry stared up at Luciano with warm, vulnerable eyes. I was crazy about you. Like a magic key those words had unleashed a flood of hope and happiness inside her, washed away the bitterness, left her barely knowing whether she was on her head or on her heels.
His wonderful smile sealed that effect. ‘Ever since you walked into my office last month, I’ve been burning for you, cara mia,’ Luciano admitted.
Deep down inside, Kerry melted like snow in hot sunshine. He came down on the bed beside her and lifted her back into his arms. He made her feel like a doll, for she was awesomely conscious of his strength and masculinity.
‘Is that a fact?’ she muttered unevenly.
He anchored one hand into her bright fall of curls to tip her head back, and studied her with intense golden eyes. ‘I’ve imagined this so often, I can’t believe it’s real.’
‘It’s real…’ Gathering her courage, Kerry smoothed her fingertips shyly along the hard plane of one proud cheekbone. Her heart raced so fast at that contact, that sweet freedom to touch again, that she trembled.
‘No…you, me and a bed could never feel real,’ Luciano quipped, turning his cheek into her palm to catch her forefinger between his lips and suck on it with an erotic intent that startled her even as it sent an equally surprising little frisson of heat feathering through her. As he took in her widened eyes, he laughed huskily. ‘I do believe I’m going to shock you tonight.’
For Kerry it was as though time had slipped, bringing back the male without the hard, abrasive edges, the male who could still be tender. She couldn’t take her spellbound attention from his lean, strong face; it was as if that cold indifference might never have been. He pressed his lips to the tiny pulse flickering like crazy at the base of her fine collar-bone. He tasted the delicate skin there, lingered, finding pleasure points she had not known existed, and her head fell back, her whole body thrumming and almost painfully responsive to his every caress. She sank her fingers into the luxuriant depths of his black hair and struggled to breathe.
Cooler air brushed her skin and she tensed as she realised that he had already undone the buttons hidden below the lace on her nightdress. Lifting his tousled dark head, he took her willing mouth with a raw, passionate urgency that made her heart race and then he stood her up between his spread thighs. With sure hands he slid the nightie from her taut white shoulders. As the heavy fabric fell in a heap, a tide of colour washed her fair skin and she crossed her arms over her nudity in instinctive concealment.
‘Per meraviglia…’ His dark deep drawl ragged with emphasis, he caught her hands in his and parted her screening arms again. His slumberous golden gaze roamed over her pale curves with unashamed masculine appreciation. ‘You’re my every fantasy.’
‘No need to get carried away,’ she mumbled.
‘I intend to get very carried away,’ Luciano intoned, tugging her back to him.
He curved his hand to her pouting breasts and watched her jerk against him in quivering response. A whimper of sound broke low in her throat. She pushed her sensitised flesh into his palm, tormented by the throb of her distended nipples. He bent his head there and closed his mouth round a tender pointed bud and her breath rasped in her throat at the sweet gathering torment of sensation beginning to cascade through her. She could feel her own body slipping away from her, eager and wanton, ready to go out of control, and it was almost as scary as it was exhilarating.
‘Luciano…’ As his handsome dark head lifted and she collided with shimmering golden eyes, she trembled against the hard, muscular wall of his chest. ‘Is this going to mean anything to you?’
She heard herself say it even though she didn’t want to say it, and then she wanted to die for herself, lose herself in some dark, deep hole where she could convince herself that she hadn’t voiced that so obvious and pathetic leading question. The taut silence that followed chipped away at her nerves like a chisel.
His brilliant eyes narrowed. Closing his arms round her again, he swept her off his hard thighs and set her back against the tumbled pillows instead. He smoothed the tangled curls back from her white brow. ‘It means more than you would ever believe, cara.’
Which told her precisely nothing and she knew it, knew it even as he sent a lean brown hand trailing with innate provocation down over her slender thigh to distract
her. But she couldn’t prevent the leap of her own response any more than she could stop herself from reaching for him and dragging him down to her by his shoulders so that she could clumsily find his beautiful mouth for herself again. And finally she understood what really wanting was: all caution, all pride sacrificed in the desperate hope that something better would come of it.
‘You’re still mine…that’s why,’ Luciano informed her with scorching assurance as she let him come up for air again, her lips red and moist from the wild hunger of his.
He sprang off the bed in a fluid, graceful movement and arched his narrow hips to unsnap his jeans.
Far too critical of her own flaws to be at ease half-naked, Kerry scrambled beneath the sheet. ‘What does being yours…er…entail?’
‘Being a total sex slave for my pleasure…’ Sheer provocation in his gleaming gaze, Luciano surveyed her with a smouldering satisfaction he made no attempt to hide. ‘And not looking away when I take off my jeans…’
An uneasy laugh was dredged from Kerry, for she had been about to do exactly that. She lay there all of a quiver, wicked heat coiled at her feminine core, making her shift against the cool sheet. Suffering from not a single inhibited bone in his magnificent body, he peeled off those jeans with deliberate slowness and he watched her like a hawk. Studying him with an attention that had become distinctly fixed, Kerry tried and failed to suppress her nervous tension, for, while he was gloriously, breathtakingly male, he was also hugely aroused.
He slid into the bed and leant over her with wicked amusement still brimming in his clear dark golden eyes. ‘You can scream now if you want to.’
‘Stop teasing me…’
‘Your innocence is the hottest, sweetest turn-on I’ve ever had,’ Luciano confided, plundering her lush mouth with a hard, deep, explicit kiss that left her reeling. ‘Also the biggest threat—’
