by Lynne Graham
‘Blame yourself. I needed a good reason to put on jeans,’ Dante quipped, striding off into the cover of the trees and leaving her to follow the rough trail through the long grass.
Her figure-hugging cotton dress rode up her thighs as she broke into a stride in an effort to keep up with him. She smoothed it back down, breathless in the heat, perspiration beading her brow. ‘Wish you’d warned me. I’m not really dressed for the occasion.’
‘I know but I wouldn’t have missed that outfit for anything, carissima mia,’ Dante confided. ‘Clinging to your truly spectacular curves that dress is a show stopper.’
It was a grey stretchy cotton dress teamed with a colourful scarf but he made it sound like something else entirely and she flushed, unaccustomed to such masculine candour. Spectacular curves? She had long envied her siblings’ whippet-slim frames. Clothes hung on her sisters as though they were elegant models while Topsy’s infinitely fuller figure was much more of a challenge to dress.
‘Why...a picnic?’ Topsy asked, drawing level with him in a clearing below a spreading mature chestnut tree as broad in proportion as a bus. Beyond the clearing the ground fell away steeply into dense woods but the view over the quiet valley was amazing.
‘I thought it would be more your style than a trendy city lunch.’ Setting the basket down, he took the rug from her and spread it.
The silence but for the birdsong crept round her like a cocoon. She kicked off her shoes and sat down on her knees, determined not to betray her nervous tension. ‘Where are your bodyguards?’ she asked abruptly.
‘I gave them the day off. After all, I’m still on the estate and this was a last-minute decision that nobody else knows about.’ Pouring the wine, he passed her a glass, the tips of his long elegant fingers briefly brushing hers. ‘Drink up...relax.’
Relax? Topsy almost laughed at that impossibility. Being alone with a man who fascinated her to the degree that he did was deeply unnerving. She sipped the wine and let him pile a plate with a selection of the many delicacies he unpacked from the basket. She ate wafer-thin ham, dainty crostini snacks and Panzanella, a refreshing tomato salad. Lemon tart followed by a rich spicy slice of cake finished the meal. Having drained her second glass of wine, Topsy flopped down flat on her back with a sigh to gaze up through the sun-dappled canopy of leaves above her.
‘I’ll never move again,’ she swore ruefully. ‘I’ve never eaten as much at one sitting.’
‘My chef will be flattered.’
A window of clarity briefly shone in her sunlight-and-wine-dazed mind. He had brought her into the woods to seduce her. He had even put on jeans. Topsy froze and then hurriedly sat up, deeming it unwise to lie horizontal like a sacrifice and encourage him. She collided with iridescent green eyes and a quiver of response shimmied through her. ‘I know why you brought me here.’
Dante shifted fluidly closer. ‘We both know why.’
‘This is so not going to happen,’ she warned him ruefully.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A RELUCTANT SMILE tugged at the corners of Dante’s beautifully shaped mouth. ‘But why not?’
Topsy sighed. ‘When I was eighteen I made a list of exactly what I wanted from a man. I watched my sisters get involved with unsuitable men and getting hurt and I swore it would never happen to me.’
‘What’s on the list?’ Dante prompted, silkily confident. ‘I love a challenge.’
‘Can you cook?’ Topsy studied his face and the bemused frown forming there before sighing. ‘I can’t cook, so I decided I needed a guy who could.’
‘I can provide a chef,’ Dante pointed out with deadly seriousness. ‘And obviously I can microwave stuff but I usually eat out when I’m working.’
‘You can’t beat the list, Dante. You just don’t match. You’re not modest or romantic or caring.’
‘But I’m also not asking you to marry me,’ Dante declared with staggering candour. ‘And by the sound of it, your list was drawn up to road test a potential life partner.’
Topsy tilted her head to one side, long black waves sliding over one bare shoulder, dark eyes reflective because she had never thought of that angle before. ‘You’re right. You don’t need to be Mr Perfect.’
‘You choose me to have a good time in and out of bed, gioia mia,’ Dante proposed silkily.
‘No, you’re definitely not modest,’ Topsy commented with a helpless little laugh as she studied his face, marvelling that just looking at that precise arrangement of features could give her such an extraordinary thrill.
‘Modest types lose boardroom battles,’ Dante confided with immense assurance and leant forward to bridge the gap between them. ‘And they probably lie about their performance in the bedroom.’
‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ Topsy asked breathlessly because he was so close now a faint hint of citrusy cologne was tugging at her nostrils, instilling a powerful recollection of what it felt like when she was in his arms with his mouth on hers. An ache stirred deep down inside her and her tummy flipped.
‘I aim to prove it.’ Knotting one bronzed hand into the hair falling down her back, he eased her closer and sealed his sensual mouth to hers. It was like dying and being reborn in a burst of fireworks and celebration. Her awareness of her body shot from zero to overload in the space of seconds, every part of her reacting to the heat he generated.
Smouldering green eyes scanned her flushed face in the aftermath. ‘Together we burn, gioia mia,’ Dante savoured. Long fingers smoothed up over her taut ribcage to caress the swell of a rounded breast, ensuring that her breath shortened in her throat.
He reached for the hem of her dress and began to lift it and she literally froze at the threat of being naked in broad daylight. Suddenly she wanted lights she could switch off, a bed she could huddle in beneath a sheet.
‘Che cosa hai? What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing’s wrong!’ Her throat convulsed on the denial as she struggled to get her nerves under control again. A certain amount of clothing had to come off, there was no getting round that requirement, she told herself. She closed her eyes, reached down to close her hands into her dress and tugged it up and off in one determined movement. It made her feel much better than the alternative of sitting there like a doll for him to undress; it made her feel that she was taking control. She glanced at him from below the rumpled mane of her hair, dark eyes provocative, her brain refusing to dwell on the reality that she was stripped down to a lacy bra and knickers.
‘Time to take your shirt off,’ Topsy told him instead.
His stunning eyes gleamed with amusement and he unbuttoned his shirt and shed it. The corrugated slab of his flat abdomen as he stretched took her breath away. He was beautifully built, hard muscles rippling below bronzed skin with his every movement. Her mouth ran dry as he unzipped his jeans and peeled them down with fluid ease, revealing black boxers that clung to narrow hips and a lean waist. She noticed, could not have avoided noticing, the bulge of his straining erection in the boxers and something clenched low inside her and she hurriedly glanced away, a more primal dart of apprehension infiltrating her. She was wondering if the first time would hurt and was realistic enough to assume that there would at least be some discomfort, but there was nothing she could do to avoid that rite of passage. Of course she could tell him she was a virgin but was afraid he would think she was some kind of freak to have stayed untouched until her age and the prospect of that made her cringe.
‘Come here,’ he husked, all warm tanned flesh and assurance, finding her mouth again, toying with her lips, stroking them apart, thrusting, in truth unleashing a repertoire of moves that disconcerted her because just kissing had never been so good before. Pulsing energy consumed her and she pushed against him, falling into those kisses and the delving of his tongue with shivering enthusiasm, marvelling that the feverish heat in her pelvis could be awakene
d by even that small intimacy.
‘You have the most glorious breasts,’ Dante murmured hungrily, moulding the high round globes with appreciative hands, tracing the tightly beaded tips and suckling the pointed peaks into the hot velvet of his mouth, parting her lips on a gasp and sending tiny arrows of need spearing continuously to her core. Almost as if she had spoken, when the hot, tight feeling between her thighs became unbearable, he tugged off her knickers and touched her where she most needed to be touched.
Her awareness of what was happening took a severe hit at that point as her hips squirmed and sensation overwhelmed every other response. His thumb circled her clitoris and a fingertip traced the sweet swollen tightness of her most private place. Her hips shifted and lifted, a whimper of sound torn from her as he explored. She could feel the wet readiness of her own body and the straining eagerness to reach a climax.
Dante shimmied down the length of her and used his mouth to tease her. Shock at the incredible intimacy of it rippled through her but the tide of pleasure he evoked was too great to withstand. The flick of his tongue across that tiny bundle of nerve endings made her cry out, excitement gathering that was out of her control. He drove her into a frenzy of need, her back arching, her body screaming for satisfaction by tightening and tightening until the wicked pleasure triumphed and an explosion of sensation overwhelmed her body as she reached the highest peak. In the aftermath her body crested down the slope of arousal on tiny aftershocks of earth-shattering delight.
She heard the crackle of foil, knew he was donning a condom and breathed in deep and slow, too shaken by what she had already experienced to feel her earlier apprehension. He rose high over her, pushing her legs over his shoulders and her eyes widened at the sensation of pressure as he pushed the broad thick head of his shaft into her tender flesh.
‘You’re very tight, cara mia,’ he groaned. ‘I’ll stay in control, go slow.’
Topsy could feel herself being stretched, her inner muscles protesting his invasion and she shut her eyes and struggled to relax.
‘You feel miraculous,’ he breathed as he eased into her.
In the same moment as he pushed a little deeper she felt a burning sensation and then a sharp pain and she cried out, eyes flying wide, surprise and dismay etched there.
Dante froze. ‘I hurt you?’ She could see his shrewd green eyes deducing certain things she would have preferred him not to know.
‘It’s all right now...it’s been a while,’ she muttered dismissively, her face red and hot as fire.
Dante shifted his lean hips, sank slowly deeper and then withdrew and repeated the manoeuvre. A ripple of excitement gathered in her pelvis as her body clenched around him and he thrust deep with an appreciative groan. The delirious dark pleasure was engulfing her again by degrees, tightening her muscles, making her heart race, filling her with a flood of hunger. He slammed into her harder and faster, the all-consuming urgency of their entwined bodies enthralling her as another climax slowly, steadily began to build. The extremity of that orgasm when it came made her thrash and buck and cry out.
Afterwards, Topsy thought she would never move again because her body was in a blissful state of exhaustion. Dante dropped a kiss on the bridge of her nose and levered off her, releasing her from his weight.
‘Che diavolo! You’re bleeding!’ he exclaimed.
And there and then she almost died of mortification, startled eyes flying wide on his shocked expression as she sat up and saw the smudge of blood on her thigh. She burned red from head to toe and folded her arms round her knees. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘You were a virgin,’ Dante breathed in audible disbelief, reprogramming his every former assumption about her.
‘We don’t need to do a post-mortem on it,’ Topsy fielded.
‘You should have told me!’ Dante censured. ‘I could have made more of an occasion out of it. If I’d known I wouldn’t have taken you on a picnic rug in the woods.’
Embarrassed though she was, that had Topsy turning wondering eyes on him. ‘You don’t find it a turn-off?’
‘I think it’s the biggest turn-on I’ve ever had,’ Dante told her, his keen gaze studying her with fascination. ‘To know that at its most basic no other man has done what I’ve just done with you is extraordinarily exciting, gioia mia.’
In relief she leant forward and kissed him. He nibbled at her lower lip and then kissed her long and hard and before very long all talk ceased and they were making love again.
* * *
Topsy surfaced from a long much-needed nap to find that the sun was going down and she glanced at her watch in consternation. Dante was already dressed and the picnic packed away. ‘You should have wakened me,’ she complained.
‘You must’ve needed the rest.’
Shy of him now, she flipped off the edge of the rug he must have tossed over her while she slept and concentrated on retrieving her clothing and getting into it fast. She felt downright astonished by what had transpired between them and the raw passion that had engulfed them had rewritten all that she thought she knew about herself. She hadn’t known she had such a capacity for passion, indeed had often assumed she was more than a little cold in that department, for never before had she found it impossible to resist temptation. And Dante was the very essence of temptation on her terms. With him she was weak, she acknowledged. But was that necessarily a bad thing?
It was a fling, a little holiday fling, nothing more serious. Neither of them was looking for or expecting anything more and on that basis they were a good match. As he had pointed out, he wasn’t auditioning as potential husband material. And yet as she glanced at him when they reached the car again and he smiled, a feeling like trapped sunshine expanded inside her chest, making it feel tight. It was an infatuation, she told herself, responses heightened by the heat of the Italian sun and the taste of freedom she was enjoying. She was young and full of hormones, finally exploring a side of herself that had been on a leash for too long. What she was experiencing was normal, she reasoned frantically, not something she needed to worry about.
‘You’ve gone so quiet. I’m used to you chattering,’ Dante confided, shooting the car to a halt by the garages.
‘I’m making a mental list of all the things I have to check before the ball next week.’ Topsy hesitated and then forced herself to continue, ‘Don’t say anything about—’
‘Of course I won’t.’
Topsy’s tension level dropped a little. ‘If your mother or Vittore knew or guessed, it could make for an uncomfortable atmosphere,’ she warned him.
She scrambled out of the car in haste, desperate to have a shower and relocate her poise. At that moment she was as awkward as a clumsy teenager around him and it galled her.
‘Topsy...’ His voice halted her as she sped across the courtyard towards the servants’ entrance at the back of the castle.
Reluctantly, she turned, amber eyes welding to his lean, darkly handsome face and the sardonic expression he wore. ‘Yes?’
‘I have work to do as well. I’ll see you later,’ he told her smoothly.
Topsy fled, heart beating as fast as if she were sprinting. He could set her alight with one look, one word, even the rich accented timbre of his beautiful voice. It was as if she had succumbed to the worst possible addiction and the strength of it frightened her.
* * *
Dante walked into his study, a dark frown pleating his ebony brows. Topsy was always surprising him. Once he had realised just how inexperienced she was, he had feared she might be a little clingy—and he hated clingy women like poison—but she had taken off like a bat out of hell without even trying to instigate the expected fact-finding dialogue about where they were going and what they were doing. Her restraint had disconcerted him.
It was an affair, no big deal, he reflected impatiently, but the circumsta
nces were not what he would’ve chosen. She was his mother’s employee and, just as he had always ensured that his relationship with his staff at the bank remained strictly above board, he would not have chosen to become intimately involved with anyone working for his family. But then that was before he met Topsy and before he enjoyed a session of amazingly vibrant and satisfying sex that had only left him craving more. There was always an exception to the rule and he could not remember when he had last craved more of a woman so soon after having her.
In retrospect he could barely believe that he had cherished such sordid suspicions of her relationship with his stepfather and with Mikhail Kusnirovich. He was more taken aback by the acknowledgement that he had become so cynical about women that he had automatically distrusted the evidence of his own eyes and had decided, on no very strong evidence, that Topsy was a promiscuous little schemer up to no good. Well, she certainly wasn’t promiscuous.
* * *
Topsy stood in the shower reliving his every touch and, with a frustrated groan, leant back against the cold tiled wall, angry with herself for being so susceptible. Where was her brain when she needed it? It was a physical infatuation, nothing more threatening and it would run its course soon enough.
Dante didn’t join them for dinner and she was guiltily relieved when she heard that he was dining with his old friend, Marco, one of the local doctors, but she was also a tad irritated that he hadn’t thought to tell her that he was going out. So, now was she trying to attach strings to him? He didn’t belong to her; she didn’t belong to him. Their lovemaking in the woods might never be repeated, she conceded, because it was perfectly possible that he might have decided that their intimacy was a bad idea.
On that thought her heart sank as if a giant stone had been attached to it and to give her thoughts a new direction she rang Kat and listened to her beloved sister burbling happily about what a wonderful surprise her latest pregnancy had proved. Kat rang off when Mikhail walked through the door of their London home. That was true love, Topsy reflected wryly, that desperate longing to reconnect after a parting, no matter how brief.
