by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
“I want you.”
“I know.” He’d made that patently clear and even half asleep, she could hear the sensual edge to his tone.
“I cannot lie next to your delectable body for one minute longer and not take you.”
The admission cost him. She could hear it in his voice. He hated being subject to such strong physical need. His next words confirmed it.
“I swore after Sofia that no woman would hold me in sexual thrall like that again.”
“You don’t like being out of control.” He might not believe it, but she found no satisfaction in enthralling him sexually. Straight sexual hunger was nothing compared to love and respect.
“I grew up learning self-discipline and control in the face of circumstances that would be impossible for many people.”
“And the idea of a mere woman breaking through that terrifies you, doesn’t it?”
“I am not afraid.” She couldn’t see him, but she could sure hear his affront.
“Bad choice of words.”
“I am not over there seducing you. I do have some self-control where you are concerned.”
But not a lot and he’d had to get out of the bed to exercise it. She didn’t rub that in, however. She had realized some time yesterday that she got no pleasure out of hurting him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry enough to let me make love to you?”
She laughed at the absurdity of the question. “No way would you ever be able to accept sex based on pity.”
“You would be surprised.”
His desire beat at her like a pulsing base in an orchestra of sensual composition.
Her own body’s needs warred with the thoughts going through her mind. This man had abandoned her and their baby. She could not trust him with her body again.
But he had also come back.
That fact had not struck her until a few months ago. He had been there when she was losing the baby because he had come to her apartment to see her. She didn’t know why and for a long time had not cared, but now she wondered.
“Why did you come back?”
“You said you were pregnant with my child.”
“You didn’t believe it was yours.”
“I realized it did not matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“You believed the baby was mine. I would have married you. The baby would have been mine.”
“You were prepared to marry me even though you thought I might be pregnant with another man’s child?”
“This is the truth.”
Unbelievable! “You weren’t willing to do that for Sofia.”
“I was younger. Hot-headed. And she lied to me.”
“You thought I lied to you.” He’d said so.
“You told me what you wanted to be true. It is not the same. You believed it.”
While what he was saying touched her, the fact he still doubted her hurt. “It was your baby.”
He didn’t reply for a long time, and when the words did come they weren’t the ones she wanted to hear. “I let you down.”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry.”
“It doesn’t help.”
“I know.”
But was that entirely true?
After learning about Sofia Pennini, Elisa appreciated better why Salvatore had not trusted her. An experience like that would make any man wary when his lover told him she was pregnant with his child. Her father’s assertion Elisa was just like her mother had justifiably fueled Salvatore’s distrust.
So, yes, she understood why he believed what he did, but it made little difference to her emotion-deprived heart. The simple truth remained. If he had loved her, he would have wanted the baby to be his, not been afraid it was so. He would have believed her. He never would have left.
For a brief time, in her naiveté, she had believed he loved her. He’d wined and dined her. Flattered her. And he’d bedded her. In the end it had been that easy. Over her vacation in Sicily, she had fallen helplessly in love with Salvatore. She’d had no hope of resisting his blatant seduction when he looked her up in Milan.
Stupidly, she had mistaken his passion for love. She had ended up pregnant with his child and had only then come to appreciate her mistake. He had not believed her that the baby was his and she’d miscarried. Now they had this thing between them that was both too big to dismiss and yet nothing at all.
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“I do not know.”
“I can move to the floor if you like. I’ve got your coat to lie on anyway.”
“No.”
“It’s bound to be more comfortable for me than it is for you.”
“No.”
“You’re so stubborn and you’re too macho for your own good.”
“You think I am macho?” There was humor in his voice, which was a real improvement over the almost desperate tone he’d had earlier, or the dead tone he’d used when he apologized.
“Please, Salvatore. You’re so macho, you could bottle and sell it. Not only are you a good head taller than most Sicilian men, but you also have more muscles than any tycoon has a right to.” And the way he’d been flashing them earlier was still affecting her breathing when she thought about it. “You’re trained to fight like a commando and you practically define the word virile. It’s enough to make a woman swoon.”
The only warning she had that he had moved was the faint sound of fabric brushing against fabric and then he was there. Next to her on the mattress, his face so close to hers that his breath brushed her skin.
“I define the word virile?”
Perhaps that had been a dumb thing to admit, but it was no use lying now. “Yes.”
“But you will not let me share your bed.”
“I didn’t kick you out of the bed. You left because you were afraid of seducing me.”
“You admit I could seduce you?”
“I’m not admitting anything. It’s your own worries that had you sitting on the hard floor in the middle of the night.”
“Fear. Worry. You make me sound like an old woman.”
Nervous laughter huffed out of her. “I don’t think so.”
His lips brushed her cheek. “Maybe you want to be seduced,” he whispered, the words a caress against her skin.
Warmth pooled in her inner places while she cursed the darkness that seemed to magnify the electricity of his touch. “N-no.”
“Once again and with meaning.” His lips played with hers and she couldn’t seem to work up enough self-preservation to tell him to stop. “You want me, cara. Admit it.”
Her only defense lay in the truth. “Of course I want you. What red-blooded woman wouldn’t? What do you think I’ve been saying? But my body doesn’t always want what is best for my mind or my heart.”
His warm, masculine hand curled around her waist. “This time it does. Trust me, Elisa. I will not hurt you again.”
How could he help it? He didn’t love her and that in itself hurt. It shouldn’t. She didn’t love him anymore. How could she after all he had done? She should be able to take her pleasure the way he did, with no emotional entanglement. Only she knew she couldn’t, probably not with any man, but most definitely not with him. What she didn’t know was why.
Breathing in the scent of her body’s only acknowledged mate, realization blinded her like a lightning bolt in the darkness of the vault. She still loved him. Despite the way he had rejected her, she would always love him.
No. Her breathing turned shallow from fear. She’d thought her emotions were dead. Safely buried under a wall of pain so she couldn’t hurt any more. She didn’t want to love him.
His mouth pressed against the corner of her lips, his tongue flicking out to taste her and then retreating. “Please, dolcezza, let me pleasure you.”
The shock of her inner revelation combined with the physical sensations overwhelming her in the absolute darkness of the vault. And her mind stopped functioning, shor
t-circuited by the words and tone that promised so much.
Her head turned and her lips sought his blindly, needing more than that brief touch.
Chapter Seven
LIPS hard with passion closed over hers.
Want, need and love coalesced inside her, creating an overwhelming ache that was both physical and emotional. A sense of emptiness in the core of her femininity craved the filling of his flesh. Her heart fed on the need in his voice, the tension in his touch that attested his need for her.
A year ago she had exulted in this hunger that was so much more than mere physical lust, but now it terrified her. She knew what pain lay beyond the satiation of her senses.
But even her fear of the depth of emotion elicited by his kiss could not stifle the need, nor her body and heart’s demand it be met.
While her mouth feasted on the taste of her lover so long denied her, her body shifted against him in voluptuous abandon. He groaned, his hands closing convulsively on her. She pressed against his naked chest, digging her fingers into the short curling hair and muscled contours.
Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see anything. All she could do was feel.
His fingers undoing the buttons on the shirt she wore. His mouth staking a claim on hers. His heart beating an erratic rhythm against her hand. The pebble-hard bump of his male nipple. Then the feel of his hands cupping her naked breasts, kneading them with sensual urgency.
She let her hand slide down to measure his already hard male flesh through his trousers.
Moaning like a man in torture, he broke the kiss and she sensed his head falling back in abandonment to the pleasure of her touch. His hands continued caressing her breasts in what felt like a mindless pattern of squeeze and release…squeeze and release.
He strained against the fly of his trousers, letting her know without words that his need was as much as or greater than her own. Carefully, with one hand, she undid his fastening and pulled the zip down slowly enough to make him groan again.
“Sì. Touch me, cara. I need your hand on me.”
But she didn’t touch him.
She peeled the fabric away, cautious not to so much as brush his rigid flesh with the backs of her fingers. Then she pushed the trousers down his hips, waiting for him to move so she could slide them all the way off. Taking her time, she was careful not to let even the tip of his shaft into contact with any part of her body.
She loved teasing him like this.
“You are driving me mad.”
“Do you mind?” she asked with gentle mockery. “Maybe you want me to stop.”
“No!”
She smiled and, using the same maddening caution, she removed his silk boxer shorts.
She could feel his big body shudder and her own was shaking. Her nipples were so hard, the skin felt stretched unbearably taut and her breasts swelled in his hands.
“Salvatore…” She sighed out his name, glad for the darkness that hid the emotions swirling through her from his penetrating gaze.
“You want me.” He made it a statement and she did not bother to answer.
Her body was doing a fine job all on its own. She was drenched with desire between her legs, the flesh there engorged and throbbing.
She touched his face like a blind woman, trying to see with her hands. He let her, his body curiously still, as she allowed her fingertips to roam over him from the angles of his handsome face to biceps bulging with sexual tension, to the even ridges of muscle on his abdomen.
He sucked in air as she traced the line of his pelvis and once again she smiled. In this way, he was not so in control.
She stopped with her fingertip pressing into him just above his throbbing erection. She could feel the heat radiating off of him even though she could not see the familiar evidence of masculine arousal.
“I wonder what it is you want?”
“You.” His voice was guttural. “Just you, you teasing little witch.”
For right now she took the words at face value, pretending they meant what her heart longed for them to mean, but she didn’t move.
They stayed that way for several seconds, both of them anticipating the touch that was next to come.
When she could withstand the self-inflicted torment no longer, she curled her fingers around him with possessive pleasure and reveled in the primitive sound that tore out of his throat. Strong hands convulsively gripped her breasts. The pressure increased her own excitement and made her nipples ache for the kind of caresses they had come to expect from this incredibly sexy man.
She pleasured him as he had once taught her to do, unaware that his expressive passion had guided innocent hands to the touch that gave him the most gratification.
Without any warning, even the preliminary touching she’d always taken for granted, a hot, insistent mouth closed over one of her stiff peaks. She cried out from the shock of it.
He started sucking. Hard. She arched toward him, the apex of her thighs brushing against his solid, broad tip. The thin silk barrier of her panties might not even have been there.
The touch was so electric, so wanted, so much after a year-long desert of stimulation she shuddered and cried out in a mini-culmination.
He reared back, his breath rasping from his throat. “You are perfect for me. No woman has ever been so perfect.”
She only vaguely registered the compliment, her entire attention centered on the pleasure still rippling through her body.
Then he was pushing the shirt off her shoulders, guiding her backward so he could dispense with her panties. Expecting him to come down on top of her, she was confused when instead she felt the change in the pressure in the air mattress as he got off of it. “Where are you going?”
“I want to see you.” She heard a click and then the soft glow of the emergency lighting filled the vault.
After the absolute black, her eyes closed against what felt like a harsh glare and it took several seconds before she could open them and keep them open. By then he was back on the mattress and looking at her.
His dark eyes were pools of black fire burning in his face as he soaked in the vision of her lying there, open to him.
“Bellisima. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. An angel of perfection.”
His lavish praise was something that had shocked her at first when this Sicilian tycoon had become her lover, but now she adored it.
Warmed by his blatant approval, she let her eyes feast on his nudity too.
The subdued lighting made his bronzed skin even darker, but did nothing to hide the gorgeous sculpting of his features and build. He was everything that defined virile, just as she’d said. So much a man, such an amazing lover.
She looked at him through her lashes, her lips slightly parted in a pout. “Are you going to come get me?”
He didn’t laugh as she expected, as he had many times when she had taunted him like that. Instead his face contorted as if with pain and he came to her in a rush. A low growl vibrated in his throat in response to her feminine challenge.
All thought of playing fled as his body invaded hers in one smooth stroke that left them both panting.
He didn’t move, but held himself rigid above her for so long, she asked, “Is something wrong?”
“No.” He kissed her, hard and thoroughly. “Something is right. Very right.”
It felt that way to her too and she wrapped her arms and legs around him, letting him set a pace that would bring them both the fulfillment they craved.
He didn’t go hard and fast as she expected, but started an agonizingly slow rocking, pulling almost completely out before pressing forward again, sheathing himself in her slow centimeter by centimeter. A few minutes of the sensual torment and she was crying out for more, but he refused.
“No, dolcezza. It must last. This first time must go on forever.”
She wasn’t going to survive five more minutes, much less forever. She unhooked her legs and dug her heels into the mattress, bowing her body upwa
rd and forcing him to sink into her to the hilt. She gyrated wildly with her hips, needing the friction between their bodies to complete the starburst of pleasure just out of her reach.
When it came, it was like a supernova going off in her head and body. She screamed so loud, her throat felt raw, but his shout of completion was even louder.
Her ears rang, her body trembled, her muscles ached from contractions so intense they had made the now lit vault go black around her. She collapsed back on the mattress and he came with her, covering her body completely with his own.
He said something she didn’t understand.
She was so tired. “Sleep…” she said, her voice slurred.
If he answered, she did not hear.
Elisa woke, sure she was still asleep and dreaming, for only that scenario could explain how her naked body could be wrapped tightly against the equally nude body of her former lover. Even in the darkness, she knew his scent, his form, the very feel of him. She would never forget it.
“Buono mattina, cara,” a husky voice rumbled against her right temple.
She went completely rigid as the events of the night before came back to her. She had let him make love to her. No, not just let him. She had begged him in the end.
“How do you know it’s morning?” He must have turned off the light again after she fell asleep because the darkness in the vault was absolute.
“My watch has a night reading function.”
“Oh.” Stupid, inane conversation for the morning after, but then she didn’t know what meaningful thing she could say. “What time is it?”
“Eight-fifteen. We slept late.”
What they’d done had little to do with sleeping. Then she realized Signor di Adamo would be there when the vault door opened…in less than an hour. If the door opened right now, there would be no hiding what she and Salvatore had been doing. She sat straight up, panic clawing through her.
“We have to get dressed.”
His hand brushed her bare stomach, making already tight muscles clench further. “Relax. We have plenty of time.”
The scent of their lovemaking permeated the air around them. “How can you tell me to relax? Do you think I want my boss to know I spent the night with his security consultant?”
