She supposed that some women might have shouted a few home truths before slamming the door in his face, but her curiosity was aroused. And not just your curiosity, taunted the remorseless voice of her conscience with chilling accuracy. Despairing of the fact that the last thing she wanted was for him to simply walk away, she shrugged nonchalantly.
‘Why not?’ She opened the door wider, telling herself that it was necessary to see him. To talk to him. What did they call the kind of conversation they needed to have together? Closure, that was it. Common sense told her that she would never completely be free of his memory unless they achieved some kind of closure. That was all it was. She gestured for him to come inside.
Silently he expelled the breath which he hadn’t even realised he had been holding, and followed her into the sitting room, his eyes mesmerised by the swaying thrust of each buttock as it moved provocatively against the satin while she walked.
Her heart was beating fast. His presence was like a light, filling the room with some unbearable, shimmering promise. And that was an illusion, she told herself fiercely as she turned to face him, wondering whether her face betrayed the fact that she wanted him.
He was wearing some unspeakably elegant suit in a soft dove-grey. And a thin white shirt through which she could just discern the faint shadowing of the hair which she had scraped her fingernails against at the moment of orgasm. A tie of sapphire almost as blue as his eyes had been loosened, and it exposed a gleaming little triangle of olive flesh. There was nowhere to look but at him, and she forced herself to swallow down desire, and to remind herself instead of the true situation.
But the words still hurt to say. ‘So what about your fiancée, Giovanni?’ she enquired deliberately. ‘Does she know you’re here? With me?’
The memory of Anna, and the hurt he had caused her, filled Giovanni with heated regret. But something else heated him too—the same accursed reason which had brought him to her bed in the first place.
‘Ex-fiancée,’ he corrected icily.
‘Oh, dear—I’m so sorry! Still, I guess it’s better she found out about you sooner rather than later.’
He stilled, then raised dark brows, and the insult freed him, made what he was about to do seem ridiculously simple. ‘Found out about me?’ he echoed silkily. ‘And just what is that supposed to mean, cara?’
He made the word cara sound like a profanity. ‘What do you think it means?’ she demanded, remembering how he had whispered that word to her over and over. ‘I’m not flattering myself to think that I was the first little dalliance you’d had on the side!’
Tension tightened his tall, dark frame. His voice was velvet, edged with steel. ‘You think that I am the kind of man to regularly commit infidelity, do you, Kate?’
‘How should I know? I hardly know a thing about you!’ But as soon as the words were out of her mouth she realised that she had dug her own grave of shame.
‘No, you don’t,’ he agreed, and his eyes gave an insolent glitter. ‘But that didn’t stop you being as intimate with me as it is possible for any woman to be!’
Kate flinched as if he had struck her. But how right he was. She recalled the way she had touched him. Licked him. Sucked him in a place where she had sucked no other man. She felt the colour rush to her cheeks as pride made her construct her own defence against the accusation.
‘Do you really think I would have…would have…’ she struggled to find the least offensive way to describe what had happened ‘…would have slept with you if I’d known that you were engaged to be married?’
Her question brought the night back into sharp focus with exquisitely arousing clarity. ‘We had very little sleep that night, as I remember, bella—you were delightfully eager to repeat the experience over and over again.’
‘So were you!’
‘Who would refuse such an offer when it was so enticingly offered?’ He shrugged. ‘But how could I possibly make a judgement about your morality? This bizarre situation is entirely mutual—and, as you just so sweetly pointed out, we barely know each other. At least, not in the conventional sense.’
But the assumption was crystal-clear. Kate flicked angry fingers through the red fall of her hair, only succeeding in making it even more dishevelled than it already was. ‘You think I’m some sort of tramp who gives her body to any man who comes along?’
‘Not any man,’ he corrected, with a shake of his dark head. ‘I recognised that you had exquisite taste, right from the beginning. I cannot condemn you for your choice of partner, Kate.’
It took a moment for his words to sink in. ‘You’re very arrogant.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Just honest.’
‘But not honest enough to tell me at the time that you were engaged?’
‘I wasn’t thinking very straight at the time.’
‘No.’ She stared at him, shocked by how much she wanted to touch him. Wondering just what she would do if he touched her. ‘Just what are you doing here, Giovanni?’
He caught the blinding green question in her eyes, and a pulse began to hammer at his temple. ‘I think you know the answer to that very well, cara,’ he said softly.
There was silence, save for the deafening thunder of her heart. Yes, she knew. She had known ever since she had opened the door to him and seen the predatory glitter in his eyes. Just as she had known the last time, too.
And there didn’t have to be a repeat performance.
She lifted her chin and said with surprising calm, ‘You think I’m going to fall into bed with you again?’
He thought that bed had nothing to do with it. To do it right there where they stood would do fine to begin with. ‘Why not?’ He gave a slow, cold smile. ‘You know you want to.’
His assessment quite literally took her breath away. But only for a moment. ‘You rate yourself very highly as a lover, don’t you, Giovanni?’
The smile was now edged with ice. ‘You told me so yourself. In fact, you gave me the very highest recommendation— you said that I was the best.’
He spoke nothing more than the truth. She remembered her frantic little pleas, the sighed pleasure, and the indolent little murmurs of praise she had whispered into his ear just after she had…had…
‘I didn’t know then that you were engaged—’
‘Would you have cared?’
‘Of course I would have cared!’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. You just wanted me,’ he taunted. ‘Very badly. As badly as I wanted you.’ Still want you. ‘You curled your fingers around my arm and I knew then that you would not have been satisfied until I had pleasured you as no other man had before.’
‘That was just a touch!’ she protested. ‘An innocent touch! I hardly started removing my clothes in front of you, like some kind of temptress!’
The ache intensified. ‘Don’t be so naïve! It is never “just” a touch. And never, ever innocent! How could it have been, when the chemistry between us was so strong? You were fascinated by me. Intrigued by me.’
‘You can’t know that!’ she said inadequately.
‘Can’t I?’ He paused. ‘I saw the print-out from your computer.’
She stared at him with a look of incomprehension. ‘What print-out?’ she said blankly.
‘You’d been doing your homework on me, hadn’t you, Kate?’
Still she didn’t get it.
‘And reading up about Sicily,’ he told her in a soft, taunting voice. ‘You clearly wanted to know something of my land and its people—presumably to learn a little more about me. You wanted as much background on me as you could and I cannot deny that I wasn’t flattered.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’ she declared. ‘You’d been positively insulting about the fact that I knew nothing about Sicily—and just because I wanted to fill in a few gaps in my knowledge you make it sound like I had some kind of master-plan to ensnare you!’
‘You didn’t need a master-plan, Kate,’ he told her starkly. ‘Yo
ur eyes ensnared me from the first moment I looked into them.’
She was very nearly beguiled by the velvet caress of his compliment, until she reminded herself that he had betrayed his fiancée, and in a way he had betrayed her, too. If, as he had acknowledged, the chemistry between them had been so strong, then why had he asked to come in for a drink in the first place? He must have recognised that he was placing himself in a dangerous situation.
And her.
Unconsciously she tightened the belt of her satin robe around her waist, but the flicker of his eyes as he followed the movement of her fingers told her that it was entirely the wrong thing to do. He was staring at her as if he would like to undo what she had just done, and to…to…
‘I think you’d better leave now,’ she told him huskily.
Leave? An earthquake would not have budged him. He shook his head and moved towards her, and she was frozen with wanting and longing.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Giovanni, no.’
‘Oh, yes,’ came the silky contradiction. ‘Yes, Kate.’
She shook her head, but it was too late, and he was pulling her into his arms and bending his head to hers and she supposed that she could have stopped him. Should have stopped him. But no power in the world could have prevented her lips from parting in a sharp little gasp of remembered pleasure as he drove his mouth down like a man who had been starved of kisses.
She swayed within the circle of hands which impatiently drew her in towards the hard cradle of his desire, and felt the immediate flowering of need as his tongue licked its way inside her mouth.
He tried to tell himself that kissing her was the only way to ensure her capitulation, but that was only a part of it because he could not seem to stop himself. Was dazed by it. A kiss that had started out hard and hungry became luxuriant and soft—the erotic brushing together of two tongues intent on some slow, sensual exploration. And it sparked off an inevitable chain of reaction which could have only one conclusion.
Impatiently he pulled at the belt of her robe so that it parted for him, allowing him to reach one hand inside and cup the swollen globe of her breast, and he heard her make some sound midway between a purr and a protest.
‘Look down,’ he instructed softly, and she obeyed the order instantly, watching his fingertips as they began to softly encircle each tight, rosy nipple, and seismic little shocks of pleasure began to ripple over her.
She reached blindly for the belt of his trousers. Then her fingers scrabbled down like those of a woman possessed as she urgently eased the zip down, feeling the great power of him in the palm of her hand as he sprang free. And she curled her fingers possessively around his silky hardness.
‘Matri di Diu!’ he gasped out, and lowered her gently onto the carpet, unable to wait or to risk moving—like a schoolboy on his first ever encounter with a woman. He began to fumble in the pocket of his trousers.
She could feel him sliding a condom on and then pushing his trousers down, but only down, and she knew then with an erotic certainty which aroused her far more than it shocked her, that he wasn’t even going to take them off. That he was going to take her…take her…
Oh, lord—here! Here! Distractedly she turned her head to the side as he lowered himself on top of her. The floor-to-ceiling windows were uncurtained, and it was broad daylight. Someone might see!
‘Giovanni,’ she husked, from a mouth which suddenly felt as dry as sandpaper.
He paused from tugging at her breast with his mouth, teeth nipping and grazing in an action which veered tantalisingly between pain and pleasure. ‘Chi?’ He saw her look of confusion, and realised that he had spoken in Sicilian. ‘What is it?’ he questioned feverishly.
With a finger which was shaking she pointed at the window, through which strolling couples could be seen ambling along the towpath in the golden summer evening. ‘Someone might see us,’ she whispered.
Some madness almost made him cry out that he didn’t care—such was his urgent need to possess her. But he had never approved of voyeurism.
With a groan he eased himself away from the honeyed lure of her body, and used the opportunity to kick his trousers away, his modesty maintained by the silken shirt which skimmed the tops of his thighs. His shoes and socks followed, and Kate sucked in a frantic breath which did nothing to quell the acceleration of her heart.
He moved around the side of the room, so that he could not be seen from the outside, and drew the curtains together, and in the few short steps back to where she lay, her eyes dark with hunger and excitement, he unbuttoned his shirt halfway and pulled it over his head.
She lay watching him, saw how proud and aroused he was. Pale light filtered through the curtains and transformed him into a glorious dark and golden silhouette, and she thought that she might pass out if he didn’t come back to her quickly.
For one moment he towered above her, unsmilingly surveying the beautiful bounty of her body as she stretched out on the backdrop of silver satin.
She thought how cold his face suddenly looked, inappropriately cold considering how much he obviously wanted her, and she felt the skittering fingers of foreboding icing her skin. But she could not stop him. Not now. Certainly not now. She sensed that he still blamed her for seducing him, but none of that seemed to matter. In fact, nothing seemed to matter other than to have him here with her again…
He sank down and edged the robe completely free, easing it off the pale curves of her shoulders, until she was as naked as he was.
He jerked his head arrogantly towards the window. ‘Is that private enough for you, cara?’
Her desire for him made her ignore everything—even the sardonic tone in which he had asked the question. Greedily her hands went up to his shoulders. And where her fingers led her mouth followed as she anointed the soft olive gleam of his skin with eager, tiny kisses.
She was wild! Giovanni was deadly sober, but he felt almost drunk with a cold, hard power as he parted her legs and touched her syrupy warmth, so that she bucked with pleasure beneath his fingers.
‘Oh!’ The single syllable came out in an ecstatic little moan.
He reined in his own needs, wanting to see her even more in his power. His hand stilled. ‘Oh, what?’
Kate very nearly wept with frustration. ‘Please,’ she breathed.
‘Please what?’ he questioned cruelly.
Her pride now vanquished by the clamour of her senses, she whispered, ‘Please do it some more,’ and was rewarded with a sure instinctive touch that took her to the very edge.
He could make her come right now, beneath his fingers like last time, he thought with a grim kind of satisfaction. But pleasure was all the more intense when it was prolonged. He moved his hand away, unbearably excited by the sulky little pout of her lips.
‘Oh!’
‘No, no, no, cara,’ he murmured, enjoying the way she writhed frustratedly beneath him. ‘A little while longer. Why not try…this instead…?’ and without warning he slipped inside her, seeing her eyes dilate as their flesh joined and he filled her.
He moved, slowly at first. Long, deep, agonisingly slow thrusts, and Kate felt so full of him that she felt as though her heart might burst.
He was playing with her, she thought almost bitterly. Demonstrating his control over her, while she, like a puppet, submitted willingly to the orchestrations of his body.
He did not kiss her. Just watched the mindless flutter of her eyes, the way the breath escaped from her parted lips in frenzied little sighs.
‘Open your eyes,’ he instructed softly.
She did, then almost wished she hadn’t—because there was not a single scrap of tenderness etched on that dark, beautiful face. Just a primitive kind of hunger, which she could see he was reining in with an effort. But succeeding. Oh, yes, he was certainly succeeding.
‘You have beautiful eyes,’ he whispered.
Was he trying to punish her, by making her wait? To pay her back for what he obviously blamed her for—getting him
into bed in the first place?
‘Tell me what it feels like,’ he instructed softly, and thrust deep inside her once more.
‘Heaven!’ she burst out, before she had time to think about the wisdom of her reply.
He gave a laugh then, a low, soft, mocking sound of triumph, but the triumph backfired on him when she began to move beneath him, changing the pace so irrevocably that he was caught up on an inexorable ascent towards mindless pleasure.
He gave a small moan as he felt power slip away from him, but the unwillingness of his surrender was quickly replaced by the stealthy warmth of abandonment. Abandonment?
No, even stronger than that. He was a man who had always lived his life by rules. And structure. So what was happening to him now?
The feeling which rocked him took him completely off-guard, and her own corresponding gasps of pleasure as she spasmed around him made him tip his head back in a disbelieving kind of wonder as he came and came and came, his seed spilling uselessly into the condom.
And then he rolled off her and gazed unseeingly at the ceiling.
He hadn’t known it could feel quite like that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GIOVANNI must have slept—fallen into an unusually deep, and dreamless, interlude. Only with consciousness did reality begin to chase strange images across his mind.
Red hair and green eyes, and a body which had taken him to paradise and back again. A feeling of powerlessness as he had climaxed. And that, inexplicably, he had found himself actually resenting the protection he wore. Had wanted no barrier between him and her slick, beguiling warmth.
He expelled a sigh and stirred, but he did not open his eyes. He needed to realign his thoughts. To work out just where he went from here.
Beside him Kate was awake, though pretending not to be. She had kept watch over him while he slept, like an anxious mother night-watching a fevered child. Only in sleep had his face relaxed. And in orgasm, she reminded herself as a dull warmth began to seep into her satiated blood.
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