by Lynne Graham
Kathy worked at speed in an attempt to lose her troubled thoughts in energetic activity. The treatment she had received had left her angry and bewildered. Sergio Torrente was a gorgeous guy with an attitude problem. A rampant snob and very proud. Cool at best, he was colder than ice when he was crossed. But when he had kissed her, pure naked excitement had made mincemeat of all his faults. Had he momentarily contrived to forget that she was just the cleaner? He must have done. He was probably at least thirty years old and way too mature for her. She rammed the mop into the bucket with noisy unnecessary force. She had nothing in common with some super-rich older guy who owned a building and made a big fuss when some lesser mortal dared to muck around with his chessboard!
She began to wonder if she was fated to die a virgin. Year after year, life was steadily passing her by. Sergio Torrente was the first bloke she had fancied since Gareth had dumped her. How clever was that? Sexual chemistry was very strange, she mused ruefully. Why hadn’t she warmed to one of the many men who had tried to chat her up at the café? Obviously she was being rather too fussy. Even so, she was convinced that nine out of ten women would find Sergio Torrente pretty much irresistible. She had never gone for boyish men or the type who might almost be described as pretty. His lean dark features contrived to unite classic good looks with a raw and compelling masculinity that was seriously sexy, Kathy ruminated dreamily, wielding her mop with less and less vigour.
‘Kathy…?’
Her head flew up, light green eyes preoccupied. When she saw the subject of her most intimate thoughts standing just ten feet from her she did a double take. As she felt her wretched skin colouring up in a wave of guilty heat she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her alive. ‘Yes?’
‘I owe you an apology.’
Kathy nodded in firm agreement.
Sergio, who had been awaiting a flattering protest at that statement, laughed with reluctant appreciation. She was turning in a prize-winning performance in the sincerity stakes. Was her candour supposed to strike him as a refreshing quality? Appeal to his jaded billionaire palate and need for novelty? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. The fawn-like lashes swept down on her amazing eyes and desire dug talon claws of need into his groin. What did it matter if she sold her story afterwards to some tacky tabloid? One glimpse of her exquisite face and the most basic of male instincts took over. His reaction to her was atavistic and stronger than anything he had felt in a long time. To look at her without touching her almost hurt. He knew that the only thing that would satisfy him now was bedding her. He had never been into self-denial.
‘Will you play another game with me when your shift ends?’ Sergio asked silkily.
Kathy was astonished by the apology and the renewed invitation. In a wary and fleeting collision with brilliant dark eyes as crystal-clear and cold as an underground lake, she sensed the danger of him: the powerful personality reined in below the surface. Clever, ruthless, definitely not the sort of male anyone would want as an enemy. It dismayed her that even sensing those hard-nosed qualities she should still find him incredibly attractive. She swallowed hard, struggling to pay heed to her misgivings. ‘I’m afraid I don’t finish until eleven o’clock.’
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘No?’ Temptation was tugging at her with relentless force.
‘No. I haven’t eaten yet. I’ll send a car to pick you up when you’re finished.’
‘Can’t we just play here?’ Kathy gave way but only on terms that she felt would be comfortable for her. She didn’t want to risk being seen with him. Nor did she want to climb into some strange car to be taken heaven knew where and possibly left to find her own way home again in the early hours of the morning.
His surprise was patent. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It is.’
Kathy watched his long fluid stride carry him out of her sight. She was in a daze, not quite able to accept that he had talked her round with very little effort. It was only a game of chess, she told herself in sudden exasperation. He was still set on winning. If he kissed her again, she would…well, she would just make sure that they didn’t get that close. It would be pointless, him with his business empire and her with her history. And she didn’t want to be kicked in the teeth again, did she? There was no point literally queuing up to get hurt. But nor was there any harm in pitting her wits against his.
Five minutes before eleven, Kathy freshened up in the cloakroom. She folded up her overall and dug it into her bag. Her turquoise cotton T-shirt clung to her minimal curves. She turned sideways, breathed in deep and arched her spine. Her bosom remained disappointingly slight from every angle. Meeting her own eyes in the mirror, she flushed in embarrassment and concentrated on brushing her hair instead.
Kathy was twenty-three years old but, just then, she felt more like a nervous teenager. That lowering feeling of ignorance and insecurity annoyed her. The years between nineteen and twenty-two, when she might have acquired a little more experience, had been stolen from her. As soon as that bitter thought occurred to her, she buried it again, for she tried never to look back in that spirit; it did her no good to dwell on what could not be changed. She had spent three years in prison for a crime she had not committed and still bore the scars, mentally and physically. But few had been willing to believe in her innocence and indeed had often judged her more harshly for daring to make such a claim. Get over it, she told herself firmly; leave it in the past, move on.
When she walked into his office, her lissom figure and endless long coltish legs merely enhanced by a T-shirt and jeans, Sergio was startled by her impact. The exotic slant of her cheekbones was more obvious with her glorious hair tumbling in loose waves round her narrow shoulders—hair the colour of tangerine marmalade in sunlight, glinting with amber and ochre shades that acted as a superb showcase for her white skin and apple-green eyes.
‘Have you ever been a model?’ he asked while he poured her another drink.
‘No. I don’t fancy walking half naked down a catwalk. I like food too much, as well. Could you spare a packet of crisps?’ Her tummy grumbling with hunger, Kathy had noticed the snacks in the snazzy drinks cabinet that stood open.
‘Help yourself. You seem more relaxed than you were earlier,’ Sergio remarked.
‘I’m on my own free time.’ Kathy curled up on the sofa and munched crisps while she played. The salty snack made her thirsty and she had to keep on sipping her drink. She only allowed herself to study him closely several moves into the game when he seemed unaware of her attention.
But no matter how much she looked at him, Sergio Torrente still took her breath away. He was drop-dead beautiful. Hair and lashes with the sheen of black silk, mesmeric dark eyes, a strong sensual mouth. He had shaved since she had last seen him—the faint bluish shadow of stubble had vanished. She wondered if that meant he planned to kiss her again. Heat pooled in her tummy and warmed more intimate places with a physical awareness that took her aback. She reminded herself that she had come to play chess, not to flirt.
Sergio glanced up. ‘Your move.’
Her lashes dropping in a protective screen over her eyes, she studied the board.
Sergio watched her demonstrate a skill, speed and assurance that made it clear that she was well able to hold her own. ‘Who taught you to play?’
‘My father.’
‘So did mine.’ His lean strong face shadowed. Silence lay before he matched her on the board and then, noticing her empty glass, he rose to refill it.
Her light green eyes rested on him throughout the exercise. Everything about him fascinated her: the classy cut of his hair, the designer élan of his suit, the discreet gleam of gold at his wrist and cuff, the fluid way he moved his lean brown hands when he spoke. He was very elegant and very controlled.
‘If you keep on looking at me like that, we’ll never finish the game, bella mia.’
Kathy reddened and took the glass he extended with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. He had read h
er so easily it embarrassed her. It also reminded her of how little she knew about him. As she thought of what she should have asked at the outset she tensed. ‘Are you married?’
Surprise made Sergio quirk an ebony brow. ‘Why are you asking?’
‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘I’m single.’
Although her head was swimming a little, Kathy sidestepped the trap he had set for her on the board and shot him a victorious smile.
‘You’re good,’ Sergio conceded, amused by the suspicion that she too might have set out to play a very fast game. ‘We have a tie. Tact or fact?’
‘Fact.’
Her cheeky grin of challenge brought out the caveman in him.
He leant down, closed a hand into her tumbling copper-streaked tresses to raise her face to his and drove her delectable pink lips hungrily apart, making love to her mouth with devastating expertise.
That sudden taste of him took Kathy by storm. Desire exploded through her slender length like a depth charge that ignited on impact. Shards of sensation rippled through her. He kissed with an eroticism that was spellbinding. As he pulled her up against him her arms went round him to steady herself because she was dizzy. The alcohol? She shut down that suspicion, suddenly determined not to succumb to her need to play safe again. She was breathless with excitement, her heart pounding like mad. For the first time that she could remember she felt young and fearless and alive.
‘I can’t keep my hands off you,’ Sergio told her softly.
‘We were playing chess,’ Kathy reminded him in a breathless whisper.
‘I want to play with you instead, delizia mia.’
That was a touch too blunt for her. Her cheeks flamed, her confusion patent. With a sardonic laugh, he raked smouldering golden eyes over her exquisite face. He lowered his handsome dark head again. The invasive stab of his tongue inside her mouth was deliciously sensual and she pressed helplessly closer to his hard masculine frame for more. Against her lower stomach she could feel the hard, intimate proof of his arousal and she shivered. Her hands fixed to the wide, steely strength of his shoulders. Her response overwhelmed and ensnared her. A tight little knot of desire was unfurling low in her pelvis, filling her with yearning and impatience. Even her senses seemed to have gone into hyperactive mode: her fingers filtered through his springy black hair and rejoiced in the silken texture while the already familiar scent of his skin acted on her like an aphrodisiac.
Sergio had planned to finish the game first and it had finished on schedule. Sergio always planned everything. But desire was a raging fire in his blood and that driving intensity was novel to him. Her slim body slotted into his lean powerful frame as though she had been born to make that connection. What he was feeling was addictive and he wanted more of it and all of her. He lowered her down on the sofa and discarded his jacket and tie.
That temporary separation made Kathy tense and question what she was doing. Even though her mind was fuzzy, she told herself to get up. Hair spread in a burnished mass of Titian splendour round her head, she looked up at him, eyes glazed with passion and uncertainty, her generous mouth rosy red from the attention of his. He chose that particular moment to smile down at her. ‘You are gorgeous,’ he told her and it was a smile of such charismatic power that she felt as though her heart were bouncing like a rubber ball inside her chest.
A tiny pulse was going crazy at her collar-bone. Sergio put his mouth to the delicate blue-veined skin and she gasped and arrowed up to him. Her body was thrumming like an engine that was raring to go and she didn’t know how to handle the stress of it. He found the bare skin below her T-shirt and closed his hand to a tiny, sweet pouting mound. For an instant she went stiff because she had forgotten that she had no bra on and there was no warning before he found the part of her body that she was least confident about. He pushed the turquoise fabric out of his path and exposed her small breasts to his appreciative scrutiny.
‘Ravishing,’ Sergio pronounced with satisfaction, catching a pouting nipple the colour of a tea rose between thumb and finger and chafing the delicate bud until a smothered sound of response was wrenched from her. He used his tongue to moisten the distended crest and it was only the beginning of a slow process of sensual torment. Her hips jerked and shifted with increasing frequency, her thighs pressing together on the ache of emptiness that was stirring between them. Her breath rasped in her throat as he toyed with the sensitised nubs until they were stiff and taut and wildly responsive to his every caress.
Reaction was piling onto reaction too fast for her to bear. She was on the heights of a frantic anticipation that utterly controlled her. He coiled back from her to peel off her jeans. For an instant awareness returned to her when she rocked back up into sitting position to blink in vague surprise at the sight of her bare legs. Tiny tremors of frantic desire were quivering through her. She met hot golden eyes and burned inside and out, sensible thought sizzling into nothingness.
‘Sergio,’ she whispered wonderingly.
That fast he recaptured her attention. He meshed long brown fingers into the vibrant fall of her hair and kissed her with devouring passion. She resented the distraction when something caught in her hair and pulled it hard enough to make her mutter in complaint.
‘Be still. Your hair’s caught,’ he groaned, unclasping his designer watch to disentangle her from the bracelet and removing the timepiece to toss it aside.
Kathy struggled with the buttons on his shirt until he leant back and wrenched it off for her. ‘You need practice,’ he told her thickly. ‘I’ll give you all you can handle, delizia mia.’
The hair-roughened contours of his warm muscular torso felt amazing beneath her palms. She wanted to explore further, but he pushed her back against the arm of the sofa to take her mouth with ravenous need. At the same instant that he discovered the moist, swollen heart of her, conscious choices evaporated for her. She had never been touched there before and never dreamt that she could be quite so sensitive. But he had the erotic skill to show her. Exquisite sensation engulfed her in mindless pleasure and she shivered and writhed and whimpered.
Sergio had never been so aroused by a woman. There was no thought now of who she was or what she might be. Her passionate out-of-control response exploded his customary cool like dynamite. Once his powerful sensuality was unleashed, he was all decisive action. He came over her in one slick movement. She trembled, suddenly aware of the feel of his hot, probing intrusion in that most tender place. Her eyes widened and she tensed in disquiet at virtually the same moment as he entered her with an earthy groan of satisfaction. She was unprepared for the sharp stab of pure piercing pain that provoked a cry of dismay from her lips before she could bite it back.
Ebony brows pleating, Sergio stared down at her with frowning golden eyes of enquiry. ‘Per meraviglia…I am the first?’
‘Don’t stop.’ Kathy shut her eyes tight. It was like being in the grip of a whirlwind, for even as the pangs of pain receded her body still signalled a powerful craving for the urgency of his.
He sank his hands below her hips to ease his passage with a slow sexual skill that was breathtakingly erotic. Her heart hammered as he taught her his sensual masculine rhythm with a boldness that delighted her senses. The excitement flooded back even stronger than before. Ripples of pleasure began to build, gripping her tighter and tighter in a torment of need she could not withstand. She reached for the ultimate and shattered in a climax that consumed her at hurricane force and plunged her into a free fall of delight.
The delight was short-lived.
Sergio held her close. ‘It’s a long time since any woman made me feel so good, bellezza mia,’ he murmured raggedly.
Kathy was still shell-shocked by the entire experience and revelling in a sense of physical connection that was seductively new to her. ‘I’ve never felt like this…ever,’ she added helplessly.
‘I have one vital question.’ Sergio stared down at her with disturbingly cool and assessing dark eyes.
‘Why did you give me your virginity?’
Kathy was dismayed by that direct question, particularly as he was suggesting that she had made some kind of a decision while she was all too uneasily aware that she had been considerably less mature in the nature of her giving.
Taut with suspicion of her motives, Sergio shook his handsome dark head. ‘It was a very gratifying experience and not one I ever expected to have,’ he confided flatly. ‘But I know and I accept that any special pleasure always comes at a cost and I would really prefer to know right now up front what you want in return.’
Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Why should it cost you anything?’
‘I’m a very rich man. I can’t recall when I last enjoyed a freebie,’ Sergio countered with sibilant derision.
When Kathy finally grasped his meaning she was appalled. She snaked her slim body free of his weight in an irate gesture of repudiation. How could she have shared her body with a guy who seemed to think that she would want to reap a financial reward from the activity? She could not have felt more ashamed had she been forced to walk down a street naked with the word whore written on a placard and hung round her neck.
Forced back from her by her sudden unanticipated retreat, Sergio had discovered another even more immediate source for concern. He cursed under his breath in Italian. ‘Are you using birth control? In any form?’
Kathy was feeling dizzy and sick and distraught. She could not credit what she had done. She could not credit how stupid she had been. But while she was still in his presence she would not allow herself to think about those realities. All her energy was now concentrated on beating a very fast retreat from the scene of her worst ever mistake. She reached for her clothing. ‘No—but you used contraception.’
Lean dark features uniformly grim, Sergio was getting dressed. ‘The condom tore.’
Kathy flinched and turned paler than ever but she said nothing in response. Indeed she refused even to look at him. This is what it’s like when you get intimate with someone you don’t know—awkward, humiliating, shaming, she reflected painfully. She fought her way into her panties with trembling hands, hauled on her T-shirt and wrenched on her jeans with so much force that she scratched the skin on her thighs.
