Sicilian Nights Omnibus (30 page)

CHAPTER NINE

‘I
T
IS
SO
lovely having you and Ollie living here, Annie. Sometimes I have to pinch myself in case I’m dreaming. I feel I’ve been so lucky.’

Annie nodded her head and tried to look as though she was paying proper attention to what Julie was saying as the two of them sat drinking tea and watching their babies playing happily together on the shaded patio of Rocco’s beautiful mansion. The reality, though, was that she was finding it next to impossible to drag her thoughts away from the intoxicating and guilty pleasure of reliving over and over again the events of two nights ago, when she had woken up in the velvet darkness to find herself in bed with Falcon.

Still buoyed up with the sweet physical satisfaction of her earlier orgasm, and the emotional high of feeling that she had finally broken free of her imprisonment and celebrated her sexuality, she had been filled with unfamiliar confidence and happiness.

It was those feelings, she felt sure, that had somehow led to her not only stretching luxuriously against Falcon, savouring the sensuality of being in her own skin and at one with her sensuality, but also being proactive enough to decide that the rush of pleasure it gave her to stretch out and feel Falcon’s skin against her own was a pleasure that needed further exploration.

From that thought it had only been the merest heartbeat of a step—the simple raising of her hand to place it palm-down flat against Falcon’s chest so that she could absorb the simple but delightful pleasure of feeling his heart beat against her touch—to discovering the temptation to do far more than that.

The fact that Falcon had been asleep wasn’t something that had even registered with her. She had been on such a high of thrilling confidence and sensual joy. Her new sense of freedom had swept away all normal rationality. She had been lost, totally and utterly, in a daze of such sensual delight and arousal, so pleased with herself for being able to feel that way, that she simply hadn’t been able to stop herself from letting her new-found womanhood have its way.

She had stroked her fingertips along Falcon’s bare arm, kissed her way from the place where her head had rested on his chest close to his heart right up to his throat—spending endless absorbed and entranced minutes, or so it had seemed, exploring the hollow at the base of his throat with her tongue-tip, painting swirls of delighted gratitude there for all that he had given her. And then, when the languorous, relaxed happiness she had been feeling started to transform into an aroused ache, she’d continued to stroke her tongue over his Adams’s apple and then upwards, diverting towards his ear, leaning across him as she did so. Every movement of her lips had seemed to necessitate a similar movement of her already tight breasts against his chest, the friction caused by the movement of her still-sensitised nipples against his body hair rekindling a powerful surge of the need she had experienced earlier in the evening.

Quite how or when her hand had drifted down to his hip, her fingertips itching to stroke lower, she had no idea. All she did know was that even now, nearly two full days later, just recalling the moment when Falcon had moved, turned his head and murmured in her ear, ‘Either you stop right now, or you accept the consequences of what you are doing,’ brought back a tumultuously intense echo of what she had felt then, accompanied by an all too familiar dragging ache low down in her body.

Of course she should have stopped. She had found her sensuality, after all, so there had been no real need at all, absolutely none, for Falcon to continue with his teaching programme. But she hadn’t stopped. Wild horses, if available, would not have had the least impact on her desire
not
to stop. And not only had she not stopped, she had deliberately moved her hand lower, stroking her fingers through the thick, slightly damp heat of the hair above it until she had reached Falcon’s firm erection.

How a woman who had had no knowledge of the intimacy of a man’s body could have known such a fiercely possessive female desire to caress and control such maleness she had no idea. All she knew was that she had done so.

Falcon had suffered her caressing exploration for a handful of heat-charged minutes, during which her heartbeat had raced to match the thunder of his and the air between them had become filled with the heightened sound of their mutually unsteady breathing. His flesh, already firm beneath her fingertips, had grown harder and wider. And then he had groaned out loud—a raw, guttural, utterly visceral sound that had thrilled through her, reaching deep into her body to turn its already aroused flutter into a driving, urgent pulse. Then he had reached for her, pulling her down on top of his own body, his hands pressing her hips down against his hardness and then sweeping possessively up over her back and into her hair whilst he held her against his mouth and kissed the breath out of her.

He had broken his kiss only to tell her in a semi-tortured, throaty voice, ‘I want you. I want you right here, right now.’

‘I want you too,’ she had whispered back.

She had been the one to tug urgently on his hands, shivering with raw delight when he had rolled her beneath him. The moonlight had been a silver, sweat-slick pathway over his skin, revealing to her the male desire burning in his gaze, its intensity mirroring the dangerous heat licking at her own nerve endings.

She’d had a child, rejoiced in his birth, unconcerned then about the effect that physical experience might have on her body. But suddenly she had been acutely aware of how much that process might have changed her. And not just that process. She might have no memory of what had happened with Antonio, but it had happened.

Somewhere deep down in her most secret self she had felt a pang of something primitive she hadn’t really wanted to admit to: a mixture of longing and grief and recognition of the fact that Falcon was the man, the lover, was the one, given the choice, she would have wanted to be her first.

He had kissed her face and then her throat, moving over her, touching her sex with his fingers as he had done before. This time the rush of sensation that had filled her was stronger and deeper, arching her up towards him.

He’d kissed her breasts and then asked softly, ‘Are you sure you want this?’

She had, she remembered, laughed a little unsteadily before telling him truthfully, ‘Yes—and a thousand times more than I have ever imagined I could want it.’

In the moonlight she had seen his chest expand and then contract.

‘I’ll need to take precautions,’ he had told her. ‘I won’t be a second.’

She had known that what he was saying made sense, but suddenly the thought of him leaving her was one she hadn’t been able to bear. She had clung to him, wrapping her arms tightly around him, pressing her pelvis into him with aching need as she had told him, ‘No.’

Would he have stayed if she hadn’t rubbed herself against him so provocatively, her body convulsing in open and delirious pleasure and need as she’d felt his hardness against her sex? She didn’t know. What she did know was that the pleasure of her own wanton sensuality had been so intense that she had repeated the movement—not once, but several times.

His control had broken then, and he had positioned her, lifting her slightly so that he could thrust slowly and deliberately into her.

‘If you want me to stop—’ he had begun, but she had shaken her head, showing him rather than telling him how little she wanted that by wrapping her legs around him and rising up to meet his thrust.

After that the world had become a whirligig of different pleasures, each one more intense than the last. A kaleidoscope of shared need and movement. Her flesh had clasped itself greedily around him as each thrust took him deeper into her, taking her higher and higher.

Having him inside her had felt so right—like nothing she could ever have imagined. He had filled her and completed her, and the pleasure had grown and kept on growing, leaving her so lost in the marvel of it that her orgasm had caught her unawares, overwhelming her so swiftly that she’d wanted to hold it back so that she could enjoy the sensation for longer.

The echoes of it had still been shuddering through her when Falcon had arched and tensed before thrusting one last time, the agonised joy of his male triumph reverberating through the silver night.

She had cried a little afterwards, for no good reason at all, and if that hadn’t been shameful enough she had then compounded her silliness by telling Falcon emotionally, ‘That was wonderful. I just wish that you had been the first.’

The first, the last and the only.

Ollie’s protesting wail as he and Josh reached for the same toy brought her abruptly back to reality.

‘When is Falcon due back from Florence?’ Julie was asking her.

‘Not until tomorrow evening some time.’

She saw the look that Julie gave her and tried not to blush. Her words had betrayed all too clearly that she was missing Falcon and wanted his return.

She’d only learned that he’d left the
castello
and gone to Florence when Maria had told her. Annie had returned to her own room to sleep, of course. After all, she and Falcon weren’t a couple in the normal sense. But her bed had seemed empty and cold after the warmth of his and his presence in it. The whole
castello
felt empty and cold without him, in fact.

Like the rest of her life would be without him?

Annie jumped as though she’d touched something that had given her a small electric shock. What kind of silly thinking was that? How could her life be empty when she had a son and now, thanks to Falcon, the ability to find herself a proper partner and to make a commitment to that partner? But the only man she wanted to make a commitment to and with was Falcon.

No! She must not think like that. She could not and would not. Having her fall in love with him had most certainly not been the purpose of Falcon’s plan to help her recover her repressed sexuality. He would be horrified if he were ever to discover how she felt. It had to remain her secret.

‘I worry about the Prince when Falcon isn’t here,’ she said, excusing her reaction to Julie. ‘Especially after your warning to me.’

It was the truth in one sense. She had felt distinctly anxious earlier in the day, when Maria had told her that the Prince’s manservant had said that his master wanted to see ‘the child’, and that he—the manservant—would come and collect Ollie, to take him to see his grandfather. Her presence was not required.

It was silly to feel so afraid and vulnerable because Falcon wasn’t there. After all what could his father do? He was a frail elderly man, and Ollie was
her
son.

* * *

Falcon pushed to one side the plans he had been studying. It was no use. He was only deceiving himself if he thought he was actually going to do any work. There had only been one place his thoughts had been since the evening Annie had shared his bed, and that had been with her.

Falcon had always considered his attitude—no, he corrected himself harshly, he had
prided
himself on his attitude to others and their needs, but now he recognised that he had been guilty of hubris. In his arrogance and his inability to recognise his own human vulnerability he had not seen the danger of what he was planning to do—for himself and, even more unforgivably, for Annie.

There was no point telling himself that his motives had been altruistic, based on a genuine belief that he had a duty to help her. He should have known and factored in the risk of his own weakness. He was human, after all. Very human—as the evening he had spent in bed with Annie had proved.

He had believed that he was doing the right thing, and that there was no risk to either of them. No risk? When he had broken the golden rule of modern sexual relationships by not using a condom? How much more evidence of his own reckless risk taking did he need to be confronted with before he admitted his fallibility and his error?

He had challenged fate, thoughtlessly and arrogantly, and now he was having to pay the price. But worse than that, with his behaviour he had broken the bond of trust he had assured Annie she could depend on. The plain, unvarnished truth was, as he had now been forced to concede, that he had wanted her from the minute he had first held her. Something had been communicated then, from the feel of her in his arms, that had seeded itself directly into his senses—and his heart. Wilfully he had ignored all the warning signs along the way, and deliberately he had encouraged her to believe that he would be her saviour.

Her saviour! He was no better than Antonio in what he had done, even if in his arms she had learned and discovered true sexual pleasure. Just as in hers
he
had learned and discovered what it was to love?

A shudder ran through his body, causing him to push back from his desk and stand up. From the window of his office in his Florence apartment, in the beautiful eighteenth-century
palazzo
that had come down to him through his mother’s family, Falcon looked down into the elegant courtyard garden.

He had stolen from Annie, abused her just as surely as his half-brother had done—even if Annie herself was not aware of that as yet; even if before she had finally fallen asleep in his arms she had whispered to him her joyful thanks for what they had shared.

Somewhere, somehow, during their intimacy, a line had been crossed that he had had no right to allow her to cross. He owed her an apology and an explanation. The former he could and would give her, but as for the latter...

What would he explain? That he had concealed the truth from himself and thus by default from her when he had not admitted to himself that his actions were in part motivated by his own desire for her? That admission should have been made, and with it a choice given to her. He had not been honest either with her or with himself, and Annie would have every right to treat him with anger and contempt. Those were certainly the emotions he felt towards himself. And was he really sure that his motivating need right now to be with her stemmed from a desire to admit his failings to her? Was he really sure that the reason he wanted to be with her wasn’t that he wanted to repeat the intimacy they had already shared?