The Sicilian's Passion (7 page)

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.

G
IOVANNI
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.

In sleep she had been able to study him with an intensity she was certain he would not have tolerated had he been awake. And the sight of him had been endlessly fascinating.

The hard mouth had softened into a half-smile, giving his face an unthinkable illusion of vulnerability. The dark lashes which framed those dazzling blue eyes had been like two soft, ivory curves brushing the seamless olive of his skin. His jaw held more than a trace of darkness and she found
herself wondering if he was the kind of man who had to shave morning
and
evening. Very probably.

She had resisted the desire to stroke a wondering fingertip all over the hard contours of his face—it was so beautiful in repose. She sighed, a sadness washing over her as she closed her eyes with a hopeless kind of yearning.

Giovanni's eyes snapped open and he turned to look at her, unprepared for her wanton loveliness as she lay stretched out on her side facing him, her head pillowed on her arm, with the rich hair spilling all over the pale flesh of her upper body.

So glorious in her nakedness, he thought with a wrench. The long limbs and the tiny waist and the breasts which were so startlingly lush and heavy. Their rosy centres were peaking and he had to stifle the urge to reach out to cup one and gently circle the flat of his hand there. When he touched her he could not think straight, and he needed to think straight.

‘Kate?' he said softly.

She effected to stir, and to stretch, carefully composing her face so that he would not see a woman who had been enslaved—by a man who treated her in such cavalier fashion. ‘Hello,' she said, her voice as soft as his, as her eyelids fluttered open.

His blood pounded.
Diu!
One word and he wanted her all over again! All his good intentions fell by the wayside. ‘You want that we go to bed?' he asked her lazily, his English unusually fractured by the stir of his senses. ‘Or shall we stay here?'

Either, or both. That was what she wanted. Or anything else he cared to offer her. But Kate knew that she badly needed to assert some kind of control over her behaviour. She had been wayward. Overly compliant. He was a proud and arrogant man, who, so far, had only to snap his fingers for her to accede to his will. And wouldn't that only make him prouder, more arrogant still?

She sat up, as much to escape that horizontal scrutiny as to assert herself. ‘I need to take a shower,' she said crisply,
conveniently neglecting to mention that she had been soaking in a long bath just before his arrival. But that had been before he…before he…

He saw her sudden, swift rise in colour and knew that he could make her change her mind. He sat up, too—so that he was facing her.

‘Together?' His voice grew husky. ‘I could do with a shower myself.' He felt the urgent throb of need, and looked down at himself, peeling the spent condom off his renewed hardness. ‘See what you do to me?' he questioned ruefully.

Oh, yes, she saw. Just what was he planning? she wondered angrily. Another frantic bout of sex in the shower before he disappeared from her life again? She supposed that she should be grateful he hadn't left immediately, and then wondered whether that was why she had kept watch over him—to ensure that he didn't.

No. The reason had been much more fundamental and primitive than an urge to check that he didn't desert her. She had wanted nothing more than to drink in his beauty and to revel in the power of a strong, virile body—which had moved her in a way that no man ever had done before.

She met the provocative taunt in his eyes. ‘Boasting, Giovanni?'

She looked proud at that moment, he realised. Proud and defiant as she tilted her chin at him, the green eyes flashing emerald fire. The ache grew. ‘I don't need to boast, Kate,' he mocked. ‘And if there is any boast to be made then it should be yours, not mine—for you are the one responsible for my growing desire,
cara
.'

‘Because I'm here?' she challenged, deliberately averting her eyes from just how much his desire was growing. ‘Would any woman do if I wasn't?'

‘Much as I do not wish to pander to your ego,' he retorted softly, ‘it might flatter you to know that I have never been unfaithful before.'

‘Flatter me?' She let out a short laugh. ‘Isn't flattery
supposed to include terms of endearment? And you're a little short on those, Giovanni.'

‘I never say anything I don't mean,' he answered insolently. ‘And extravagant compliments aren't paramount in my mind right now.'

Kate was unprepared for the sharp tang of pain which contracted her heart. ‘Thanks a bunch.'

Giovanni looked at her thoughtfully. He had angered her—and what point was there in angering her when he still wanted her so badly? He had put his own anger on hold for that very reason. His disbelief, too—because if he stopped to think about how he had detonated the whole structure of his life because of his inexplicable need for this woman…

No, not need, he told himself fiercely. Desire was not the same as need. ‘I told you that you had very beautiful eyes,' he remarked, with a slow smile.

He had also said some fairly comprehensive things about her breasts and her long legs—but shuddered comments about her physical attributes at the height of passion did not constitute endearment. Not in Kate's book. ‘Quickly! Let me go and write it down before I forget!' she said sarcastically, and then her senses flared into life again as he reached his hand out to cup her chin.

‘Kate,' he said softly. ‘Why are we arguing after what we have just shared together?'

She bit her lip. Should she be silent and passive? Or let him know what was
really
on her mind? Thinking that she didn't have a lot to lose, she said quietly, ‘We've shared very little except for sex, Giovanni—'

‘Exceptionally good sex,' he demurred.

The best. The very best—but sex wasn't what she was talking about. She wanted more than that, unrealistic though it might be. ‘Sex isn't everything.'

‘No, but it's a pretty big part of everything.' And it had taught him just what he had been missing… ‘What else did you have in mind?' he countered coolly.

She saw his face close and heard his voice become remote. The very last thing she wanted was to come over as some clinging vine. She had given herself to him freely, so she had no right to play the blushing virgin now.

She gave a shrug, as though she hadn't really thought about it, as though she didn't really care one way or the other. ‘To sit and have talked over dinner some time might have been nice.'

He didn't know what he had been expecting, but her use of the past tense both intrigued and tantalised him. He had come here today wanting this. Knowing that she would give him this. And had thought that one more time in her arms would be enough. That afterwards he would be able to think of her as nothing more than a bitter-sweet memory. But he had been wrong. It hadn't been enough—no way near enough. ‘You're making it sound as though it's over, Kate.'

‘Over?' She stared into his blue eyes with genuine surprise. ‘Oh, come on, Giovanni—it never really began, did it?'

‘Not in the most conventional of ways, no,' he agreed, and Anna's pain swam uncomfortably into the forefront of his mind. ‘But surely that doesn't rule out it carrying on?'

‘But you live in Sicily, and I live in London,' she pointed out, even as some kind of delirious kind of hope flared into life inside her.

His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. Surely she couldn't be
that
naïve? She was an independent woman who was clearly at ease with her own sexuality; surely she must know how these things worked?

‘I wasn't talking about dating,' he said roughly.

The flare of hope was extinguished, but she kept her expression of interest quite steady. ‘Oh? Then how are we supposed to “carry on”, as you put it?'

‘I could take a couple of weeks off work,' he told her softly. ‘Call my secretary and have her cancel all my engagements.'

And maybe in a way it would be best to absent himself
from Sicily. Before he had left for London he had told Anna to damn his name as much as it gave her satisfaction to do so. He knew that he deserved it. But Anna had shaken her smooth, dark head and looked at him with sad eyes as she told him that she would say nothing bad about him. That a man she had loved and wanted to share the rest of her life with could not have suddenly become a villain overnight.

That had been the worst part of all. He had seen her attitude change from one of bitter hurt to one of sweet generosity and an attempt at understanding and forgiving what had happened. And he had recognised in that moment just what had motivated the change. Anna didn't want it to be over, he realised. She was telling him what she thought he wanted to hear, in the hope that he would go back to her. Tacitly, she was telling him that many, many women turned a blind eye to their men's transgressions, and many men revelled in this and exploited it. But Giovanni had just discovered he was not one of them.

He had betrayed Anna, and in so doing, it had made him realise what was missing from his relationship. He had also betrayed the fundamental trust on which their relationship had been based. And the relationship had floundered.

And all because of the naked woman who sat before him, her smooth, high bottom resting indolently on silver satin. She had tempted him and he had succumbed. She had offered him forbidden fruit and he had eaten it. A pulse began to patter at his temple.

‘So how about I do that?' he murmured, trying by sheer force of will to deny the heat in his loins. ‘Stay around for a couple of weeks and you can show me London.'

Two weeks! He certainly wasn't offering her anything in the way of permanence, was he? She saw how one hard, hair-roughened thigh had come up to shield his manhood from her, but not before she had seen how aroused he had become. She thought women weren't supposed to get turned on by that kind of thing, but Kate found that she was. Very.

‘You want me to show you London?' she asked unsteadily.

She must know how these games were played. He doubted if she would want to hear the unvarnished truth—that he wanted to lose himself in her body for just as long as it took for the fire to leave his veins.

‘I'd love you to show me London,' he smiled.

It was the smile that did it. The first real smile she had ever seen curve his lips into an irresistible invitation. If he smiled like that he could ask her to show him around a municipal car-park and she would have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

‘I think that can be arranged.' She smiled back at him prettily. ‘Where are you staying?'

He frowned. Again, so naïve—or was that all some kind of act? She was, he guessed, around twenty-seven, though she seemed to have honed her sexual prowess to resemble a woman in her forties.

He went for broke. ‘Usually I stay at the Granchester—unless you're offering me a bed here, Kate?'

Then she understood what he was getting at. This was a game to be played, an erotic and exciting game. She pretended to consider it, while her heart raced. ‘It would make more sense, certainly,' she said slowly. ‘Otherwise, I'd just have to pick you up from the hotel every morning, wouldn't I?'

His blue eyes flashed. ‘Of course it all depends…'

‘On what?'

Another smile. A more predatory smile this time. Much more predatory. ‘On how many bedrooms you have.'

She struggled to adopt an insouciant air, even as she felt the honeyed rush of desire. ‘Just the one.' She swallowed.

‘Oh. That decides it, then. I'll arrange to have my bags sent over from the hotel.' He gave a dark smile which sent shivers down her spine. ‘But let us waste no more time talking of accommodation, Kate,' he murmured. ‘Didn't you say something about taking a shower?'

She framed her lips to say ‘alone', then shut them again. He was here. For two weeks. As her lover. She gave a shiver of anticipation. Why bother denying herself what she most wanted?

She rose elegantly to her feet and stared down at him, the raw look of approbation which he washed over her making her revel in her nakedness. ‘Will you wash my back for me, Giovanni?' she questioned innocently.

Heat flooded him, and he snaked his hand around her ankle, whispered his fingertips up behind her knee to her inner thigh, and then found her where she was still as molten moist as before. Kate's knees gave way and she sank back down to the carpet.

‘The shower?' she said weakly and she saw the look of dark intent on his face as he reached for the packet of condoms once more.

‘Will wait,' he growled, and began to kiss her.