successful company. Everything she wants, except the one thing she really, really wantsââ
âYou,â she breathed, the words coming out as thick and sweet as honey before she could stop them, âI want you.â
His triumph at her admission was fused with despair. He had expected resistanceâan appalled, outraged resistance. Not eager compliance so thinly disguised.
In the moment before he claimed her mouth he knew how doomed sailors must have felt, lured to their fate by sirens who tempted as this woman now tempted him.
He forgot his flight, forgot all about his reasons for flying home to Sicily. He felt the burst of desire which would not, could not, now be denied, and with a small angry growl he pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her.
In the dark heat of longing, she opened her mouth to his, feeling the tension in his hard body. One taste and she knew that she was lostâit was that complete and that immediate.
âOh, my God,â she moaned as his tongue began to trace a moist circle inside her lips.
âYour prayers will not help you now, cara ,â he mocked, still with that slight edge to his voice. But as he felt her bodymelt closely into his he responded with a raw hunger which drove the last lingering traces of guilt away.
It seemed forever since he had kissed a woman, and these were new lips. Erotic lips. Lush and scented with wine. He groaned and plundered deeply, his hands tightening around the small indentation of her waist, unable to resist the curve of her hips and the cup of her bottom. He pushed up her skirt until the flat of his hands were exploring the cool globes laid bare by the thin, lacy thong she wore, and he felt that he might explode. âYou dress to kill,â he shuddered.
And she felt like she was dying. With need. And with pleasure. She felt her arms snake instinctively around his neck as her hips melded into the rocky power of him, thinking that it was too long since she had been in a manâs embrace like this. She pressed her breasts against him, and he groaned, turning her in his arms and pushing her up against the wall, one lean, muscular thigh prising its way authoritatively between hers, and she felt the pooling of desire as it slicked against her thong.
She pushed him away from her, but only so that her fingers could fly to the buttons of his fine silk shirt, clumsily freeing them from their confinement, and he replied by swiftly unclasping and unzipping her skirt. It fell to her ankles immediately, and she stepped over it, wearing nothing now but a cashmere vest and a lacy thong.
With another small, angry growl of desire, Giovanni feasted his eyes on the front of the white thong, where the faint red triangle of hair tempted him from behind the flimsy lace. Her fingers were now scrabbling at his belt, and they were turning and touching like a pair of demented dancers, clothes falling free as they frantically kissed their way out of the sitting room.
He felt his hardness grow explosive, aware that their frenzied path had brought them to a door which he assumed must be to her bedroom.
Unprepared and unwilling to accept a momentâs more delay, he scooped her up into his arms.
âGiovanniââ she gasped.
The blue-black eyes glittered obdurately. âWhat?â
âWhere are you taking me?â As she spoke the words, she knew that it was a foolish and redundant sentence, and his abstract, almost cynical smile told her that he felt exactly the same way.
âTo bed,â he ground out, and kicked the door open.
CHAPTER FOUR
G IOVANNI carried Kate straight over to the bed and put her into the centre of it, and, his eyes still holding hers with their icy glitter, began to unzip his trousers.
âYou are protected?â he asked, as matter of factly as if he were asking her for a cup of coffee.
She shook her head. âNo.â Pointless to tell him that she had been single for over two years. He did