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A faint flush of colour irradiated the high cheekbones that intensified his raw attraction. He captured the fingers lacing into his black silky hair and pressed them to his lips, dense lashes concealing his gaze. ‘I’d never made love to a virgin before. I wanted it to be special for you. That’s why I took you to Switzerland.’
‘It was special,’ she managed unsteadily. ‘Very special.’
‘Grazie…grazie tanto, cara,’ he teased. ‘It was so special for me that I had to keep you all to myself, being of a naturally selfish disposition.’
She had never seen him so relaxed, not this last week, not ever. But for a split second he reminded her so powerfully of Daniel. The same beautiful dark eyes, the same wide mouth that could yank at her heart-strings with the faintest smile. Her breath caught in her throat, but he was brushing aside the lace cups of her bra, letting his tongue and then his mouth circle the taut pink nipples he had uncovered, and her mind became a complete blank, her fingers clenching together as sensation began to build, drawing every tiny muscle tight beneath his ministrations.
There was a mirror above the bed. She blinked bemusedly and then the imagery of his brown hands on her paler skin and his dark head bent so intimately over her took over. ‘There’s a mirror up there,’ she whispered.
‘How shocking.’ His voice was indistinct, abstracted. ‘Tell Christian he has outrageous bad taste next time you see him.’
‘This is his villa?’
Luc eased back from her reluctantly, rolled off the bed and proceeded to strip. She couldn’t take her eyes from him. Wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, lean hips and long, muscular thighs. He was very aroused, superbly male, supremely beautiful.
‘Looking at me like that does nothing for my self-control.’ He came down beside her again, dispensed with the wispy lingerie and curved her into his arms. The dark hair hazing his chest rubbed against her tender breasts, one lean thigh hooking over hers as he stared down at her, so much unashamed hunger in his probing appraisal that she was breathless. ‘You wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Done what?’
‘Walked away at the airport.’ A wry smile challenged her shock. ‘I wouldn’t have let you go. Did you think I didn’t know? Sometimes I know what you think before you think it.’
Having devastated her, he took advantage by ravishing her swollen mouth with a fierce, driving sweetness. Time and thought were banished. She got drunk on the taste of him. The warm masculine scent of him flooded her, making her even more light-headed. She could feel herself sliding out of control. Breathing hurt her lungs. Tiny sounds she was barely conscious of broke from her lips, and when his hand touched her where she most ached for fulfilment, she went wild, writhing with his burning caresses, hungrily searching out for herself the compulsive heat of his mouth.
It was agony and ecstasy but he wouldn’t give her what she sought as she blindly arched her hips in a silent expression of need as old as time. She was twisting in the heat of a fire that demanded assuagement. Her fingernails raked hi
s back in torment and protest. And then, in the shuddering, explosive tension of his body, she felt the flames leap and scorch through him as well. Suddenly he was all aggressor, all savage demand, spreading her out like a sacrifice to some primitive god and falling on her, hands bruising her thighs as he took her with all the strength he possessed in a driving surge of passionate intensity.
It went on and on and on, more and then incredibly more until she was sobbing her pleasure out loud, lost to everything but the remorseless demands of her own body. The release came in a frenzied explosion of exquisite sensation that left her awash with the bliss of satiation.
‘Dio!’ he groaned in harsh satisfaction, shuddering in the possessive circle of her arms, burying his damp face in her hair. ‘Te amo,’ he muttered, almost crushing her beneath his weight. ‘Te amo.’
She stilled. I love you. I love you, he had said.
‘Scusi.’ He rolled over and sprawled back in an indolent tangle of sun-darkened limbs against the white percale sheeting. ‘Now I finally know what it’s like to be a sex object,’ he sighed without particular concern in the winging smile he angled at her. ‘You made me lose control. That’s my department.’
She smiled, a fat-cat-got-the-cream smile. He probably didn’t even know he’d said it. That was fine. The last thing she wanted to do was to make an issue out of it. She had lived off ‘I need you’ for almost two years once. She could manage a good decade on ‘I love you’. Moving over, she scattered a trail of kisses across a sweat-slicked broad shoulder. ‘I love you…I love you…I love you,’ she whispered feverishly.
He caught a hand into her tousled hair. ‘I know, I know, I know,’ he said playfully.
He hadn’t bitten the bait. When did he? She was too impatient. If he had meant it, he would tell her in his own good time. If? It didn’t help to be aware that such a confession at the height of sexual excitement was recorded the world over as a statutory and meaningless phrase. But didn’t she have rather more to worry about right now? Daniel rose like Mount Everest in the back of her mind.
‘Luc…how do you feel about children?’
He tugged her down on top of him, claimed a kiss, clearly not very focused on the concept of dialogue. ‘I never thought of them until recently.’
‘Do…do you like them?’
‘Like them?’ Ebony brows slashed together in a frown. ‘What sort of a question is that? I expect I will like my own. I have no real interest in other people’s.’
It wasn’t very encouraging. She made no demur when his hands started to roam lazily over her again. Indeed, she needed that closeness, that hunger of his to control the fear that was steadily rising inside her. Luc would be furious. But what frightened her most was the unknown quantity of how he would react after the fury.
* * *
‘You can sleep during the flight.’ Luc smiled down into her heavy eyes, satisfaction and amusement mingling in his scrutiny.
They were about to leave the VIP lounge when a small grey-haired man, closely followed by a security guard, came in.
‘Antonio?’ Luc crossed the room to greet him with pleated brows.
