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‘And although I almost didn’t recognise it until it was too late, I always wanted a girl like you in it,’ Sergio informed her huskily.
Her ready smile lurched a little and she was quick to lower her lashes to conceal her expression, as she knew that someone like her could not aspire to dream-girl status. She was so different from Grazia in looks, style and experience. As Grazia had cruelly pointed out, she would always be the girl he had idolised as a teenager. There was a history there, a pull of familiarity, background and youthful attachment that Kathy knew she could never hope to equal.
Sergio sank down beside her and undid the clasp of her emerald and pearl necklace, setting it aside before embarking on the tiny hooks on her fitted bodice. Her narrow spine tensed because she was thinking about the moment when he would see the scar on her back. ‘That’s okay…I can manage!’ she said hurriedly, wriggling out of reach with the dexterity of an eel.
Sergio tugged her back to him. ‘How did it happen?’
The level of his insight unnerved her and her delicate profile tightened. ‘In prison. Someone thought I’d grassed them up and jumped me in the showers.’
He closed his arms round her. ‘Nobody will ever harm you again.’
‘You can’t make promises like that.’ Her eyes were hot and scratchy with tears but she wouldn’t give way to her emotions. Being absolutely crazy about him was one thing, even dropping a hint of it something else entirely.
Sergio turned her round to look at him. ‘You are so terrified of trusting me—’
Her apple-green eyes flashed. ‘I’m not terrified of anything!’
Dark golden eyes smouldering, he leant forward and drove her soft lips apart with the passionate demand of his sensual mouth. After so long the taste of him chased through her like a chain reaction. Heat uncoiled in her pelvis while the rest of her turned to jelly. Angling his proud dark head back, he sprang up to peel off his shirt. Her heart thudded while she watched him undress. Light caught the wedding ring on his finger. The reminder that he was her husband was welcome and it strengthened her again.
She slid off the bed in a fluid movement and turned round. ‘I need your help to get out of this…’ she said gruffly.
He ran down the zip on the fitted skirt and it dropped to her feet. She stepped out of it. He shifted her hair round her slim white shoulders and touched his lips to a sensual pulse point at the vulnerable nape of her neck. ‘You’re trembling…’
‘It’s been a long time,’ she said breathlessly.
‘How long?’ His question was abrupt and a sharp little silence fell. ‘I did wonder if—’
‘Don’t go there. It’s none of your business,’ Kathy interposed waspishly. ‘Did I ask you for chapter and verse on what you did on your stupid flashy boat?’
‘I offered and you refused to listen. Tell me, if I sank Diva Queen, would you stop going on about the stag do?’ Sergio enquired dulcetly.
Kathy giggled. ‘No, I’d tell you how extravagant and wasteful you were, and I still wouldn’t forget.’
He let the boned bodice fall and an almost inaudible gasp escaped her when she realised that the jagged seam of her scar was visible. ‘You have skin like satin, all soft and silky and white as snow,’ he murmured with silken intimacy. ‘Your hair looks like flame against it and I can’t believe you’re so anxious about one small imperfection…’ He smoothed over the roughened skin and she shivered, narrow shoulder blades protruding defensively.
‘It’s ugly,’ she pointed out. ‘And my skin is so pale it really shows.’
‘The only ugliness is in the person who did this to you,’ Sergio asserted. ‘If it bothers you so much that you feel you have to hide it, a good plastic surgeon could probably make it vanish. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s nothing, bella mia.’
‘You’re quite good at saying the right thing when you have to,’ Kathy teased, all her tension evaporating, her spine curving as she leant back against him. ‘So, no doubt if you put your mind to it, you can be equally good at being married.’
‘Is that an order or a request?’
Kathy winced. ‘A hint?’
Sergio laughed with rich appreciation and curved possessive hands to her tiny waist. ‘It was way too bossy to be a hint.’
His hands closed over the pert swell of her small breasts. She leant back against him with a helpless little moan, shaken by how sensitive she was to that first light touch. The hunger she had fought while Ella needed all her attention was breaking free of her control. A score of times she had watched Sergio walking towards her and she had blocked out the sexual response that had once betrayed her so badly. Those artificial barriers crumpled once she reminded herself that they were married, that, in spite of all the mishaps that had gone before, they were now together. Her soaring sense of relief at that truth made her dizzy.
Filled with sudden impatience, Kathy turned herself round clumsily in the circle of his arms and stretched up on tiptoe to find his mouth for herself. That stolen taste of him was impossibly seductive. He hauled her to him and kissed her with bruising passion, answering the fierce need in her with an accuracy that shook her. He lifted her onto the bed and reached for the silk panties that hugged her hips to peel them off.
Panting for breath, her rosy lips swollen from his attention, Kathy gazed up at him with anxious eyes. Even though she had never felt more naked or exposed, she made no attempt to cover herself up because she accepted that he wanted to look at her. She held her breath in fear that a shadow would cross his face as he suddenly appreciated that she was too skinny and lacking in curves to compete with tiny, curvaceous Grazia, and that her body was marred by the scars of her past and of childbirth.
‘You have the most wonderful figure.’ Wholly intent on her, Sergio skated an undeniably admiring hand down over her narrow ribcage to a slender thigh still clad in lace-topped white hold-up stockings. ‘Elegant, graceful…’
Kathy stretched so that he could better admire her from all angles and ready amusement curved his handsome mouth even as his gaze marked her every move with very masculine appreciation. He shed his boxer shorts without ceremony. She looked at him in turn, for he was beautifully built. The lean, hard, muscular lines of his powerful bronzed body bore out his reputation for being as super fit as an athlete. Her attention rested on his rampant state of arousal and colour warmed her cheeks.
‘This is the first place we make a deal, delizia mia,’ Sergio murmured, pulling her up against his long, sleek, masculine frame
