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‘Yes!’
His laugh was soft as he began to strum her and Lina almost shot off the bed as he established a soft rhythm. Breathless anticipation captured her in a silken snare as he lured her on towards some unimaginable peak. And suddenly she was falling. Or flying. He shattered her completely, as if he were slowly taking her apart before putting her back together again.
‘Yes,’ he breathed approvingly and she was aware that he was watching her spasming body with unashamed pleasure. ‘I knew you would be passionate from the first time I saw you.’
She thought she must have murmured his name for he gave that satisfied laugh again before reaching out to the nearby table to grab at something—which Lina quickly realised must be a condom. She kissed his bare shoulder as he moved to lie on top of her and his mouth sought hers in a way which suddenly seemed way more intimate than before.
He said: I want you so much, Lina.
He said: You feel incredible.
And Lina was so dazzled by those words of praise that she touched her fingers to his face in wonder, because even if he didn’t really mean them, couldn’t she just enjoy being made to feel gorgeous by a man who had fallen into her world like a dazzling star?
And then the fairy tale began to take on a new and unwanted direction. Was it the obvious resistance he encountered as he pushed inside her which made him grow very still? Which made his face darken with something which no longer looked like passion, but a dawning recognition? He uttered another Sicilian curse, one which might have made her blush if she’d heard it anywhere else. But Lina was too concerned about what was happening to worry about profanities. Something much more serious—mainly the very real threat that this might end before it had properly begun.
‘You’re a virgin?’ he verified.
Dumbly, she nodded.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
But Lina wasn’t really interested in answering his question—her body was too busy instinctively clenching around the rigid length of him as, softly, he cursed again. But this time his words seemed to lack conviction and suddenly he was moving. Moving inside her. Thrusting up deep into her body and taking on a hard rhythm which felt relentless and incredible. That amazing feeling began to build inside her again and Lina could feel control slipping away as she poised in readiness to take another heavenly flight. Or fall. But it was too late—or too early. Or something. Because Salvatore was choking out a helpless-sounding cry as he bucked within her, sweat sheening his muscular back, so that her own desire shrivelled and died. And when he’d finished there was nothing but the sound of their ragged breathing, which seemed to echo discordantly around the vast room.
CHAPTER FOUR
AT FIRST LINA thought she was alone, mostly because it was quiet. Unbelievably quiet—save for the tweeting of some distant bird. She opened her eyes, aware of nothing other than the tangle of fine sheets and an unfamiliar aching deep in her body. She stretched luxuriously, caught in the dreamy world halfway between sleeping and waking, as fragments of memory came filtering back into her mind. And then she saw Salvatore, silhouetted against the morning sun, which was streaming in through the un-shuttered window beside which he stood. Dark and forbidding and sexy as hell.
And fully dressed.
Now the memory became a sensual stream as she remembered the way it had felt to have him deep inside her. Making her cry out with ecstasy time after time, so that he’d had to kiss her quiet until her body had recovered from that sweet, slow shudder which made everything else seem so insignificant.
Had he heard her stir? Was that why he turned to look at her? She felt her heart turn over as she remembered that time in the middle of the night, when they’d been dissolved by passion and she had felt so close to him. When she had snuggled up against his chest and he’d been stroking his fingers through her hair, and she had confided in him all her dreams that one day she might be able to break away from her mother and make something of herself.
‘You’re awake,’ he observed.
‘I am,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. As though what had happened hadn’t been a big deal. And it wasn’t, she told herself fiercely. She’d lost her virginity, that was all. She’d spent her adult life wondering whether she’d ever meet anyone who could stir her to the kind of passion she’d only ever read about and now she had. That could be regarded as a positive—just so long as she didn’t start having unrealistic expectations about what was going to happen next.
It was a one-night stand, she reminded herself. It was never intended to be anything else. And she would be crazy if she ever thought any differently about it.
She smiled. ‘You look like you have places to go, things to do—so please don’t let me stop you if you need to be somewhere else.’
Salvatore met her eyes, uncharacteristically unsure of how to respond to her words as a rush of conflicting feelings washed through him. He wanted to tell her, yes, he had to be somewhere else. Somewhere as far away from here—and her—as possible. But that would be tantamount to running away. It would be the action of a coward and he was no coward, even though his head was all over the place this morning. Because Lina had been a virgin—something he had suspected even though he’d done a brilliant job of pushing that possibility to the back of his mind. Yet despite her inexperience, she had provoked a seemingly insatiable hunger in him. At times during the night it had felt as if she had cast a spell on him, without his permission. He liked control in the bedroom—as in every other area of his life—and this unsophisticated village girl had temporarily robbed him of that control.
And he didn’t like it.
He didn’t like it one bit.
‘Are you okay?’ he questioned.
‘I’m fine.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand,’ he breathed, genuinely perplexed. ‘Why give me your virginity, Lina? A man you barely know.’
She sat up in bed then and the sheet slipped to her waist, so that it bared her breasts. Dark curls were tumbling in profusion over rosy-tipped nipples and Salvatore felt the betraying stir of his body.
‘I didn’t give my virginity to you,’ she corrected. ‘Just like you didn’t take it from me. It’s natural. It’s the way of the world and it happens all the time.’
‘But clearly not to you. And I fear you may have squandered it with a man like me, who was seeking nothing more than a swift liaison. A pleasant diversion at the end of a tough couple of days.’ He sighed, wondering why, after that first time, he hadn’t done what he should have done and sent her back to her little village. Driven her back in the fading light after she’d freshened up and eradicated the evocative scent of his sex from her skin. Yet she had looked at him with those wide bourbon eyes and he h
