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‘Why not?’ she said lightly, as if it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter—at least, not to him.
And to her?
Aisling didn’t know. A lifetime of hard work and denial and playing to the rules had been vanquished by the tall, powerful man they called Il Tigre on that scented Italian evening. Something alien and tantalising was driving her and she was being propelled by an instinct she was in no mood to fight. Or maybe it would have taken a stronger woman than her to fight the night and the moonlight and the man. This man.
Her heart was beating very fast as they stepped out into the scented air and walked away from the noise of the party in silence, like two conspirators.
The moon was full and the sky full of stars but they weren’t moving anywhere and Aisling quickly turned her face upwards, as if to reinforce the real reason why they were out here. Except that deep down she knew it was not the real reason. Because who cared about stars?
‘Which shooting stars? I can’t see any,’ she said, in a voice which didn’t sound like her own.
‘It is a little late in the year,’ he conceded, but he wasn’t looking at the sky—his attention was captivated by a cloud of dark hair and the pale profile which looked as if it had been carved from marble—intensely beautiful because it was so unexpected. How could he have been so blind not to have seen her loveliness before?
‘You see them mostly in August,’ he said distractedly. ‘The feast day of St Lorenzo is known as the night of the shooting stars—and then you can see meteors showering the skies like fireworks. People consider them lucky and they make a wish.’
‘Gosh. How … romantic.’
‘You like that?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘And yet this morning you told me you preferred the pragmatic approach,’ he mused.
‘Did I?’ But this morning seemed a lifetime ago. She kept looking upwards towards the heavens, losing her gaze in its star-studded blackness, terrified of what she thought might be about to happen—and yet her heart was beating fast with a mad kind of eagerness because she wanted it to begin. ‘Aisling?’
His soft voice made her stop looking at the sky and turn her gaze instead to the sculpted shadows of his face. In the dim light she could see the glitter of his eyes and the gleam of his lips.
Her voice was tremulous. ‘What?’
‘Do you know what I would wish for, if I saw a star blazing across the night sky right now?’
She shook her head, so that the hair moved like a heavy silken curtain. ‘No.’
His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘Yes, you do,’ he taunted softly as he pulled her into the shadow of a large tree and into his arms.
CHAPTER THREE
HIS body was hard, his breath was warm as he pulled her close against him and Aisling could scarcely breathe as every longing she’d ever had about him fused into that single moment. ‘Gianluca!’ she gasped, her voice a mixture of plea and protest.
‘Mia bella! Kiss me. Just kiss me!’
‘But this is wrong!’
‘Why is it wrong? How can it be wrong?’ he demanded.
She tried to think of a reason but her brain had gone to mush and so had her body. Was it the raw urgency in his voice which made her want to obey him without question, or her own overwhelming hunger which made Aisling stay right where she was? Perhaps it was simply the fleeting feeling that if she didn’t, then she would regret it for the rest of her life. That she would become one of those bitter old women who had rejected a taste of paradise when she’d had it offered to her on a soft, warm night in Umbria.
‘You know you want me,’ he asserted harshly.
‘Yes,’ she assented breathlessly. And with a little moan, she wrapped her arms around his neck, lifting her mouth to meet his hard, seeking kiss.
A thousand fireworks exploded in his head as her lips opened beneath his. ‘Aisling,’ he groaned, her name as unfamiliar on his lips as the taste of her, the smell of her, this sheer unexpected reality of having her soft and compliant and oh-so-hungry in his arms. The ice-queen melting! The cool Englishwoman kissing him!
Aisling swayed as she responded with a fervour which seemed to sap her of strength and reason. His hands were touching her breasts, and—oh, heavens!—she was letting them, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Fingertips moving over her body, as if examining her by touch alone. Lingering at the indentation of her waist. Skating over the curve of her hips. Cupping the swell of her buttocks and pulling her into the hard rock of his arousal.
‘Oh!’ she gasped.
‘You like that?’
