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‘No, don’t go! Not yet!’ She saw him raise his eyebrows, as if such demonstrativeness was faintly distasteful, but her desire not to lose him overrode any sense of maintaining an air of dignity.
‘Please,’ she continued, some instinct spurring her on as she put her hand out to rest in conciliatory fashion on his arm, and she shivered, for the muscle beneath was as honed as she had imagined it would be. Brazenly, she let the hand stay right where it was, her fingers curling around the curved, hard contour in a gesture which was most definitely possessive.
Their eyes met in a moment which was pure electricity, and she read the question that glittered so provocatively from the sapphire depths.
‘I certainly didn’t mean to offend you just now when I seemed surprised by your knowledge of literature,’ she told him softly. ‘Or to stereotype you. I’ve been very ungracious and you have been very kind.’
Giovanni narrowed his eyes as her words were made incomprensible by her touch. But then wasn’t touch the most irresistible of all the senses? He looked down at where her hand rested lightly on his arm—a gesture at once so innocent and yet so profoundly sensual. He felt the almost imperceptible sting where her nails touched him and the blood begin to roar in his ears, because it was what he had wanted since the first moment he had set eyes on her.
To touch her.
No, more.
Much more than that. He wanted the most fundamental communion of all.
He felt the pull of temptation as something primitive flared into life inside him, like a dark, compelling fever which had taken over his body. And it had overtaken her, too—of that he was certain. He could see from the blackened pools which almost obscured the emerald of her eyes that she wanted him. Really wanted him. In the space of a heartbeat he made his decision.
She would have him!
Very slowly and very deliberately he lifted his hand, and cupped her face in his palm as if he had every right to do so, grazing an arrogant thumb over the lush outline of her lips which trembled into immediate and urgent response.
Kate’s knees turned unfamiliarly to water, her stomach warm and melting as desire flooded hotly through her veins and her hand fell redundantly to her side.
‘Giovanni!’ She swallowed, trying to tell herself that all he was doing was touching her lips, for heaven’s sake!
His gaze was full-on, the blue eyes blazing with careless question. If she said no, then he would stop immediately. ‘What is it, cara mia?’ he purred, his accent as pronounced as it was persuasive. The pad of his thumb traced slowly around the quivering Cupid’s bow of her mouth. ‘What is it that you want from me?’
She trembled violently, unable to pull away, wondering just who was this new and over-responsive Kate? Must he think her a brazen fool? A woman who reacted so compliantly to a man she had just met. But suddenly, she didn’t care! She shook her head, her mouth as dry as dust, as she struggled for words which would make sense of her reaction.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s a little difficult to say anything,’ came her muffled response, ‘when you’re touching my lips like that.’
‘You want me to stop touching them? Is that it?’
Her eyes met his with a fierce, burning look.
‘No,’ he answered, his accent deepening to one of soft reflection as his gaze dropped downwards, and he watched the flowering of her nipples through the cashmere vest. ‘That is the very last thing you want, isn’t it, cara? So tell me what you do want?’
What? Admit that she felt she would die if he didn’t replace his thumb with his mouth, and kiss her? She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came, only the sudden erotic entry of his thumb between her lips, and she imprisoned it there with a fierce little suck, just like a baby.
‘Or are you afraid to tell me?’ He swallowed as he felt the moist plumpness of her mouth encasing his thumb.
For reply she sucked again, hard. She saw his responding shudder, heard the sigh which was very nearly a groan as he muttered a harsh imprecation in what she presumed was Sicilian.
She lifted her eyes to his. Afraid? All she knew was that she had never wanted a man so much and so unequivocably. She always played the respectable game. The getting-to-know-you-and-then-we’ll-see game. Except that most times the getting-to-know-you bit had been enough to kill any desire stone-dead. And she always played by the rules, too—rules which Giovanni Calverri seemed hell-bent on redefining.
‘Such an independent woman,’ he teased, but there was a dark undertone to his taunt. ‘With her fantastically successful company. Everything she wants, except the one thing she really, really wants—’
‘You,’ she breathed, the words coming out as thick and sweet as honey before she could stop them, ‘I want you.’
His triumph at her admission was fused with despair. He had expected resistance—an 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 lost—it was that complete and that immediate.
