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Her arms lifted to his shoulders, her mouth parting to his kiss. There was nothing tentative about his touch; it was that of a man aroused to the point where nothing mattered save the need to assuage his desire. Saffron felt it in the hard urgency of his mouth and the tautness of the male thighs pinning her to the ground.
The buttons on her blouse gave way beneath his impatient fingers, and the new, unknown Saffron who seemed to have been born in the moments of her defeat when she tried to escape from him felt only a thrill of pleasure at the way Nico exposed her body to the moonlight and studied it fixedly while the silence thickened around them.
'In this light your skin could almost be alabaster,' he muttered feverishly. 'You could have modelled for a statue of Diana. But your flesh is warm with the temptation of a newly ripened peach, and just looking at you brings out a pagan need in me to touch and taste.'
He bent his head, and something sweet and languorous curled headily through her veins. The touch of his tongue as it stroked across the budding tips of her breasts was a delight and a torment, provoking a muscle-clenched reaction, and a wanton impulse which she didn't deny to lock her fingers in the dark disorder of his hair and hold his head against her skin.
Only the fine tremble of Nico's body betrayed his own reaction, but the heat coming off his skin and the low groan that escaped his lips as they moved in hungry possession against her breast showed that she was not alone in her need to submit to the magic of the night.
When Nico removed her skirt she felt only heady pleasure because it allowed her closer contact with his body. She had already unfastened his shirt, but when he pulled it off completely, followed by his jeans, she drew in her breath in wonder at the male perfection of his body.
'Don't just look at me, touch me,' he muttered thickly, lowering his body to meet hers, circling her with his arms, as his mouth explored her skin. The barriers of shyness and inexperience were swept away, her response total as she pressed trembling lips to male flesh that shuddered to her touch, and yet incited it to be repeated.
Something in their mutual desire sparked off a fevered, almost frantic response in Saffron; a need to drink deeply, knowing that the cup of life was about to be dashed from her lips before she had even tasted the bitter-sweet wine of love.
She felt Nico's full weight on top of her, the tautness of his muscles and the aroused maleness of his body.
'Why?' he demanded softly against her lips. 'Why now and not before?'
She knew what he meant, and with all the barriers down between them could answer him honestly.
'Perhaps because I want to experience everything life has to offer before it's too late.'
She felt him pause, probing the darkness, turning her face into the moonlight to search it feature by feature with eyes suddenly cool and wary.
'I think I heard you, but tell me again, just to make sure I'm not imagining things.'
Hesitantly Saffron did so. When she had finished there was silence. And then Nico said flatly, 'Are you trying to tell me you're still a virgin?'
'And if I am?' Why did her voice have to tremble over the words?
He sighed, and straightened up, sitting with his back to her so that she couldn't read his expression. Then he reached for his jeans.
'Now I've heard everything,' he said wryly. 'But something tells me you aren't lying. Is this honestly what you want?' he demanded curtly. 'A purely physical coming together with a man you don't even know? If it is, why not before? Why now?'
'Because you're here,' Saffron replied as calmly as she could, glad of the darkness to hide her features. This wasn't the response she had envisaged. Nico was lecturing her like an irate parent. She climbed into her clothes again.
'So are Guido and Piero,' he told her evenly. 'Are you saying that they would have done equally well?'
She wanted to, but somehow couldn't force the lie between her lips. Nico had turned round and was studying her, so she shook her head mutely.
'Saffron.' He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her face. It was the first time she could remember him using her name and it added an almost unbearable note of intimacy to the proceedings.
'You might be innocent and naive, but not so much that you won't realise the truth of what I'm about to say. Situations such as this one act like hothouses, forcing the emotions and channelling them in ways they wouldn't normally be channelled—hence the events of tonight.' He paused and seemed to grimace a little in distaste, and a sense of rejection shocked and hurt her as she realised that he was not, after all, going to make love to her.
'If you didn't want me, why did you start making love to me in the first place?' she managed, holding on to her pride, and trying to avoid the look in his eyes.
'I wanted what I thought was an equally experienced and worldly woman,' Nico corrected her brutally, 'not an inexperienced girl child who was using me merely to further her education. You should be grateful,' he added tersely. 'This way you get to save it all for the purpose it is obviously intended for—the sanctity of the marriage bed!'
'Which I'm not now likely to have,' Saffron pointed out bitterly. 'And anyway, I wasn't saving myself for that.'
'No?'
The mockery in the word infuriated her.
'No,' she retorted heatedly.
'Then what, or rather who?'
