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His gaze on her face was blunt and she felt her cheeks grow warm.
‘I’m just a gardener.’ Her voice was husky, her eyes both fierce and afraid. ‘You, on the other hand, have been out in the sun too long if you think I’m some nature goddess. You should get inside.’
Shaking his head, he stepped closer—so close she could see the flecks of brilliant cobalt in his eyes.
‘You’ll have to do better than that. If you want me to leave then tell me and I’ll go.’
She swallowed. ‘I want you to leave,’ she lied.
There was a moment of silence and then he nodded. ‘There. That wasn’t too hard, was it?’
The air seemed to tremble between them, and relief and regret and merged inside her.
‘You see. We’re both liars.’
And slowly he lowered his head and tilted her face up towards his. Her heart seemed to drop inside her and she felt suddenly glutted with longing, and the rightness of that longing, and the heat of that longing. The breeze and the birds fell silent and still and her breath stopped. And then like a diver on a springboard she curled her toes into the grass and, standing on tiptoe, kissed him gently.
Fire flooded her skin and the tension inside her that had been growing and growing burst as his mouth moved softly over hers. She felt his tongue drift teasingly over the curving flesh of her lips and, moaning softly, maddened by its firm, probing tip, she kissed him more fiercely, nipping his mouth with her teeth.
His fingers slid slowly over the nape of her neck and then her lips parted in surprise as he jerked her against him, his arms tightening around her slender body as he deepened the kiss. Helplessly, she arched herself against him, the heat of his body drawing out the heat inside her—a relentless, tugging, pulsating thread of longing and need.
She was losing herself; she felt breathless, euphoric. Her hands slid over the broad muscles of his back, caressing the hard body beneath his shirt. Her blood was singing, her nerves dancing in time to the frenzied beating of her heart. And then she heard him groan, and her stomach clenched in a sharp, almost painful spasm.
Hazily, she became aware that her skin, her dress, his hair was wet. Abruptly, she pulled away. Eyes wide, she stared at him dazedly, and then tugged her dress back onto her shoulder.
Massimo’s expression was a mixture of frustration and amusement as raindrops splashed lightly onto his face and shoulders. ‘It’s only rain, cara!’
She smiled weakly. ‘This is a bad idea. We should go inside.’
Her voice was breathy and uneven. For a moment he said nothing, just watched her in silence, making no attempt to hide either his desire or his triumph.
Finally, he nodded. ‘I agree. Your bedroom or mine?’
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE WAS A SHORT, strained pause. For one brief, dizzying moment, Flora imagined his fingers curled round hers, imagined them running through a merry-go-round blur of hedges and walls, their feet moving up the stairs...
And then her skin grew cool. A shiver rose up her spine and her eyes widened in angry disbelief. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said slowly.
Your bedroom or mine? Had he really just asked her that question? His arrogant assumption that, having kissed, she would simply go to bed with him jarred inside her like an out-of-tune piano.
‘Do you actually think we would—?’ She stared at him incredulously. ‘You are unbelievable.’
Like war paint, the leaves of the rose bush cast stripes of shadow across his face. His eyes were narrow, angry and thwarted.
‘For wanting to have sex with you? I’m a man and you’re a woman and we just kissed like the world was about to end. Of course I’m going to think about sex.’ His eyes glittered. ‘And you kissed me first, so I don’t really know what you were expecting—’
‘I didn’t expect anything! Why should I? Nothing happened!’
‘Nothing happened?’ he ground out, his voice cold with fur
y. ‘You call that nothing?’
She glanced up at the sky. Above them, a rainbow was shimmering, its gentle pastel arcs somehow at odds with the sharpness of his anger.
‘No. I call it a mistake. One I don’t intend to repeat.’
A faint blush suffused her cheeks and throat. She couldn’t deny the heat humming in her veins. Or the fact that she had responded to him with a force and intensity that had never happened with any other man. But he wasn’t just ‘any other man’. He was the cold-hearted, manipulative man who wanted to make her homeless and she would have to be a certifiable lunatic to forget that for the sake of one kiss.
