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‘Yes, that is so!’ Leah proclaimed with spirit as she slid upright again, restless as a cat on hot bricks, to make the coffee he had forgotten about again. She might not be much of a cook, but she could manage coffee, couldn’t she? She was shaken to see that her hands were trembling as she flipped through cupboards in search of china. Yes, there was a much bigger question looming over her blitzed brain. Would she or wouldn’t she spend the night with the most sexually enthralling and gorgeous guy she had ever met?
In her restricted circle, when would such an opportunity ever present again? She didn’t want to be an old and grey virgin, did she? And thatwasa distinct possibility, given the way she now felt about relationships, wasn’t it? No man was ever going to get the chance to make a fool of her a second time!
‘This proposal of yours...’
Brows pleating at that very word, Gio turned to look at her, surprised to see the now shuttered aspect of her vivid little face. ‘Yes?’
Leah strengthened her backbone. She had been Oliver’s doormat, silently swallowing his criticisms of her weight, her clothing choices, her accent and lack of culture. That would not be the blueprint for her future. From now on, intimacy of any kind would only happen onherterms and right now she could only contemplate the most superficial of bonds. ‘If I agree,’ she said tightly, ‘it would be an agreement that it’s a one-night stand and nothing more. I won’t consider anything else.’
Gio laughed out loud in delight and astonishment combined, for no woman had ever offered him only one night without the potential for the connection to turn into something more. In that instant he decided that being Mr Nobody from Nowhere was sheer magic. Leah didn’t want him for his money, his social position or his business influence because she was not aware of his true status, and while in other circumstances he might have considered it wrong not to admit who he was, when it came to one casual night he believed that nobody would be harmed by his decision to remain silent on that score.
‘You think that what I said was funny?’ Leah pressed tautly, taken aback by his amusement.
‘Not in the sense that you suspect,’ Gio told her confidently. ‘Women can sometimes be a little clingy with me, so I was pleasantly surprised by your attitude and your directness.’
Leah could perfectly understand women getting clingy with a male as drop-dead beautiful as he was, but she was still encased in the protective armour that Oliver’s deeply hurtful deception had inflicted on her. Her heart was now as frozen as any cartoon princess might wish for and, with it, any desire toclingto any man. To stay strong and safe, she reasoned, she needed to stand alone and control her own destiny, not allow either foolish romantic dreams or, worse, some self-serving male authority to influence her intelligence and her judgement again.
‘Let me do that,’ Gio interposed as she searched the entire kitchen, it seemed, for a teaspoon. ‘Sit down—’
‘Watch it. You’re a bit too bossy for me,’ Leah told him, a warning gleam in her caramel eyes.
Gio sent her a wolfish grin, thoroughly enjoying himself with a woman for the first time in a long time. All the size of her and trying to look tough, he acknowledged, impressed once again by that hint of an irrepressible spirit. He showed her the food he had put in a bowl for her dog and watched her attend to the little animal, before making the coffee and extending hers.
Leah was nonplussed by the level of his control, having dimly expected to be urged straight towards the nearest horizontal surface or whatever. She scolded herself for that naïve assumption. He wasn’t an unpolished teenager keen to score at speed with the first available girl, he was rather more sophisticated.
Gio had never been so tempted to abandon all cool with a woman. Arousal was humming through every inch of his big powerful body. It was years since he had experienced anything like that level of desire in female company and he was determined to figure out what it was about Leah that revved him up to such an extent. Aridiculousextent, he told himself impatiently, when one conceded that he had never in his entire adult life been desperate for sex. So, what was it about her?
The vibrance of her expression? That amazing glossy mane of curls? The big dark eyes, whose expression she veiled when uncomfortable...like now? What the hell was she uncomfortable about? Telling him that the most he could expect from her was a one-night stand had been a pretty feisty move, not the behaviour of a shy or naïve woman, so why had that feisty assurance somehow struck a vaguely bogus note to his ears?Dio, was she one of those old-fashioned women, who still thought she had to play hard to get even as she surrendered to the same hunger that infused him?
Gio smiled and Leah was entrapped, instantly, irrevocably, watching the way that shift of his wide sculpted lips threw his exotic cheekbones into prominence and allowed those stunning eyes of his to narrow and glitter. Pale grey, she had thought at first, then she had tagged them as the palest possible blue with a near Mediterranean hint of turquoise when passion flared. A tiny shiver curled low in her pelvis and her whole body lit up like a firework display, forcing her to shift uneasily in her seat.
‘I’m usually very good at restraint,’ Gio told her truthfully. ‘But right now, right here with you... I’m not feeling it,cara.’
His boldness made her feel outrageously shy, and she could feel her skin heating and tightening over her bones.
‘You blush,’ he said in apparent wonderment.
‘Occasionally—’
‘Will you blush if I ask you to come upstairs with me?’
‘P-probably,’ Leah muttered as he pushed away his untouched coffee and stood up to extend a hand to her. She tugged out her phone and sent a quick text to Sally, telling her that she wouldn’t be home.
Her heart began to pound inside her as she too got up and reached for that hand, feeling rather like a drowning swimmer while fighting all those insecure feelings to the last ditch. So, this raw, powerful sense of connection was something new and different for her, but she would get used to it, being very adaptable as she had had to be throughout her life, she told herself firmly.
CHAPTER THREE
GIOPAUSEDTOkiss Leah on the first landing because he, literally, couldn’t keep his hands off her any longer. Passion flared like lightning, shooting through Leah like a jet-propelled rocket, both stunning and seducing, urging her arms round his neck without her realising how they had got there.
She was breathless and flushed as he walked her on up the next flight of steps, anticipation provoking a dull tugging ache at her feminine core. But for all that, she was disconcerted when he led her into what she had assumed was the master bedroom. ‘Isn’t this Mr Zanetti’s room?’ she exclaimed in surprise.
The faintest edge of colour scored Gio’s cheekbones, because it was not a moment when he wished to be reminded of his whimsical impulse earlier to deny his true identity. ‘He doesn’t use this one,’ he asserted, reaching for her again, determined to distract her from awkward questions while remaining unusually aware that he had just told an actual lie, which was not something he was in the habit of doing under any circumstances.Harmless, he reminded himself stubbornly as he collided with those wide dark eyes of hers with something weirdly similar to wonderment becauseshewas makinghimact out of character. He didn’t want to give her any excuse to walk away, but even less did he wish to see greed and ambition spark in her beautiful eyes.
But, usually, sex wasn’t really that important to him, bearing in mind that it was always available to him no matter where he was because beautiful, willing potential partners were plentiful. As a rule, he didn’t do one-night stands; he would stay with one woman for a couple of weeks and then move on before it got stale. It never lasted any longer than that, never got any deeper than that. He didn’t offer commitment—indeed, since his short-lived marriage he had not surrendered or shared control in any element of his life. Sex was a trivial pursuit on the periphery of a driven life he devoted to technological research and business.
‘Gianni...’ she said, her soft voice purring along the syllables, and it was sufficient to spring him back out of that rare instant of introspection.
He kissed her again and the worry about whose room they were occupying melted away in a fresh tide of longing. Her T-shirt fell to the floor in the midst of a frantic bout of kissing, the zip of her shorts sliding down, the garment dropping to her ankles as he lifted her clear. She lay back on the bed where he placed her in a fevered daze, watching him dispense with sweater and jeans and toe off his boots to reveal an incredibly powerful physique, all lean, muscular strength and bronzed masculinity. He simply took her breath away. He was beautiful in a way she had never known a man could be, beautiful from his wide shoulders to his corrugated abdomen and long, strong legs.
