AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Too easily,’ Lorenzo chided, trying to keep some distance between them while he was as hard as rock and throbbing with arousal.
Brooke realised that she was literally backing him into the wall and she laughed in surprise, wondering if Lorenzo was always so slow on the uptake, so businesslike, so prone to saying and doing only the right thing that he couldn’t even grasp when his wife was coming on to him! She lifted her hands and ran them up over his ribcage over the shirt below his tailored jacket, sensitive fingertips learning the lean mouth-watering musculature hidden beneath, and she stretched up and literally face-planted her mouth on his.
Two very masculine hands sank into her mane of ringlets and held her fast and she smiled against his parting lips, her mouth opening eagerly for the plunging urgency of his. It was everything she remembered from the clinic, a chemical explosion of sheer hunger and demand. Oh, yes, her husbandwantedher all right, she savoured with pleasure, he only needed encouragement while she needed no encouragement whatsoever when keeping her hands off him was more of a challenge. Her body was coming alive with a host of sensations from the tightening of her nipples, to the swell of her breasts, to the aching hollowness that tugged at the heart of her.
There was a sound somewhere behind her and Lorenzo yanked her back from him as though he had been burned. Stevens was muttering an apology and Lorenzo assured him that dinnerright nowwas fine.
Her face hot as hellfire, so hot she wanted to die for a split second, Brooke retreated to her designated dining chair and grasped her wine glass with new fervour. She couldn’t look at Lorenzo, she absolutely couldn’t look at him in that instant, she was so mortified by her own forward behaviour, but honestly, it was as if he were a magnet that pulled at her until she couldn’t resist the charge any more. She was convinced that she had never felt desire so strongly before...and yet how could that be?
Lorenzo infuriated her then by acting as if nothing had happened. He asked her about her day and her enjoyment of the garden. Slowly, painfully, her equilibrium returned. It wasn’thisfault that she wanted him to be the sort of guy who said to hell with dinner and carted her off to the nearest private spot to take advantage of her willingness...was it?
CHAPTER FIVE
ITWASNOWor never, Brooke challenged herself, because on a deep inner level she was cringing about what she was about to do.
The many mirrors in her dressing room showed a slender figure garbed in a white satin and lace nightdress. Wearing it felt weird because Brooke was convinced that, at heart, she was a pyjama girl rather than the fashionable, sexier image she was sporting, but, going by the decorative lingerie collection in the dressing room, her past self had never given way to the weakness of putting comfort first. Pyjamas weren’t sexy though and sheneededsexy, needed it desperately, she acknowledged apprehensively, because in spite of reading the book she had found in the bedside cabinet on ‘how to thrill your lover,’ shestillfelt as if she didn’t have a clue!
After all, suppose Lorenzorejectedher? How would she ever rise above that humiliation? She breathed in deep. Her need to have a normal marriage, added to the desire she definitely felt for him, was motivating her and what was wrong with making a major effort? Why would he reject her when he kissed her as though his life depended on it? she asked herself, striving to bolster her flagging courage as she ranged closer to the connecting door between their bedrooms and reached for the handle. The blasted door was locked! She couldn’t believe it, and so afraid was she of losing her nerve altogether that she stalked straight out of her bedroom and walked down the corridor to let herself into his room with a fast-beating heart.
She couldn’t believe her luck when she heard the shower running in the en suite. In one frantic leap she made it into the bed and hit the lights on the wall to plunge the room into darkness. Maybe that was a little too cowardly, she reasoned with a grimace, because that amount of self-consciousness wasn’t sexy either. Stretching up, she put the lights back on and surveyed his bedroom décor, which was much warmer and comfier in ambience than her own stark white bower of rest.
Brooke was still all of a quiver, like a real scaredy-cat. She shrank at the prospect of being confronted by Lorenzo’s shock, surprise and, ultimately, his rebuff. But if he said no, he would have to explain why not, wouldn’t he? And then another little piece of the mystery of their marriage would fall into place, so, at the cost of her dignity, she would find out more even if he did dismiss her.
Lorenzo was in a dark brooding mood as he stepped out of the shower and snatched at a towel to dry off his hair. It was a challenge for him to believe that sharing a roof with Brooke could wind him up like a clockwork toy with sheer lust. How had that happened?Whenhad that happened? It was damned near three years since he had experienced that hunger and then Brooke had woken up after the accident and somehow that primal urge had come back with a vengeance, engulfing him without reason or logic. It infuriated him.
When Lorenzo strode naked out of the bathroom and saw her lying in his bed, the last chain of restraint snapped inside him and set him free. Suddenly he had had it with self-discipline and had it with continually hearing his legal team’s warnings in the back of his mind and all he could think about was that there were no cameras in his bedroom and he could do whatever the hell he liked with the woman he had married. Brooke was still his wife. He wanted her andshewantedhim. If he kept it that simple, he didn’t need to even think about anything else, and itwassimple, basic sexual instinct and nothing more.
‘I th-thought...’ Brooke stammered, peering in awe at him over the top of the duvet, striving to grab up some bad-girl sass from somewhere down deep inside her, so deep she couldn’t find it. She felt like a woman who had never been in a man’s bed in her life and that was unsettling her more and increasing her nerves.
‘Great minds think alike,’ Lorenzo quoted, all smooth and dark in tone like the finest chocolate laced with that delicious accent of his.
And he smiled at her, he actuallysmiled, and the charisma of that smile set her heartbeat racing and released butterflies in her tummy. In an abrupt movement, Brooke pushed back the duvet with valiant hands and sat up against the pillows, the worst of her nerves conquered by the suspicion that she could have looked as though she was hiding in his bed like a little kid. A deep heat assailed her face when she registered that he was naked, absolutely naked, all bronzed and hair-roughened and aroused naked, and her mouth ran dry.
‘So,’ she breathed shakily. ‘You’re not going to throw me out?’
Lorenzo tilted his tousled and damp dark head to one side and sent her a smouldering appraisal from dark glittering eyes that speared her where she sat. ‘You want me?’
Unnerved a bit by the change in his attitude, Brooke nodded jerkily like a marionette.
‘Say it,’ Lorenzo commanded, needing to hear the words because he knew she didn’t remember being with him before and that for her this was her first time with him.
‘I want you,’ Brooke practically whispered, so hard was it to get sufficient oxygen into her struggling lungs.
‘Dannazione...No, I’m not going to throw you out,’ Lorenzo told her thickly.
‘I want us to have a normal marriage,’ she muttered tightly.
‘It’s been a long time since we had normal,’ Lorenzo admitted.
‘But whyisthat?’ she pressed.
‘That’s not something we want to get into at this moment,’ Lorenzo growled, tossing aside the towel still clutched in one lean brown hand and climbing into the bed.
Brooke felt almost as if she couldn’t breathe with Lorenzo that close, the heat of his body warming hers even before he touched her, and then his wide sensual mouth crashed down on hers and breathing began to seem a much overrated pursuit as every sense she possessed flew off on a wild and wonderful trail of discovery. The very scent of him, soap, designer cologne and clean male, overwhelmed her and the minty taste of him against her tongue was delicious. As for the actual feel of that long, lean, hot, heavy body pressing against hers, it invoked a delirious wriggle closer from her hips while she pushed her breasts against the hard wall of his chest.
Great minds think alike.
She loved that phrase, which suggested that he had been waiting for her. Maybe this had always been their way—she came to him—and the idea no longer bothered her because he was pushing the welcome mat out with irrefutable enthusiasm.
