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‘I can’t believe you’ve made a meal for us,’ Lorenzo confided truthfully.
‘It may not win any awards but I think I should be able to make a decent meal,’ Brooke contended seriously. ‘It’s a basic skill.’
‘How are you feeling about returning to London tomorrow?’ he prompted.
‘Kind of sad,’ she confided, laying down her fork to finger the sapphire gleaming below her collarbone. ‘I love it here and I’ve relaxed a lot more but we can’t live cut off from the rest of the world for ever.’
‘No, we can’t,’ Lorenzo agreed and, as he pushed his plate away to indicate that he was finished, he lounged back in his chair and spread his hands. ‘Why did you go to all this trouble for a meal? We could’ve eaten out. That’s what I usually do when Sofia takes a night off.’
‘It’s our last night here.’ Brooke shrugged in an effort to be casual and pushed back her chair to return to the kitchen. There she drained pans, whisked the sauce again and put the main course together on delicate china plates to take them out to the table.
‘It looks great,’ Lorenzo said softly.
‘Wait and see how it tastes,’ she urged.
He ate in deliberate silence, cleared the plate and then sent her a wicked grin of appreciation. ‘That’s it. You’re on kitchen duty every night that I can spare you.’
‘And how often would you spare me?’ she enquired as she pushed her own plate away and went to fetch dessert.
‘Not very often,’ Lorenzo confessed, following her into the kitchen to tug her back against his lean, hard frame, his hands smoothing down over her hip bones to lace across her flat stomach. ‘You have a much more important role to fulfil,cara mia.’
Insanely aware that he was aroused, she instinctively pressed back into him, loving the sudden fracture in his breathing and the way his fingers instantly slid up to the waistband of her jeans to release the button and delve down over her quivering tummy to the heart of her. ‘And what would that role entail?’ she prompted shakily, suspecting that he wasn’t likely to let her make it as far as dessert.
Interpreting the damp welcome below her silk knickers, not to mention the encouraging gasp parting her lips, Lorenzo laughed appreciatively. ‘I think you already know,gatita mia.’
‘Well, youhaveto make a choice. Me...’ Brooke told him, battling her hunger for him to gently step away and fasten her jeans, ‘or the last course.’
Lorenzo snatched her back to him. ‘I’m Italian...the woman wins every time.’
‘Maybeifyou’re really, really good,’ Brooke teased, ‘I’ll bring you dessert in bed.’
In answer, Lorenzo spun her round and kissed her with voracious hunger, his mouth crushing hers, one hand anchored in her mass of curls. Beneath that onslaught, she gasped and he wasted no time in bending down to scoop her up and head for the stairs. ‘Bossy...much?’ she taunted.
‘You know you like it,’ Lorenzo breathed with inherent dark sensuality, dropping her down on the bed and following her there to pluck off her shoes and divest her of the rest of her clothes.
‘No, you undress first,’ Brooke instructed, feeling daring as she pushed his jacket off his broad shoulders and yanked at his tie, her fingers deft on his shirt buttons. Pushing the fabric back, she spread her hands over the warm hair-roughened musculature of his chest.
Lorenzo vaulted off the bed to remove the rest of his clothes. ‘Off with the jeans and the top,’ he commanded impatiently.
Brooke made a production of shimmying out of her tight jeans, sliding out one slender bare leg, then the next. Bending back, she released the hooks on her top and peeled it off over her head, her teeth tightening at the over-sensitivity of her engorged nipples as the air stung them. Her breasts had felt weird for several days, tender and swollen, and she had thought that had to be a sign of her menstrual cycle kicking in. Although she had had periods while she was still in the clinic, she had not had one since she left medical care and she knew that she would have to mention that to the doctor when she saw him as well. Possibly that IUD Lorenzo had mentioned was causing her problems, she reasoned wryly, and perhaps she would have to consider another method of birth control.
Lorenzo feasted his eyes on her with unashamed appreciation, his attention lingering on the luscious swell of her breasts. She must’ve put on weight and it really, really suited her, he acknowledged hungrily. ‘I’m burning up for you—’
‘Since when? You woke me up at six this morning,’ Brooke reminded him helplessly, as always, almost astonished by his constant desire for her.
Lorenzo grinned and came down beside her. ‘That was this morning and it was a lifetime ago,bellezza mia.’
‘Will we still be like this when we go home?’ Brooke heard herself ask in sudden fear that their new intimacy would somehow vanish when they left Italy.
‘You’re moving into my bedroom,’ Lorenzo asserted.
‘Am I?’ Brooke smiled like a cat that had got the cream, reassured by that statement, that change in attitude that signified togetherness rather than separation.
‘Are you thinking of arguing about that?’ Lorenzo husked against her reddened mouth.
Her fingers speared into his black hair to draw him down to her, the same intense hunger firing through every atom of her being. ‘No.’
A long while later, she lay in perfect peace in his arms and drifted off to sleep in a happy daze, which made the dream that followed all the more frightening because she wasn’t prepared for it, couldn’teverhave been prepared for the images that went flashing through her brain and made her scream so loud in the dark that she hurt her throat.
