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I huffed out a breath. For goodness’ sake, I had no clue what my role here even was anymore. What was he expecting of me? What was I expecting from myself?
I had unpacked to get a handle of my nerves, but as I closed the dresser drawer, I pressed unsteady hands to my blazing cheeks.
This was ridiculous. I was so not cut out to be any man’s mistress. Not even a part-time temporary one. Obviously, I couldn’t do this.
You need to leave. Like, now! Duh.
I yanked the drawer back open, and grabbed the stack of underwear, but as I scooped it back out of the dresser, intending to run for the hills, a low voice had me spinning around.
‘I missed you at supper,Principessa.’
I was so startled at the sight of Renzo leaning against the doorway to the room’s terrace—the dying glow of sunset shining off his dark hair and making the tanned planes and angles of his face gleam—I sprayed the underwear across the bed.
‘How...how did you get there?’ I asked.
And how could he look so relaxed and so—I swallowed heavily, taking in the way the worn jeans and linen shirt only accentuated his muscular physique—and so impossibly gorgeous, when I was a complete wreck?
He hadn’t even touched me yet and I could already feel the lava pooling in my abdomen.
‘You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ I added.
‘Our suites have a shared terrazzo.’ He sent me an assured smile, then stepped into the room as if he owned it—probably because he did. ‘It will give us better access.’
Better access to what, exactly?I wanted to scream, but all my nerves were now wrapped around my throat, choking me.
He walked around the four-poster bed, the hitch in his stride only making the emotion knot tighter around my ribs. And the lava flow down between my thighs. As he reached me, he took the only item of clothing I still held out of my numbed fingers—a particularly fetching pair of bargain-basement blue cotton panties which the supermodels he used to date would never have been seen dead in—and lifted them to his nose.
He took a deep breath, and sighed. ‘Mmm... They smelldeliziosa,’ he murmured in that gruff Italian accent which seemed to stroke my core, his gaze riveted to my burning face.
‘They smell of laundry detergent you mean,’ I blurted out, managing to release the stranglehold on my throat.
‘No,Principessa.’ Those tantalising lips quirked in an impossibly sensual smile, as he rubbed the clean cotton over my hot cheek. ‘They smell of you.’
I stepped back, the emotion in my chest painful. Desire and approval were not the same thing. Why did I keep mixing them up?
This was all a hangover from my childhood, I decided. The father who had never wanted to know me. The mother who had eventually abandoned me too. Intellectually, I knew that, but even so I couldn’t seem to clamp down on the brutal need enveloping my body and echoing in my heart when he looked at me this way. As if I really mattered to him.
I took the panties from him, wrapped them around my fingers, staring at them because I didn’t want to look into his eyes and see the glow of desire, the purpose and determination to have me, to hold me, to make love to me.
‘I’ve decided I think I should leave—this isn’t going to work,’ I said, my voice trembling with the embarrassment and confusion which had unsettled me all day.
He tucked a knuckle under my chin, lifted my gaze to his. ‘I thought we had a deal, Jessie?’
There was no demand in his tone for once, just a sort of probing curiosity. But even so, the panic clawed at my throat.
‘I know... But... I just can’t...be here, like this... It’s just not me... Not who I am. Not who I want to be.’ I paused. I was babbling now, and not making a lot of sense. But I was scared he would persuade me to stay with the force of our chemistry, which was even now bombarding my senses. And making me want to fall into his arms, when I knew I should be running in the opposite direction.
But to my surprise, instead of taking advantage of the desire I couldn’t seem to control, he sat on the bed. He straightened his injured leg, rubbed his thigh. Then he patted the space next to him. ‘Sit. Tell me, what is the problem? And we will fix it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, of course.’ His lips quirked. ‘The next three weeks must be pleasurable for both of us. Or it will not work.’
He said it so simply, I felt foolish. And pathetic. He was right. It was only three weeks for goodness’ sake. And this was about pleasure. Nothing more or less. Why had I spent the whole day freaking out?
And where exactly had the woman gone who had convinced herself she was totally Renzo’s equal this morning? Why was I behaving like a blushing inarticulate virgin all of a sudden, instead of a woman with a career—who had been supporting herself since she was sixteen years old? Even longer if I considered how useless my mum had been, at doing anything other than bringing home the latest creep to ‘look after us’—most of whom hadn’t even been able to look after themselves.
Where had the Jessie gone who had survived a miscarriage?
