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* * *
She found a box waiting for her on their return, on the table next to the bed. ‘What’s this?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t order anything.’
‘Open it up and find out,’ he snapped, before disappearing into the bathroom, the first words he’d spoken since the cemetery. His silence hadn’t bothered her during the journey home. Instead she’d welcomed it. It restored him to the role of villain. It balanced any glimpse of tenderness he might have shown—the reverent way he’d carried the flowers for his aunt—the quiet respect he’d shown when he’d entered the crypt.
It helped her forget how good he could make her feel in those moments where she could put aside thoughts that this was all a pretence, all a hoax.
And she didn’t need to find things to like about him. She liked him being cold and hard and unapproachable and totally unforgivable.
It was better that way, she reasoned, as she tackled the box, looking for a way in.
Easier.
Necessary.
She found the end of one tape, ripping it from the seam of the box. Found another and swiped it off, opening a flap and then another layer of packing.
No!
Luca returned, his tie removed, his shirt half unbuttoned, exposing a glimpse of perfect chest. She tried not to look and failed miserably as he kicked off his shoes. And then she remembered the box.
‘Where did this come from?’
He shrugged, and pulled his shirt off over his shoulders. ‘You needed a new computer.’
‘My computer is fine!’
‘Your computer is a dinosaur.’
‘You’re a dinosaur!’
He paused, halfway to tugging off his trousers, and in spite of herself, she couldn’t help but feel a primitive surge of lust sweep through her as she considered all the reasons he might be undressing, her mind lingering longingly on one particular reason... ‘And there was me thinking you considered me a caveman.’
‘Dinosaur. Caveman,’ she said, trying not to notice the bulge in his underwear, trying to hide the faltering sound of her voice, ‘It’s all the same to me. All prehistoric.’
‘Surely not the same,’ he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders that showed off the skin over the toned muscle of his chest to perfection as he turned towards her. ‘I would have thought a dinosaur would be lumbering and slow, and awkward of movement. Whereas a caveman could have more fun, don’t you think, clubbing women over the head to drag them back to his cave to have his wicked way with them.’
She swallowed as he reached out a hand and stroked back the hair from her brow, winding a tendril of it around his finger. It was hard to think with a naked man standing in front of her, his proud erection almost reaching out to touch her. The caveman taunting her with his club. Making her hungry for him. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You do the caveman thing particularly well.’
He smiled, and tugged on the curl of hair he had wound around his finger and drew her mouth closer to his. ‘Surely not the only reason you’re here, Valentina? Don’t you enjoy being with me?’
‘No,’ she said, as he tugged on her hair and drew her still closer to his mouth. She held her breath. ‘I’m counting down the days until I will be free.’
He smiled as if he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I’d better make the most of the days that are left.’
He pulled her face to his, his lips meshing with hers, insistent but still coaxing, inviting. And when he finally took his mouth away and she breathed in again it was to have her whole body infused with his scent and his taste.
He sighed. ‘I’m sensing a problem here.’
It was impossible to make sense of his statement through the thick fog of desire clouding her brain. She licked her lips, tasting him on her tongue. ‘What problem?’
He put a hand to her breast, cupped the aching weight of her through her dress. ‘You’re wearing far too many clothes.’
And she almost sighed with relief as she gave herself up into his kiss. Of all the problems in her life right now, an excess of clothes was one problem she could fix.
* * *
She’d imagined he wanted quick sex, fast and hot and furious. What he did was make love to her as if she were as fragile as that tiny glass horse.
His hands were slow and hot, his mouth scorchingly tender, his tongue an instrument of exquisite torture, and with all these things he spun a web of silken arousal around her, so that when she came, it wasn’t wrenched from her or like being caught in the maelstrom of a storm, but almost like an admission. A confession. A giving up of herself to him.
