“This is the symbol for my country,” she whispers. “The two-headed eagle is on the Albanian flag.”
What are the odds?
I grit my teeth. I’m not sure how long I can bear her touch without reciprocating.
“But not these yellow circles,” she adds.
“There’re called bezants.” I sound really hoarse.
“Bezant.”
“Yes. It represents a coin.”
“In Albanian, we have the same word. Why do you have this tattoo? What does it mean?” Alluring eyes peer up at me.
What can I say?
This is the shield from my family’s coat of arms.
I don’t want to explain my family’s heraldry at three o’clock in the morning. And the truth is, I had the tattoo done to piss off my mother. She hates them…but of the family coat of arms? How could she complain?
“Like I said, a youthful folly.” My eyes stray from her eyes to her lips. I swallow. “It’s too late to discuss this now. Let’s sleep.” I toss back the quilt on the bed and step aside so that she can climb in. She obliges, revealing long, slender legs beneath the pajama shirt that is way too big for her.
This is torture.
“What is this word ‘folly’?” she asks as I walk around the bed. She’s propped herself up on her elbow, and her glorious dark hair falls in a riot of loose waves over her shoulders, past the contour of her breasts, and onto the bedding. She looks gorgeous, and I’m going to have to keep my hands off her.
“ ‘Folly’ in this case means a foolish action,” I say as I join her in bed. I almost snort at the irony of my word definition.
If sleeping next to this beautiful girl isn’t folly, I don’t know what is.
“Folly,” she whispers as she lays her head on the pillow. I dim the bedside light so it glows in the darkness, but I don’t switch it off, just in case she wakes again.
“Yes. Folly.” I lie down and close my eyes. “Go to sleep.”
“Good night,” she whispers, her voice soft and sweet. “And thank you.”
I groan. This is going to be torture. I turn on my side, away from her, and start counting sheep.
I’m lying on the lawn near the towering stone wall that surrounds the kitchen garden at Tresyllian Hall.
The summer sun warms my skin.
The scent from the lavender that rings the lawn and the sweet fragrance of the roses that climb the wall waft over me.
I’m warm.
I’m happy.
I’m home.
A girlish laugh catches my attention.
I turn my head, drawn to the sound, but I’m blinded by the sun and can see her only in outline. Her long, raven hair blows in the breeze, and she’s swathed in a translucent blue housecoat. It billows out around her slim silhouetted figure.
Alessia.
The scent of the flowers intensifies, and I close my eyes to inhale their sweet, intoxicating perfume.
When I open them, she’s gone.
* * *
I wake with a start. Morning is bleeding through the cracks between the blinds. Alessia has trespassed onto my side of the bed, and she’s nestled under my arm, her hand balled in a fist on my abdomen, her head on my chest. Her leg intertwined with mine.
She is all over me.
And fast asleep.
And my cock is wide awake and rock hard.
“Oh, God,” I whisper, and brush my nose against her hair.
Lavender and roses.
Intoxicating.
My heart rate flips into overdrive as I make a mental list of all the possibilities this scenario presents: Alessia in my arms. Ready. Waiting. She is so tantalizing, so close…too close. If I roll over, she’ll be on her back, and I can finally bury myself in her. I stare up at the ceiling, praying for self-control. I know if I move, she’ll wake, so I torture myself some more and lie still, enjoying the sweet, sweet agony of having her sprawled all over me. I gather a lock of her hair between my fingers, surprised by how soft and silky it feels. She stirs, her fisted hand flexes, and her fingers splay out on my belly, tickling the beginning of my pubic hair.
Fuck!
I’m so hard and want nothing more than to grab her hand and wrap it around my erection. I’ll probably explode if I do.
“Mmm,” she murmurs. Her eyelids flicker open, and she looks dreamily up at me.
“Good morning, Alessia.” I’m breathless.
She gasps and scrambles to put some space between us.
“I was enjoying your visit to my side of the bed,” I tease.
She pulls the covers up to her chin, her cheeks rosy, her smile shy. “Good morning,” she says.
“Sleep well?” I ask as I roll onto my side to face her.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Hungry?” I know I am. And not for food.
She nods.
“Do you really mean yes?”
She frowns.
“You said in the car yesterday that in Albania it’s the opposite.”
“You remembered.” She sounds pleased and surprised.
“I remember everything you say.” I want to tell her that she looks very lovely this morning. But I refrain. I’m behaving.
“I like sleeping with you,” she says, confounding me.
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“I did not have bad dreams.”
“Good. Me neither.”
She laughs, and I try to recall the dream that woke me. All I know is that she was part of it. As usual. “I dreamt about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure it was not a nightmare?” she teases.
I grin. “Quite sure.”
She smiles. She has a bewitching smile. Perfect white teeth. Pink lips that are parted possibly in invitation. “You look very desirable.” The words come out of my mouth in an unguarded moment. Her deep brown eyes dilate, captivating me.
“Desirable?” Her breath catches.
“Yes.”
The silence stretches between us as we gaze at each other.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispers.
I close my eyes and swallow while her words from last night echo in my head.
I have never slept with a man.
“You’re a virgin?” I whisper, and open my eyes to study her face.
She blushes. “Yes.”
Her simple affirmation is like an ice bath to my libido. I’ve only slept with one virgin, and that was Caroline. It was my first time, too, and it was a disaster that nearly got us expelled from school. After that my father took me to a high-class brothel in Bloomsbury.
If you’re going to start fucking girls, Maxim, you’d better learn how to fuck.
I was fifteen, and Caroline moved on….
Until Kit’s death.
Bloody hell.
Alessia’s a virgin at twenty-three? Of course she is. What did I expect? She’s different from every woman I’ve ever known. And she’s looking at me all big eyes and expectation. I wonder again at the folly of bringi
ng her here.
Alessia frowns, anxiety etched on her face.
Shit.
Reaching forward, I brush my thumb against her pouty bottom lip. She inhales sharply. “I want you, Alessia. Very much. But I want you to want me, too. I think we need to get to know each other before we take whatever this is any further.”
There. That was the grown-up response. Yes?
“Okay,” she whispers, but she looks uncertain, and possibly a little disappointed.
What does she expect of me?
And I know I need to put some distance between us to think about this. Here in my bed she’s a distraction, a pouting, soft-lipped, and beautiful distraction. I sit up and cup her face in my hands. “Let’s just enjoy this holiday,” I murmur, and kiss her, and clamber out of bed.
Now is not the time.
It’s not fair to her.
And it’s not fair to me.
“Are you leaving?” Alessia asks as she sits up in bed. Her hair tumbles down around her small frame like a veil. Her eyes are round with concern; she looks effortlessly sexy, swamped in my pajama shirt.
“I’m going to grab a shower, then cook us breakfast.”
“You can cook?”
I laugh at her shock. “Yeah. Well, I can cook bacon and eggs.” I give her a sheepish smile and stride into the bathroom.
* * *
Bugger.
More self-abuse in the shower.
Water streams over my body, and with one hand spread on the marble tiles supporting me, I come quickly, thinking of her hand on my stomach and her hand wrapped around my dick.
A virgin.
I frown. Why am I making such a big deal of this? At least she hasn’t been brutalized by those fuckers. Anger flares in my gut as I think of the men coming after her. She’s safe here in Cornwall. So that’s something.
Perhaps she’s religious. She did say her grandmother was a missionary, and she wears a gold cross around her neck. Or maybe premarital sex is a taboo in Albania. I have no idea. I wash my hair and my body with the soap Danny left for me.