A faint frown-line had appeared between Damiano’s winged ebony brows. She registered that she had disconcerted him, had roved wildly off whatever script he had expected her to pursue. ‘What—?’
Eden folded her arms in a defensive movement and straightened her slim shoulders. ‘Look, it was unpleasant enough finding out that Mark wasn’t the wonderful friend I thought he was. I don’t need you demanding to hear it all, so that I can feel a right idiot all over again!’
‘You’ve decided to end the friendship?’ Damiano seemed to be having a problem grasping that reality. ‘When did you decide that? Right there this minute when it dawned on you that I’m angry?’
Her shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, boy, are you paranoid…’
Damiano went rigid, faint colour arching across the hard slant of his high cheekbones. ‘I merely requested that you explain yourself—’
‘And I politely refused to go into any greater detail. Mark’s just not important enough for us to be arguing over him.’ Eden meant that assurance with every proud fibre of her being.
‘Santa cielo…I am not arguing…where the blazes are you going?’ Damiano raked at her in a lion’s roar as she began walking back in the direction of the front doors.
‘I thought maybe if I went out and then came back in again, you might give me a nicer welcome.’
A dropped feather could have sounded like a thundering avalanche in the rushing silence which followed.
Eden heard Damiano move behind her but she was still quite unprepared to find herself being suddenly snatched right off her feet and up into his powerful arms. For a moment, the world tilted crazily. Then she met the mesmeric lure of his burnished golden eyes. Simultaneously she ran out of breath and rational thought. An instant burst of wanton heat ignited inside her, sending her heartbeat crashing, her pulses pounding.
A scorching smile slashed Damiano’s lean, powerful face. ‘This is the kind of welcome I should l have given you, tesoro mio.’
He pressed his mouth to the tiny pulse flickering like crazy below her delicate collar-bone. Her throat extended, her entire body jerked. She lifted a shaking hand to curve it to his dark head and then his mouth found hers. A huge brilliant fireworks display blazed up in the darkness behind her lowered eyelids. She was so hot, so excited, she clutched wildly at him. He lowered her down onto a hard, cold surface, closed his hands over her knees and parted them so that he could haul her back into even closer contact.
A hoarse little cry of response was wrenched from her as he let his long fingers glide up her slender thighs beneath her dress. She was shivering, shaking, alight with a hunger that burned. Damiano rested his hands on her slim hips and lifted his head to gaze down at her, dark, deep-set eyes shimmering gold, strong face hard with raw male need, beautiful mouth almost ruthless in its line.
‘So now you show me that you don’t need the vodka,’ Damiano murmured in thickened invitation.
For a split second, her veil of desire was pierced by an inner screech of shock. What? Here? Now? On a marble table? And then Eden collided with those dark golden eyes that had haunted her dreams from the very hour of their first meeting. She literally felt her body melt. Awareness slid away again. The world could have ended right there and then and she wouldn’t have cared.
‘I don’t mean here,’ Damiano husked, laughter roughening his rich, deep, sexy drawl.
He tugged her off the table and wound her fingers calmly into his to urge her through the doorway which he had appeared in earlier. Her legs felt weak and wobbly supports. Yet her every skin cell felt almost painfully alive. Sexual tension was twisting her into a deliciously tight knot. Their footsteps echoed as they passed through yet another vast room, full of marble columns, glittering crystal chandeliers and huge oil paintings. As Damiano led her beneath an ornate portal which opened onto the fantastic double flight of stairs which wound gracefully up to the first floor, she was gazing in astonishment at their palatial surroundings.
Upstairs, Damiano walked her into a room that at first glance struck her as the size of an aircraft hangar. A hangar with a bed, that was. And what a bed, overhung by a giant gold coronet from which glorious brocade hangings descended into extravagant folds down onto an exquisite rug. ‘You can live the fairy tale like the little princess.’
‘You being here with me…’ Eden muttered unevenly. ‘That’s enough of a fairy tale.’
Damiano dealt her a slumbrous sexy look from beneath black spiky lashes. He settled his hands to her slim shoulders and turned her slowly and carefully round. As he ran the zip down on her dress, her breath feathered in her throat. Light was flooding through the tall windows, light so bright she could see dust motes dancing in the air. And she felt terribly shy and self-conscious but she didn’t feel like rushing across the room to close the shutters and plunge them into darkness.
Once she had tormented herself with secret humiliating comparisons between Annabel’s long-legged voluptuous shape and her own infinitely slighter and smaller attractions. The urge to keep her seeming deficiencies covered from view had risen to obsessive proportions. But in allowing herself to think in that way, she had forgotten the only thing that really mattered. Damiano had married her; Damiano had chosen her, not Annabel Stavely.
He eased her dress from one slight, taut shoulder, making a production out of the process. She shut her eyes tight. ‘Santo Cielo…’ Damiano swore huskily above her head. ‘I’m burning for you, cara.’
He lifted her hair and bent her head forward and let his expert mouth trail across the exposed nape of her neck. She quivered, every sense leaping. ‘Oh…’
‘This will be so good,’ Damiano promised with husky sensuality.
The very sound of his voice could turn her boneless. A muted little gasp escaped her as her dress drifted down to her ankles. She fought the instinct to cross shielding arms over herself. She could feel the tips of her breasts hardening into straining little points within her bra. She could feel the wave of heat travelling over her and her knees started to wobble.
‘You are doing so well,’ Damiano purred appreciatively. ‘You’re quivering like a racehorse ready to bolt but you’re still in the same room.’
‘No vodka,’ she mumbled, trying to match him in humour but her voice came out all shaky.
‘Open your eyes, cara,’ Damiano urged as he lifted her clear of the tangle of cloth round her feet and spun her back to him. ‘Enjoy me admiring you.’
He was pushing too far too fast. She knew she had small breasts and hips that were just a little too full for the rest of her and legs that were just legs, not especially long or especially anything, sturdy enough to be useful, not flashy enough to attract attention. ‘I can’t!’
‘Would you prefer to sleep alone in that bed tonight?’
Her lashes lifted high on stricken green eyes. ‘No!’ she gasped with even greater force.
‘Gotcha…’ Damiano drawled with smouldering satisfaction, brilliant dark golden eyes scanning her blushing face. ‘I cheated. You have no chance of sleeping alone.’
Her brow indented. ‘No…?’
Bending down, he swept her up again into his arms and strode over to the bed to settle her there. She kicked off her shoes and began scrabbling at the bed linen to get under it.
‘Ah…ah…’ Damiano allowed her to get under cover and then, hooking long brown fingers round the fine linen sheet, he flipped the bedding deftly back into a fold at the footboard. ‘It’s a sort of knee-jerk reaction, isn’t it? But a little modesty goes a long way with me, cara.’
Rather than remain splayed out in only her bra and pants, she sat up again and hugged her knees, hands tightly clasped. She was striving desperately to think of something witty or cool to say. ‘I…I, well—’
‘Shut up,’ Damiano broke in with tender amusement. ‘You may not like your body but I love it!’
She studied his stunningly attractive features and felt that melting sensation down deep inside that just overwhelmed her. She didn?
?t place much credence in what he said but she knew he wanted her. She had felt the hard urgency of him against her, could not doubt the physical reality of his desire. She watched him peel off his shirt. Her lashes lowered, carefully screening the directness of her gaze, but she was as hopelessly mesmerised by his potent male beauty as she had always been. He had no inhibitions and she adored that blatant, blazing self-assurance he emanated, so very different from her own.
As he unzipped his chinos, exposing the taut, hard flatness of his stomach bisected by a silky dark furrow of hair, a tight little stab of sexual awareness twisted low in her tummy. He was all male, full of dynamic energy and hot-blooded intensity. Shimmying her hips back deeper into the shadows cast by the drapes festooning the bed, Eden watched the chinos being cast aside with keen interest. She studied the long flow of his smooth brown back, the lean masculine hips in pale boxer shorts, the long hair-roughened thighs. She did not look away as she had once done. Indeed she was hot with curiosity to see him totally stripped but terrified that he might notice.