Eyes smouldering between thick black lashes over that assessment, Vito shifted closer with silent fluid grace. ‘Says who?’
‘Says me!’ Ava thumped her chest in emphasis with a loosely coiled fist. ‘Do you think I’m stupid, Vito? Did you think I wouldn’t appreciate that once the party was over, we were too?’
His face set even harder. ‘I never said that.’
‘Yeah, like you were planning to come calling at my humble bedsit on a regular basis!’ Ava scoffed in disbelief. ‘Why can’t you at least be honest about what we have here?’
‘Do you think that could be because when I dare to disagree with you, you immediately accuse me of subterfuge?’ Vito queried smooth as silk, a sardonic ebony brow raised.
Ava was getting more and more worked up over her inability to get through to him. He was dancing around words, refusing to match her candour, selfishly complicating things when she wanted it all done and dusted, neat and tidy and over while she still had the strength to deal with it. Before she even realised what she was doing, both her hands lifted in frustration and thumped his broad hard chest instead. ‘It’s over, Vito! Fun while it lasted but now the writing’s on the wall.’
‘Not on my wall,’ Vito fielded, closing strong hands round her waist and lifting her right off her startled feet to lay her down on the well-sprung bed.
‘What the heck are you talking about?’ Ava snapped back at him in bewilderment, scrambling breathlessly back against the headboard to stay out of his reach.
‘My agenda, rather than yours … sorry about that,’ Vito delivered rawly, dark golden eyes glittering like starlight in his lean taut features as he came down on his knees at the foot of the big bed and began to move closer again. ‘It’s not over for me yet. Sorry, if that disrupts your rigid timetable. But I still want you …’
Sentenced to involuntary stillness by his extraordinary behaviour, Ava stared fixedly at him. He was stalking her like a predatory jungle cat ready to pounce. ‘Now just you stop right there!’ she warned him shrilly.
She drove him insane, Vito acknowledged darkly. Somehow every time they clashed she brought emotion into it, the emotion he shunned and she unleashed like a tidal wave. ‘I’m not stopping,’ Vito almost purred with assurance. ‘And you know I don’t back down …’
That dark sensual voice of his was compelling, sending a deeply responsive echo strumming right through her taut length. ‘You know I’m right, Vito.’
‘You always think you’re right,’ Vito husked. ‘But on this occasion, you’re wrong. I want you.’
A jolt of desire shot through her, making her achingly aware of the heat at her feminine core. Her cheeks burned with mortification. ‘We only got out of bed a couple of hours ago!’ she slung.
‘And I’m still hungry, bella mia,’ Vito growled deep in his chest, drawing level with her to bend his head. ‘Doesn’t that disprove your theory that I’m ready to let you go?’
‘You don’t let me do anything!’ Ava launched back at him in a rage. ‘And I know you well enough to know that you won’t be ready to let me go until you make that decision.’
His fingers feathered slowly through her tousled coppery hair and curved to her taut jaw. ‘You’re a lot of hard work but I still burn for you.’
Ava flung back her head in defiance. ‘Well, my flame’s gone out. Common sense snuffed it,’ she traded.
‘What the hell does common sense have to do with this?’ Vito demanded thickly, crushing her stubbornly compressed mouth beneath his and revelling in the way her soft full lips opened for him as the tip of his tongue scored that sealed seam.
His mouth devoured her and she wanted to eat him alive, powered by a frantic desire that terrified her when she was trying so hard to make him see sense. But there was no sense in that all-encompassing overwhelming hunger that gripped her. Her hands came up of their own volition to cup his high cheekbones and then threaded into his thick silky hair. The spicy scent and taste of him only made her want more … always more. When did she reach satiation level? When would that terrible craving ease enough to allow her to hold it at bay?
‘I’m packed, I’m leaving,’ she mumbled obstinately when he freed her swollen mouth long enough to let her breathe again.
‘I could chain you to the headboard to keep you here,’ Vito told her silkily as he closed a possessive hand round a full breast below her sweater, a thumb massaging the already swollen peak. ‘Now doesn’t that open an interesting field of possibilities?’
Ava trembled, sexual frissons of sensation running through her like liquid lightning. ‘Only if you’re a perv,’ she told him doggedly.
‘You like it when I’m dominant in bed,’ Vito traded with fiery erotic assurance in his stunning eyes.
Ava planted her hands to his shoulders and pushed forward, off balancing him back against the pillows. A wolfish grin split his bronzed features and he laughed with rich appreciation, hauling her down on top of him with shocking strength to take her mouth again with ravishing force. She shivered violently, insanely aware of the male arousal resting like a red-hot brand against her and the hand sliding down over her quivering stomach below her unfastened jeans to tease her with knowing expertise.
‘Don’t forget that I’m an equal opportunities employer,’ Vito reminded her raggedly, lifting her out of her jeans with more haste than finesse.
‘I’m in the middle of packing!’ Ava raked at him in a frustration steadily becoming more laced with self-loathing.
‘But you’re not going anywhere now,’ Vito pointed out, shedding his jeans with positive violence and drawing her back up against him, all hot and ready and hard.
‘We should have discussed this like civilised adults—’
‘You talk too much,’ Vito told her, delicately tracing her lush opening with carnal skill and then, having established her readiness from the whimper of anguished sound that exited her straining lungs, he shifted over her and sank into her with a raw primal sound of satisfaction that she found insanely arousing.