Bella came up alongside him and put an arm around his lean waist. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let me help you.’ She led him back to the bed and, while he was still standing, quickly straightened the mangled linen.
He closed his eyes once he was lying flat. ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll have to kill you,’ he said after a moment’s silence.
She smiled, and before she could stop the impulse, she briefly touched the ends of her fingers against his where they were lying on the mattress close to her thigh. ‘You’ll have to catch me first.’
He gave a soft little grunt without opening his eyes. ‘That will be the easy part,’ he said and within half a minute he was soundly asleep.
* * *
Bella woke again as the sun touched her face in a golden slant from the window. She stretched her legs—and encountered a hair-roughened one. Her eyes flew open as she realised she was in bed with Edoardo.
You’re in bed with Edoardo Silveri!
The words were like a neon sign flashing inside her head.
Had she slept with him? Had she actually had sex with him? She squeezed her thighs together and was momentarily reassured. But why, then, was she lying in his arms with her legs caught up with his?
OK, let’s be sensible about this, she thought. There’s got to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she was lying with her legs entangled with his. She was still in her piglet pyjamas. All the buttons were still done up. Maybe she’d just drifted to sleep and unconsciously reached for him. Or maybe he had reached for her. Why, then, hadn’t she woken up and moved out of reach?
Could she somehow wriggle away and leave without him waking?
Before she could get her scrambled thoughts together, he turned and looked at her.
‘So you slept with me after all,’ he said.
‘I did not!’
He smiled a smile that tugged on something deep inside her belly, like a small needle pulling on a tiny thread. ‘You did too,’ he said. ‘I heard you snoring.’
‘I do not snore.’
He picked up a lock of her hair and slowly wound it around one of his fingers. She couldn’t help noticing it was the same finger he had slipped inside her the evening before. She felt her inner core give a little tremor of remembered pleasure. ‘You snuffle,’ he said.
‘Snuffle?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘That doesn’t sound much better.’
He gave her hair a gentle tug, his eyes holding hers in an erotic lock. ‘Come here,’ he commanded.
Bella let her breath out in a fluttery rush that felt like the pages of a book being rapidly thumbed inside her chest. ‘Don’t do this, Edoardo,’ she said.
His eyes read the message her mind was relaying, not the one her mouth had just uttered so breathlessly. ‘You want me,’ he said. ‘You curled yourself around me during the night. I could have taken you then and there.’
‘I’m about to become engaged to another man,’ Bella said, but right at that very moment she wasn’t sure if she was reminding him or herself.
‘Call it off.’
She looked at his mouth, her belly turning over itself as she thought of how it had felt to have those sensual lips moving against hers. She forced her gaze back to his blue-green one. ‘I can’t call it off,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to call it off.’
He tugged on the tether of her hair; it was part pleasure and part pain. But wasn’t that just typical of what she felt for him—a confusing mix of emotions she didn’t want to examine in too much detail? She hated him and yet her body wanted him as it had wanted no one else. His mouth came closer and closer, stopping just above hers. ‘I could talk you into it,’ he said. ‘All it would take is one little kiss.’
Bella put a finger against his lips, the graze of his stubble sending a dart of longing straight to her core. ‘I can’t.’
He opened his mouth and sucked her finger into his mouth, gently snagging it with his teeth as his eyes held hers in a silent challenge that made her insides quiver like not-quite-set jelly.
A sweeping wave of red-hot desire coursed through her.
She felt her body gravitate towards him like a magnet attracting metal. Temptation was like a surging tide she had to swim against without the use of limbs. She felt the hard ridge of his erection against her belly and ached to hold it in her hand, to stroke him, to explore him, to taste him. Her hand moved forward but then she snatched it back, shocked at her own wantonness. ‘Let me go,’ she said, pulling at the lock of hair still tethered to his finger. ‘Please?’