‘A deal?’ Her green eyes flew wide.
‘While I concentrate on what pleases you outside the bedroom you can concentrate on what pleases me inside it.’
Kathy studied him in honest wonderment. ‘Are you really that basic?’
Sergio nodded affirmation without hesitation. ‘I want to spend the entire week in bed,’ he growled. ‘I am so hungry for you I almost dragged you off from the church.’
Kathy was blushing like mad. But she really liked the idea of being lusted after; a man ma
king her the focus of his erotic intent was most unlikely to be thinking of another woman at the same time.
‘Under the table at the reception…into another room…up against the wall…on the floor,’ Sergio enumerated thickly. ‘In my fantasies you’re insatiable, delizia mia.’
‘Am I?’ Kathy whispered a split second before the hungry onslaught of his mouth silenced her.
Fizzing little signals of response darted through her bloodstream and fired inside her with every wicked probe of his tongue. Her body was hypersensitive and geared up for him. For the first time she was eager to touch him and conduct her own explorations. For the first time she was confident enough to be his lover. She traced the solid wall of his chest with admiring fingertips, traversed the taut flatness of his muscular stomach, and when she hesitated he took over to guide and teach her and she learned that it was astonishingly easy to make him groan.
‘Enough,’ he growled. ‘This is our wedding night. I want to give you pleasure.’
‘You’re so traditional.’ Eyes bright as stars, empowered by newly learned skills that had done wonders for her assurance, Kathy flopped back against the pillows. Breathless, she watched him, her gaze clinging to his lean, strong face. There was a wicked tight knot of longing clenched at the heart of her. All he had to do was mention pleasure and she was boneless with expectation.
‘No, I’ve waited too long to lie here and keep my hands off your beautiful body,’ Sergio breathed roughly.
Hot, hungry golden eyes assailed her and her mouth ran dry. He spread her beneath him and smoothed a possessive hand over the swollen pink peaks of her breasts. She shivered. A wicked smile of knowledge slashed his strong, sensual mouth.
‘You are so ready for me, amata mia,’ he told her, dipping his tousled dark head to lock his mouth to the tiny taut, straining buds that betrayed her arousal.
Kathy gasped out loud, her hips squirming into the mattress. With controlled passion and endless skill, he traced his sensual path down over her slender twisting length, deliberately not touching her in the one place where she most yearned to be touched. As if in compensation other areas seemed to become much more sensitive in response while the blood thrummed in her veins and her heart pounded faster and faster. A river of elemental fire was flowing through her, burning and scorching everything within its path.
‘Sergio…’ She almost wept with impatience.
‘No orders, instructions or even hints allowed, cara mia,’ Sergio warned huskily. ‘This is one of those occasions when I really do know what I’m doing.’
And she learned things she didn’t know about herself. She learned she liked things she had never dreamt she might like. She also learnt a level of response that was terrifyingly powerful. When she believed she could stand no more she found she had no voice to tell him so. He wrested all control, all reasoned thought from her. The ache of need was overwhelming. She was shaking with desire when he chose the optimum moment to take her enjoyment to its zenith. Easing her under him, he plunged into her tender depths with potent power.
Irresistible sensation seized her in a tempestuous flood. He said her name and she moaned a response, locked to him in wild arousal. In thrall to his sexual energy, her excitement soared to a dizzy high. His desire for her was unquenchable, energising. She was all liquid heat and craving. Caught up in a delirium of spellbinding pleasure, she arched her spine and cried out at the height of release. Melting waves of delight followed and left her rocked to the core of her being over the strength of what she had experienced.
‘I think I’m going to like being married,’ she whispered blissfully, both arms wrapped round him as she hugged him tight with instinctive affection.
An ocean of love and forgiveness was washing round Kathy’s heart. She breathed in the musky perfume of his skin and sighed with contentment. He pushed her hair off her brow and kissed her and studied her with slumberous dark-as-night eyes fringed by spiky black lashes. Just looking at him she felt weak. ‘You were right,’ she added, feeling that just this once a small compliment might be due. ‘You don’t need instructions.’
The silence lingered and she wondered what he was thinking about. Grazia? The idea and the name came at her out of nowhere and dropped like a giant rock on her floaty feelings to crush them flat. Wasn’t it odd that he hadn’t even asked what Grazia had said to her the night before? He was certain to have thought about Grazia after seeing her today, Kathy reasoned uneasily. He was only human, but she didn’t want him to be only human, and she definitely didn’t want him thinking about his former fiancée and soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law.
‘Were you madly in love with Grazia?’ Kathy asked abruptly, and she was so horrified by the nosy question that had simply leapt from her brain to her tongue that she almost cringed in front of him.
Sergio released his hold on her and sat up. ‘What do you think?’
On the might-as-well-be-hung-for-a-sheep-as-a-lamb principle, Kathy added with equal abruptness, ‘Did you speak to her today?’
His jaw line squaring, Sergio groaned out loud. ‘No, I think she was only in the building for about ten minutes.’
Her face burning at what might or might not have been an unkind allusion to the incident with the red wine, Kathy muttered, ‘She mentioned that she’s divorcing your brother.’
Sergio shot her a sudden shuttered glance. Lean, extravagantly handsome features sombre, he vaulted out of bed. ‘I need a shower.’
‘And you’re the guy who’s going to change and share things with me?’ Kathy flung, cut to the bone and wishing she could shut up—but quite unable in her sense of humiliation and abandonment to make herself shut up.
‘Madonna diavolo—not stuff like that!’ Sergio countered without hesitation.