Gianni had given her a slow-burning smile and had said nothing.
So intense was that recollection that Milly stared at the bed almost as if she expected to see the ghosts of Gianni and herself still lying there. She blinked, and turned around in an uncoordinated circle, and then found herself heading for the fitted units in the dressing room. She stared in frank astonishment at the clothing carefully stored in garment bags and then sped into the bathroom to check cupboards.
Finally, with her legs threatening to buckle, she sank down on the corner of the bed. Unbelievable as it was to her, Gianni had left all her belongings intact. Nothing had been changed, nothing had been dumped. It was eerie. But for the garment bags, the past three years might not have happened. The whole house appeared to be locked in an astonishing time warp.
‘You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve pictured you here like this…’ That deep, dark sexy drawl slashed through her reverie and sent her head flying up, shining waves of hair tumbling back from her oval face to accentuate troubled eyes as blue as lapis lazuli.
Milly looked fantastic, Gianni acknowledged with satisfaction, long past the stage of questioning why this one small woman should excite him to such an extent. It was sex, just sex. He was content with that explanation. It wasn’t something he had to think about; the ache of hot, instantaneous arousal was reassuringly familiar. She was wearing something bright and clingy, which for Milly signified a fairly substantial degree of effort on her behalf. She was also trying to smile, but her eyes were strained. She was just nervous; she had to be happier than she looked, Gianni told himself impatiently, discarding that initial impression. He just could not see that she had the smallest thing to be unhappy about.
Milly stared at Gianni with colour steadily mounting in her cheeks. He lounged in the doorway, six feet three inches of stunning dark good looks and lean, lithe elegance, his attitude one of deceptive indolence.
Abruptly, she slid upright, smoothing uncertain hands down over the turquoise dress she wore. ‘I didn’t hear you arrive…’
Shimmering golden eyes roamed over her, lingering on the generous curve of her soft mouth, the defined thrust of her firm breasts and rounded hips in the sleek silky fabric. ‘You’ve been shopping—’
‘No. This was an impulse buy last year. I never wore it.’
‘Sexy, cara mia,’ Gianni told her with husky approval, slowly raising lean brown hands to shrug out of his overcoat and let it fall.
Milly’s heart started to beat so fast she thought it might burst from her chest. He removed the jacket of the formal suit he wore beneath. Her breath began to rasp in her throat, making her mouth run dry. Without removing his smouldering attention from her for a second, he tugged loose his gold tie and unbuttoned his shirt.
‘Gianni…’ she began unevenly, her body reacting involuntarily to the wild, hot sexual charge in the atmosphere. As her breasts swelled with languorous heaviness, and her nipples stiffened to push against the confines of her bra, she shifted uneasily. ‘We really should talk.’
‘Never got us anywhere before.’
‘Because we never actually did it!’
‘Everything the way it was,’ Gianni reminded her with scorching golden eyes as he took an almost compulsive step forward. ‘You promised.’
Had she promised? Hadn’t she just said she’d try? But as Gianni came closer the question became academic as rational thought blurred and infinitely more basic promptings took over. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get close. She merged with his outrageously masculine frame on legs that already felt weak and hollow, eagerly drawing in the familiar warm, male scent of his skin.
‘You want me…’ Long fingers curved to her chin, exerting pressure to turn up her face and see the hunger she couldn’t hide.
Breathless, she gazed up into his spectacular eyes, heat spearing up almost painfully in her stomach to stretch every nerve-ending taut. ‘Always.’
‘That’s all I need, cara mia,’ Gianni asserted with complete conviction.
She reached up to him first, encouraging him to drive her lips apart in a devouringly hungry kiss. Her head spun and her senses whirled. He tasted like water in the desert, so sweet, so precious she felt she would die if she didn’t drink deep. Painful memories fell away from her. She met those dark, deep flashing eyes with an instinctive sense of coming home.
Unzipping her dress, Gianni peeled it off. She shivered, pressed her thighs together, seeking to contain the heat he had already awakened. But in one easy movement she unclasped her own bra. Her face burned, but she revelled in the sudden blaze of gold in Gianni’s appreciative appraisal as her pouting breasts fell free.
‘Witch,’ he rasped, tumbling her down backwards on the bed with a thrilling lack of cool.
Her spine curved in wondering pleasure as his expert mouth trave
lled hungrily between her urgently sensitive nipples. As he sucked on a straining pink bud she gasped, her hands clutching at shoulders still frustratingly sheathed in fabric.
‘Take your clothes off,’ she urged shakily.
Expelling his breath in a driven hiss, Gianni raised himself. He scrutinised her flushed face and moist parted lips with ravenous desire, his lean, strong features taut with the effort self-control demanded. Beginning to sit up, she arched her back, and his mesmerised gaze welded to the projecting peaks of her exquisite breasts.
‘Dio… I can’t spare that much time,’ Gianni groaned raggedly.
He curved a not quite steady hand to her temptingly swollen flesh and then drove her flat again with the onslaught of his passionate mouth on hers. His tongue dipped with slow, skilful intimacy between her parted lips, tasting her with an eroticism that released a startled moan of excitement from her throat.
With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, Gianni lifted his head again and surveyed her. ‘I might want to jump you like a starving animal, but tonight is going to be different,’ he swore, rubbing a thumb gently along the ripe curve of her full lower lip, and she shivered with helpless anticipation.
‘Different?’