‘Special,’ Gianni husked thickly against her mouth, and kissed her again. This time she didn’t just see cymbals and fireworks, she saw a whole chamber orchestra illuminated by shooting rockets.
‘I love the way you kiss,’ she confided feverishly as she tried to wrench him out of his shirt. ‘But if you don’t take your clothes off I’ll scream!’
Gianni finally backed off the bed. The slashing grin of appreciation lightening his strong dark features squeezed her heart as efficiently as a vice.
Her softened eyes roamed over him. Not even the most perfectly tailored trousers could conceal the bold jut of his erection. A twist of almost shocking excitement slivered through her. Dry-mouthed, she watched him strip.
‘I like it when you can’t take your eyes off me,’ Gianni confessed huskily.
Her whole body tingled with the need to touch him. He was awesomely aroused. He strolled fluidly back to the bed and she felt as if her bones were about to melt beneath her skin. He stood her up with gentle hands and went down on his knees to tug her panties down over her hips.
‘I have three years of erotic daydreams to live out.’ Gianni’s deep, dark drawl fractured as he pressed his mouth in a surprisingly tender salute against her stomach. She quivered like a sapling in a storm.
Curving strong hands to her slender hips, he lifted her back on the bed. She was weak with hunger. His first touch was like a match hitting a bale of hay. She was so ready she already ached for him, but Gianni was intent on reacquainting himself with every responsive inch of her wildly sensitised flesh. With silken finesse, he explored the hot, moist centre of her. She writhed out of control. Then he rearranged her, like a gourmet at a feast, and used his wickedly expert mouth and tongue to drive her crazy with an intimacy that drove her from ecstatic moans to choked and frantic pleas for satisfaction.
‘Dio…I love torturing you with pleasure…I’ve had nothing else on my mind since the day I saw you at the airport, cara mia. I can’t work; I can’t sleep,’ Gianni ground out, startling her.
Rising over her, he settled her beneath him. He entered her with an evocative groan of shuddering satisfaction. She met his shimmering dark eyes, feeling the sheer burning intensity of his pleasure for a split second before he plunged her back into sole awareness of her own.
‘You feel like hot satin!’ Gianni rasped.
And then, as he moved on her and in her, the hot, electrifying excitement took over and she wrapped herself round him, moaning her pleasure beneath his every thrust. Heart and body exulting as one, she gave herself without inhibition and reached a shattering climax that left her floating in shell-shocked contentment.
Releasing her from his weight, Gianni hauled her back into the circle of his arms. The almost forgotten reassurance of that continuing desire for physical closeness even after satiation filled her with brimming warmth.
He ran a slow fingertip down over one tear-wet cheek. ‘Special,’ he breathed almost harshly, gazing intently into her drowningly blue eyes, dark colour slowly rising to accentuate his sculpted cheekbones. ‘And yet you have driven me crazy more times than any woman I’ve ever known…’
‘Really?’ Milly gave him a dreamy, unapologetic smile.
‘Really, cara mia,’ Gianni confirmed, hungrily kissing her again.
Gianni woke up and rolled over. Milly wasn’t there. He sat up with a jerk to hit the lights and check his watch. It was midnight. Springing out of bed stark naked, he strode out of the bedroom.
He found Milly downstairs in the dimly lit state-of-the art kitchen. Her slender back turned to him, she was barefoot and wearing an oversized T-shirt that he recognised as having once been his. Humming softly to herself, she was checking something in the stainless steel oven. The almost forgotten aroma of baking apples and pastry assailed Gianni. He turned pale.
Breathing in shallow, quiet spurts to refill his straining lungs, Gianni slowly unclenched his coiled fists. He was in a cold sweat! Swinging soundlessly out of the doorway, he flung himself back against the wall in the dark corridor beyond. Where did you think she’d gone? His even white teeth gritted. He was outraged by the recognition of his own fear, alienated by the dark, deep stirrings of childhood memories he always kept locked away.
When he’d been barely more than a toddler, Gianni had learnt the hard way that he couldn’t depend on anybody. Not his mother, who had thrown him out of the house for hours on end while she entertained her clients, not his supposed father, who had drunk himself into violent rages and seized on any excuse to lash out with his fists and his belt. Not his stepmother, who had loathed him on sight and humiliated him at every opportunity.
Not even his deeply religious uncle and aunt, who had removed him from the orphanage at the age of thirteen and flown him over to their London home to take the place of their own dead son. For a little while he had believed he was really wanted, until they’d started constantly reminding him of the debt he owed them. They had never formally adopted him, and had washed their hands of him entirely the instant they were forced to accept that he had no vocation to become a priest.
Yet Milly’s warmth and affection had drawn Gianni even as he’d marvelled at her naivety in being so foolishly, dangerously open. Didn’t she know he was going to hurt her? Didn’t she know he had nothing to give back? That deep down inside, where she was all giving and feeling, he was just one big, empty hollow? But fate had had the last and cruellest laugh on him. The day Gianni had found Milly with his brother had been the day he’d finally realised how much he loved her.
Levering himself off the cold wall with sudden force, Gianni went back upstairs and headed straight for the shower, wrenching on the controls with angry hands. Love had been a breeze for Milly. But love had been a killer-chiller for him. So she needn’t think that sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to make some childish offering of his once favourite snack was likely to change the status quo!
Milly carried the tray upstairs. She was so happy. She was just so incredibly happy. Gianni had been so tender, so teasing, so warm. It had honestly been as if the Stefano episode had never happened.
How Gianni could shut it all out, how he could be like that with her while still believing what he did, she could not begin to comprehend. But suddenly it didn’t seem to matter. If that worked for him right now, that was all right with her. Only once they were safely married Gianni was in for a rather unpleasant surprise, she conceded ruefully. If it took her fifty years, if it took chaining him to a wall in a locked room, she would make him listen to her about Stefano!
Fully awake, Gianni was lounging in bed, intent on his notebook computer. His black hair was still damp from the shower he had evidently taken. His sleek, powerful bronzed body was dark and exotic against the pale bed linen. Milly st
udied him with wholly possessive eyes. Externally he was absolutely gorgeous, internally he was a little bit complicated, but they finally had a future and she intended to make the most of the opportunity.
‘I thought you might be hungry…’ She slid the tray down beside him, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Possibly it had been slightly over the top to rush down to the kitchen and turn out a tarte tatin.
‘I’m not, but don’t let me inhibit you,’ Gianni murmured, without taking his eyes from the screen.
‘It’s something you like,’ she told him.