‘Would a few more days make any difference?’ He put the question to her with genuine interest, she was sure, but it was mocking all the same, because he knew just as she knew that this had been written on the wall from the first second of their first glance at each other.
‘No,’ she ruefully replied.
‘Then keep those beautiful eyes on me,’ he softly commanded. ‘I like to make love with all the senses, and your eyes make love to me more than any other pair of eyes I’ve known.’
‘Known many?’ she asked in a lightly mocking attempt to sound clever and witty and sophisticated.
His smile reappeared, teasing and warm. ‘No, this is my first time,’ he said.
And she laughed. It was such an outrageous thing to say—and she felt some of her awkwardness seep away. I love you, she wanted to say, but those words were banned to her every which way she looked at them, so she did the next best thing and reached up on tiptoe to brush her mouth against his.
‘A lady has a right to be unsure of herself at moments like this,’ she murmured as she drew away again.
‘So does a man,’ he countered. ‘Now—take a sip of your champagne again and hold it in your mouth.’
Intrigued by the instruction, she did as he bade, her eyes still fixed on his as he did the same thing with his champagne. Champagne bubbles began to fizz on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and the air between them stirred as a new level of awareness took precedence.
Lost in the warmth of his eyes and the awakening of her own desires, she therefore didn’t see what was coming until it was too late. With a smooth, slick move he slid a hand around her waist—then swooped on her mouth with no warning whatsoever.
The result was an explosion on the senses when his champagne-moistened tongue made contact with hers. It was the most erotic thing she had ever experienced. In a single moment she seemed to shoot from gentle awareness into full arousal with no gap in between. Her hand shot up, instinctively searching for support as pure sensation went racing through her on the flow of champagne bubbles that had entered her blood.
Her hand found a tightly muscled shoulder, and gripped. Breathing had gone haywire, mouth hot on mouth. Nervous barriers fell, uncertainties disappeared. The kiss deepened and became something else entirely—seduction at its most intense.
She heard the light tap of glass on stone but didn’t recognise the sound for what it was until she felt her own glass being taken from her and placed on the marble table. Freedom to use both hands had her moving closer to him with her fingers sliding up the front of his shirt. She felt the warmth of living flesh, the hardness of well-honed muscle, and the slight prickle of chest hair, all of which sent a pleasurable little sigh whispering from her mouth into his mouth.
Why the champagne kiss should have caused this to happen, she didn’t understand. All she knew was that it had happened—and that he’d known it was going to happen, which automatically said he had done this before.
‘You’re too good at this,’ she murmured unsteadily when he eventually let their mouths separate.
‘I get even better,’ was his conceited reply. Then, with only that mocking remark to accompany them, he caught her hand and began leading her up the steps towards the waiting bedroom. As they passed by the wall switch he paused to dim the sitting-room lights. In the bedroom he did the same, shrouding them in a more intimate atmosphere, then taking her back into his arms.
She went without a murmur, her mouth welcoming him as if they were already lovers. The bed was several yards away, but neither seemed in any rush to get there, so it was reached in easy stages, the first stage being the caressing way he began to remove her dress. His hands skimmed her body, lighting fires as they went, then fed the flames on their way back up again. Long fingers slid beneath the silken weight of her hair swinging gently away from her back because of the passionate tilt of her head. He found her nape, used his fingers to lightly measure its slenderness, then was moving again, finding the zip to her dress and drawing it downwards, while she merely clung to him, needing his strength when her limbs began to shimmer with a sultry kind of heat.
Then he was diverting her attention again by peeling her dress down her arms and her body until she stood in front of him in nothing but what she was wearing beneath. So now he knew his provocative guess earlier had been absolutely right, she realised as she watched his dark gaze skim over her white silk underwear with a look of triumph he did nothing to disguise.
‘Homework?’ he taunted softly, and she began blushing like crazy.
He just laughed huskily, and proceeded to make her feel utterly wanton standing there with her dress pooled around her feet as he explored every silk-smooth inch of her while retaining both his clothes and his dignity.
Not for long though, not for long. For it didn’t take many seconds for her fingers to release the rest of the buttons on his shirt. He lost her mouth as the two pieces of fine white linen parted and a need to look at him overrode her need to feel his mouth seducing hers…
The last thing he expected her to do was to stroke him as he had been stroking her. The feel of her fingers against his flesh had his chest expanding on a fierce intake of air. The fingers paused, her eyes flickered upward to catch the intense pleasure reflected in his, then, with a sensuality that knocked him sideways, she moistened her softly pulsing mouth with the tip of her tongue, then lowered her gaze again and leaned forward to begin stringing clinging kisses from one tight male nipple to the other.
‘Dio, cara,’ he breathed in shaken reaction. And closed his eyes as her mouth, her tongue and her caressing fingers locked him into his own world of burgeoning pleasure…
She’d been wanting to touch him like this for so long now it felt like for ever, Natalia was thinking hazily. And he was so wonderful to touch. She could feel his response in each ripple of flesh she so carefully explored. His breathing was tight, his heart thumping against his solid ribcage, and her fingertips felt enlivened by the rasping sensation of crisp body hair and satin tight flesh.
She wanted more. And more came with her lips joining in the banquet. At the first moist touch of her tongue on his skin he opened his eyes again, looked deeply into hers, then muttered something in his own language as she shook his hands free of the shirt so he could reach for her…
Mouths joined again, hotly, hungrily, her arms looped around his neck. Finding her slender hips, he eased her up against him, then leaned back against the wall behind to simply sink himself into the rousing heat permeating his body as she began to move against him in an erotic rhythm no man with blood in his veins could resist.
She was a born sensualist, and he couldn’t believe his luck in finding someone like her. Inhibition seemed like a foreign word to her. She wanted him and was doing absolutely nothing to disguise that want. Did Edward know her like this?
No! his mind blasted angrily back at him. You fool, don’t bring him in here!
‘What—what’s wrong?’ Feeling the violent change in him sent her jerking back from him in confused reaction.
‘Niente,’ he rasped, didn’t even know he had spoken in Italian, but saw her beautiful eyes darken into wariness and, on a grim act of black fury aimed entirely at himself for ruining the moment, he bent to scoop her up into his arms. ‘I want you, that is what is wrong,’ he growled. ‘Have you