Her hands snapped up of their own volition, anchoring themselves around his neck. Sandro laughed, all male, all sexually confident male.
‘You will understand, mi amore,’ he continued in that same tormenting vein, ‘that when I insist that you must kiss me, it is only because I have no wish to be accused of coercing you in any way.’
And this wasn’t coercion? Having a full-blooded half-naked male resting sensually against her was not a terrible coercion in itself? Having these strong brown arms enclosing her, and that beautifully muscled torso pressing down on her, and one of those powerful thighs of his hooked across her own was just about the worst coercion she had ever experienced.
Then one of his hands gently cupped her breast and she went into emotional overload, groaning out a protest that was more a whimper of surrender as her spine arched and her hand applied the necessary pressure to bring his waiting mouth crushing down on her own.
In seconds her senses were raging wildly again. She seemed to have no control over them any longer! Her hands were doing exactly what they wanted to do, caressing his warm dark skin; her lips were doing what they were desperate to do, greedily tasting him, tasting him everywhere, anywhere she could place her hungry mouth to taste him.
‘Joanna, this is too fast,’ Sandro muttered in a thickened rasp as she literally caught fire beneath him.
And he was no longer taunting. He was no longer playing the sexually confident male who had just threatened to completely devour her. He was trying to subdue her, trying to stem the wild storm.
‘Joanna...’
She caught his mouth in a kiss that devoured him instead, one hand clasped around his nape while the other ran in a feverish sweep down the full length of his back. He arched like a man shot by an arrow, groaned something painful, then just gave himself up to the whole bubbling turmoil, taking over, becoming the hot, hungry and passionate lover she had always known lurked beneath his impossible self-control.
As his touch grew bolder, caressing her where she’d never allowed him to caress her before, she thought elatedly, I can do this! I can actually let this happen now!
Only to feel the whole thing flip over like a spinning coin that falls to the ground to land the wrong way up. Suddenly the panic was back, sizzling along her veins and making her fight instead of encourage. She let out a choked whimper, then was pushing violently away from him, scrambling from the bed, standing swaying dizzily beside it, legs shaking, pulses frantic, her whole mind gone into a complete mental meltdown while Sandro remained where she had pushed him, watching it all happen with a kind of grimly rueful familiarity that almost tore her apart as much as her own sense of failure was managing to do.
He should have been angry, she would have preferred it if he’d got angry! But all he did, after watching her battle with herself for a while, was roll onto his back and drawl lazily, ‘Well, at least that got a whole lot further than it ever did before. Things could well be looking up for us, cara.’
On a choke of distress she ran from the room.
The hour long drive to Orvieto along the main road out of Rome was accomplished in the most appalling tension—hers, not Sandro’s. He, by comparison, seemed incredibly relaxed which, considering the way she had left him in a fierce state of physical arousal, was more distressing to her than the very unpalatable fact that she had been in no lesser state herself.
Yet, when she had eventually forced herself out of their bedroom—having had to wait until he’d decided to vacate it before she would go back in there to shower in the en suite bathroom, and get herself dressed and ready to face another day of pressure Sandro had planned for her—there he’d been, sitting at the table on the sunny breakfast terrace, reached via the small dining room, drinking coffee while he skimmed through a morning newspaper and looking just about as relaxed as anyone could look!
It was amazing. The man definitely had his emotions encased in steel, she’d decided. He had showered, shaved, and was wearing oatmeal-coloured trousers held up by a brown leather belt, and a plain white tee shirt was tucked in at his spare waist. As usual, he shrieked style, even though there was no obvious evidence of his clothes being anything special.
But there it was, Sandro in a nutshell: a man whose style came from within, but which was always evident.
‘Help yourself,’ he’d invited, indicating towards the coffee pot that had stood on the table next to a basket of warm bread rolls. ‘We should try to leave here within the next hour,’ he’d said smoothly. ‘But you have time to eat and drink something before we go.’
She’d said nothing. What could she have said except, Why don’t you put us both out of our misery and let me go again?
Then she’d seen it, tucked in beside her plate, and her eyes had filled with the now too-ready tears, her wretched mouth beginning to quiver. ‘Sandro...’ she’d whispered hoarsely.
‘Shush,’ he’d said, getting up from the table, then bending down to brush a kiss across her pale cheek. ‘Enjoy your breakfast. I have to make a few phone calls before we leave.’
She’d watched him stride back into the apartment, leaving her sitting there feeling wretched, feeling hopeless, feeling utterly, heart-wrenchingly useless, as her fingers gently stroked along the thornless column of the short-stemmed red rose he had placed there for her.
I don’t deserve him, she’d told herself—something she had always, always known.
By the time he’d come back for her the rose had disappeared, having been carefully folded into a napkin and
placed inside her purse for future filing with her precious store of memorabilia. If she ever saw that store again, because she knew she would never ask Sandro for it. That would open up too many cans of wriggling worms that still had to be let loose.
‘Ready?’
She’d nodded and stood up to join him, lifting very guarded eyes to his. But Sandro hadn’t been looking into her face, he’d been too busy checking out what she was wearing, his dark eyes inspecting the cream linen trousers and the tiny cotton top of the same colour. She had managed to get her long hair to plait into a single braid that swung between her shoulderblades this morning. She wore no make-up. It was just too hot. So she had applied some protective cream from the very expensive-looking jar she had found in the bathroom.
Now she wished she’d piled on the make-up, because at least it would have hidden the strained pallor that was back in her face.
Together they had walked through the apartment and out into the upper foyer, where he’d paused hesitantly, then turned towards her. ‘We can go down by the rear fire escape, if you would prefer it,’
It had been a concession she’d felt neither pleased about or grateful for, because it had only highlighted what a pathetic waste of time she was.