‘You and I both know I’m not about to do anything stupid, Lexi,’ he said grimly. ‘I should not have … I used emotional blackmail to get you here, then to keep you here. Now it is time for me to start playing fair again. So I am letting you know that you can go home—no regrets.’
She hadn’t expected this. After all the things they’d been throwing at each other over the last few days she just had not expected him to—to … ‘S-so all that stuff about—about us trying again was what? You using me as a diversion so you didn’t have to think about M-Marco?’
He rose to his feet, a frowning black scowl on his face now. ‘I am just trying to play fair.’
‘I don’t want you to play fair!’ Tears were gathering. She could feel them building in her throat. ‘I want you to be honest with me and just tell me—have I been a diversion so you did not have to face your guilt and grief about Marco?’
‘No!’ he rasped.
‘Then what?’ she persisted.
Like a man driven to commit murder he strode towards her, took her by her trembling shoulders and heaved her up against his chest. ‘You just don’t know when it is safer to say nothing, do you?’ he raked down at her angrily. ‘You were like this four years ago—a yappy little temptress who never knew when to shut up!’
‘Y-you said you liked me yappy back then.’
‘I like you yappy now. That is the whole damn point!’ He sighed when he saw her soft mouth was trembling. Her eyes looked huge and hurt and—’Santa cielo,’ he groaned in exasperation. ‘I am trying to do the honourable thing by giving you a choice here, you aggravating female. Go because you want to go or stay because you want to stay—no extra coercive strings attached, your damn choice!’
‘Stay,’ Lexi whispered.
He frowned again, as if she’d given the wrong answer. ‘Why?’ he charged. ‘When I have given you nothing but aggravation, hassle and hurt?’
‘I was just getting used to the idea of—of us trying to be married and …’ She attempted a helpless little shrug within the firm grip of his hands. ‘I still have feelings for you, OK?’
Defensive and tense, she waited for him to say something. He was still frowning down at her, but a searching glint was happening behind the frown, and at least that horrible blackness had left his eyes so she could see the golden bits again. The silence stretched. Lexi wished she knew what he was thinking. Like a stork, she swapped her weight from one leg to the other, then, because she couldn’t stop it, she let out a soft, slightly husky, nervy little laugh.
‘And I love your legs. You always did have great legs …’
‘My legs?’ Franco repeated.
Lexi nodded, biting down on the quiver moving across her lips. ‘Kind of long, tough and tanned. Sexy—even with all the scars you’ve accumulated over—’
He shut her up with a hot, bruising kiss. She dropped the things she was holding because she needed to grab hold of his arms to steady herself. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew they hadn’t finished with the Claudia thing but did not want to think about that right now.
This was what mattered: the heat of his mouth claiming hers with the same burning hunger it used to, the remembered dark groan of pure pleasure when he felt her melting response. Franco had taught her everything she knew about the power of her own deep flowing rivers of passion and he plundered deep, savouring the eager heat with which she responded to him.
No drawing back this time. Lexi knew it as surely as she knew that Franco knew it. He meshed one of his hands into her hair, the other cupping the silk covered shape of her bottom to bring her close up against him so she could feel the power of his desire for her. Thick potent heat swam through her veins and pooled low between her thighs in an erotic swirl of excitement. Her hands moved, anxiously scoring over the soft cambric of his shirt and feeling the powerful set of his biceps, his shoulders, the alluring heat of him. Her bare legs made brushing contact with his, increasing the bright sting of need growing inside her as the hair-roughened quality of his skin rasped against her smooth softness. It was like being wired up to an electric grid and she quivered, her restless fingers clutching at him so tightly she felt him shudder, then flinch.
‘Oh …’ she choked, remembering, and drew her head back a little. Her heart was racing and she was breathing too fast. She clashed with the simmering darkness of his eyes. No gold in evidence—just dark, dark caverns of hunger she wanted to drown in. ‘I hurt you,’ she groaned.
‘No,’ he denied, and tried to recapture her lips, but Lexi held them away from him.
‘I did,’ she insisted. ‘You’re one big bruise, and I don’t know how we are going to do this without putting you through torture.’
Franco released a short mocking laugh and moved his fingers against her bottom, sliding them sensually against silk as he eased her into greater contact with him. ‘You think this isn’t already torture?’
It was pure instinct that made Lexi move against his potent hardness, and he groaned and shuddered, his other hand shifting from her hair to her back, then sliding with a compulsive movement to her waist to press her even closer as he captured her mouth again and this time gave her no chance to think. Passion flared between them in a fevered hunger. Liquid heat was pooling in just about every erogenous zone she possessed.
‘I want you, tesoro, so badly it is eating away at me.’ The heat of his lips moving across her cheek as he husked the words made her shiver as he tasted the sensitive flesh below her ear.
Lexi tilted her upper body back a little so she could begin unbuttoning his shirt. Her fingers trembled so badly she struggled over the simple task, and it didn’t help that Franco was tasting her neck now, whispering words in low, sexy Italian while his hands dealt with the removal of her nightie in one smooth, deft move that sent the scrap of silk pooling to her feet.
Naked in front of him for the first time in years, she froze for a few seconds and he did the same thing, even taking a step back so he could look at her, the simmering flame of his study lashing her skin with hot stings which tightened the swelling tips of her breasts so her nipples bloomed like crowns of dusky pink. Reaching out, he cupped a hand around one breast—gently, as if he was reacquainting himself with its size and its weight. Seeing the power of his fierce concentration, Lexi stood perfectly still and watched him as he stretched out the other hand and curved it around the gentle swell of her hip.
The air around them throbbed with sexual tension. His shirt was hanging open, the wedge of dark hair trailing over his front to the waistband of his undershorts a virile contrast to the deep bronze sheen of his skin. Her tongue moistened in her mouth with a desire to lean in and taste him, her fingers twitching by her sides in an anxious need to move away the shirt. She could see the jutting evidence of his manhood pressing against his undershorts, traced its powerful length with her eyes. Memories of what it was like to feel him deep inside her awoke with an excitement that held her gripped in its thrall.
As if he could tell what she was thinking he moved his hand to her stomach, then stroked downwards—and she shivered out a gasp of expectancy just before his fingertips sank into the triangular cloud of dusky curls. As he made that first fingertip dip it was as if he was laying claim to something he believed was totally his. She was hot and she was damp and her body welcomed his touch by clenching the muscles there, which he felt with a brief, tense smile of acknowledgement.
By mutual need they came together again—urgent, maybe even a little desperate, their lips fusing while she dealt with the shirt, then moved to hook her fingers into the waist of his shorts. Pushing them down his lean, smooth, tautly muscled flanks, she felt his tremor and then his gasp as she stroked her fingers along his length, then closed them around him. His fingers became buried in her hair again, so he could tilt back her head. Her lips were already parted and ready to receive the driving force of his kiss that carried them all the