What had prompted his strange sense of unease and the fleeting pang of some long-forgotten pain when he had been holding the baby? Thoughts of his mother and her death? Or was it merely that bringing a woman made everything seem so different? He was being treated differently, as if having a partner made him seem more human and approachable.
But it wasn’t like that! Lucy was here as his lover and his distraction—and not just for him. As his partner she would send out a powerful message to the conniving matrons of Mardivino who were always so intent on manufacturing introductions to their precious daughters!
Hadn’t he always longed for a relationship with a woman who thought as a man did? Who enjoyed the good things, like sex and laughter, and didn’t produce the whole gamut of female emotions which made life so impossibly dreary and tortuous?
Was that what was troubling him? The fact that she had started coming over all gooey-eyed when she saw Leo? Or that she’d started looking a little too much at home? The trouble was that you got an image of a woman in your head, and when she started acting outside that image it made you feel you didn’t know her.
He stared across the table at her. She was giggling at something the Englishman was whispering to her. His mouth hardened.
That was the whole point, surely? That he didn’t really know her—and neither did he want to. That was what killed the excitement—once you started getting into that trap of caring and sharing and analysing every last damned thing. Or rather, when they did. Guido had never met a woman he could spend time with, day in and day out, in that parlous state they called commitment.
Lucy turned her head to look at him then, and very deliberately he ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. He saw her eyes darken and waited to see what she would do next, and he felt a hot jerk of sensual frustration to see her coolly turn her head and continue to talk to the man beside her.
After that the evening became an ordeal to be endured. He could barely wait to get her alone again, and yet he knew he had to—and matters were made even more exasperating by the fact that she seemed to be taking her time over everything.
It seemed to take for ever until he could get near her, and when he did he dipped his head to her ear. ‘Shall we slip away now?’ he suggested silkily.
Lucy looked at him askance, though inside she was simmering. Ever since they had visited the Nursery he had virtually ignored her—apart from the occasional studied sexual stare. And now, at the very first opportunity, he wanted to whisk her away to bed. He hadn’t even asked her to dance!
‘Why, that would look terribly rude, Guido!’ she reprimanded him softly. ‘What are you thinking of? The band have only just started playing and I’ve had at least three offers to dance!’
He’d bet she had! He didn’t like the tone of her voice, and neither did he like what she was saying. Had a few hours in the Palace been enough to make her forget her place in it? ‘I don’t need advice from you on how to behave in my own home!’ he snapped.
‘Well, I think you do!’ she retorted sweetly. Let him stew! Let him… ‘Oh—oh,’ she gasped, as he pulled her into his arms without warning, his hard body pressing against the pliant softness of hers. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like?’ he questioned as he slid his hand over her back, possessive against the bare skin, his fingertips tracing tiny unseen circles on her flesh which set her shivering. ‘I’m claiming the first dance.’
Claiming. It sounded territorial—let’s face it, it was territorial. So why was she letting him stroke her like that? Was she powerless to resist him, or simply unwilling? Close call.
Her head tipped back as if it was too heavy for her neck, and she could feel his warm breath close to her skin. ‘Guido,’ she said weakly, ‘you must stop this.’
‘But I’m not doing anything,’ he said, as he pressed his hard heat against her.
‘You know exactly what you’re doing,’ she gasped softly. ‘You’re using the dance to seduce me.’
God, yes. He could smell the desire on her skin, and he breathed it in like a man who had been drowning. ‘And you don’t like it?’
She opened her eyes very wide then, aware that her breath was coming in short, frantic bursts—like someone who had been running in a long, long race. How on earth was it possible to feel overwhelming passion at the same time as the heavy, stone-like ache of her heart at the realisation that this was what he wanted from her. Probably all he wanted from her.
But he had tortured her, so now let him have a taste of his own medicine. ‘Oh, I love it,’ she whispered. ‘But it’s making me wish that no one else was around. So that you could slide my expensive dress up…’
‘And…and why would I want to do that?’ he questioned shakily.
‘To find out whether or not I was wearing any knickers, of course.’
‘Aren’t you?’ he groaned.
‘Well, yes—I am, actually. But we could soon dispose of those, couldn’t we?’ Fractionally, she pushed her breasts against him, and now it was his turn to moan. ‘And then you could lift me up, wrap my legs around your waist, and we could do it here…here…right here and right now, Guido. Because that’s what you’d like, isn’t it?’
He closed his eyes, because now the hot jerk of desire was threatening to render him incapable of doing anything—except maybe acting out her outrageous fantasy. ‘Can you feel what you’ve done to me?’ he bit out.
Could she? Lucy swallowed. ‘Er, yes.’
‘So how the hell am I going to get off this dance floor.’
‘You think of something so abhorrent that it completely freaks you out and makes you lose all that desire in an instant.’
There was a long pause. Oh, that was easy! He thought of marriage, and suddenly he was right back where he wanted to be. In control.