‘Sí?’ he whispered softly, but words failed her because he had moved his hand between her thighs and parted them.
She licked her lips feverishly as he moved his middle finger inside her thong.
And Giovanni’s breath escaped him on a long, almost helpless shudder as he felt the syrupy desire of her slicking against his skin, feeling her shudder beneath his touch, hearing her moan his name once more. Was she like this for every man? he wondered for one hot and fevered moment.
He moved his finger experimentally against her. And again. And again. Her moans increased, and the sound of her helpless little cries made him grow even harder, almost unbearably so.
‘I want you,’ she whispered.
He gave an almost cruel smile as he lifted his dark head to look down at her. He would make her beg. Women liked to beg. ‘Not yet,’ he told her, on a silky taunt.
‘Please.’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he repeated, on a low, provocative growl.
He wasn’t going to stop what he was doing, Kate realised…
He wasn’t going to stop…
And, to her utter disbelief, Kate felt the inexorable onslaught of fulfilment. The great tearing warmth of…of…
‘Giovanni!’ She said his name urgently. ‘Oh!’ She opened her eyes very wide. ‘This is the best!’ she gasped in astonishment. ‘I’m coming…’
He could see that for himself from the sudden stiffening of her limbs, the way her back arched, the increased slick against his fingers, and then the slow, shuddering spasms which made her cry out loud.
He waited until she was nearly done, and then he straddled her, two taut thighs on either side of her hips, and thrust into her while her body was still pulsing with pleasure.
Her eyes flew open at the renewed sensation. He was so very big. So huge that he filled her completely. But, more than that, it felt so right to have him inside her. As though all her life her body had been yearning to have Giovanni Calverri make love to her like this.
He moved. Over and over. And as he moved he kissed her, and she gave herself up to the sweetness of those kisses, not thinking, not even caring about whether this was right or wrong, because nothing had ever felt this good.
He wanted to prolong it, to make it last forever. He had always been able to do that. Even as a teenager, when the newness of physical pleasure had threatened to overwhelm him. But now he felt the stealthy steal of orgasm come to claim him before he was prepared for it. He tried to fight it. For a moment he almost managed it. But when he felt her begin to pulse around him once more he knew that he was lost.
‘Kate,’ he said almost brokenly, the first and only time he had said her name since their bodies had joined with such bitter-sweet communion.
And Kate wept with some strange, deep emotion against his bare shoulder as she came again, feeling him begin to shudder deep inside her, arms closing around him tightly as she wished that this night could never end.
Giovanni awoke to unfamiliar shadows, his senses leaping into perception in a split-second as he tried to work out just where he was.
Dear God!
There was a sleeping woman beside him, which in itself was not strange, but he knew immediately that this was different. Her scent was different. The long red hair which the night had made dark was different.
And the sex had been different, too. Beautifully and irrevocably different.
Ruthlessly he quashed the memory as his body betrayed him once more with the stirring of desire, and he slipped silently from the bed.
He was of a race that understood secrecy. And stealth—and he had no difficulty moving without sound around the silent room to locate his clothes and shoes, which he carried from the room.
In the bathroom he dressed, glancing only once in the mirror, but once was enough. The wild glitter in his eyes told its own story. As did the darkened contours of his mouth, where she had kissed him as if she were drowning, as if she couldn’t get enough of him.
His mouth twisted with self-contempt as he let himself noiselessly out of the flat into the crispness of the moonless summer night, and to where the black car was sitting reproachfully just as he had left it.
He looked up at the unlit windows of the flat as he turned the key and the engine flooded into powerful life, wondering whether she would appear, clutching a sheet perhaps, bewitching him with that pale and glorious body as she watched him drive away.
But the window remained empty, and relief coursed hotly through his veins, just as desire had heated them only hours earlier.
Two o’clock.