‘No, no, no, cara,’ he murmured, enjoying the way she writhed frustratedly beneath him. ‘A little while longer. Why not try…this instead…?’ and without warning he slipped inside her, seeing her eyes dilate as their flesh joined and he filled her.
He moved, slowly at first. Long, deep, agonisingly slow thrusts, and Kate felt so full of him that she felt as though her heart might burst.
He was playing with her, she thought almost bitterly. Demonstrating his control over her, while she, like a puppet, submitted willingly to the orchestrations of his body.
He did not kiss her. Just watched the mindless flutter of her eyes, the way the breath escaped from her parted lips in frenzied little sighs.
‘Open your eyes,’ he instructed softly.
She did, then almost wished she hadn’t—because there was not a single scrap of tenderness etched on that dark, beautiful face. Just a primitive kind of hunger, which she could see he was reining in with an effort. But succeeding. Oh, yes, he was certainly succeeding.
‘You have beautiful eyes,’ he whispered.
Was he trying to punish her, by making her wait? To pay her back for what he obviously blamed her for—getting him
into bed in the first place?
‘Tell me what it feels like,’ he instructed softly, and thrust deep inside her once more.
‘Heaven!’ she burst out, before she had time to think about the wisdom of her reply.
He gave a laugh then, a low, soft, mocking sound of triumph, but the triumph backfired on him when she began to move beneath him, changing the pace so irrevocably that he was caught up on an inexorable ascent towards mindless pleasure.
He gave a small moan as he felt power slip away from him, but the unwillingness of his surrender was quickly replaced by the stealthy warmth of abandonment. Abandonment?
No, even stronger than that. He was a man who had always lived his life by rules. And structure. So what was happening to him now?
The feeling which rocked him took him completely off-guard, and her own corresponding gasps of pleasure as she spasmed around him made him tip his head back in a disbelieving kind of wonder as he came and came and came, his seed spilling uselessly into the condom.
And then he rolled off her and gazed unseeingly at the ceiling.
He hadn’t known it could feel quite like that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GIOVANNI must have slept—fallen into an unusually deep, and dreamless, interlude. Only with consciousness did reality begin to chase strange images across his mind.
Red hair and green eyes, and a body which had taken him to paradise and back again. A feeling of powerlessness as he had climaxed. And that, inexplicably, he had found himself actually resenting the protection he wore. Had wanted no barrier between him and her slick, beguiling warmth.
He expelled a sigh and stirred, but he did not open his eyes. He needed to realign his thoughts. To work out just where he went from here.
Beside him Kate was awake, though pretending not to be. She had kept watch over him while he slept, like an anxious mother night-watching a fevered child. Only in sleep had his face relaxed. And in orgasm, she reminded herself as a dull warmth began to seep into her satiated blood.
In sleep she had been able to study him with an intensity she was certain he would not have tolerated had he been awake. And the sight of him had been endlessly fascinating.
The hard mouth had softened into a half-smile, giving his face an unthinkable illusion of vulnerability. The dark lashes which framed those dazzling blue eyes had been like two soft, ivory curves brushing the seamless olive of his skin. His jaw held more than a trace of darkness and she found herself wondering if he was the kind of man who had to shave morning and evening. Very probably.
She had resisted the desire to stroke a wondering fingertip all over the hard contours of his face—it was so beautiful in repose. She sighed, a sadness washing over her as she closed her eyes with a hopeless kind of yearning.
Giovanni’s eyes snapped open and he turned to look at her, unprepared for her wanton loveliness as she lay stretched out on her side facing him, her head pillowed on her arm, with the rich hair spilling all over the pale flesh of her upper body.
So glorious in her nakedness, he thought with a wrench. The long limbs and the tiny waist and the breasts which were so startlingly lush and heavy. Their rosy centres were peaking and he had to stifle the urge to reach out to cup one and gently circle the flat of his hand there. When he touched her he could not think straight, and he needed to think straight.
‘Kate?’ he said softly.
She effected to stir, and to stretch, carefully composing her face so that he would not see a woman who had been enslaved—by a man who treated her in such cavalier fashion. ‘Hello,’ she said, her voice as soft as his, as her eyelids fluttered open.
His blood pounded. Diu! One word and he wanted her all over again! All his good intentions fell by the wayside. ‘You want that we go to bed?’ he asked her lazily, his English unusually fractured by the stir of his senses. ‘Or shall we stay here?’