Then it was her turn. She stroked her way over his firm flesh, heated by a renewed need herself as he sprang into vibrant life beneath her fingertips.
His eyes glittered as he realised what she was trying to do. ‘No,’ came the silken rebuttal, before he lifted her up to thrust into her over and over again, while her legs straddled him, her soft thighs pressing into the hard jut of his hips.
‘Giovanni!’ she gasped.
‘That’s my name,’ he agreed in a grim kind of voice, uncharacteristically feeling himself teetering on the brink of control, and resenting it even as he gloried in it. His mouth hardened as he reined in his desire.
Kate had never been made love to in a shower before, and the contrast between his hot, hard entry and the gushing water that flooded down on them only seemed to intensify her pleasure. She would have liked him to kiss her, but the confined space made kissing difficult. Maybe he liked that, she thought with a sudden wave of sadness—because kissing brought with it a certain kind of tenderness; but then he drove into her even harder and thought gave way to pure, beautiful sensation.
She opened her mouth at the moment of fulfilment and warm water rained into it, at the very same time as Giovanni dissolved with a low, rasping moan of completion.
His face looked darkly serious as he lifted her away from him, the blue eyes giving nothing away.
‘Are you always this generous a lover, cara?’ he asked sombrely, the deep voice sounding almost shaken.
She hid her face by bending to pick up the soap, which had flown from someone’s grip—hers or his, she couldn’t remember. His question seemed to imply that she carried on like this with hundreds of men—oh, if only he knew how small was the number of lovers in her life!
‘I hope so,’ she prevaricated, and saw his mouth tighten.
He wondered why it filled him with the white-hot heat of fury to imagine her like this with another man. Why should he have unrealistic expectations of a woman like this?
Anna had been a virgin, had known only him as her lover, and he had always held back just a little, for fear of shocking her.
Yet with Kate he was at his most inhibitedly rampant. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Novelty value, he told himself angrily, that was all it was. Two weeks of non-stop sex should be able to cure him of that.
But, in the meantime, they had run out of certain essential supplies.
‘Let me wash your hair for you, cara,’ he coaxed in velvet entreaty. ‘And then…”
‘Then?’ The question came out breathlessly, because, supper forgotten, all she wanted to do was to take him to her bed. What on earth was happening to her?
‘We need to go out.’
‘Out?’ she pouted.
He gave a low laug
h, and ran his finger over the swollen contours of her mouth, the laugh becoming one of delight when she nipped at the tip with her teeth like a tiny animal. ‘Yes, out, my beautiful, wanton Kate.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Very,’ he answered truthfully, because he had skipped lunch.
‘Well, I have plenty of food in. Champagne, too,’ she added hopefully, as an incentive.
He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He did not want to drink champagne with her. Why celebrate a fundamental flaw in his character, which he was only just discovering? That this woman had a certain power over him, that she had taken something from him which he had not intended to give? ‘But there is one vital provision we have run out of,’ he told her softly.
‘What?’
For answer he took her hand and guided it between his legs until it touched the silky surface of the rubber which was still in place.
‘We have used three already,’ he told her, on a silken boast.
She felt a detached feeling of disappointment as she let her head rest on his wet shoulder. Of course that was all he was thinking of—that was all they had ever shared, wasn’t it? ‘The chemist it is, then,’ she said, her voice muffled against his skin.
But he heard the disappointment, and frowned. He lifted her face and looked down into it, thinking how curiously vulnerable her bare, wet face seemed—and what a contrast to the firebrand she had been in his arms. ‘You want to have dinner, don’t you?’ he said softly. ‘So go and get ready. We’ll buy what we need and then I’ll take you out to eat.’
And Kate was unprepared for the great leap of excitement in her heart as she pulled the shower door open.