Knew just how to touch and tempt to send her hurtling towards the edge.
For a moment he was the master, the one in control. And then he felt her fingers on the towel, felt the gentle tug as she unwrapped him, followed by the breath of cool air on his flesh. And he remembered that she knew him too. And she used that knowledge as she covered him with her hand and took the control right back.
Her touch drew a thickened groan from him, an involuntary acknowledgement of what this woman did to him. The way they connected. It would have gone all the way. The way it had from their very first date. Once they started there was no stopping, their mutual passion totally beyond control. But the time wasn't theirs and as usual it was his phone that came between them— that small, seemingly innocent gadget that always seemed to rip holes in their time together.
They froze, locked in intimacies that had come so naturally and which now seemed so shocking and inappropriate.
With a soft curse, Rico sprang to his feet and reached for the towel, securing it quickly before answering the phone with one impatient stab of his finger.
CHAPTER FOUR
'She's awake?' Stasia struggled to sit up, her tangled hair forming a curtain over her flushed, mortified face. How could she have done that? Her whole body hummed with sexual frustration and utter humiliation.
She hadn't even meant to follow him into the room, but then she'd seen him slumped on the sofa looking utterly done in and something had ached inside her. And that same something had made her cross the room and offer comfort. But she should have known that it wasn't safe.
One touch.
One touch and she'd lain down for him like the pathetic groupie she was never going to be. Did she have no pride? No will-power? No sense of self-preservation? The way to get over Riccardo Crisanti was not by allowing him unlimited access to her body.
But being back in the villa, where they'd been so blissfully happy, had made her vulnerable. Weepy. Weak and pathetic. And when she'd seen him, so gloriously naked, a man designed to tempt woman, she'd been unable to maintain the angry front.
'She recovered consciousness five minutes ago.' There was no missing the tension in his voice and she suspected that it wasn't all due to concern for his sister. She wasn't blind. She could see the proud jut of his arousal under the totally insubstantial towel. Knew that he was still throbbing with unfulfilled need.
As she was.
The sexual frustration was so agonizingly acute that she could have screamed with it.
He looked at her, his dark jaw set hard. 'We need to get back to the hospital.' His eyes slid to the swell of her creamy breasts, streaked red from the scrape of his stubble. He turned away as if he couldn't stand the reminder of his own weakness. 'Cover yourself.'
'Damn you, Rico!' Her voice was hoarse as she struggled to do up buttons with shaking fingers. 'I won't let you blame me for this!'
How dared he look at her like that when he'd been every bit as responsible as she for what had flared up between them?
'You came out here dressed only in a shirt.'
'You were naked!'
His gaze was hard. 'Perhaps you think that offering sex makes me more inclined towards forgiveness.'
Offering sex?
'I don't need your forgiveness, Rico—' her voice was hoarse '—but you may well need mine. Get out.'
They glared at each other, neither prepared to take responsibility for the fact that they had a complete inability to be together and not make love. Both refusing to acknowledge the fact that the sexual chemistry between them was such a powerful force that it was outside their control, the pull between them as natural as breathing.
'Willingly.' He stared at her for a moment longer, a tiny pulse beating in his hard jaw, his eyes dangerously dark as he punched a number into his phone and ordered the car to be brought round. 'Get dressed. We're leaving in five minutes.'
And with that he strode out of the room, giving her a final view of his broad bronzed shoulders and long muscular legs.
For a moment Stasia just sat there staring after him, despising herself for wishing he'd turn round, come back to her and finish what he'd started.
She gave a groan and resisted the temptation to drum her heels into the sofa.
At that particular moment she didn't know who she hated more. Rico, for losing his ice-cool control whenever he came near her or herself, for wanting him every bit as much as he clearly wanted her.
Her only consolation was that Rico hated losing control almost as much as she did. And if she was suffering then there was no doubt that he was suffering too.
And at the moment she really, truly, wanted him to suffer. If he felt only one portion of the agony that she was feeling then that would go some way towards satisfying her sense of justice.