CHAPTER EIGHT
‘YOUKNOW, TECHNICALLY that’s a revision, not a lesson,’ she pointed out, pushing up on one elbow when her breathing had returned to normal. He grinned from between her legs, before pulling himself up the bed, his body over hers, his arms braced on either side of her head as his full weight pressed her into the mattress.
‘Complaining?’
‘Not at all,’ she assured him huskily. ‘Just eager for advancement.’
‘An A-plus student,’ he murmured, nibbling her ear lobe. Olivia held him right where he was, his body so heavenly against hers, his proximity launching a kaleidoscope of butterflies in her abdomen. She could feel his arousal and yet she had no experience, no knowledge, and so, despite his obvious physical awareness of her, worry permeated her fog of pleasure, so her eyes flickered away from his, filled with uncertainty.
‘What is it?’
She glanced back at him with a start. Was she so easy to read?
‘Yes,’ he responded to her unasked question. ‘I can tell when something is bothering you. Your face is very expressive.’
‘I know.’ She expelled a soft sigh. ‘I’ve tried to change that.’
‘It’s your eyes. They give everything away.’
She grimaced. ‘Perhaps a pair of very dark sunglasses,’ she suggested thoughtfully.
‘Or, you could tell me what’s on your mind.’
‘Well,’ she pressed her palms flat to his chest. ‘Actually, that would be you.’
Triumph shaped his features. ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
‘Not in a good way.’
‘I see.’
‘I just...’
He waited, and when she didn’t continue, prompted her gently. ‘Yes?’
‘Is there something wrong with me?’ she blurted out, then pulled her hands from his chest purely to cover her face and the eyes he’d just said he could read like open books.
‘Wrong with you? What the hell do you mean?’
‘It’s just, you seem to be able to touch me and kiss me and make me feel a thousand and one things, then walk away again. Don’t you...want me?’
He swore in Italian, his eyes boring into hers. ‘Look at me, Olivia. Look at my face. Do you not see the tension there? Do you not realise that it is taking every ounce of my willpower to take this slowly, to make your first time what it ought to be?’
Her heart stammered. ‘But it’s just sex,’ she whispered.
‘No, it is your first time having sex. After me, you may make love to whomever you want, and at whatever speed you want. With them, it will be “just sex”. But with me, and for your first time, it is different. Special. Even when we have both agreed it means nothing, it means something because you have not done this before. If this were about what I wanted, and what I wanted only, I would have made love to you in the elevator in Positano.’
Her breath squeezed from her lungs. ‘Seriously?’
‘You think I didn’t want you even then?’
He dropped his head, kissing her lips gently. ‘You think I didn’t want you the second I saw you at that damned party? I watched you and wanted you, even before I knew you were looking for me, cara.’
She lowered her gaze.
‘So do not think for even one moment that I am simply walking away from you. I am torturing myself by waiting.’
‘Torturing us both,’ she promised throatily.