Powerful emotion glinted in his eyes and it called to Amy like a log fire on a cold day. For all his cool sophistication, which if anything made Amy more wary of him, Sev was clearly a guy capable of deep, strong feeling and she was impressed by the strength of his attachment to his sister and his protectiveness. Sev, she acknowledged, wasn’t quite what he might seem to be on his gilded and polished surface. He wasn’t all show and gloss alone.
‘No, they shouldn’t have been at risk,’ she agreed. ‘But I assume you’re planning to make sure itdoesn’thappen again.’
Sev jerked his chin down in a strong nod of confirmation, confident that after the party Lawson would be keen to stay well away from him and his sister, rather than risk further messy revelations in a social climate that admired good judgement and caution and punished the indiscreet. He urged Amy into the car, his keen gaze locked to the glow of admiration in her bright violet eyes. Hunger as fierce as a sudden storm gripped him in an overwhelming surge, arousal pulsing through his lean, powerful frame.
‘Staywith me tonight,’ Sev breathed in a driven undertone, fiercely reluctant to part with her, wondering if it had been sharing his sister’s unhappy experience with Amy that had made him feel closer to her.
CHAPTER FIVE
SURPRISEANDPLEASUREconsumed Amy because she immediately believed that Sev had to be experiencing the same intense sense of connection that she was and for the very first time sexual intimacy struck her as the most natural next step in a relationship. Her face flushed as a wave of heat ran through her entire body and he bent his head down and kissed her.
Exhilaration tugged at the very core of her, making her slender thighs tremble. Her lips clung to his until the ragged breath he drew in after that first kiss fanned her cheek. He lifted his dark head, his brilliant gaze glittering like stardust in a night sky. ‘I want you so much I ache,mia piccola.’
And to hell with all common sense and restraint, Sev thought rawly. Sex would be no big deal for her. Why would it be? Why was he making such a heavy production out of following his natural instincts? She wanted him as much as he wanted her! His shrewd brain well aware that he was talking himself into what he was unaccountably desperate to do, he tasted the ripe sweetness of her peachy lips and lost himself in her honey-sweet response. For such a very small package, he acknowledged, she packed one hell of a punch in the passion stakes, because he didn’t think he hadeverbeen so aroused.
Amy had never experienced passion of that nature, kisses that burned and just weren’tenough, the firm stroke of masculine hands over her still-clothed figure inspiring a startling spasm of frustration that he wasnotactually touching her bare skin. The feverish rush of sensation blew her every clear thought into outer space because she had never dreamt, never even hoped, that any guy could make her feel anything as strongly as Sev did. It was mutual: it felt...right. Her heart was pounding inside her chest, her pulse racing.
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say with unusual confidence. ‘Yes, I’ll stay.’ And after she had spoken, she could barely believe she had made that decision.
It wasn’t as though she had been saving her virginity for marriage, she reasoned, it was only that she had been waiting for someone who made her feel special, and Sevdid. There was so much she liked about him as well: his having given a rescue animal a good home, his loving, caring support of his sister, his complete indifference to her social standing and income level in comparison to his own. All those traits had huge appeal for Amy and made him almost a perfect specimen of true masculinity in her eyes.
Sev closed a taut arm round her slight figure and drew her close, breathing in slow and deep in relief to steady himself. His zip was biting into his arousal. He was the closest he had ever been, or ever eventhoughtto be, to having sex in his limo. Tacky, grubby, he censured himself, incredulous at that powerful prompting that had come at him out of nowhere like one of those stupid ideas that occurred to a horny teenager,notan adult male. Amy was coming home with him for the night and he could relax...
Amy settled into the reassuring warmth of his embrace and struggled to settle her over-anxious brain, which was still shooting thoughts at her at an almost hysterical speed because Amy didn’t usually make hasty decisions about anyone or anything. Having to be more independent from an early age had made her cautious and careful beyond her years. But in her heart of hearts, where she had never had reason to probe before, sheknewthat she was falling in love with Sev, with a man whose surname she couldn’t even spell, she scolded herself ruefully. The strength of her feelings unnerved her a little but she was determined not to be a scaredy-cat, protecting herself from imagined dangers even when she saw no just cause to behave that way: Sev had somehow taught her to trust him at a very early stage and she didn’t question that gut instinct.
Long fingers tilted up her chin. She gazed up into dark golden eyes that melted her to liquid honey. He closed his mouth over hers again and she quivered, her entire body lighting up as he tasted her, worrying at her lower lip with the blunt edge of his teeth, teasing and awakening with the ravishing plunge of his tongue. It was wildly arousing and wildly frustrating at the same time and she was in a daze by the time he tugged her out of the car.
The next thing she knew, she was in the dimly lit hall and Sev was urging her back against a wall and claiming her swollen mouth again. It was electrifying, the pulse between her slender thighs rising to a dulled insistent ache that was maddening.
‘Dio...you burn me up,’ Sev growled, reaching down to lift her legs and push between them, that sudden physical connection striking her like a red-hot coal as his lean, muscular body pressed against the humming heat at the heart of her.
In an equally sudden movement, he bent and swept her off her feet into his arms, startling her. ‘You can’t carry me!’ she gasped in consternation.
‘Of course, I can.’ Sev laughed as he mounted the stairs with ease. ‘You’re tiny and you weigh next to nothing. Maybe I’ve been waiting all my adult life for a woman I can carry around as easily as a parcel!’
‘I wouldn’t say you’re very good at waiting for anything,’ Amy mumbled, yet she was somehow humbled by the obvious truth that he was as eager for her as she was for him. It had to be one of those weird sexual-attraction conundrums because she still could not quite believe that a man as hot and beautiful as Sev could feel the same about her as she did about him. It was a miracle, she thought in a daze, a wonderful, magical development in a life that had inured her more to disappointments than rewards.
Magical, she was still reckoning as he tumbled her down on a massive bed in a huge, beautifully decorated room. As he dimmed the lights she scanned her surroundings with appreciation, admiring the subtle colour scheme, the silken folds of the drapes and the plain contemporary furniture, but she was also a little intimidated by that reminder of what vastly different worlds they inhabited... For goodness’ sake, she lived in a converted storeroom and cooked on a one-ring mini oven! Her world was workaday and ordinary and just paying the bills was a struggle. His world was utterly alien to her own. She wasn’t foolish enough to assume that his wealth automatically gave him a carefree existence, but she was very much aware that she really had no idea how his life operated. And that bothered her because she wanted to understand everything about Sev, indeed was experiencing an almost obsessional need to learn every tiny detail there was to know.
‘All of a sudden you look so deadly serious and worried,’ Sev remarked, his shrewd scrutiny noting the tension etched in her delicate features. She was so beautiful he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He marvelled that he had ever believed that he would be able to resist her allure, but then such an irresistible attraction to a woman was absolutely new to him and all the more exciting for that, he acknowledged, peeling off his jacket and casting it aside before bending down to flip off her canvas shoes and tug off her socks, exposing tiny feet.
A little unnerved by that bold approach, Amy sat up. ‘I’m not worried about anything,’ she lied, because she wasn’t prepared to tell him that he was going to be her first lover. He might find that prospect a turn-off, might even think her immature because most women her age had experimented more than she had. But yes, she was nervous, horribly self-conscious and afraid of making a wrong move of some kind. Trying to fake cool and casual didn’t come easily to her.
‘You’re still wearing too many clothes,’ Sev purred, coming down on the bed to run down the zip on her jeans and then vaulting off again to tug her jeans off.
Amy shivered, suddenly cold in the warm room, feeling the goose bumps of nerves rise all over her exposed skin. One knee on the bed, Sev closed his hands round her narrow ribcage and lifted her up to him to kiss her again, tasting her soft lips with unalloyed hunger. A little sound escaped from low in her throat and it drove his excitement even higher. He eased off her sweater with more care than he felt like utilising, struggling to get a grip on his control. Her breasts were plump, luscious swells in lace-edged cups and he snatched in a ragged breath, leaning back from her to tear his shirt off.
Lean muscles rippled as he moved, exposing a sculpted chest worthy of a men’s health magazine, and the earthy, musky and masculine scent of him assailed her nostrils. He smelled so incredibly good that she wanted to bury her nose in him, and she flushed, suddenly achingly vulnerable, her eyes locking anxiously to his.
‘You have the most amazing eyes,piccolomia,’ he growled and her bra fell away, allowing his hands to rise up and cup the full firm mounds, his thumbs rubbing over the straining pink nipples, provoking a gasp from her parted lips. ‘But why do you look so scared?’
‘I’m not scared!’ Amy parried. ‘Where did you get that idea?’
Beneath his palm her heart was racing like a trapped bird’s. He pressed her back against the pillows and closed his mouth hungrily to a pouting nipple, sucking on the tender tip until her spine came up off the bed and she squirmed. It felt as if a hot wire were tightening inside her pelvis, she thought dizzily, sending every pulse in her trembling body onto high alert. Long fingers smoothed up her inner thigh.
‘Your skin feels like silk,’ Sev groaned, struggling out of what remained of his clothes while he explored her tender breasts with his mouth and she writhed beneath him, her response sending his raging arousal even higher.
All of a sudden, nothing mattered to Sev but getting inside her, sating that overwhelming hunger driving him. He tugged away the last barrier between them, discovering that she was wet and ready for him, but at the last minute he reminded himself that he specialised in being a slow, unselfish lover. He shimmied down the bed and spread her slender thighs, licking the tender entrance he couldn’t wait to breach.