With his lips he traced the pointed buds of her nipples and a wave of sensitised reaction rippled through her, lighting up the warmth blossoming between her legs. She couldn’t stay still as he traced the damp swollen folds there with one skilled hand and used the other to make her quiver and whimper as he sucked hard on the pouting peaks of her breasts.
‘What is it about you?’ he muttered in a roughened undertone. ‘You turn me on faster than anyone else ever did.’
‘Stop talking,’ she framed shakily, parting her thighs round his lean hips, tugging her knees back to encourage him. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘I’m trying to take this slow,bambola,’ Gaetano reproved thickly.
Lara uttered a breathy little cry of impatience and shifted against him, quite deliberately sliding her heated core over his jutting erection.
Gaetano bit out a groan and gripped her slender hips to raise her to him. Mere seconds later, he was exactly where she wanted him to be, reintroducing her to sensations she had almost forgotten. The stretching fullness of his invasion, the glorious friction of his retreat and advance. Wound round him like a vine, she moaned in delight, hands skating down his long smooth back in appreciation as she angled up to him for more. With a ragged sound fleeing his parted lips he stared down at her with joy, speeding up, finally pounding into her welcoming body until what she hadn’t believed was that important happened anyway, grabbing her up in a great storm of corporeal sensation. The world behind her lowered eyelids flashed white and her slender frame arched for a timeless moment before fireworks flared inside her and she went incandescent, her whole body flooding with blissful pleasure.
With Lara still wrapped round him, Gaetano released a sigh of immense relaxation and snaked out a hand to lift his phone. She listened to him ordering champagne and raised her brows.
‘Champagne and strawberries?’ she whispered. ‘Are we still pretending we’re on a movie set?’
‘No, we’re celebrating. I’ve got my very hot wife back in my bed,’ he told her smoothly, flashing her a triumphant grin. ‘Mission accomplished.’
‘I suppose I could raise a glass to my even hotter husband,’ Lara murmured, clashing with glittering dark eyes that left her breathless.
It was an effort to get out of bed after the champagne and strawberries and she felt more than a little giggly in the aftermath. Only her concern for Freddy and what he might be having for lunch, nanny or not, roused her from the bed, in spite of Gaetano’s attempt to keep her there. She felt happy, incredibly, extravagantly happy, and feeling like that after spending so long just bumping along the bottom of life while being a working mother also felt strange. And she almost felt guilty. Why guilt? she questioned herself as she stepped out of the shower that Gaetano had just vacated. Didn’t she feel that she deserved to be happy? Or was she just afraid that somehow something or somebody would steal that happiness away from her again?
As she emerged from the bathroom, fully clothed and rather flushed and unsure of herself in the aftermath of the life-changing decision she had reached at the speed of light, she heard male voices, one of them Gaetano’s, in the next room because the bedroom door wasn’t fully closed. Breathing in deep, she returned to the sitting room to retrieve her shoes. The first thing she noticed was that Gaetano’s companion was Dario and he dealt her a shaken look before glancing away, swiftly wiping all expression from his bearded face. Lara reddened because it was very obvious that she and Gaetano must have shared a bed again but, on another level, she was pleased by Dario’s astonishment. Close friend Dario might be but, plainly, Gaetano had not confided in his lawyer before asking his estranged wife to reconcile with him. It was a relief to know that there were limits to that friendship.
‘I’m just going to check on Freddy,’ Lara murmured, ducking past both men, who appeared to be locked into some sort of serious discussion. ‘And then I’ll need to see about picking up Iris from school... Iris, my friend Alice’s little girl.’
‘No, you had better hear this first,’ Gaetano countered with compressed lips. ‘I’m afraid the press have got the jump on us and are presently besieging the house where you live.’
Lara looked at him in horror. ‘Oh, my word...’
‘If you give me your keys, my security team will remove your belongings and my son’s to bring them here.’
‘I can’t just walk out of my whole life like that,’ Lara began shakily, her eyes huge in her pale face. ‘Alice depends on me for childcare, for goodness’ sake. I can’t leave my best friend in the lurch—’
‘It’s not a problem,bambola mia,’ Gaetano cut in smoothly. ‘Alice and Iris should come here for tonight at least until the press have given up. They’ll be perfectly comfortable here and we have a nanny who is capable of taking on any childcare concerns you may have.Relax.’
Inadvertently, Lara glanced at Dario, somewhat comforted by the reality that he had only travelled from shocked to seemingly stunned into silence while Gaetano outlined his solution to their predicament.
Gaetano glanced at Dario. ‘Have an announcement of our marriage and Freddy’s birth released at home and then here in the UK. What is his birthdate?’
Lara told him and Dario dug out a notebook and made a note of it.
‘We no longer have to be discreet,’ Gaetano informed his employee.
‘Yes, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?’ the other man enquired stiffly, his formality pronounced.
‘Lara, give Dario your keys and he will pass them on.’
‘I’ll go with them.’
‘To be engulfed by a scrum of paparazzi when you’ve never faced that challenge before?’ Gaetano prompted drily. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I’ll phone Alice, ask her to go home and oversee the removal of our stuff if she can.’ Lara crossed the corridor into the nursery where Freddy was sitting at a little table cheerfully eating a lunch of finger foods while the nanny, a youthful smiling brunette, supervised him.
‘Prince Freddy is very sociable.’ Standing up, the young woman approached her and extended her hand politely. ‘I’m Ellie Ross. I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are—’
‘I’m Freddy’s mother, Lara,’ Lara admitted in a stifled undertone after hearing her son labelled in such a manner as she dug into the bag she had abandoned to find her phone.
She moved back into the sitting room where Gaetano was now sitting at a desk with Dario still hovering. ‘IsFreddy a prince?’