Gaetano burst out laughing. ‘I love the way you find fault with me.’
Black lashes dipping low over piercing eyes, he scooped her up into his arms. ‘It is much easier to kiss you lying down,bambola mia,’ he explained.
‘Is that your excuse?’ Lara was thinking that Gaetano had never had the smallest problem in communicating his needs. He was innately powerful, persuasive and driven to succeed.
His stunning eyes flared down into hers. ‘Do I need one?’
‘No.’
Her heart raced as he claimed her parted lips ravenously with his own, his tongue delving deep as he carried her indoors to the blessed cool. That electrifying shock effect lit up every nerve ending in her body. She trembled against him as he rested her down on a bed and joined her there to continue kissing her with driving hunger. Nothing had ever felt so good or so necessary as the restoration of that physical connection.
As they both paused to draw breath, Lara looked up at him anxiously. ‘I don’t want to be asking you awkward questions about what happened in your life while we were apart. I know I walked out on you...as you see it. I accept that...morally speaking, you felt that you were free to do whatever you liked with other women.’
Gaetano stared down at her with troubled dark eyes. ‘I never felt that way. I knew I was married. I knew I wasn’t free. I don’t cheat, Lara. My mother cheated on my father and a couple of Vittorio’s girlfriends cheated on him. It’s painful and humiliating. I haven’t been with anyone but you since the day we exchanged our vows,’ he admitted tautly.
Lara gazed back at him in shock and surprise and a great floodtide of relief washed through her, her aquamarine eyes glazing with the sheen of emotional tears. ‘I didn’t expect you to be faithful.’
‘But Iwas,’ he asserted levelly.
‘And I was too,’ she whispered shakily.
‘I wouldn’t let myself ask you that question.’ Gaetano released his breath on an audible hiss. ‘But I thank you for making that choice.’
That quickly, Gaetano felt as though he wasallhers again. There was no ghost of Antonella or any other woman to come between them and make her wonder about comparisons and feel inadequate. Her arms closed round his lean muscular frame, hands smoothing down over his shirt-clad muscular back. ‘I can’t really convey in words how much that means to me. I made a false assumption. My expectations were too low.’
‘I’m far from perfect.’
‘Iknow.’
A faint smile tugged at the corners of his shapely mouth. ‘You’re supposed to tell me I’m perfect, not agree that I’m not.’
‘You value honesty,’ she reminded him softly, shifting and flexing every muscle to roll him over. ‘So, now I shall tell you that you’re wearing far too many clothes...’
Lara sat up and embarked on his shirt buttons, plucking them loose, spreading her hands across his bronzed and muscular torso, shimmying down the bed to let her lips follow that same trail. His fingers laced into the tumble of her hair as she ran down his zip and then, without warning, he lifted up again from his prone position and settled her back from him.
‘I can’t wait,’ he groaned. ‘I’m like a teenager with you, always frantic to be inside you...’
His frank admission sent a surge of need hurtling through her at storm-force potency and reawakened memories. Gaetano grabbing her in the middle of the day, powered by that simmering passion she couldn’t resist, confessing his impatience, apologising, almost embarrassed by the strength of his desire for her and then taking her to orgasmic heaven at record speed.
He was wrenching his jeans down and she helped him, sitting up then too to peel her sundress over her head, laugh as he detached her bra to lift appreciative hands towards her freed breasts and then, with a groan of regret, abandon them to remove the last item that blocked her body from his. That feverish frantic pace was achingly familiar. In the midst of it, she kissed him with joy bubbling up through her.
He flattened her to the pillows with the power of his response, a hungry growl rippling through his chest as he rearranged her to his satisfaction. ‘Ieven messed up in bed with you,’ he husked half under his breath. ‘You never got the cool version of me.’
‘Did you hear me object?’
She angled her hips up to him as he leant back from her to don protection. She lay back against the pillows, her body throbbing with readiness. He entered her fast and deep and her body jerked at the rush of pure pleasure. His raw passion, his innate intensity, was one of the things she loved most about him. He drove her out of her mind with desire and broke through her every inhibition with ease. Excitement climbed as fast as his lethally effective pace and energy. She reached her peak equally fast, clenching and convulsing around him before breaking into a thousand pieces and floating back to earth, winded and shaken by the power of the experience.
Gaetano hugged her so tightly without being prompted to do so that she almost yelped and then he relaxed his hold and released her from his weight while retaining an arm round her to keep her close. Her very bones hummed with contentment.
‘The worst thing was not being able to find you,’ he admitted abruptly, disconcerting her by raising that particular topic. ‘It wasn’t until you were gone that I realised how very little you had ever told me about yourself. I knew your father died when you were nine and that you were adopted and that your mother moved around a lot but that was literally it. And it wasn’t enough, anywhere near enough, to track you down.’
‘My background felt kind of sleazy in comparison to yours.’
‘But you didn’t know my background when we first met.’
‘Your accent, the obvious level of your education, those things gave it away for you and I had my educational years basically stolen from me,’ she volunteered ruefully. ‘I had a good childhood and great parents until Dad died and then everything I took for granted just disintegrated. Mum couldn’t seem to cope without Dad. Every time Mum broke up with her latest man, we had to make a fresh start. And every time I was dragged out of school and put into a new one, which was incredibly disruptive.’
‘I had no idea.’