Far From Perfect (15 page)

Tiptoeing, she crept towards the bed, then tweaked up the covers and slithered inside. Not too easy when she too was swathed in one of the hotel’s supremely thick toweling robes. But on sneaking a surreptitious peak at Nick’s sleeping face, she saw no sign that she’d disturbed him. His carved, elegant features remained still and tranquil.

Mission accomplished
, Anna told herself, acknowledging a vague sense of disappointment. Had she wanted him to wake? To see her recovered and restored to at least some semblance of attractiveness, and then find her irresistible?

Don’t be an idiot. That way lies madness.

But good sense and rationality had never been a key part of the equation where her dealings with Nick were concerned.

Still, she had to get back to sleep and try and ignore the fact he was there. Even though that was difficult, very difficult. Since that one night at Villa Rosa, she’d never ever shared her bed with anyone.

Eyes closed, she turned her back on him, preparing for the long struggle required to quit wakefulness. For a few seconds, all was quiet, all was perfectly still, and then with a suddenness that made Anna’s heart lurch beneath her ribs, the bed shifted and a hand settled oh so lightly on her shoulder.

“How do you feel, Anna? Any better now?”

Nick’s voice, usually so crisp and incisive, was blurred around the edges from sleep, and his fluid Italian accent sounded more pronounced than usual. Anna trembled as his long fingers flexed lightly on her terry-clad shoulder. Almost reluctantly, she rolled over in bed to face him.

“Yes. A lot better, thanks. The pill worked a treat. It always does.”

The light was faint, but Nick’s eyes were luminous, even in semi-shadow.

“
Bene.
”

Even just the two syllables told her he was fully awake now, all fragments of the sleepiness of a moment ago completely dispersed. Nick eased himself up on one elbow, and the hand that had touched her shoulder now settled with infinite gentleness on her recently cleansed cheek.

“
Bene
,” he repeated. His blue eyes were almost navy as he looked down on her, but still dazzling.

“Thanks for looking after me,” whispered Anna. Her every nerve was screaming, yet oddly, it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. She felt as if she were teetering on a precipice, but the gulf that stretched beneath her wasn’t some horrid, dreaded pit. Instead, a warm and delicious paradise beckoned. If only she dared jump.

“I’m sorry I snarled at you,” she went on, mesmerized by the sight of him above her, looming but not threatening. “It wasn’t very gracious of me when you’d been so kind.”

Long, long eyelashes flicked down and then up.

“But it was most likely my fault you had the headache in the first place. And my handling of the situation this evening could have been subtler. Martin Johnson is a decent enough man.” He paused, the slightest of smiles quirking his full lower lip. “Not right for you, of course, but still decent.”

“Yes, he is,” Anna said quickly, suddenly not wanting to think about any other man but the one in bed with her again after all this time. “But still, I should have shown more gratitude…for you getting me this room and all.”

What was going on behind those eyes? Was he about to take that leap too?

“
Molto grazie
, Nick,” she murmured, feeling his fingertips burning against her cheek.

“
Prego
.”

Was he moving towards her? Closing in?

Impatience bubbled up. She lifted a hand of her own and curved it against the hard, uncompromising line of his jaw, then around the strong line of his neck to the back of his skull.

There was no need to exert pressure, because he was already lowering his mouth towards hers.

“Are we friends again, then?”

She felt the words against her lips in a feather-light touch and experienced the most piercing shaft of bittersweet sadness.

Friends, yes… They were special friends. As intimate as friends could be. But to Nick, they would never be more, because he didn’t want that. Perhaps, would never need it. But Anna did. She wanted and needed love—love from Nick—yet tonight she would accept this, the closest approximation, because she had enough love in her heart for the both of them.

“Yes,” she gasped fiercely, giving him his answer, but only managing the single syllable before his kiss overpowered her and stole her ability to speak completely.

Chapter Seven

Exploring, Anna slid her fingertips down the strong column of Nick’s neck and throat, then lower, between the thick, toweling lapels of his robe, to travel over his smooth, broad chest.

His skin was hot, and like satin, oiled satin overlaying sculpted, hard-packed muscle. She hardly dare touch him he was so precious to her, yet her delicate forays evoked a sudden, thrilling response.

A low, murmured growl. Fierce Italian utterances that she didn’t understand, despite her fair command of the language, were magical against her lips before his tongue moved into her mouth and spoke even more powerfully and evocatively than words ever could.

It wasn’t just her mouth she opened to him, but everything that she was. Impatient, she pulled at his robe and her own, getting the fluffy cloth into a tangle. But Nick’s deft hands intervened, performing the task effortlessly, removing the barriers between them. Then he pressed down on her so they were body to body, skin to skin, and groin to groin.

Anna gasped around the possessing invasion of his tongue. Dear Lord, how could she have forgotten? The heat and hardness of him was potent and miraculous against her belly, pressing against the juncture of her thighs. Not yet demanding entrance, but simply letting her know him and feel him and anticipate him—so she would be ready.

Unable to prevent herself, she surged against him, glorying the supreme maleness of his hard body, the potent majesty that moved against her in return.

“Ah,
piccolina
,” he breathed, his voice ragged as he freed her mouth and moved his own lower, strafing kisses across her cheek, her jaw and her throat, tasting and nipping.

Anna had always believed that she had every second of that night four years ago seared into her memory. But memory could play tricks, and patterns in the brain were not the real man.

The real Nick, not the phantasm molded by dreams and anguish, was like a force of nature against her, so hungry, kissing her with both assured skill and yet a manic desperation that matched her own. As his lips travelled, moving over her collar bone, then on and down to the slopes of her breasts, his hands voyaged too, rediscovering her back, her flanks, her buttocks, her thighs, sometimes lingering, sometimes skimming with tantalizing lightness.

She groaned softly as he found the crest of her nipple and worried it, his tongue flicking and tormenting, circling, circling, circling before his mouth closed more firmly around the little peak, and he sucked. Anna’s soft moan soared to a ragged cry as a jolt of pure pleasure shot from her breast to the aching niche between her legs that cried for Nick’s possession. Beyond any kind of control, she writhed, twisting like a mad thing, insane to get more of him, join with him and be one with him.

“Hush,
bella mia
.” His mouth was still hot on her breast, the tormenting dart of his tongue belying his soothing words.

But Anna couldn’t hush. Murmuring and gasping, she sent her own hands sliding between his burning skin and the toweling that still enveloped them, gliding over his powerful back and the beautifully defined musculature of his buttocks.

He was perfection. Every part of him was a wonder. And as he kissed his way back up to her face, she at last cradled the very essence of what made him man in her fingers.

She loved him. She loved the formidable, blade-like intellect behind that broad sweat-sheened brow. She loved the brave, generous, passionate heart that beat in his magnificent chest. And she loved this, his essential maleness, his fabulous, fabulous body whose unyielding pagan beauty rendered her helpless and longing before him.

“
Si
…
si
…” His voice was half-growl, half-entreaty, totally compelling, “Yes, Anna
mia
… Yes, caress me,” he commanded.

Lost in love, and lust and devotion, she obeyed, shimmering her fingers over him with a skill she barely knew she possessed, working the velvet skin over the steel-hard core, responding instinctively to his gasps and male purrs of satisfaction.

As she caressed him, his long, potent form flexed against hers, and his head tossed just as hers had when he’d sucked her breast in such delicious torment. But at last his larger hand settled over her slender one and gently plucked it from his flesh.

“You have the hands of an angel…and of a witch,
ragazza mia
,” he said in a voice that was not quite steady. “Any more of this gorgeous touching and I won’t be any good to you.” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it briefly, in tribute.

And then it was his turn to caress, to honor her intimately. Long fingers moved like fire trails over her skin, sliding downwards, downwards towards the moist, yearning delta that craved him.

The contact was like an electric charge against the very centre of her, so light, yet so unerringly accurate and stirring. Gently, lovingly, he touched and petted her, his fingertip circling there as his tongue had circled her nipple. Anna’s hips rose of their own accord, meeting the pressure, inciting it, her entire being reaching for the dazzling moment that glittered in the air before her.

Nearly. Nearly. Nearly. Oh yes!

She cried out sharply as sensation seemed to implode at the very quick of her, its epicenter fluttering beneath Nick’s caressing fingers. Agonized with bliss, she clutched him against her, her own fingers helplessly gouging his back as the intense orgasm crested like a wave, flinging her high and bright, then gradually, oh so gradually, floating her down again.

Moments, or perhaps hours, later, Anna found herself collapsed against the mattress, with Nick’s softly kissing mouth against her brow, and his hand first stoking her cheek, and then smoothing her hair away from her face.

“You’re beautiful, Anna,” he whispered, “So sweet…so giving… There’s no one like you.” She felt the delicate touch of his tongue against her skin as if he were tasting her sweat. “Can you forgive me for the way I behaved last time we were together like this?”

The words were so low, so intense. So real. How could she not forgive him? She would forgive this man anything.

Summoning the strength that seemed to have been blasted from her body by the beauty of her orgasm, she lifted a hand and stroked his lean, carved face in return. Blue eyes like indigo seemed to draw her in, invite her to drown in them, burn again in their fire.

“Of course. Oh yes… Oh Nick, I—” She caught herself. Oh no, she must not say that. It wasn’t what he wanted from her.

“I want you, Nick. Please make love to me.”

“
Bella mia, bella mia
…” His kisses rained all over her hot face like a benediction. “I want you too… Oh how I want you.”

Want. Yes, he wanted her. But that was all. He cared for her too, but in his own way, under his own terms.

Pain enveloped her for a moment. Furious and so powerful and bittersweet that it was as beautiful as it was distressing. Then she banished it and pulled him closer. Yes, he
wanted
her, but she
needed
him. Needed him like the very air she breathed.

“Yes,” crowed Nick, kissing her hard on the mouth, before pulling back and swiftly stripping away his own robe and then freeing Anna from hers. In the dim light his body was like a mythical warrior’s, both gleaming and intimidating, yet an object of worship. The low light gleamed on his flexing arms and shoulders as he turned from her a moment, investigating the drawer in the bedside cupboard. Complimentary condoms were forthcoming and once he was enrobed, Anna reached for him, beyond impatient now to feel his heated flesh inside her.

Then he moved over her, weight on one elbow while he stroked her face, as if searching by touch for the answer to some new, deep question. She felt his sex resting against her, waiting, waiting.

“Are you sure, Anna?”

His voice was low and thrilling, and his eyes as deep and dark a blue as the edge of space.

Why ask?

Yet frantic with need, she still knew why he paused. He was thinking of last time, and how it had shattered their friendship for four long years. Was he afraid that would happen again? Was he giving her the final word, the choice between the two states?

Being friends or being lovers?

I want both! I want both!
she told him silently, while the single word “yes” formed on her lips.

His answer was immediate, and it came in the form of the magnificent, measured thrust of his body into hers. Anna cried out as he entered her, coiling her arms around him as he filled and stretched the silky, liquid flesh that had yearned for him all through those cold, separated years.

And his eyes were still upon hers. Still asking? Reading her? Comprehending the emotion she felt, which he did not? All of a sudden, Anna couldn’t bear to think that anything could divide them, so she clasped him tighter, pressing her mouth against his for a kiss, and caressed him inwardly in the most intimate way she could.

Nick made a low, rough sound against her lips, no words now, just inarticulate expressions of profound response as he began to move, flexing his powerful hips to possess her ever more intensely, in a slow, insistent rhythm. She could sense him exerting almost superhuman control, trying to extend and increase her pleasure.

I love you
, she thought, her heart wracked again with the painful beauty of it, even as her body, every part of her body it seemed, began the miraculous, barreling climb towards the ultimate peak. She felt a great sensation of gathering and of tightening, each surge of Nick’s wonderful body ramping up the inner, glowing pressure. Beyond herself, yet focused completely on being one with him, Anna tossed her head, gasped and whimpered, reaching, reaching for that brilliant prize.