Sophie and the Scorching Sicilian (13 page)

‘Y
OU
kissed me,' Sophie said, not opening her eyes.

She felt the vibration of laughter in his chest, but when she forced her eyelids to lift there was no corresponding smile on his lips. His lean features were taut, the golden skin stretched tight across the strong planes of his angular face. His eyes glittered like hard emeralds as he stared at her with a driven, hungry intensity that sent a fresh tingle along her nerve endings.

‘And I intend to again,
bellezza mia
.' He ran his thumb slowly up her throat, following the motion with his eyes until it reached the corner of her mouth, then he looked into her eyes. ‘Do you have a problem with that?'

The throaty challenge drew a whimper from Sophie's aching throat. ‘I…' Her eyes locked to his, she shook her head, totally convinced that if he didn't kiss her again she would suffer permanent physical and psychological damage. It might be too late to do anything about the psychological damage because she had clearly already lost her mind.

‘No problem,' she whispered, thinking,
Unless you count the fact I might fall in a heap at your feet at any moment
.

This time there was a smile, a white wolfish smile that screamed danger.

A sensible person would, she knew, have run away from a smile like that. She clung and lifted her head, welcoming the
silky invasion of his probing tongue. Hunger licked along her nerve endings, drawing a lost cry from her throat as she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. The hunger that had been inside her exploded like a star burst.

It was several breathless moments after his mouth lifted that she opened her eyes and admitted, ‘I wondered what that would be like.'

‘Now you know.'

She did and life was never quite going to be the same. She had never gone in for a lot of sexual experimentation, partly because no man had ever touched her and made her forget her name, and partly because most men she knew only wanted her sisters, and she didn't want to be the runner-up prize.

‘And?' Marco prompted, running a finger across the swollen outline of her trembling mouth and looking into her half-closed eyes. Her lashes brushed her softly rounded cheeks, casting shadows across the flushed curves. He traced the feathery outline of one shadow with his fingertip before kissing her hard on the mouth.

Her eyelids squeezed closed as a moan was dragged from Sophie's chest. She sighed deeply, her fingers clenching the fabric of his shirt as he nipped softly at the pink cushiony fullness of her full lower lip.

‘Do I pass,
cara
?'

‘Oh, yes,' she sighed into his mouth as she gripped his hair-roughened forearms.

The kiss this time had less to do with control and more to do with hunger and desperation.

His hand tangled in her hair as he tilted her head backwards to look into her face. ‘You want me.' It was not a question and it did not even cross Sophie's mind to deny it.

Little broken gasps left her lips as he ran his tongue along the tremulous curve of her upper lip.

‘I want you,' she agreed.

Want but had never expected to have, like being six inches taller or having men look at her face when they spoke to her rather than her breasts.

Along with the lust that slammed through him at the admission came a less-welcome emotion—guilt. The way she looked at him, the trust, the total lack of artifice, touched a dormant sense of chivalry in him.

‘You need to know something.'

The urgency pumping through his body made him blunt. ‘I don't do love and commitment.' The one time he had given his heart to a woman she had ripped it out and ground it up.

He was trying to tell her it was a one-night stand and not to have any expectations.

Did he think she didn't already know that?

‘What makes you think I do?' she challenged. ‘I have a career and…plans…' This wasn't one of them, but now wasn't the time to think about that. ‘The last thing I want is a relationship,' she promised him.

The assertion should have made him feel more comfortable, but instead Marco was conscious of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.

‘Recreational sex is all I have time for.'

He pushed a strand of silky hair from her cheek. ‘Can you spare a few minutes for me in your busy five-year plan?'

‘I think so,' she whispered, shivering at the feathery-light kiss he pressed to her parted lips.

‘And if I need more?'

She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his, gasping as she felt the rock-hard impression of his erection grind into the soft flesh of her stomach.

‘You can have as much as you want. You can have anything you want.'

Lust kicked in his belly as he groaned and picked her up.

He stumbled his way out of the ballroom, up the stairs and
into her bedroom, his progress impeded not just by the objects he bumped into but by the kisses she rained on his neck. His shirt was half off before he laid her on the bed; the other half took him about two seconds.

Breathing hard he leaned over her; her face was a pale blur in the dark. ‘I wanted to do this with the lights on.' He had, in the privacy of his fantasies. ‘But no matter, this is still better.'

‘Better than what?'

Marco smiled and, supporting her weight with one arm, he whipped her nightshirt over her head.

‘Better than anything,' he said, cupping one soft quivering mound in his hand and watching it spill through his fingers. He touched his tongue to the pink tip and felt her go limp in his arms. ‘You're perfect, utterly and totally perfect.'

Sophie gave a sigh of voluptuous pleasure. ‘God, yes,' she groaned as he laid her back down.

She felt his hands on the belt of her jeans and lifted her hips.

‘This is really happening.'

‘If this is a dream,
cara
, I don't want to wake up,' he confided, sliding the denims over her hips. The pyjama shorts joined them in a heap on the floor three second later.

She opened her eyes and held out her arms, a silent invitation…longing to feel the touch of his flesh against her own.

He didn't accept the invitation. He just sat there.

Fear curled in her stomach, closing her throat. ‘What's wrong?'

With a groan like a man in pain Marco shook his head and rasped, ‘I can't do this!'

Her stomach still ached from the imprint of his erection; it had felt very much to her as if he could.

The rejection was so abrupt and so unexpected that for a moment all Sophie did was blink. She sat up, dragged the top cover with her, self-conscious for the first time about her nakedness. She reached out and touched his cheek, her fingertips skating lightly across the surface.

He opened his eyes but didn't look at her.

He couldn't take the risk. He was a man who had always prided himself on control, but it was shredded and liable to disintegrate totally at the slightest provocation. Sophie was a walking, breathing temptation.

Lust still pumped in a hot steady stream through his body. The sight of her mouth, her eyes and her body might just be too much. Still holding her gaze, he took her fingers and, removing them from his skin, shook his head.

‘Give me a minute.' It would be more than a minute before his painful arousal would allow him to walk straight, let alone think.

Sophie, feeling physically sick, sat there shivering as tears began to slide silently down her cheeks. He saw the glisten and groaned.

‘Sophie!'

Sophie flinched and pulled away from the hand he laid on her shoulder. ‘It's fine…I'm fine…I understand.' Actually, she didn't understand. Why was he being this cruel?

Marco swore under his breath. ‘If you are fine, you are the only one.'

‘Look, I understand. You don't have sex with the help—at least, apparently not when they look like me. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone… We can pretend this never happened.'

‘Enough!' Ignoring her rigidity and protest he pulled her down beside him and drew her stiff body into the shelter of his arms. ‘
Dio
, you are shaking,' he said, running a hand down her spine.

‘So are you,' she discovered, sniffing. It made her feel slightly better, but not a lot. Her entire body ached with frustration.

‘You are right, I do not have sex with the
help
. But I do…I want to with you. I will with you, but you…'

He was trying to think of a nice way of saying he didn't really fancy her. ‘Don't worry, it was just…I won't take it personally…'

She heard him swear.

‘You will not take it personally? Then why are you crying?'

‘You forgot who I was and then you…'

‘Just shut up. You are speaking rubbish.' His accent suddenly sounded very strong.

‘Rubbish?'

‘The disparaging comments, the pull yourself to pieces before someone else does.'

His mesmeric emerald gaze burned into her as he said softly. ‘It has to stop. I do not like it.'

‘All right.' At that moment she would have agreed to anything he asked just for the painful pleasure of being close to all that hard male heat…just to smell his skin, feel his touch. She ached for him in a way that she had never imagined possible. The hunger lay tight like a fist low in her belly and every individual cell in her body ached.

‘I cannot have sex…'

A low sound of distress escaped her lips and he kissed her hard.

‘Not because I don't want to. I swear I have never wanted anything more—you are driving me crazy.'

‘Then why?'

A finger to her lips hushed her protest. ‘Because I have nothing to protect you.' His brow creased into a scowl of self-condemnation as he considered his criminal stupidity.

She shook her head and looked at him through a blur of emotional tears. ‘What do you mean?'

A muscle clenched beside his mouth; the frustration in his eyes made them shine like the gemstones they were so often likened to. ‘I mean, you are not protected, are you?' The look of total incomprehension in her swimming cobalt-blue eyes wrenched a groan from his throat.

His apparent pain confused Sophie even more.

‘I mean
protection
…you're not taking the pill.'

Comprehension dawned and the mortified colour flew to Sophie's cheeks. ‘No, I'm…not.'

‘And I have nothing, unless you…?'

Marco watched her blush all over—well, the bits he could see anyway.

‘Sorry, no.' She was filled with shame.

She wasn't a risk taker or reckless.

How,
she asked herself,
could I have not have thought about the consequences?

When Annie had revealed her unplanned pregnancy she had secretly wondered how her otherwise highly intelligent sister had not taken precautions to avoid this situation.

Sophie had found it impossible to imagine a situation where she would take the same risk.

And now she almost had! Worst of all, it hadn't been her who had shown restraint, it had been Marco. She burned with shame.

‘I want babies, but not like this.'

It was Marco's turn to feel awkward; the women in his life did not talk of babies.

‘My sister has a little boy. We all love him and I know she wouldn't be without him but…'

Marco nodded in understanding. ‘There is no father?'

Sophie nodded. ‘I wouldn't want that.' She looked at him with glowing eyes. ‘Thank you.'

Marco gave an uncomfortable shrug. ‘I am no saint, but I will not do that to you.'

Being regarded in the light of a noble, self-sacrificing hero made him uncomfortable, especially when he realised how close he had come to losing control. Even now his body throbbed with the need to bury himself deep in her softness and give in to the primal urge as old as time. She was so innocent, and her eyes were still blazing with unfulfilled passion—she had so much to learn.

He took her chin between his fingers and tipped her face to his. ‘I said I cannot but that doesn't mean you cannot.'

‘I don't understand…I'm…'

‘Let me show you,
cara
, I will enjoy that.'

‘But you…'

He took her hand and kissed her fingertips one by one. ‘There are many ways of bringing pleasure.'

‘I don't know what you mean…'

Her response gave Marco a very poor opinion of her previous lovers. He nibbled her earlobe, making her shiver, before kissing his way to her mouth and whispering against her lips, ‘Let me show you.'

Dizzy with longing she said
please
at the same moment he lowered her back onto the bed and lay down beside her. Unfolding her fingers from the cover she clutched he peeled it back, exposing her beautiful body and sending the ache in his loins up another several painful notches.

One hand on the curve of her hip he looked down at her.

Sophie, suddenly overcome by the emotion, tried to turn her head.

‘No, look at me, Sophie.'

She looked at him, her face filled with a mixture of longing and fear. ‘I suppose this is chemistry. Mum says that cakes and love are both about chemistry—not that this is love obviously.' He didn't join her laughter. ‘I'm babbling again, aren't I?'

‘You're not afraid of me, are you?'

She shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘I'm afraid of the way you make me feel…not in control.'

A flicker of something moved in his eyes. ‘Not being in control has much to recommend it,
cara
. Stop thinking and feel it…'

She forced her lids apart and looked at him with glazed eyes. ‘Feel?' she whispered throatily.

He bent his head and, with his eyes still connected with hers, pressed his mouth to the side of her mouth. ‘Feel this,' he said, sliding his fingers with seductive slowness over her ribcage before cupping one aching breast in his palm and rolling the erect tight pink peak between his thumb and finger.