are here.’ The chauffeur consulted his watch. ‘The ferry is due in five minutes. Would you like me to meet Alberto?’
Dragging herself kicking and screaming back to the present, Dervla struggled to escape the power of the erotic recollections. There was a tinge of guilt to her smile as she shook her head and touched a shaky hand to her hot, flushed cheeks.
She cleared her throat, struggling to regain her composure as she replied, ‘Thanks, Eduardo. I’ll meet him myself.’
A cold shower not being an option, she could really do with some fresh air!
As she was stepping out of the car Gianfranco was consulting his watch as he pulled into the fast lane of the motorway. His private jet had got him into the country before his son and by his calculations, barring any major snarl-up on the way, he ought to be in London a full thirty minutes before his runaway wife and son reached the house.
His expression hardened as he contemplated the inevitable confrontation that lay ahead.
She had behaved badly. Gianfranco was consumed by coruscating anger every time he considered her crazy conduct. But even while he condemned her he knew that his own actions might not stand up to strong scrutiny.
In his more rational moments—pretty few and far between over the last couple of days—he knew some might consider he was a more legitimate target for the anger he directed towards Dervla.
He had married her when he knew she wanted more than he was able or willing to give. Hadn’t something like this been inevitable?
But she knew the ground rules … and he refused to acknowledge what he felt for her was more than lust. Strong lust certainly, but nothing more. He repudiated the sly suggestion from the argumentative voice in his head that he’d been selfish to marry her.
Selfish? He’d given her everything she’d asked for—not that she had ever asked for anything except his support and advice in getting the hospice off the ground.
So if she asked for her freedom you’d let her go? Let her find a man she deserves, because she deserves better than you!
What, and let her loose to be the target of the first unscrupulous bastard with slick patter and a hard-luck story? His jaw tautened as, with an aggressive snort of disgust, he treated the ridiculous idea with the contempt it deserved.
At least with him she was safe.
The problem was she was so damned giving.
And she had given it all to him, held nothing back.
He would never forget that moment when he had realised he had seduced a virgin.
Sure, you were so traumatised you only paused to catch your breath before trying to do it again!
Ignoring the sardonic interjection of the critical voice in his head, Gianfranco recalled the primitive surge of male satisfaction tinged by a tenderness that had followed his initial blank shock.
When he had held her in his arms and told her that the possibility that she would be a virgin had never even crossed his mind she had confirmed her naivety by saying with a rueful grimace, ‘You noticed, then. I was wondering if you would.’
‘How is this possible? You are twenty-six. I thought I was a late starter,’ he muttered under his breath.
With feline grace that fascinated him, she rolled over and snuggled with a very un-virginlike lack of self-consciousness up to him. She trailed a finger down his sweat-slick hair-roughened chest, insinuating the feminine curve of her hip into the hard angle of his as she threw one slim thigh across his legs.
‘So how old were you?’ she asked, adding with a sigh of voluptuous pleasure and a sexy shimmy of her soft body against his, ‘God, this is good and you are totally and absolutely beautiful.’ Her exuberance was contagious.
‘Are you going to fall asleep?’
‘No, I am not going to fall asleep,’ he promised, laughing.
He had never associated laughter with sex before, but then it was not his habit to indulge in teasing banter or snuggling in the post-coital aftermath.
The romantic boy in him was long dead. For him sex was about satisfying a mutual primal need. Modern society felt the need to dress it up and talk of spiritual, emotional connections, but he did not buy into the self-deception.
And if on occasion, no matter how great the sex had been, he was left with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, not being a man inclined towards introspection, he didn’t analyse it or feel he was missing out on anything.
‘So how old were you?’ she persisted.
‘You seem fascinated by my sexual history.’
Tongue caught between her teeth, she trailed a finger down his chest, her green eyes teasing him from under the flirtatious sweep of her lashes. It amused him to see her discovering the power of her female sexuality and taking such obvious delight from it—so was he!
Her questing hand slid lower and she gave a deliciously throaty chuckle as he shuddered, his body stirring lustfully.
‘I’m fascinated by lots of things about you,’ she admitted. ‘But I did have you down as a very early starter.’
Very conscious of the small hand that now rested palm down on the flat of his belly, he retorted, ‘I was not twenty-six.’ He avoided whenever possible thinking of his idealistic nineteen-year-old self.
‘How is it possible that a woman who looks like you has never had a lover?’
‘Thank you. That’s a very nice thing to say. You’ve got lovely manners.’
‘Manners? Dio, you say the oddest things. It’s not nice; it is a fact—you are beautiful.’ He caught her softly rounded chin in his hand and tilted her heart-shaped face up to him and looked deep into her emerald eyes.
Dervla didn’t look away, but looked steadily back at him, though there was a touch of shyness in her direct gaze. When he touched his thumb to her lips, still swollen from his kisses, and traced the cushiony softness, her lashes had swept downwards, brushing against her smooth flushed cheeks.
He kissed the delicate blue-veined eyelids and murmured, ‘Very beautiful and desirable. I thought so from the moment I saw you.’
Her eyelashes lifted and there was a sparkle of teasing wickedness in her eyes. ‘Do you want to know what I thought when I first saw you?’ Before he could respond she shook her head and with a rueful grimace said, ‘On second thoughts, don’t ask. It wasn’t very professional.’
He watched her expression grow sober, a furrow appearing between her feathery brows as she touched the sutures that had closed the healing wound that lay close to the hairline at his right temple and ended at his jaw.
He caught her hand and raised it to his lips.
‘Come to think of it, this isn’t very professional,’ she said huskily as she curled her fingers around his jaw. He watched the clear green of her marvellous eyes cloud as, with a distracted expression, she
