fire with overriding need. He told her that in Italian and she gave him a blissful smile, evidently glorying in the sound of his language or his voice or whatever it was that she liked. He stripped off the shirt, unzipped his chinos, pushed off everything in one urgent forceful assault on his clothing. Naked, he came back to her, revelling in the way her eyes locked to him and the sudden blush that warmed her porcelain complexion. He couldn’t recall when he had last been with a woman who blushed. And in the bedroom? Never.
Lizzie was transfixed. There he was in all his glory, her every piece of curiosity answered in one fell swoop. He scooped her up in his arms, pulled off the skirt that was her only remaining garment and settled her down, equally naked, in the centre of the turned-back bed.
Lizzie froze. ‘I think we need to put out the candles!’ she exclaimed, her entire body burning with embarrassment as she grasped in desperation for the sheet, which was out of reach.
In the very act of surveying her pale slender curves with rapt attention Cesare raised stunning golden eyes to study her in growing wonderment. ‘I’ve already seen you naked,’ he reminded her gently.
‘That’s different...I was too hung-over to be shy!’ Lizzie pointed out loudly.
Cesare grinned and with a stretch of a long brown arm flipped up the sheet. ‘This is not likely to hold me back,’ he warned her.
As the cool cotton settled over her quivering length Lizzie lost some of her tension. Resting on one arm, she found Cesare gazing down at her with slumberous dark golden eyes. He rubbed a slightly stubbled jaw against her cheek in a sensual gesture on his path to her ready mouth.
One kiss melted into the next but as his hands roved skilfully over her, lingering on pulse points and teasing erogenous zones, lying still beneath his ministrations became tougher and tougher. Her nipples throbbed from his attentions, sending arrows of fire down to the tender, pulsing heart of her.
He stroked her and her spine arched. ‘You’re so wet, so ready for me,’ Cesare husked.
A tiny shiver racked her slight frame, all the heat coalescing in the swollen, delicate tissue between her thighs. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, striving to stay in control and not betray how new it all was to her. But with every ravishing caress, he seduced her away from control. Soft gasps parted her lips, her neck extending, tendons clenching as the stimulation became almost too much to bear.
‘You know this will be a first for me, cara,’ Cesare confided, running the tip of his tongue across a turgid rose-pink nipple.
Lizzie could hardly find her voice. ‘What will?’
‘Sex without a condom...I’ve never done that before and it excites me,’ he admitted huskily, shifting against her thigh, letting her feel the smooth, hard length of his erection.
Lizzie was trying not to think about the size of him in that department. She was a modern woman, well acquainted with averages and gossip and popular report. Being a virgin didn’t mean she was entirely ignorant, she told herself in consolation, striving not to stress as her excitement built and built. Hands biting into his strong shoulders, she lifted her hips upward, succumbing to an almost uncontrollable urge to get closer to him. He toyed with her lush, damp opening, honeyed quivers of sensations rippling through her womb, and circled the tiny bud of her arousal until almost without warning a wild, seething force of irresistible sensation engulfed her like a flood. Her eyes flew wide and she bucked and jerked and sobbed in the grip of rush after rush of intense and enthralling pleasure.
He tipped her up, hooking her legs over his shoulders in a move that unnerved her. He plunged into her tight channel and for a moment she was preoccupied with the sense of fullness, the certain knowledge that this was exactly what her body had craved throughout his teasing foreplay. In fact everything was wonderful until the hot glide of his flesh within hers sank deeper and a sudden sharp, tearing pain made her stiffen and cry out in dismay.
Cesare froze as though a fire alarm had gone off and stared down at her, dark golden eyes like hungry golden flames in his lean bronzed face. ‘You can’t be...’
Enraged by her own bodily weakness and chagrin, Lizzie dealt him a look that would have dropped a grizzly bear at ten paces. ‘Well, don’t stop now.’
‘You’re a virgin?’ Cesare emphasised, his incredulity unconcealed as he held himself at an angle above her, muscles straining in his bulging forearms.
‘How’s that your business?’ Lizzie slung back argumentatively.
Cesare swore long and low in his own language and cursed her stubbornness. He burned for her but he was fighting his hunger with all his might. It struck him as unjust that the hot, tight hold of her body on his gave him pure pleasure while she had only experienced pure pain.
‘It’s my business,’ he told her grimly. ‘I think this is my cue to back off.’
‘No... No!’ Lizzie exclaimed in consternation. ‘You don’t get to go that far and then stop... I want to know what it’s like...’
In receipt of that plaintive plea, Cesare groaned out loud, belatedly recognising that marriage was proving a much bigger challenge than he had expected. She was experimenting with him, he thought in all-male horror.
‘Please...’ Lizzie added, tugging him down to her, pale fingers framing his cheekbones as she reached without success for his beautiful, passionate mouth.
In the mood to be easily encouraged, Cesare shifted his hips, his entire attention nailed to her flushed and expressive face so that he could register the smallest wince she might make. Instead Lizzie smiled up at him with a look of wonderment that was uniquely soothing to his momentarily threatened male ego.
Lizzie closed her eyes again, mortified at the fuss she had made, the lengths she had had to go to to persuade him to continue. She had always believed that a man found it hard to stop in the middle of sex, so the fact that he had offered to withdraw altogether did not strike her as a compliment. But she had wanted to know, had wanted so badly to know what all the fuss was about.
He moved against her and tingling, driving sensation awakened in her pelvis again. She relaxed a little. The slow, almost provocative thrusts became enticing and she relaxed completely, indeed began to arch up to greet him with an enthusiasm she had never expected to feel. His skilled acceleration delivered sensation like nothing she had ever experienced and her excitement soared to delirious heights that climbed and climbed until she reached a peak and soared effortlessly over it and then down and down into the cocoon of lethargy and satiation, exhaustion pulling at her every sense.
Cesare settled her back down on the pillows and smoothed her tangled hair off her damp brow. His hand trembled a little because he was struggling to do two opposing things: firstly treat Lizzie like the bride she was and, secondly, suppress the anger tearing at him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I’d be your first lover?’ he demanded in a roughened undertone.
His tone, his exasperation, cut through Lizzie in her sensitive state like the sudden painful slice of a knife and she sat up abruptly, clutching the sheet to her chest. ‘I didn’t see that it was anything to do with you.’
‘In other words, you chose to deliberately conceal it,’ he condemned, leaping out of bed in one lithe, powerful movement. ‘How the hell could you still be a virgin when you were once engaged?’
‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, Cesare Sabatino!’ Lizzie yelled back at him furiously,
