the more lovely by moonlight.”
The mere idea left her quivering with anticipation, but, “I think we’re supposed to stay until the bride and groom leave,” she replied primly.
“But they will not leave,” he assured her, snagging an open bottle of champagne chilling in a silver wine bucket. “Italian weddings do not end with the setting sun, cara mia. They are celebrated well into the small hours of the morning. We will return before anyone has the chance to miss us.”
She fought a brief, losing battle with her conscience, knowing her mother wouldn’t approve of her abandoning her maid-of-honor duties to run off with the best man. But wedding decorum couldn’t hold a candle to Paolo’s magnetic pull.
Fingers entwined with his, she followed him as he skirted the shrubbery separating the garden proper from the shore. The moon cast a path of hammered silver over the sea, and feathered in black the clumps of grass lining the beach.
“It’s breathtaking,” she whispered, entranced by the sight.
But Paolo grinned, his teeth blindingly white against the night-dark olive of his skin, and dragging her farther away from the light and music of the wedding, said, “You have seen nothing, yet, bella. Follow me.”
She knew the first thread of uneasiness, then. What, after all, did she really know about him? But as if he sensed her sudden qualms, he cupped her chin and, raising her face to his, said thickly, “What, Caroline? Are you not at all the woman I took you for, but a shy, untutored girl, unused to the attentions of a man like myself? If so, you have but to speak out, and I will take you back to your madre.”
“No,” she said, the faintly scornful laughter in his voice spurring her to recklessness. “I want to be with you, Paolo.”
He kissed her then, a hot, openmouthed kiss drenched in passion. She’d never been kissed like that before, with such ardent finesse. Never savored the heated taste of a man. Never realized that the thrust and retreat of his tongue in the dark moist confines of her mouth could arouse an elemental craving for the same invasion, there in that cloistered, feminine part of her no boy had ever stirred to awareness.
Conscious of the dull, sweet ache in her lower body, she let him guide her around a small outcropping of rock, to a secluded crescent of beach. A cabana stood in the lee of the low cliff. A private, safe place, perfect for an illicit tryst.
Without a word, she went inside with him. Let him pull her down beside him on a long, cushioned bench. Laughed, and pretended she was used to champagne, drinking it directly from the bottle, as he did.
It coursed through her blood. Stripped away her inhibitions. She felt his hands toying with the tiny straps holding up her gown, the cool play of night air on her bare breasts.
In some misty recess of her mind, it occurred to her that she should stop him. But he was flicking his tongue in her ear, whispering, in Italian, words of love no sane woman could resist: tesoro…bella…te amo…
Then his mouth was at her breast, and she was clutching handfuls of his hair and gasping with startled pleasure. She wanted more, and so did he. She heard his muttered curse, and the whisper of fragile chiffon splitting.
He pressed her down on the bench, ran his palm under her skirt. Up her legs. Between her thighs.
She stiffened, not so much afraid, as embarrassed. She didn’t want him to discover that her satin panties were damp…there, in that private place.
He stilled his hand immediately, and lifted his head to look at her. Although moonlight filtered through the latticed window openings, his face was shadowed, preventing her from reading his expression clearly, but she heard again the sudden doubt in his voice. “You want me to stop, cara mia? You are, perhaps, not as eager or willing as you led me to believe?”
“Of course I am!” she whispered, at once desperate and terrified. Desperate for him to continue, and terrified tha the would.
“You are sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” she cried, as if, by protesting loudly enough, she could silence the voice of conscience battling to be heard, and listen only to the yearning in her heart. “I want you to make love to me, Paolo.”
When he seemed still to remain unconvinced, she took a hefty swallow of the champagne. Then, riding high on the false courage it gave her, she put the bottle aside and did the unthinkable. She clamped her thighs together, imprisoning his cupped hand against her. At the same time, she reached down and dared to touch him.
He was so hard and big that the fabric of his trousers was pulled taut. Enthralled, she shaped her fingers delicately over the contours of his erection.
Confined though it was by his clothing, his flesh throbbed. She could feel it. And all because of her!
His muffled groan of pleasure filled her with a heady sense of female power. All sleek muscle and tensile strength, he stood well over six feet tall. In physical confrontation with any other man, he would doubtless prove a formidable opponent. Yet she, at only five feet six inches, and weighing no more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, held him captive in the palm of her hand, both literally and figuratively. He was her prisoner; her slave!
Bolder by the second, she unsnapped the fastening of his trousers and inched open his fly. Wove her fingers inside his briefs until, freed at last, he sprang, hot and heavy and smooth as silk, into her hand.
She cradled him. Stared in dazed wonder. She wasn’t entirely ignorant. She knew how men were put together. In the privacy of their rooms at the exclusive all-girls’ boarding school she’d attended, she and her friends had pored over forbidden magazines and giggled furtively at illustrations that left little to the imagination. But nothing she’d learned had preparedher for the power and primitive beauty confronting her now.
“Oh!” she breathed, drawing tiny circles along his length until she reached its tip.
Any notion that she was in control fled then. With a low growl, he sent her skirt floating up around her waist, yanked off her panties and flung them carelessly to the floor. Looming over her, he pushed her legs apart and drove inside her.
Pain, sharp as slivered glass, pierced her champagne-in-duced euphoria, and she bit his shoulder to silence her cry. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It should be slow and lovely and tender. He should be holding her close and telling her he loved her, not pulling away with a shocked, “Dio! You are vergine?”
Vergine—virgin!
Fiercely she locked her arms around his neck and tugged him down until her breasts lay flattened by his chest. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t worry, Paolo. I’m not a virgin.” And it wasn’t a lie, not really, even if it would have been, if she’d said the words a few minutes earlier.
“But yes!” Supporting his weight on his elbows, he stroked her cheek with trembling fingers. His voice was ragged with regret, his touch gentle. “Tesoro, I would not have treated you so…would not have brought you here—”
“Hush!” she protested softly, and when he went to withdraw, held his sleek, pulsing flesh captive between her thighs. Because, surprisingly, the discomfort had passed and so had the fear. Now, her body welcomed his invasion. Craved it, even. “This is what I want, it’s what I need…please, Paolo!”
He
