you trust me, Taylor?” If she didn’t, he was damn well going to teach her to, even if he had to cuddle her in his lap all night long.
She nodded. “Yes.” Then she scowled. “I don’t think I should’ve admitted that.”
He was pleased with her despite her dark expression. “Then believe me when I say I’ll help you.”
“I’m sorry to ask this of you. I know how people always want things from you. I don’t want to be like them!” Her frustration was clear.
“I know you don’t think like that.” He’d always had to fight her pride to give her the smallest consideration. Stroking the cool smoothness of her cheek, he said, “Come now, piccola. Where is my little tigress?”
Her full lips curved upward in a rueful smile. “I think she’s in hibernation.”
“That’s more like the Taylor I know.” Without stopping to think, he pressed a hard kiss to her lips, withdrawing the instant he remembered what he’d done. “My apologies again…” His gut twisted at the thought that he might’ve broken her fledgling trust in him.
Her fingers on his mouth stopped him. “I…I don’t mind when you touch me.” Her eyes widened, as if she was surprised by her own words.
He was touched by the admission. “A woman should enjoy her man’s kiss, baby, not merely allow it.” With her face bathed in the soft light of the moon streaking in through the window, she looked indefinably vulnerable.
“I’m not sure I know how to enjoy.” Her words were brutally honest. “C-could…you…”
He leaned closer, enclosing her with his body. “What would you like, piccola?”
“A kiss. Like it’s supposed to be,” she whispered.
Her words betrayed that for her, kissing had never been a pleasure. One day soon, he’d find out who had abused her, but for tonight, he would kiss her as an innocent was meant to be kissed—with tenderness and just a stroke of passion. Just enough to tantalize.
While Taylor’s heart pounded so hard that she could feel every beat in her throat, Jackson moved one big hand to cradle her head and lowered his mouth to hers. Braced for pressure, all she felt was a teasing graze of lips on lips that left her with no idea how to react.
“Just feel.” He grazed her lips again but this time, lingered over the caress. “It feels good doesn’t it?”
She nodded, throat dry. There was no pain, no force, nothing but the male scent of Jackson and the burning heat of his almost naked body. Her hands were on his beautiful skin and she could feel the raw power barely contained beneath the surface. Despite the blatant evidence of male muscle, she let her lashes flutter shut. If he’d wanted to hurt her, he could’ve done so long before this moment. All those nights working alone with him, she’d never once felt less than safe. His old-fashioned sense of chivalry had even stopped him from inviting himself in for coffee when he’d followed her home.
“Then just feel. Sweet, sweet, Taylor.” His hand tipped her head back and he dropped a single kiss on her neck. She whimpered in surprise.
“Relax for me, bellissima,” he cajoled, as his lips touched hers again, hot but undemanding. “Feel.”
Seduced by that deep voice, she did as he asked. She just felt. Felt the soft-hard duality of his lips, felt the tenderness with which he was coaxing her to open her mouth for him, felt the shudder that ripped through him when she did. Yet, he didn’t invade her mouth. Instead, he teased her with feather-light strokes of his tongue across her lips. As each slow lick built her desire, he whispered hot promises to her in Italian, his voice darkly smoky, teasing, tempting but not delivering.
At last, she gave a frustrated little moan and pressed closer, her hands clenching in his hair to hold him to her. Only then did he touch tongue to tongue, a quick foray that didn’t remind her of the forceful kisses that had hurt and shamed her as a girl, because he invited rather than took. Curious, heart thudding, she followed. His arms tightened around her, chest muscles tensing as her breasts were crushed between them, barely covered by the shirt. Beneath her bottom, she could feel the hard ridge of his erection. Panic tried to rise but failed, because despite his obvious arousal, his touch remained heartbreakingly gentle.
Their lips parted with a silky wet sound, deeply intimate in the semidarkness of the room. The man holding her nipped at her full lower lip with his teeth. “You taste like you belong to me.”
Instead of inciting fear, his possessiveness heated her blood. “I like touching you. Kissing you.” She was talking with her lips on his, her hands deep in his hair. The pure, sensual pleasure she derived from touching him enthralled her.
“Good.” There was a very satisfied glint in his eye, and the thumb he ran across the lip he’d bitten was nothing less than proprietary. When he pressed her down against his chest, she sighed and gave in.
Remnants of the passion that he’d aroused in her un-awakened body glowed like embers, keeping her warm and relaxed. A new kind of trust took root in her heart, a woman’s trust, a sexual trust, which dared her to take what her sexy ex-boss was offering and not look back to a young girl’s easily bruised sensuality.
“Are you awake, cara?”
“Yes.”
A pause. “Do you wish to tell me why you have such fear of men’s desires?”
“I promise I will, but not tonight.” She couldn’t bear to taint the sweetness of that kiss, the almost unbearable tenderness of it, with such horrible memories.
“You must sleep then.” He stood, with her in his arms.
At her door, he set her on her feet. She put a hand on his arm as he turned away. “Thank you for your help.”
Something dark shaded through his eyes. “I do not want your gratitude, Taylor.”
Somehow, she knew it wasn’t rejection but a question. “It wasn’t gratitude. It was trust.” It took courage to confess that. Before she’d met Jackson Santorini, she’d never trusted a male in the prime of his life.
He touched her hair again, a softer curve to his unsmiling mouth. “Go to sleep, piccola. I will find a way to help you and your brother.”
It was a measure of her trust that she slept the night through, without nightmares. Truth to tell, it scared her a little, this faith she had in Jackson. A woman could be fooled into love with something as powerful as trust to lead her astray. And her love was the one thing that Taylor would never entrust to any man.
Not even Jackson.
Four
The next morning, Jackson drove Taylor home.
Prior to starting the trip, he’d astounded her by producing her purse. Cole had dropped it off early that morning, while Jackson had been working out. His friend had also indicated that Donald Carson was now so terrified of being labeled a sexual offender by the police, it was a sure thing that he’d never assault a woman ever again.
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