that this was a Niccolò she’d never seen before. His face was grave, almost…assessing. She imagined this was how he might look in the boardroom, before making a big decision.
‘Now we could pretend that nothing’s happening,’ he said, as calmly as if he were discussing the markets. ‘Or we could decide to be very grown-up about this thing between us—’
‘Thing?’ she put in indignantly, but his fingers were still on her face and she was shivering. And now the pad of his thumb had begun to trace a line across her lower lip and that was shivering, too.
‘Desire. Lust. Whatever you want to call it. Maybe I just want to lay to rest a ghost which has haunted me for ten long years, and maybe you do, too.’
It was his candour which clinched it—the bald truth which was her undoing. He wasn’t dressing up his suggestion with sentimental words which didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t insulting her intelligence by pretending she was the love of his life or that there was some kind of future in what he was proposing. He was saying something which had been on her mind since Michela’s wedding. Because he was right. This thing between them wouldn’t seem to go away. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t stop wanting him.
She wondered if he could read the answer in her eyes. Was that why he leaned forward to tap briefly on the glass which separated them from the driver, before taking her in his arms and starting to kiss her?
And once he had done that, she was left with no choice at all.
HE DIDN’T OFFER HER a coffee, nor a drink. He didn’t even put the lamps on. Alannah didn’t know whether Niccolò had intended a slow seduction—but it didn’t look as if she was going to get one. Because from the moment the front door of his Mayfair apartment slammed shut on them, he started acting like a man who had lost control.
His hands were in her hair, he was tugging her coat from her shoulders so that it slid unnoticed to the ground and his mouth was pressing down on hers. It was breathless. It was hot. It was…hungry. Alannah gasped as he caught her in his arms. He was burying his mouth in her hair and muttering urgent little words in Sicilian and, although her Italian was good, she didn’t understand any of them. But she didn’t need to. You wouldn’t have to be a linguist to understand what Niccolò was saying to her. The raw, primitive sounds of need were international, weren’t they?
He placed his hands on either side of her hips and drew her closer, so that she could feel the hard cradle of him pressing against her. He kissed her again and as the kiss became deeper and more urgent she felt him moving her, until suddenly she felt the hard surface of the wall pressed against her back and her eyelids flew open.
He drew back, his eyes blazing. ‘I want you,’ he said. ‘I want to eat you. To suck you. To bite you. To lick you.’
She found his blatantly erotic words more than a little intimidating and momentarily she stiffened—wondering if she should confess that she wasn’t very good at this. But now his palms were skating over her dress to mould the outline of her hips and the words simply wouldn’t come. She felt his hand moving over her belly. She heard him suck in a ragged breath of pleasure as he began to ruck up her dress.
‘Niccolò,’ she said uncertainly.
‘I want you,’ he ground out. ‘For ten years I have longed for this moment and now that it is here, I don’t think I can wait a second longer.’
Niccolò closed his eyes as he reached her panties and impatiently pushed the flimsy little panel aside, because she was wet. She was very wet. He could detect the musky aroma of her sex as he slid his fingers against her heated flesh and began to move them against her with practised ease.
‘Niccolò,’ she whispered again.
‘I want to see your breasts,’ he said, moving his shaking fingers to the lapels of her silky dress and beginning to unbutton it. Within seconds two luscious mounds were revealed—their creamy flesh spilling over the edge of her bra. He narrowed his eyes to look at them. ‘Madre di Dio,’ he breathed, his fingertips brushing over the soft skin. ‘In the flesh it is even better. You have the most beautiful body I have ever seen.’
And suddenly he knew he really couldn’t wait a second longer. Besides, she seemed more than ready for him. He felt as if something had taken hold of him and made him into someone he didn’t recognise. As if this wasn’t him at all but an imposter who’d entered his body. Unsteadily, he unzipped himself and he wanted to explode even before he positioned himself against her honeyed warmth.
She went very still as he entered her and for a moment he paused, afraid that he might come straight away—and when had that ever happened? But somehow he managed to keep it together, drawing in a deep breath and expelling it on another shuddering sigh as he began to move.
One hand was spread over her bare bottom as he hooked her legs around his hips and drove into her as if there were no tomorrow. As if there had been no yesterday. Her nails were digging into his neck as he kissed her, but he barely noticed the discomfort. He tried to hold back—to wait for her orgasm before letting go himself—but suddenly it was impossible and he knew he was going to come.
‘Alannah!’ he said, on a note of disbelief—and suddenly it was too late.
Wave after wave took him under. His frame was racked with spasms as he gasped out her name, caught up in a feeling so intense that he thought he might die from it. It felt like the first orgasm he’d ever had. He closed his eyes. The only orgasm he’d ever had. And it wasn’t until his body had grown completely still that he noticed how silent and how still she was.
He froze.
Of course she was.
Remorse filled him as she put her hand against his chest and pushed him away. And although withdrawing from her succulent heat was the last thing he felt like doing he could see from the tight expression on her face that she wanted him to. And who could blame her?
There had been no answering cry of fulfilment from her, had there? He had given her no real pleasure.
With a grimace, he eased himself from her sticky warmth, bending to pull up his trousers before carefully zipping them up. ‘Alannah?’
She didn’t answer straight away—she was too busy fastening her dress, her fingers fumbling to slide the buttons back in place. He went to help her, but her voice was sharp.
‘Don’t.’
He waited until she’d finished buttoning and whatever little insect brooch she was wearing was surveying him with baleful eyes, before he lifted her chin with his finger, so that their eyes were locked on a collision course. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does.’ He heard the flatness in her voice. ‘I’m not usually so…out of control.’
She gave a wry smile. ‘Don’t worry, Niccolò. I won’t tell anyone. Your reputation is safe with me.’
His mouth hardened and his body tensed. It was her cool response which made something inside him flare into life—a feeling of anger as much as desire. A feeling set
