Vitale dealt her a slanting grin that lit up his lean, darkly handsome features like the sunrise. He undressed with almost military precision, stowing cuff links by the bed, stacking his suit on a chair, peeling off snug black briefs that could barely contain his urgent arousal. A slow burn ignited in her pelvis, her nipples tinging into tight buds, a melting sensation warming between her thighs.
It was only sex, she bargained fiercely with the troubled thoughts she was refusing to acknowledge, only sex and lots of people had sex simply for fun. She could be the same, she swore to herself, she would not make the mistake of believing that what they had was anything more serious than a casual affair. That was what Vitale had meant when he said, ‘Let’s keep it simple...’
He joined her on the bed, all hair-roughened brown skin and rippling muscle, so wonderfully, fundamentally different from hers, the sexual allure of his body calling to her as much as her body seemed to call to him. He kissed her and the fireworks started inside her, heat and longing rising exponentially with every searing dip of his tongue inside the moist interior of her mouth.
Her entire body felt sensitised, on an edge of unbearable anticipation.
‘I want to show you the way it should have been last night,’ Vitale husked. ‘Last night was rough and ready.’
‘But it worked,’ she mumbled unevenly, running a forefinger along the wide sensual line of his lips, revelling in the freedom to do so.
‘You deserve more,’ Vitale insisted, bending his arrogant dark head to catch a swollen pink nipple in his mouth and tease it. ‘Much more...’
And much more was very much what she got as Vitale worked a purposeful passage down over her slender length, pausing in places she hadn’t even known had nerve endings and dallying there until she was writhing in abandonment, before finally settling between her spread thighs and addressing his attention to the most sensitive place of all.
Self-consciousness was drowned by excitement, sheer physical excitement that she could not restrain. He used his mouth on her, circling, flicking, working her body as though it were an instrument and her pleasure grew by tormentingly sweet degrees until the tightness banding her pelvis became a formless, overwhelming need she could no longer withstand. When he traced the entrance to her lush opening, her spine arched and she cried out as a drowning flood of pleasure surged through her slight body and left her limp.
‘Much better,’ Vitale pronounced hoarsely, staring down at her enraptured expression with satisfaction. ‘That’s how it should have been the first time and if you’d warned me—’
‘You probably wouldn’t have continued,’ Jazz interrupted, tying him back down to earth again with that frank assessment.
‘You don’t know that,’ Vitale argued fierily, pushing back her slim thighs and sliding between them, the urgency in his lean, strong body unashamed.
Jazz looked up at him, wondering how she knew it, but know it she did even though it wasn’t very diplomatic to drop it on him like that when he was so hopeless at grasping the way his own mind worked. ‘I suspected it,’ she admitted.
‘Nothing short of an earthquake would have stopped me last night!’ Vitale swore vehemently, finally surging into her moist, tender sheath with a bone-deep groan of appreciation. ‘You feel glorious, bellezza mia...’
And the powerful surge of his thick, rigid length into her sensitive core felt equally glorious to Jazz, stretching the inner walls, filling her tight. Her eyes closed and her head rolled back on the pillow as she let the pulsing pleasure consume her. Ripples of delight quivered through her and she arched up her hips, helpless in the grip of her need. Nothing had ever felt so right or so necessary to her. He ground his body into hers and she saw stars behind her lowered eyelids. She began to move against him, hot and frenzied as he slammed into her, primal excitement seizing her with his heart thundering over hers. And then she reached a ravishing peak and rhythmic convulsions clenched her womb as he shuddered over her with an uninhibited shout of satisfaction. A rush of sensation washed her away in the aftermath of lingering pleasure.
‘It’s amazing with you,’ Vitale gritted breathlessly, releasing her from his weight.
Jazz stretched out her arms and tried to snatch him back. ‘Don’t move away.’
‘I’m not into hugging.’
‘Tough,’ Jazz told him, snuggling up to him regardless. ‘I need hugs.’
Vitale’s big body literally froze, tested out of his comfort zone.
‘It’s called compromise and we are all capable of it,’ Jazz muttered drowsily against his chest, one arm anchoring round him like an imprisoning chain. ‘I’m not telling you I love you because I don’t. I’m just fond of you, so don’t make a fuss about nothing.’
In a quandary, Vitale, who had been planning to return to his own room, lay staring up at the ceiling. He had to stretch away from her to switch off the light, but she hooked him back with the efficiency of a retriever picking up game even though from the sound of her even breathing he knew she was definitely asleep.
She was so blunt, he reflected helplessly, wondering if he should simply push her away to make it back to his own bed. He was relieved that she had no evident illusions about their relationship and wasn’t thinking along the lines of love because he didn’t want to hurt her. Seducing a virgin was a dangerous game, he acknowledged, wondering why she had still been untouched, wondering why he was even interested because his interest in his lovers was usually very superficial. He didn’t quite know how he had ended up having sex with her again and wondered if it mattered. He decided it didn’t and if he slept with her, he could have her again in the morning, so staying put made very good sense...
* * *
‘Could we just rough it for a night?’ Jazz asked hopefully a week later.
Vitale frowned. ‘Rough it?’
‘Instead of going to some very fancy restaurant, we could go to a supper club I know that does ethnic dishes. It’s cheap but the food’s great.’ Studying his unenthusiastic expression, Jazz grimaced. ‘Vitale, just for once can we go off the official map?’
‘I don’t follow an official map,’ Vitale argued, meeting hopeful eyes and simply wanting to see the liveliness return to her lovely face, which was telegraphing her conviction that he would refuse her suggestion. ‘All right, just this once but if either of us get food poisoning, you’re dead!’
‘We’re not going to get food poisoning,’ she assured him with a confident grin.
They ate a delicious and surprisingly elaborate five-course meal in a private city garden and Vitale drank out of a bottle without complaint and watched Jazz sparkle across the table. He was more relaxed than he could ever remember being with a woman. She had so much verve and personality he couldn’t take his eyes off her and the awareness that he was taking her home to bed gave him a supreme high of satisfaction.
A week later she dragged him out to the flower market on Columbia Road and he took a photograph of her, her slender figure almost lost in the giant armful of flowers he had bought her. They walked along the South Bank and he watched street performers entertain for the first time ever, laughing when she called him a stuffed shirt for admitting that.
‘You can’t always have been so sensible, so careful about
