felt too wound up to sleep. She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling which, like in the first room she had occupied, before her ill-fated attempt to climb down from the balcony, was decorated with elaborate artwork. But even though the fresco depicting the goddess Aphrodite was beautiful she was bored with studying it—just as she was bored with watching television when all the programmes were in Italian.
Her mind returned to wondering why Drago had not returned to the palazzo for dinner. Not that she had wanted to spend time with him, and she certainly hadn’t changed into a gorgeous green silk dress from the Cassa di Cassari collection because she had hoped to impress him, but she had felt strangely lonely sitting on her own at the huge polished dining table. And that really did not make sense, because after growing up in the children’s home constantly surrounded by other kids she liked her own company.
Drago had probably gone to visit a girlfriend. It was inconceivable that a man as devastatingly handsome and sexy as he was did not have a lover—or maybe more than one. Good luck to them, she thought as she sat up and thumped her pillows. Any woman who took him on would have to cope with his arrogant and bossy nature.
A sudden crash, followed by a shout, shattered the silence. The sounds had been loud, even through the walls that separated her room from Drago’s, and the deathly quiet that followed seemed ominous to Jess’s overactive imagination. Curiosity got the better of her and she slid out of bed.
The door to Drago’s suite was shut. She knocked, but received no answer, and after a moment’s hesitation she turned the handle and found that the door was unlocked. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet as she crossed the sitting room. The door leading to his bedroom was ajar, and as she cautiously peeped round it she inhaled an overwhelmingly strong scent of aftershave.
Just then he emerged from the en suite bathroom, and the sight of his blood-soaked chest caused her to give a sharp cry.
‘Santa Madre!’ He stopped dead, clearly shocked to see her. ‘What are you doing, flitting around the house as noiselessly as a wraith?’
‘I heard a crash…’ Jess could not tear her eyes from what she now realised was a blood-stained towel wrapped around the hand that he was holding against his chest. ‘What have you done?’
He glanced down at his front and said wryly, ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I cut my hand on some glass and it’s made a bloody mess—literally. I knocked a bottle of cologne into the sink and then compounded my clumsiness by trying to pick up the shards of glass. The damned cut won’t stop bleeding. Can you look in the bathroom cabinet for a bandage?’ He gave her an intent look when she hesitated. ‘Does the sight of blood bother you?’
No way was Jess going to admit that it was not the blood that bothered her but the sight of Drago’s naked, olive-skinned chest as he shrugged off his stained shirt. Her gaze was drawn to the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles, and followed the path of wiry black hair that arrowed down his torso and disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers.
She swallowed, and replied in a faintly strained voice, ‘No. When I was a kid I regularly used to patch my dad up after he’d had some accident or other while he was drunk. Once he fell through a neighbour’s greenhouse and was cut to ribbons.’
Drago frowned. ‘How old were you when that happened?’
She shrugged. ‘Eight or so. Sit down while I dress the wound,’ she bade him, when she had followed him into the bathroom and found a medical box in the cupboard.
He sat on the edge of the bath and unwound the towel to reveal a deep cut across his palm. ‘I’ve kept pressure on it and elevated my hand. The bleeding seems to be easing.’
‘I don’t think it needs stitching,’ Jess said after she had inspected the wound. ‘You’re lucky.’
‘Sì.’ He could not disguise the weariness in his voice. ‘I don’t fancy another trip to the hospital tonight.’
She threw him a quick look. ‘Is that where you’ve been? I wondered why you weren’t at dinner.’
‘Why, cara, you almost sound as though you missed me,’ he drawled.
‘Of course I didn’t. Why would I miss my jailer?’ Aware that she was blushing, she concentrated on her task. ‘At least the cut will have been sterilised by the cologne,’ she murmured as she began to bandage his hand. ‘It smells like a sultan’s harem in here.’
‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’
Drago subjected her to a leisurely inspection that for some reason made her feel hot and shivery at the same time.
‘I’m sure you would be a sultan’s favourite concubine, with your creamy skin and fiery hair,’ he said softly.
Startled by the sudden change in his voice, from teasing to husky and achingly sensual, Jess caught her breath. Her eyes flew to his, and saw the undisguised hunger in his glittering stare. ‘Of course I’ve never been in a harem,’ she choked. ‘I would never be a man’s plaything. I believe in equality between men and women.’
Nothing on earth would make her confess her secret fantasy of being swept into the arms of a handsome, powerful man and being seduced on silken sheets. In the fantasy she fought against his dominance at first, but she could not resist the skilful touch of his hands and mouth as he aroused her and tormented her until she begged for him to possess her.
Her dream lover had never had a face—until now. She darted a glance at Drago’s chiselled features and felt her stomach dip. He was all her fantasies rolled into one, she acknowledged ruefully. His hard-boned masculine beauty was made even sexier by the shadow of dark stubble on his jaw. She stared at his mouth, remembering how it had felt on hers when he had kissed her, and unconsciously she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, as if she could recapture the taste of him.
The atmosphere in the bathroom altered subtly and the sexual tension was almost palpable. Drago was conscious of the slow thud of his heart, and even more aware of the throbbing ache in his groin, the urgent drumbeat of desire flooding through his veins. It had started with the brush of Jess’s fingers on his skin as she’d wrapped the bandage around his hand. The contrast of her pale fingers against his darkly tanned flesh had made him imagine her naked in his arms, her smooth white limbs entwined with his hair-roughened thighs.
But in all honesty it had started before that—when she had appeared in his room looking utterly delectable, wearing a nightgown from the Cassa di Cassari collection that was little more than a wisp of white silk and lace. She was an intriguing mixture of virginal innocence and sensual siren, with her crushed-berry lips and those startling green cat’s eyes.
As she leaned over him to tend to his hand he breathed in the delicate rose-scented fragrance of her skin, and the brush of her silky hair against his bare shoulder inflamed his senses. From the first moment he had seen her in London he had felt a primitive hunger to possess her and claim her as his woman. He was no Neanderthal; he was a twenty-first century guy who believed in equality between the sexes as much as she did. But his desire for her was a pagan force he had no control over.
He had never wanted any woman the way he wanted Jess, Drago acknowledged. The gentle concern in her eyes as she tied the bandage on his hand called to something deep inside him. Since the death of his father he had been the carer and protector of his family, always strong and in control. Tonight that control was slipping away from him. He was not thinking about his suspicion that she was involved with his cousin’s missing inheritance
