sincerity. He reached out to stroke the side of her face and then gently tilted it so that she was looking at him. This was so inappropriate and yet it felt so right. He thought about all the reasons why he shouldn’t be touching her at all, not even the most innocent of touches, of which this definitely wasn’t one, and all that emerged was the stark ferocity of his physical response. It seemed to batter through everything to emerge the victor.
‘These aren’t even my clothes,’ Sunny whispered, even though she had told herself that there was no way she would admit to that because she had been so keen to prove to him that she was capable of having fun just like any other girl her age.
‘No?’ Stefano wondered why he was so relieved to hear that. Her skin, under the roughened pad of his thumb, was velvety-smooth and her eyes, up close like this, were the clearest green he had ever seen, the colour of sea-washed glass.
‘They belong to the girl I share the flat with,’ Sunny confessed, resisting the urge to lean into the gentle absent-minded strokes of his finger on her cheek. Her heart was racing. This felt very, very dangerous but she told herself that that was purely in her imagination because he was just being kind.
And she didn’t want him to be kind... She wanted him to be...a man...
Her breathing became shallow and her eyelids fluttered as the realisation settled like a leaden weight in the pit of her stomach. Finding him attractive had been inexplicable enough but at least that had been a passive situation, something she could deal with, even if it was inconvenient.
But wanting him to carry on touching her all over, wanting him to look at her with the hunger of a man looking at a woman he wanted...
She eased back and immediately missed the headiness of being close to him and feeling his skin against hers.
‘Amy lent them to me,’ she said in a more matter-of-fact voice. ‘She thought they might look a bit better than the usual stuff I wear when I go out...’
After that brief moment of intimacy, Stefano could feel her pulling away from him and the need to recapture the lost connection slammed into him with the force of a freight train.
‘But I didn’t feel comfortable in them, if you want to know the truth.’ She gave a careless shrug, hoping to dispel the electric charge between them.
A girl could lose herself in his eyes, she thought a little wildly. So it was no wonder that she was falling victim to all sorts of wobbly legs type feelings!
‘Why the name?’ Stefano murmured before she could slip away into polite conversation, before she could distance herself from him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your name. Is it a nickname? Because, from what you’ve told me about yourself...about your mother...’
‘You’re not really interested in that!’ Sunny laughed weakly. ‘And I’m sorry for being such a wimp and spilling my guts out! I’m sure that’s not the sort of thing you bargained for when you asked me to come along with you and Flora tonight...’ Hot and bothered by the way he was looking at her, she tried to find something sensible to say about Flora, some observation that would turn the intimacy of this conversation around because her bones were melting, especially because, instead of taking the hint and pulling away from her after she had tactfully drawn back, he had sat forward, once again closing the distance between them.
Nothing sensible came to mind and she licked her lips nervously.
‘I’m interested,’ Stefano murmured.
Sunny sighed. No big deal. Was it...?
‘She was in one of her optimistic windows,’ she said sadly. ‘That’s what she told me many times over the years. She’d come off the drugs and the drink as soon as she found out that she was pregnant with me...’
‘And your father?’
Sunny lowered her eyes and felt her breath catch. ‘No idea. Probably just another drifter...’
‘I’m sorry.’
And he sounded as though he genuinely meant that, which brought a lump to her throat. Her eyes tangled with his and clung. He had, she thought distractedly, the most wickedly long eyelashes...
‘You were saying...’ Stefano reminded her.
‘So I was. I was saying that Mum was off the bad stuff and she just plucked the most hopeful name she could think of...’ Sunny smiled wryly ‘...and I’ve been stuck with it ever since. I haven’t even got a useful middle name I could have reverted to...’
‘Your outfit,’ Stefano murmured.
Sunny tensed. ‘I can’t wait to get it off...’
‘I didn’t say...what I said to be insulting...’
‘Maybe you thought I wouldn’t fit in with that crowd.’ She forestalled any truths that she knew would cut to the quick.
He looked at her with open puzzlement and she laughed, knowing that she’d at least got that bit wrong. He wasn’t the sort to care what other people thought.
‘I said what I said because...’ he sat back and folded his arms, his eyes not wavering ‘...the thought of other men looking at you...’ He shouldn’t be doing this but knowing that didn’t help and didn’t change anything. He was experiencing that very, very rare feeling of being at the mercy of something bigger and more powerful than his own iron willpower. He allowed his words to sink in, not knowing whether she would respond at all but driven to find out because he just had to. ‘Well, put it this way... I didn’t like the idea and I couldn’t see how they could fail to stare in that outfit of yours...’
‘You didn’t like the idea...’ She felt as if she was suddenly walking through thick fog with no signposts in sight.
‘Men look...and then they want...’ He shrugged in a way that was typically foreign, an overblown gesture that seemed to convey dry amusement and impatient resignation at the same time. ‘I didn’t like the thought of that...’
‘Of what?’
‘Of both...’ His stomach clenched because, for once, he wasn’t staring at a guaranteed outcome. She was quirky and...unpredictable, and both those things added up, for him, to an unknown quantity. And for once the riptide was carrying him. He didn’t like it or want it but he was powerless to resist it.
‘I didn’t like the thought of them looking...and I didn’t like the thought of them wanting... I felt that both those things should come from...me...’
SUNNY STARED AT Stefano in wide-eyed bewilderment, certain that she had somehow got the wrong end of the stick.
‘What are you saying?’ she stammered.
‘Surely I don’t have to spell it out in words of one syllable.’ His voice was husky and teasing but that thread of uncertain apprehension was still pouring through his veins, investing him with the sort of edge-of-seat feeling he had never had much time for.
His
