style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Because you…because you wanted to look at the horses, didn’t you?’
In any other woman it would have been a coy question, but Gianferro knew she meant it. ‘No. You know very well what I wanted. What I want. What you want, too—if you can dare to admit it to yourself.’
Her eyes were like saucers as she saw the expression on his face and read the sensual intent there, so dark and so powerfully irresistible that she shook her head, willing it to go away even while she prayed it never would. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘No. We mustn’t!’
‘But we have to—you know we do,’ he whispered. ‘For you will die unless we do.’ And so will I.
‘Gianferro!’
He pulled her into his arms and tumbled her down beneath him onto the spiky bed of a bale of hay, pushing back a strand of hair from her rain-wet face. For one long moment he stared down at her, ignoring the bewilderment in her eyes, before blotting out the world with the heady pressure of his kiss.
For Millie it was like jumping the highest jump in the world—she’d never felt such a heady blend of excitement and fear before. She could feel the muscular strength of his body, and his hands cupping her face, his lips grazing over hers.
‘Oh!’ It was a broken plea, a request for something she wasn’t aware she wanted, and as she made it he opened her lips with the seeking brush of his tongue. She gasped as it flicked inside her mouth. Fireworks exploded inside her head and she began to ache as she gripped onto him, drowning in the sweetness of it all, her body seeming to take on a life of its own as it pushed itself against the hard sinews of his. Dimly, she was aware of the heavy flowering of her breasts, and their sweet, prickling ache made her want him closer still.
With a terse exclamation he pulled himself away from her, his breathing ragged and unsteady as he stared into the sultry protest of her slick lips.
‘Why did you stop?’ she questioned, in a honeyed voice which sounded like a stranger’s.
‘Why?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Why do you think?’ And then he read the uncertainty and the hunger in her big blue eyes and relented, his dark brows knitting together. ‘Have you ever kissed a man before, Millie?’
She stared at him. So he had guessed! ‘Not…not like that.’
The dark brows were elevated in lazy question. ‘And what way is that?’
She wanted to say With your tongue, but she couldn’t. It made it sound so anatomical. As if what had just happened had been all about experimentation, and it had not been about that at all—more a great whooshing feeling which had swept her away and made her feel like…like…
She shook her head, as if that could make the mixed-up feelings go away. ‘Nothing.’
A sense of triumph began to bubble up inside him as he acknowledged just how inexperienced she was, and he pulled her back into his arms. ‘You kiss very beautifully,’ he said softly. ‘Very hard and very passionately.’ He traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his finger and they trembled beneath his touch. ‘But there are other ways to kiss a man too, and I shall show you them all. I shall teach you well, dear Millie.’
His words seemed to bring her to her senses, and she pulled herself away from him. He did not stop her. What the hell was he suggesting? What had he lured her into, and why had she let him? Distractedly, she tugged strands of hay from her hair and cast them down on the stable floor as she stared at him.
‘You won’t do anything of the sort!’ she spat out, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘What kind of man do you think you are?’ And what kind of woman was she? ‘You’re going to marry my sister!’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘I am not.’
‘You are! You are!’ she cried desperately. ‘You know you are!’
‘I cannot marry her,’ he said flatly, and he reached out and captured her chin, turning her face towards his to imprison her in the ebony spotlight of his gaze, melting her with its intensity. ‘And we both know why that is.’
‘I’M GOING to marry Gianferro.’
Lulu paused in the act of brushing her hair. ‘Are you out of your tiny?’
Millie swallowed, but the words had to be said, no matter what the reaction. ‘I’m sorry.’
The eyes which were reflected in the dressing-table mirror narrowed, and then Lulu whirled round. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Gianferro, and I…we are to be married.’
‘Tell me you’re joking.’
Millie shook her head. The right thing to say now would be, I wish I was, but that wouldn’t have been true. And she had decided that she could not shirk the truth. Lulu was going to be hurt—through no fault of her own—and it was Millie’s duty to stand there and take the flak. ‘No. I’m not joking.’
For a second Lulu’s mouth twisted, and then she said, in the same voice she used to use when she told Millie that men didn’t like girls who smelt faintly of manure, ‘Millie—you may have decided to develop a crush on that cold-hearted bastard, but it really isn’t a good idea to start living in fantasy land. If you come out with bizarre statements like that then people are bound to get to hear. And people will laugh.’
‘She means it, Lulu,’ said a voice at the door, and both sisters turned round to see their mother standing there.
‘You knew?’ questioned Millie in bewilderment.
‘Gianferro rang me this morning,’ said her mother. ‘Supposedly to ask my permission for your hand, since your father is no longer with us—though I got the distinct impression that my agreement was academic. That he intends to marry you whether I sanction it or not, and that he is not the type of man who will take no for an answer.’
Lulu was looking from one to the other, like a spectator at a tennis match, a look of puzzlement on her face. ‘But she doesn’t even know him!’
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘How can she be marrying him?’ continued Lulu, in disbelief. ‘If she hasn’t seen him since that day he ruined our lunch party and broke my heart into the bargain?’
‘He didn’t break your heart, darling,’ said her mother gently. ‘You’ve been back with Ned Vaughn ever since!’
But Lulu wasn’t listening. ‘Are you going to give us some kind of explanation, Millie? You’ve only met him once!’
The Countess’s eyes were shrewd. ‘I think you’ll find she’s met him a great deal more than once—haven’t you, Millie?’
Millie nodded, biting her lip, summoning up more courage than she had ever needed in her life.
‘When?’ snapped Lulu. ‘And where?’
‘At
