by the incident, and it had proved the final straw in helping her to make a complete break with her old crowd. She had been surprised how little she had missed them; how content she had been in her father’s company. She moved drowsily in the sunshine, her skin tanned a warm golden brown, contrasting with the minute emerald scraps that comprised her brief bikini. There was a matching jacket and wrap-round skirt on the sand beside her, and she sat up, swiftly fastening the skirt, as she stared out to sea. She would have hated Nico to have met her as the girl she had been. The other girls in her set would have drooled openly over him as they were wont; no doubt laughing shrilly in their attempts to focus his attention on them, the sharp, supposed to be witty, suggestive comments that were second nature falling from their glossed lips.
How would he have reacted to that photograph? Something told her that had she been spotted in such a compromising situation with him those photographs would never have reached the newspapers. But then Nico Doranti was hardly likely to steal up behind a girl and behave as childishly as Jean-Paul had done. For one thing he wouldn’t need to, and for another, when Nico chose to make love to a woman it wouldn’t be with one eye on the publicity he might gain. Saffron’s face felt hot—nothing to do with the sun; a strange languor was creeping over her as she contemplated how it would feel to be made love to by Nico.
Long shadows were starting to creep across the beach—a sign that the afternoon was dying. Soon she would have to leave the beach and trudge up the flight of stone steps cut in the cliff which led to the villa perched at the top. She started to gather up her belongings, glancing towards the cliffs and freezing as she saw the lone male figure sauntering towards her.
He was wearing ragged denim shorts, and a gold medallion on a fine chain glinted in the sun before disappearing into the dark tangle of body hair.
‘Nico!’
His name left her lips on a startled whisper, her eyes widening in unconscious appreciation of the male litheness of his body. The shorts were well worn and faded. They looked as though they had once been jeans and had been cut down—the genuine article, not some expensively fashioned beachwear, and the frayed cuffs drew her eyes to the solid muscle of his thighs. The sight of his near-naked body had a powerful effect upon her senses, heightened by the fact that he had been in her thoughts almost constantly since their meeting.
‘They told me up at the villa that I’d find you down here,’ he told her with a smile.
‘You came to see me?’ She hardly dared believe it.
His eyes were mocking. ‘Of course not! I can think of at least a dozen other reasons why I should drive hell for leather down here during the middle of a particularly hectic working week. But they’d all be lies,’ he added softly, devastating her by the way he looked at her, his glance encompassing the feminine curves of her body.
‘You surprise me,’ he said at last, shifting his inspection to her flushed face and tremulously parted mouth. ‘On a secluded beach like this I’d hardly have thought that—–’ he nodded towards her bikini and the skirt she had tied loosely round her waist, ‘charming though it is—necessary.’
It was several seconds before the full implication of his words sank in, and when they did Saffron reached nervously for her sunglasses and slid them quickly on to her nose to conceal her expression. Had he genuinely expected to find her sunbathing in the nude when he made his way down those steps?
Suddenly awkward, she stepped away from him, appalled to discover how difficult she found it to think logically while he was there.
‘Have you… will you be staying long?’ The question was disjointed, and she regretted the gaucheness of it the moment it was asked, but Nico seemed unconcerned.
‘One day, perhaps two; I have booked into a hotel—if you can call it that in San Lorenzo, just down the coast. You know it?’
‘Yes… but you could have stayed here, at the villa.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Would your father approve of such intimacy?’
Again Saffron was shocked by her body’s response to the picture he was painting; the two of them alone in the villa when Maria and her husband had returned to their own home in the evening. They could dine on the terrace that overlooked the sea, only the brilliance of the stars illuminating the scene, and afterwards…
Her mouth had gone dry, her whole body responding with a sensuality that rocked the ground beneath her feet. She had never felt like this before. She glanced downwards distractedly, absently noticing her towel and suntan lotion still lying on the sand, acutely aware of the aroused firming of her nipples beneath the emerald cotton. And Nico was aware of it too. She could see his glance focusing briefly on the hollow between her breasts where the cotton twisted in a provocative bow, and for one delirious moment she almost willed him to untie the green fabric and replace it with the hard warmth of his hands. She shuddered deeply, perspiration breaking out on her upper lip. What Was happening to her? Had Nico seen what she was thinking?
‘Come, your Maria asked me to tell you that she is preparing dinner early tonight because she wishes to leave early. She mentioned that tomorrow is her day off and she intends to spend it with her daughter. I would suggest that we dine together, but,’ his smile deepened the cleft in his chin, ‘but it has been a long drive from Rome, and I am very much afraid I might disgrace myself and fall asleep. However, if I might be permitted to have breakfast with you, and then later, perhaps, we could go for a drive?’
Swallowing her disappointment, Saffron clung to the fact that he had driven all this way to see her, that he wanted to see her tomorrow, and managed an answering smile, bending to collect the rest of her belongings; a sharp exclamation leaving her lips as she stepped back on the jagged edge of a shell.
Pain lanced through her tender skin. She overbalanced, falling awkwardly, and was deftly caught by Nico.
His hands seemed to burn through the flesh of her back, spread palm to fingertip against her skin as he steadied her.
‘What happened?’ He frowned and she shook her head.
‘I stood on a shell—nothing much.’
‘Let me see.’
He dropped on his haunches beside her, lifting her injured foot, so that she was forced to balance herself by gripping his shoulders. His skin had the taut sensuality of raw silk; the muscles it cloaked were supple. Saffron had to quell her desire to run her fingers over his shoulders and back. It would be like stroking the pelt of a jungle cat, she thought hazily, and just as dangerous. She glanced down, observing the dark head, and the deftness of the fingers exploring her injured foot.
‘It looks okay,’ Nico pronounced. ‘It’s bleeding quite freely, and as long as you wash and cleanse it thoroughly when you get back to the villa there shouldn’t be any complications. I can’t see any pieces of shell in it. Still, best to be sure.’
Before she realised what was happening Saffron felt the warmth of his mouth against her foot. Lean fingers curled round her ankle, and the feeling uncoiling inside her as Nico used his tongue to cleanse the small cut was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Who would have thought that the steady brush of his tongue against her skin could be so erotic?
‘Saffron?’
Nico raised his head, his hand stroking upwards from her ankle, an expression in his eyes that sent her pulses hammering with answering desire. And then he was on his feet and she was in his arms, her lips parting eagerly for the hot possession of his kiss. His hand
