off,’ Nico began, suddenly pausing in front of a framed photograph on one of the tables. It depicted Saffron with her father, and one of her father’s oldest friends. Nico was staring at it with a fixity that puzzled her, his eyes and mouth tautly bleak.
‘An old friend of my father’s,’ Saffron told him. ‘He… he died last year.’ Her voice faltered and she bit hard on her lip. She hadn’t known John Hunter all that well, although he and her father had been friends for many years, but she still found it painful to talk about his death. He had been a kidnap victim, and his subsequent death at the hands of his kidnappers had made headline news. Even now Saffron found it hard to shake off the sick horror that crawled through her veins as she dwelt on his ordeal. She had never even told her father about her own almost pathological fear of being kidnapped. Some people were terrified by spiders, she told herself flippantly; her phobia was kidnappers.
She suspected it stemmed from her mother’s death. She had been at boarding school when it had happened and had known nothing. The arrival of two strangers, who she later discovered were her father’s secretary and personal assistant, who whisked her away from school without explanation and then proceeded to tell her of her mother’s death, had left a scar that had never completely healed.
‘He was kidnapped by terrorists,’ she forced herself to say, as though by speaking the dread word she could overcome her fear.
‘Tragic.’ Nico sounded as though he meant it, and for a split second Saffron found herself reliving her father’s grief and the sharp resurrection of her own phobia, but she quelled it swiftly with a flippant, ‘Oh, I don’t know—isn’t it everyone’s private sexual fantasy?’
It was the sort of flip statement expected among her crowd and Saffron had often used them defensively in the past, not caring about the conclusions her companions would draw, but now she did care, and she bitterly wished the seemingly callous statement unuttered when she saw the look in Nico’s eyes.
‘Nico?’ Her voice and eyes pleaded with her to understand, begged for the forgiveness her pride would not allow her to ask for, and miraculously his expression changed, a smile soothing away the frown and with it the harsh bitterness that had seemed so alien to his character.
‘I think I must have got out of my bed on the wrong side this morning.’ His mouth twisted wryly. ‘Or perhaps the problem is that it wasn’t the right bed.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘How long will it take you to finish getting ready?’
No reference to the fact that ten minutes ago he had been on the point of cancelling their outing, but Saffron was too delirious with joy to mention it.
‘Ten minutes,’ she promised, and was as good as her word, watching with steadily escalating excitement as Nico stowed the picnic basket away in the boot of the Mercedes, and opened the passenger door for her to climb in.
They had the road almost entirely to themselves. Saffron relaxed back into her seat, enjoying the teasing caress of the breeze as it tangled her curls, breathing the hot, sensual scent of the countryside drowsing in the midsummer heat. They passed olive groves with trees so gnarled and ancient it wasn’t hard to believe that they had probably been old when the Roman legions tramped these roads.
They were high up in the hills behind the villa. Below them the sea shone deep azure blue, merging into the distant skyline in misty lilac. Saffron sat with her knees hunched under her chin, aware of the heat of the sun as it beat down on to her shoulders. Half an hour ago Nico had pulled off the road in this beautiful, strangely desolate spot. Now he was lying at her side on the thin grass watching the sky. A pleasant breeze stirred the heated air. She ought to have been feeling pleasurably relaxed after the meal they had just shared, but she wasn’t. Tension coiled her stomach like an over-wound spring, her body so intensely aware of the man beside her that she could sense his every movement without even looking at him. He had removed the jeans and shirt he had worn for driving and lay on his back, and Saffron berated herself for not having followed his example and donned her swimwear beneath her tee-shirt and jeans. But Nico’s brief trunks did little to conceal his masculinity, and she forced herself not to give in to the impulse to let her glance wander at will over his body. She could always go and change. There was no one to see except Nico. As though he read her thoughts he suggested lazily,
‘Why don’t you go and change?’
She wanted to, so why was she holding back? What was this strange selfconsciousness that made her reluctant to expose herself to Nico in the brief triangles of her bikini?
‘You are looking as though you were a Christian maiden who preferred being thrown to the lions to exchanging her virtue for the embrace of her Roman captor. It is a novel experience,’ he continued lightly, levering himself up on one elbow to study her. Dark eyelashes swept protectively across her eyes, anxious to conceal her expression from his probing glance, fearful that he would read in her eyes the secret of her virginity. Why, when she had never felt burdened by it before, did she suddenly long for the experience and expediency of her peers? If only she had some practical sexual knowledge to fall back on, to tell her how to react.
‘Why is innocence always such a lure to the men who witness it? When I look at you now, I find it hard to imagine any man other than myself has so much as touched your lips.’ Nico’s expression changed, hardening, his muttered, ‘God, I must be losing my grip!’ lost as he leaned over her imprisoning her with his body, his voice thick and unsteady as he said against her lips, ‘Something tells me I’m going to regret this, but right now I can’t think past the aching in my gut, that reminds me I’m a male animal first, and a thinking human being a very poor second. What is it those soft eyes are begging for when they look at me so? Reprieve? Or this?’
Saffron had known the first time she saw him that he was a man who knew all there was to know about the female sex, but he seemed to have misjudged her badly, because the ferocious pressure of his mouth, the desire he made no attempt to temper, frightened rather than aroused her. Deep down inside him she sensed a bitter anger, an inner rage that drowned out seduction and sensitivity and left only a raw need that even she, inexperienced though she was, knew he had not meant to betray. Why? she asked herself numbly, frozen beneath his body, terrified by the emotions she sensed churning through him. She struggled to break free, panic tensing her muscles, her mind and body crying out to her that she had been a fool to allow herself to be alone with him. What did she know of him after all? What if she had merely imagined that rapport which had seemed to make conventional preliminaries between them unnecessary?
As though he sensed the direction of her thoughts the harsh pressure of Nico’s mouth suddenly relaxed. He murmured an apology against her ear, stilling her frantic movements with the sensual caress of his hand stroking over her body.
‘Forgive me, cara. I was too impulsive, my desire for you too intense…’
Despite his words and the look in his eyes, Saffron had the momentary impression that he was playing a part, mouthing words he did not feel, but it died almost the instant it was born as his hand pushed aside the thin barrier of her tee-shirt, cupping the rounded softness of her breast, his lips brushing tantalising over hers, with none of the angry pressure of before.
Perhaps she had imagined his anger, she thought hazily, perhaps it had just been fostered by desire. She knew so little of the emotions which drove men, and he was obviously not a man used to denying his sexuality.
Her body’s responsiveness to him frightened her, and she tried to wriggle away. ‘We ought to be going,’ she murmured shakily. ‘I…’
Nico glanced at his watch and then seemed to search the scenery; the deserted sky and equally deserted road.
‘Not
