you tell her?’
She nodded.
‘And what did she say?’
‘To be careful,’ Bella admitted. ‘Then she told me that perhaps you were not as bad as your brother...’ Their hips were swaying, his other hand was feeling her bottom through the dress and she was closer, not just physically but closer and safer than she had ever felt with another person. Oh, Bella loved her mother but Maria’s lifestyle meant that Bella had never ever really known how it felt to be truly safe.
Tonight for the first time she did.
She danced and leant on him and then they kissed some more. Her dress was thin and he loathed the padded bra that did not let him stroke her nipples so he slipped the straps of her dress down and she closed her eyes as he removed her bra, sure he would be disappointed.
He wasn’t. His thumb caressed her nipple and his palm was warm on her skin as they danced...but as he buried his mouth beneath her hair to kiss her neck he was honest. ‘I loathe that scent,’ Matteo said.
‘So do I.’
‘Let’s get rid of it, then.’
He ran the bath and then peeled off her dress and they danced in the bathroom for a while longer until the bath was full. Bella, in her underwear and high heels, Matteo still in his suit, and she saw that her make-up had smeared his shirt.
She liked how when he let her go he pulled up his sleeve and put his hand in the water and added more cold water and then he took her hand and she sat on the edge of the bath.
He did not look up as he unclipped her stockings and rolled them down, and she could hear a ragged edge to his breathing as he undid her shoes and undressed her some more.
He kissed the inside of one pale thigh as an apology for his earlier uninvited touch there and Bella’s legs were shaking as he kissed the other thigh the same way. She lifted her bottom just enough so that he could take down her panties and suspender belt and he knelt as she sat naked.
The room was warm and steamy and her legs were apart and her throat closed as she silently wished he would kiss her there. Bella knew, though, that if he did she would topple, for even gripping the sides of the bath she was barely steady as his kiss to her thigh deepened.
He could feel her shaking so he stood and took her hand and Bella was helped into a bath for the first time.
She liked it even more as she lay shoulder deep in bubbles and his eyes did not leave her face as he undressed.
‘You’re getting in?’ she asked as she watched him slip off his jacket and hang it behind the door.
‘I am,’ he said, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘I want to be with you rather than simply watching you.’
Bella lay back and she watched as he responded to the slow smile on her face with one of his own.
She had never seen him smile like that. Usually he was ice—his features held closed and his eyes either behind sunglasses or guarded. If he ever did smile, it was usually an arrogant one or a triumphant smirk, but tonight his smile was slow and sensual and for her alone.
He undressed slowly and it was suddenly important to Bella that he did. She had already put out of her mind what had taken place in the corridor but even aside from that, the Matteo she had heard about was neither tender, slow nor patient.
He was tonight.
She watched as he undid the buttons on the front of his shirt and then the sleeves and then he took it off. Bella wanted to reach out and touch his skin. She wanted her fingers on dark, flat nipples as his had been on hers. Soon they would touch but for now she took in the delicious view of his torso. He was masculine and raw in his beauty. Even his arms turned her on as she knew soon they would be wrapped around her and that they would be skin to skin. She watched the stretch of his muscles as he hung his shirt on a hook and her eyes fell on a long, very neat scar.
‘What happened?’ Bella asked.
‘A fight,’ he said, and then shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
He tossed aside his socks and shoes with far less care than his other clothes and she lay there, a dense feeling forming between her legs as he saved the best till last.
He slid open the buckle of his belt.
Too slowly for Bella for, beneath the fabric, she could see his erection bulging.
His tongue he held between his lips as he slid down the zipper.
Bella wasn’t even breathing.
The bathroom shrank, steam fogged the mirrors, even her shoulders and face, which were out of the water, were damp.
But her mouth was dry.
She licked her lips as he freed himself and, no, the rest of his clothes he did not hang up, he just stepped out of them.
He was always impressive dressed and yet he was perfection naked.
His calves were lean, his thighs were long and muscular and they would be hers to enjoy later, but all she could focus on now was his erection. Impressive, dark and long, and growing even as she looked, beneath the bubbly water her fists clenched. She lifted her knees as he approached, but not just to make room for him. It was a necessary motion because her thighs ached as they never had before.
He was so tall and had run the bath so deep that the water slipped over the edge as he joined her.
‘We don’t want to flood the bathroom,’ she said, loving the strength of his legs as they moved around the sides of her body and captured her like a vice.
‘We might end up crashing through the floor and into the bar,’ he said, and he laughed a deep, low laugh, and it was the first time she had heard it.
No one really heard it, Bella was sure, and that made her sad enough for it to show in her expression but he misread it.
‘Are you scared?’ he asked.
She shook her head. How could she possibly be scared with Matteo gazing into her eyes and his legs holding her body and his hands taking hers in his? Fear had no place here tonight.
He looked at her hands, pale and slender in his, and then he let them go and picked up a cloth when she wanted his kiss. Her lips moved towards him but he moved his head back.
‘Patience, Bella.’
‘I have none with you.’
‘Well, I’m going to teach it to you. Come here, little panda...’
He very carefully started to remove her make-up. The lipstick he had already taken care of with his mouth and she closed her eyes as he removed the streaked eyeliner and mascara and painted her eighteen and innocent again.
He was tender and yet it was so sensually done that her hands could not stay still beneath the water so she explored his thighs, feeling their power and stroking the lean muscle while resisting her true desire to touch him more intimately.
He
