completely unexpected. She shimmied out of her robe and got into the makeshift bed on the floor.
And made him feel like an absolute idiot.
‘Ever had your testosterone levels checked out?’ he grumbled.
‘What’s the matter, Valentino? Your masculinity being challenged because I’m not falling at your feet?’
Yes, as a matter of fact it was.
‘Was the kiss that good?’ he purred.
‘I can’t remember.’
He heard her fake a yawn and shook his head. ‘Sounds like you want a reminder.’
‘Not in this lifetime,’ she sputtered.
Her protest was a little too vigorous, which he liked.
Tino stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling, his eyes starting to adjust to the grey shadows cast around the room from the moonlight seeping in around the sheer curtains.
He heard the blankets on the floor rustle and his teeth gnashed together. She was being ridiculous and taking this just a little too far. He wondered if she was wearing something lacy. Something like the freshly laundered hot-pink thong hanging on the towel rail in the bathroom. The sight of those delicate panties had knocked him for a six, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t left them there deliberately.
Finding out she really did favour sexy lingerie was a fact he could have well done without. Ball-breaking Miss Miller Jacobs was turning out to be full of contradictions. Not least of all that fiery response to his kiss in the garden.
Acting, she had said after the event. Yeah, right.
Acting, my ass.
Yeah, and you’re not supposed to be thinking about it.
‘I like the thong you left in the bathroom,’ he said, unable to help annoying her as she was annoying him.
‘You can’t borrow it,’ she said after a slight pause.
He gave a soft chuckle. Man, she was sassy. And, no, he didn’t want to borrow it. But he wouldn’t have minded stripping it down her long legs to see what he was sure would be tawny curls underneath. His heart beat the blood a little more heavily around his body and he was unable to stop his mind from imagining her naked and spread out on the four-poster bed. Imagining her soft and wet with the same need that had compelled her to wrap her tongue around his in that garden.
He breathed deep and willed his body to relax, reminding himself that he only wanted her because he’d placed an embargo around her.
The blankets rustled again as she adjusted herself on the hard floor that not even thousand-dollar-a-metre carpet could soften.
His blood was Sicilian, and if she thought he could stay sprawled out on a comfortable bed while she lay uncomfortably at his feet she had another thing coming. But he knew offering up the bed would only play into her martyr’s hands and give her a reason to make him feel even more like a heel, so he stayed quiet and devised another plan that had the double advantage of allowing him to live up to his chivalrous nature and annoy the hell out of her at the same time.
Half an hour later Tino looked down on Miller’s sleeping form. Her hands were tucked under her face and her shoulder-length hair was dark against the white pillow. Deep shadows beneath her eyes attested to how tired she was.
Careful not to wake her, he leaned down and pulled the meagre blanket away from her body—and instantly stilled.
She was lying half on her stomach, one leg bent to the side in an innocently provocative pose. Her pale jersey camisole top and matching three quarter length pants stretched tight over her ripe curves. As far as night attire went it wasn’t the most seductive he’d ever seen, and yet as he gazed at her slender limbs, milky in the shadowy moonlight she had his full attention.
His hand itched to curve around the firm globes of her bottom while he bit down gently on the soft-as-silk skin that covered her trapezius. Would she be sensitive there? Or would she prefer him to kiss his way down each pearl-like button of her spine? Perhaps while he was buried deep inside her.
Tino groaned and closed his eyes. He felt like a randy teenager looking at a full on girlie magazine. Lust, hot and primal, beat through his body and made his legs weak. For a moment he was gripped by an almost uncontrollable urge to roll her over and wake her with a lover’s kiss. Get her to open her mouth for him as she had done earlier, cup her pert breasts, shove those stretchy pants to her ankles and thrust into her until all she could do was chant his name over and over as she came for him.
Only him.
He blinked back the unusually possessive thought, the incongruity of it burning through his sensual haze and reminding him of his initial purpose in pulling the blanket from her body.
Gently, he scooped her up off the floor and carried her to the bed. She stirred and shifted in his arms, the curtain of her hair trailing down his naked arm and her orange blossom shampoo tickling his nose. His body tightened at the allure of that clean smell and he almost tumbled her onto the bed in his haste to put her down. As soon as he did she mumbled something unintelligible and sighed deeply as she curled into the soft mattress.
Tino quickly pulled the comforter up over her near naked limbs before he could change his mind about being chivalrous.
His eyes drifted to the other side of the king-sized bed. It looked vast and empty with her only taking up one quarter of it. Tiredness invaded his body, and although he had fully intended to sleep on the floor he realised he probably didn’t have to. The bed was nearly as big as the infinity pool downstairs and he was an early riser. If the gods were on his side he’d be up and running along the beach before she even knew it was a new day.
Still, he laid a row of pillows down the centre of the bed. No point in tempting fate.
* * *
‘Oh, yes,’ Miller moaned softly as she felt the weight of a hair roughened thigh slip between her legs while a warm, callused hand palmed her breast. Her body buzzed and her nipples tightened, forcing her to arch more firmly into that warm caress. The hand squeezed her gently and somewhere above her head she heard a rough masculine sound of appreciation. Another hand was sliding confidently over her hip toward—
Holy hell!
Miller’s eyes flew open and she stared straight into Valentino Ventura’s sleeping face. Within seconds her brain assimilated the fact that she was no longer on the floor, but in bed and that Valentino had one of his hands on her breast and the other curved around her bottom.
Miller yelped and pushed against his impossibly hard chest, glad when he gave a grunt of discomfort, his jet-black lashes parting to reveal slate-grey eyes still glazed with sleep.
Miller pushed at his hands and scrambled backwards, her legs colliding with one of his knees as she roughly slid her leg out from between his.
Tino let out a rough expletive and moved his legs out of the way. ‘Watch the knee.’
‘Watch the...?’ Miller had a vague recollection of the men questioning Valentino about some racing injury but she didn’t care about that right now. ‘Get your hands off me, you great oaf.’
