and invigorating. This new side to him should have scared me more but as he walked back towards me, still struggling to get a grip on the desire which continued to reverberate through my own body, I felt a giddy sense of kinship.
Was he as disturbed by the ferocity of that kiss, and how quickly it had raged out of control, as I was?
‘Forgive me,’ he growled when he reached me. ‘That got out of hand a lot faster than I intended.’
The apology sounded gruff but sincere. And gave me an answer I didn’t know how to handle. Dante Allegri, the ruthless unprincipled womaniser, was a lot easier to hate than the man before me, who seemed almost as troubled by that kiss as I was.
‘Can we... Can we get back to the game?’ I managed at last, surprised by my ability to string a coherent sentence together.
One eyebrow rose a fraction, but then he nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Lifting one hand out of his pocket, he directed me to precede him into the poker salon. He made a point of not touching me again but, once we were seated at the table and he began to deal the cards, I could see he had regained his composure, and that cast-iron control.
I lifted my hole cards and examined them, but the probabilities I should be calculating as he dealt the first of the community cards and the blind betting began refused to come. My mind and every one of my senses had turned to mush.
My heart shrank in my chest as the play continued and he won the hand.
I tried to get my mind into gear during the next hand, but my judgement was off and my concentration shot. My mind and body were still reeling from the driving needs and inexplicable emotions he had ignited with a simple kiss. A kiss I had encouraged. No, a kiss I had initiated.
I wanted to weep, my panic increasing as he won the next hand. The unrequited need smouldered in the pit of my belly—the memory of his lips on mine, his hands kneading my buttocks, his tongue exploring in deep strokes—a distraction I couldn’t seem to conquer...
Long before the final hand was dealt, I knew I had lost and that I had only myself to blame. Because in those giddy moments when I had yearned for Dante Allegri’s kiss, then revelled in the stunning way it made me feel and then kidded myself it had devastated him too, I had become the one thing I’d always sworn I would never be... As weak and needy and gullible as my mother.
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