Ava responded tactfully, because Damien had been flirting like mad with her during their brief conversation, even confessing to her that young single women were scarcer than hens’ teeth in the neighbourhood and that he had started attending the church services in the hope of meeting more people, only to discover that the greater part of the congregation was as old as the hills.
‘I’ll warn him off … I don’t share,’ Vito delivered darkly.
Ava blinked. ‘You really don’t need to warn him off.’
‘I don’t do one-night stands either,’ Vito continued with lashings of assurance.
In the act of dragging her eyes from his truly magnificent physique, Ava blushed like a tongue-tied adolescent and could think of absolutely nothing to say to that when he was clearly, in spite of their earlier difference of opinion, planning to spend the night with her.
‘But I think, right now, I could be very much into fun, bella mia,’ he confided raggedly, the tough front lurching slightly.
‘I don’t know how to do casual,’ Ava told him jerkily, her nerves getting the better of her vocal cords but the sting of his reproof about casual sex unforgotten.
‘I don’t either,’ Vito murmured silkily, tossing something down on the bedside cabinet and throwing the duvet back and climbing into the bed beside her as though he slept with her every night and it were the most normal thing he could do.
‘Vito …’ Ava began in a troubled voice.
Vito ran a finger caressingly down the length of her slender throat to rest where a tiny pulse was beating out her tension below her collarbone. Hot golden eyes looked levelly into hers. ‘I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.’
‘Oh,’ Ava said stupidly, but in truth she was transfixed by the admission from such a source. Vito, who needed no one, listened to no one and who never confessed to human weakness was telling her something she had never expected to hear from him. He wanted—no, needed—to be with her and he could not have said anything more calculated to appeal to her.
He brushed his lips very gently across hers, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘Do you want me to leave?’
Ava froze at the offer. ‘Er, no—’
‘But hopefully you don’t want me to stay because you wanted me at eighteen and couldn’t have me?’ he pressed, evidently concerned that that might be the case.
He was asking her to divorce the past from the present and she wasn’t sure she could do that. ‘I just want you,’ Ava said gruffly, shorn of her usual cool. ‘But I assure you that I got over my obsession with you at eighteen.’
‘I don’t like the idea that I’m taking advantage of you,’ Vito admitted grimly. ‘Here I am, I’m not drunk but I’m not sober either, and I’m not even thinking about what I’m doing.’
‘That’s OK, no big deal,’ Ava soothed softly, patently unaware of how rare it was for Vito to do anything without thinking it through first. ‘It’s not important.’
‘I’m not about to fall in love with you and marry you or anything like that!’ Vito warned her, derision at the idea giving his mouth a sardonic twist. ‘This is an affair, nothing more complex. Don’t overthink it.’
‘I never thought I would say it but you talk too much,’ Ava told him with sudden amusement. ‘I’m not that daft dreaming teenager you remember—I grew up and I’m not even twenty-two yet. I don’t want to get married for years and years and years!’
‘I don’t ever want to get married,’ Vito traded, throwing himself back against the pillows while wondering how he could possibly be irritated by her total lack of interest in marrying him. Naturally that was good news and she was blessedly free of the carefully presented hypocrisies with which his more usual style of lover sought to set him at his ease. Of course she was ten years younger than he was and that was a fair gap, he acknowledged, tension filtering through his momentary relaxation. In fact it was almost cradle-snatching.
Ava leant over him, her hair brushing a big shoulder while she marvelled at the conversation they were having. ‘I don’t want to marry you. I want to play the field and have fun first.’
‘If Damien Skeel comes on to you, you tell me,’ Vito spelt out rawly in a knee-jerk reaction that shook him because it seemed to come from some strange place inside him he didn’t recognise. ‘And you’re not going to be playing the field and having fun with anyone but me until we’re over. Is that understood?’
A pang pierced Ava. She didn’t like to hear him talk of their affair being over before it had even really begun. It hurt, just as breaking up would hurt, she reminded herself impatiently. She wasn’t a kid any more. She didn’t cherish a little soap bubble fantasy of Vito falling madly in love with her and sweeping her down the aisle to an altar. Even as a teenager she had not been that naïve.
‘Do you always lay down the law in bed like you’re in the boardroom?’ Ava teased.
‘I need to with you. You’re a new and very original box of tricks, cara mia,’ Vito contended, pushing her playfully flat against the pillows to extract a long, drugging kiss that sent her heartbeat into overdrive.
She felt tiny beneath him, crushed by his broad chest and the hair-roughened thigh that had slid between hers. She was madly aware of her nipples tightening into tingling buds and of the hard press of his arousal against her. He wanted her. For a split second she simply luxuriated in that sweet wonderful knowledge. She wanted him and he wanted her. Finally, the time was right. And then in dismay she recalled the rather childish tattoo on her hip and resolved to buy some large plasters as soon as she could to conceal that revealing marking before he could see it. He wouldn’t think of her as an adult for long if he caught a glimpse of that.
Vito sat up and tossed back the duvet. ‘What on earth are you wearing?’ he demanded.
‘My PJs.’
‘Gingham just isn’t sexy,’ Vito pronounced with authority and embarked on the buttons.
Ava lay there stiff with embarrassment while he stripped off her pyjamas and reminded herself that he had seen it all before and that it was silly to feel so self-conscious. ‘Put the light out,’ she still urged him.
‘No … you’re a work of art and I want to savour you,’ Vito countered without hesitation, studying the long svelte line of her pale body. ‘I was in far too much of a hurry yesterday.’
‘I’m cold,’ she told him, hauling up the duvet at speed again.
‘No, you’re shy and I never realised that before. Ava Fitzgerald … shy,’ Vito commented with rich amusement. ‘Wow … you’ve turned as pink as a lobster.’
‘If you refer to lobsters and me in the same sentence again you can go back to your own room!’ Ava hissed vitriolically, blue eyes sparkling like sapphires in her elfin face.
‘It’s not happening.’ With a sudden laugh, Vito crushed her mouth beneath his again, his tongue delving deep in a devouring kiss that sent erotic thrills coursing through her all too ready body. When he discarded his rigid self-discipline and reserve, there was so much passion pent-up inside him, Ava thought, thrilled by his approach.
