The Sicilian's Passion
Kate stiffened, and indignation took the place of surprise. ‘You think I left it behind on purpose?’ she asked, her voice rising with incredulity.
He shrugged, and the blue eyes glittered a challenge at her. ‘Didn’t you?’
She raised her eyebrows, scarcely believing what she was hearing. ‘Presumably just so that you would return it, I suppose?’
‘If that was your intention.’ He gave a coolly beautiful smile. ‘Then you have succeeded, mmm, cara?’
She almost laughed aloud at his arrogance. ‘Maybe such a scenario happens to you all the time Mr Calverri—’
‘Giovanni,’ he corrected softly, unable to stop himself even though the distant clamour of his conscience told him not to enter into this delicious game of flirtation.
‘Maybe women do throw themselves at you—’
‘They do,’ he agreed gravely, and was rewarded with a renewed look of outrage, though was unprepared for the stealthy acceleration of his pulse as her sinful lips pursed themselves together.
‘Well, for your information—’ she drew a deep breath, slightly aware of behaving a little hypocritically since she had been sitting here obsessing about him, hadn’t she? ‘—if I was that interested in a man I wouldn’t resort to such transparent tactics, I would… would…’
Dark brows were raised in query as her words tailed off. ‘You would…?’
Well, why not tell him the truth? ‘I would have asked you out,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Giovanni knew a moment of intrigue. Women had asked him out before, particularly English and American women, and he had always felt a sizzling disdain for such forward behaviour. Though a modern man in terms of accomplishments, he remained a staunch traditionalist at heart. The island of his birth defined the roles of the sexes far less markedly than in centuries past. But at its root still lay a machismo society where the man pursued the woman, and not the other way round.
And yet he found himself wondering if the unquestionably strong desire she had aroused in him might have enticed him enough to accept.
‘But you didn’t,’ he stated softly.
Her eyes met his fearlessly. ‘No, I didn’t.’
But she had thought about it, he realised with a start. Mulled over the possibility and decided against it. He felt his interest flicker again, for wasn’t that a kind of rejection?
His eyes narrowed. It was an entirely new sensation for him. No woman had ever rejected him, in any way, shape or form, and Giovanni felt the renewed leap to his senses as the first dull flush of the inevitable made him shrug in wry recognition.
‘I will try not to be too offended at such a blow to my ego,’ he murmured.
‘Oh, thank heavens for that!’ came her sardonic retort. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to sleep nights if you had!’
He almost smiled, acknowledging that something unknown and forbidden and dangerous was pulsing in the air around them. And that, instead of getting out of here as quickly as possible, he lanced through her emerald gaze with a cool look of challenge. ‘So, aren’t you going to ask me inside, cara?’
And then realised just how shockingly and beautifully potent that question sounded.
‘Inside?’ she repeated slowly, and her mind started to play outrageous tricks on her as she imagined the reality of that simple, one-word request which suddenly sounded like the most erotic proposition imaginable. And didn’t cara mean… darling?
He heard her momentary hesitation, knew what had prompted it and felt himself grow hard—so hard that he felt he might die with wanting her. But he pinned a lazy smile onto his mouth instead. A smile he didn’t really mean, because the only thing that had any meaning at that precise moment was the need to possess her. A need he knew he should ruthlessly resist, and yet… yet…
‘For a drink?’ He shrugged, as though he could take it or leave it. ‘As a reward for having come out of my way to see you.’
Some of the tension left her. Some but not all. She forced herself to open the door to him.
Forced! Just who did she think she was kidding? Why, if she gave into her true feelings right then she would have dragged him in by taking a great swathe of that silk shirt in her fist and drawing him close to her. So close that he would not be able to resist her.
But he had done her a favour. And wasn’t she in danger of letting this all get a little out of hand? She should invite him into her home and expose herself to a little more of his own distinctive air of arrogance—that was the way to get him right out of her system! ‘A drink?’ She flashed him a bright, polite smile. ‘Of course. Sure. Come in.’
He walked into her flat and it was as stunning as he had anticipated. He had known that her home would be exquisite, and it was. More than exquisite, it was distinctive. Like her. Strong, bold colours which somehow managed to blend instead of grating on the eye. A mix and match which pleased and excited the senses. Again, like her.
She had changed, he noted, not for the first time—and now wore an indecently short skirt which showed off her long legs. A little vest-top in cool green cashmere emphasised the firm swell of her breasts and the way her torso tapered down to a delicious, tiny waist.
He swallowed and his eyes travelled almost with relief to a small table, where a half-drunk glass of wine rested. His mouth curved, he felt glad of the opportunity to disapprove of her again.
Kate noticed the tiny elevation of the jet-dark brows, felt his disapproval as surely as if it were shimmering in waves of heat off him. He didn’t say anything—but, there again, he didn’t have to. It was written clearly all over the autocratic features.
Some small inkling of who she really was came seeping back and she tried to catch hold of it, fast. Not some simpering schoolgirl, but a woman. His equal. ‘Is something wrong, Giovanni?’ she asked sweetly.
He shrugged. ‘You drink alone?’
For one quietly hysterical moment she felt like saying that yes, yes, she did drink alone. That a bottle of vodka would leave her untouched and unsatisfied. Because she could tell from the unmarred perfection of his face and body that here was a man to whom excess would be anathema. Except perhaps for excess in one thing…
What could she say? That she never drank alone, but that he had unnerved her so much that she felt that wine might bring some warmth and some life back into her cold and bewildered veins?
‘Rarely,’ she conceded with an answering shrug, not caring whether he believed her or not.
Every instinct in his body was clamouring at him to get the hell out. Telling him that here lay danger, a hot and inexplicable danger far beyond any he had ever encountered. Giovanni had never known a moment’s fear in all his thirty-four years, but in that instant his flesh shivered with trepidation at something quite outside his experience.
And yet he was known for his worldliness—his refusal to be cowed by anybody or anything. So what spell was this witch casting on him? Which honeyed chains were denying him an exit from this enchanted place of hers? His head was ordering him to leave and leave now, even as his body bluntly refused to listen to such requests.
Kate saw the fevered glittering in his blue eyes. Take control, she thought. Take control. She drew a deep breath. ‘What would you like to drink, Giovanni?’ His name felt delicious on her lips—so wickedly bewitching that just to say it flooded her with the unturnable tide of desire.
He had asked for a drink and now that it was offered knew that he must refuse it. And yet, like some disbelieving watcher of his own self, he heard himself murmuring that yes, yes—he would like a glass of wine very much indeed.
And then he lowered himself onto one of the sofas, and watched her while she poured, his eyes following her closely, intensely aware of every movement she made, bewitched by her as he was rarely bewitched by a woman. The little skirt she wore skimmed her thighs as she bent over, drawing attention to the heart-stopping length of her legs.
Knowing that he watched her, Kate willed her hands not to tremble as she slopped red wine into a simple-stemmed glass of crystal and handed it to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said gravely and his pupils grew as dark and as wide as a jungle cat’s as she stood in front of him as though she didn’t quite know what to do next. ‘Aren’t you going to sit down and join me, Kate?’ he murmured.
How could such a mundane request sound like the most erotic invitation she had ever heard? She perched on the edge of the chair opposite him, and wrapped her fingers around the crystal glass.
He noticed the prim way that she had glued her knees together, and a pulse beat deep in his throat. He ran the tip of his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass. ‘So what shall we drink to?’
For one mad moment, she thought that she saw humour lurking in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes, but the image dissolved almost before it had appeared and a cold hunger had taken its place once more.
‘Hmm, Kate?’ he prompted silkily. ‘A toast to what?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said tonelessly, thinking that her name could sometimes sound like a hard, shotgun sound, but the way that he curved his lips around it made it sound as soft and as beguiling as a caress. ‘What do you usually drink to in Sicily?’
He smiled, but it was a smile without heart and now, at least, totally without humour. ‘Why, we drink to the same things that people drink to all the world over, cara mia. To health. And to happiness,’ he murmured, and raised his glass to her in a mocking gesture.
Leaving Kate wondering why the toast sounded such an empty one.
CHAPTER THREE
KATE drank her wine more quickly than she had intended, or was used to. Not enough to be drunk—but enough to make her feel very slightly reckless.
But why not? She was committing no crime, was she? This man, whilst unknown to her, came with the excellent pedigree of being Lady St John’s godson. He was an attractive man who fascinated her. So why not just enjoy the drink for what it was worth?
What did she think was going to happen?
That was the trouble—she just didn’t know!
‘It’s very good of you to come out of your way,’ she said, thinking how stilted her words sounded.
Giovanni opened his mouth to tell her that he was on his way to the airport and that the detour had been a minor one, but some instinct made the words remain unsaid. ‘No problem,’ he said obliquely.
‘Shall I… shall I put some music on?’
Dismissively he shook his dark head and sipped at his wine, allowing his bright blue gaze to sweep around the airy room to where the reflection of light bouncing off the river dappled in pale gold waves across one wall.
‘This is a very beautiful place you have,’ he observed.
‘Thank you.’
‘And in an extremely desirable area.’
‘Thank you again!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You must have done extremely well,’ he observed thoughtfully, ‘to be able to afford to live somewhere like this at your age.’
She wondered if she was imagining the inference behind his casual statement. That maybe some man had set her up here? ‘My success has so far outstripped my wildest dreams,’ she told him truthfully. ‘Perhaps in the same way as your own business fortunes? I expect you must be expanding all the time?’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘No, we are not!’
‘No?’ she queried in disbelief. ‘When your company’s name is synonymous with the world’s finest silverware? I’m not an expert—’
‘No, you’re not,’ he agreed coolly.
‘—but aren’t you missing out on an opportunity?’ she persisted, refusing to be cowed by his rudeness.
He shrugged as he acknowledged the compliment, noting almost reluctantly the way that her hair rippled in a fiery waterfall down over her breasts.
‘Our company’s success is based on traditional methods,’ he told her softly. ‘Over-expansion would be unwise—or so my father always maintained. We have never been a mass-market company, instead we make a limited number of very beautiful products. It is a lengthy and highly specialised process, and one of which my family is justifiably proud.’ He thought how passionate his voice sounded. How he rarely gave so much of himself away to a stranger. Danger.
His fervour drew her irresistibly in and she found herself leaning forward, clasping her hands on her knees. ‘How very romantic!’
Her face was earnest and the green eyes were huge and shining in her heart-shaped face. She looked, he thought with a sudden lurch of his heart, as eager and as animated as a child at Christmas. ‘It is a little,’ he agreed, with a slow smile. ‘Though sometimes I have a battle to rein in my ambitions.’
‘Beware of ambition which overreaches itself, Giovanni,’ she chided softly, without thinking.
‘Shakespeare,’ he observed. ‘Macbeth.’
‘You know the play?’ She couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice, and then saw the dangerous answering glitter of his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Oh, yes, you did,’ he contradicted silkily. ‘You’d placed me in your stereotypical little box, hadn’t you, Kate? The sophisticated veneer merely masking the Sicilian peasant who lies beneath? More familiar with the Mafiosi than with any kind of literature? Is that what you thought?’
Her lips opened to deny it, but the harsh way he had spoken had stripped away the urbane sophistication of this elegant man who sat opposite her.
And suddenly she saw someone quite unlike any other who had come into the safe confines of her London life. She saw centuries of pride and of striving encapsulated in that lean, hard body, and that proud and beautiful face.
She could not tear her eyes away from him, observing him with the intense preoccupation she usually gave to a house she was about to decorate.
The muscles which rippled beneath the silk shirt were not the pretty-precious muscles of a man who worked out with weights at the gym every morning. This was a man as men were meant to be. Tough and sometimes harsh, and totally uncompromising.
And she found herself wondering how a man like this would treat a woman.
He saw the dull flush of awareness which had spread rosy wings across her high, pale cheekbones and he rose from the sofa before the dull ache of temptation grew stronger. ‘May I use the bathroom?’
‘But of course!’ Thank heavens she had cleaned the sink that very morning! ‘It’s along the corridor—the third door down.’
Once there, he spurted icy water onto his wrists, as if doing that could subdue his heated blood. The eyes that stared back at him from the mirror looked like a stranger’s eyes with their hectic glitter transforming blue to black.
She is just a woman, he told himself. A very beautiful woman, but a woman all the same. And he had resisted many, many women over the years.
On his way back to the sitting room he passed what was obviously her study. He noted that she had left her computer on, and then he heard a loud buzzing, like the muted sound of a dentist’s drill, and saw a wasp as it battered uselessly at the window-pane.
He imagined its sting piercing her pale, smooth flesh and moved towards the insect, his mouth thinning as he acknowledged an inappropriate sense of protectiveness towards her. He raised the flat of his hand to crush the insect, and then relented, flicking the handle so that the window opened, and in that moment the wasp flew free.
As he shut the window he looked down at the scattered papers littered over the desk, and when an instantly familiar word leapt out at him he frowned.
Sicily.
His olive fingers flicked over the sheets and a warmth stole over him as he gazed at the familiar shape of the island. So she was interested in him! Interested enough to bother to come straight back here and look up the land of his birth.
In that one moment he knew that he could have her. Recognised and rejected the tantalising idea before it had a chance to move from mind to body.
He went back into the sitting room.
‘It’s time I was leaving,’ he said abruptly.
Her heart lurched with disappointment, and Kate sprang to her feet. He looked so very right here, in her home—with his proud, dark beauty silhouetted against the golden backdrop of the light-dappled wall. Suddenly, she wanted him to stay.
‘No, don’t go! Not yet!’ She saw him raise his eyebrows, as if such demonstrativeness was faintly distasteful, but her desire not to lose him overrode any sense of maintaining an air of dignity.
‘Please,’ she continued, some instinct spurring her on as she put her hand out to rest in conciliatory fashion on his arm, and she shivered, for the muscle beneath was as honed as she had imagined it would be. Brazenly, she let the hand stay right where it was, her fingers curling around the curved, hard contour in a gesture which was most definitely possessive.
Their eyes met in a moment which was pure electricity, and she read the question that glittered so provocatively from the sapphire depths.
‘I certainly didn’t mean to offend you just now when I seemed surprised by your knowledge of literature,’ she told him softly. ‘Or to stereotype you. I’ve been very ungracious and you have been very kind.’
Giovanni narrowed his eyes as her words were made incomprensible by her touch. But then wasn’t touch the most irresistible of all the senses? He looked down at where her hand rested lightly on his arm—a gesture at once so innocent and yet so profoundly sensual. He felt the almost imperceptible sting where her nails touched him and the blood begin to roar in his ears, because it was what he had wanted since the first moment he had set eyes on her.
To touch her.
No, more.
Much more than that. He wanted the most fundamental communion of all.
He felt the pull of temptation as something primitive flared into life inside him, like a dark, compelling fever which had taken over his body. And it had overtaken her, too—of that he was certain. He could see from the blackened pools which almost obscured the emerald of her eyes that she wanted him. Really wanted him. In the space of a heartbeat he made his decision.
She would have him!
Very slowly and very deliberately he lifted his hand, and cupped her face in his palm as if he had every right to do so, grazing an arrogant thumb over the lush outline of her lips which trembled into immediate and urgent response.
Kate’s knees turned unfamiliarly to water, her stomach warm and melting as desire flooded hotly through her veins and her hand fell redundantly to her side.
‘Giovanni!’ She swallowed, trying to tell herself that all he was doing was touching her lips, for heaven’s sake!
His gaze was full-on, the blue eyes blazing with careless question. If she said no, then he would stop immediately. ‘What is it, cara mia?’ he purred, his accent as pronounced as it was persuasive. The pad of his thumb traced slowly around the quivering Cupid’s bow of her mouth. ‘What is it that you want from me?’
She trembled violently, unable to pull away, wondering just who was this new and over-responsive Kate? Must he think her a brazen fool? A woman who reacted so compliantly to a man she had just met. But suddenly, she didn’t care! She shook her head, her mouth as dry as dust, as she struggled for words which would make sense of her reaction.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s a little difficult to say anything,’ came her muffled response, ‘when you’re touching my lips like that.’
‘You want me to stop touching them? Is that it?’
Her eyes met his with a fierce, burning look.
‘No,’ he answered, his accent deepening to one of soft reflection as his gaze dropped downwards, and he watched the flowering of her nipples through the cashmere vest. ‘That is the very last thing you want, isn’t it, cara? So tell me what you do want?’
What? Admit that she felt she would die if he didn’t replace his thumb with his mouth, and kiss her? She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came, only the sudden erotic entry of his thumb between her lips, and she imprisoned it there with a fierce little suck, just like a baby.
‘Or are you afraid to tell me?’ He swallowed as he felt the moist plumpness of her mouth encasing his thumb.
For reply she sucked again, hard. She saw his responding shudder, heard the sigh which was very nearly a groan as he muttered a harsh imprecation in what she presumed was Sicilian.
She lifted her eyes to his. Afraid? All she knew was that she had never wanted a man so much and so unequivocably. She always played the respectable game. The getting-to-know-you-and-then-we’ll-see game. Except that most times the getting-to-know-you bit had been enough to kill any desire stone-dead. And she always played by the rules, too—rules which Giovanni Calverri seemed hell-bent on redefining.
‘Such an independent woman,’ he teased, but there was a dark undertone to his taunt. ‘With her fantastically successful company. Everything she wants, except the one thing she really, really wants—’
‘You,’ she breathed, the words coming out as thick and sweet as honey before she could stop them, ‘I want you.’
His triumph at her admission was fused with despair. He had expected resistance—an appalled, outraged resistance. Not eager compliance so thinly disguised.
In the moment before he claimed her mouth he knew how doomed sailors must have felt, lured to their fate by sirens who tempted as this woman now tempted him.
He forgot his flight, forgot all about his reasons for flying home to Sicily. He felt the burst of desire which would not, could not, now be denied, and with a small angry growl he pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her.
In the dark heat of longing, she opened her mouth to his, feeling the tension in his hard body. One taste and she knew that she was lost—it was that complete and that immediate.
‘Oh, my God,’ she moaned as his tongue began to trace a moist circle inside her lips.
‘Your prayers will not help you now, cara,’ he mocked, still with that slight edge to his voice. But as he felt her body melt closely into his he responded with a raw hunger which drove the last lingering traces of guilt away.
It seemed forever since he had kissed a woman, and these were new lips. Erotic lips. Lush and scented with wine. He groaned and plundered deeply, his hands tightening around the small indentation of her waist, unable to resist the curve of her hips and the cup of her bottom. He pushed up her skirt until the flat of his hands were exploring the cool globes laid bare by the thin, lacy thong she wore, and he felt that he might explode. ‘You dress to kill,’ he shuddered.
And she felt like she was dying. With need. And with pleasure. She felt her arms snake instinctively around his neck as her hips melded into the rocky power of him, thinking that it was too long since she had been in a man’s embrace like this. She pressed her breasts against him, and he groaned, turning her in his arms and pushing her up against the wall, one lean, muscular thigh prising its way authoritatively between hers, and she felt the pooling of desire as it slicked against her thong.
She pushed him away from her, but only so that her fingers could fly to the buttons of his fine silk shirt, clumsily freeing them from their confinement, and he replied by swiftly unclasping and unzipping her skirt. It fell to her ankles immediately, and she stepped over it, wearing nothing now but a cashmere vest and a lacy thong.
With another small, angry growl of desire, Giovanni feasted his eyes on the front of the white thong, where the faint red triangle of hair tempted him from behind the flimsy lace. Her fingers were now scrabbling at his belt, and they were turning and touching like a pair of demented dancers, clothes falling free as they frantically kissed their way out of the sitting room.