Vicenzo’s hand tightened on hers as a dart of pain struck him at how he’d let Allegra down. ‘Not pathetic at all. Very human. And he was a fool.’
To Cara’s relief he seemed happy to leave it there, and then to her surprise she realised they were the last in the restaurant. As they walked out he turned to face her, all shadows and angles in the moonlight.
He reached for her hand and raised it to his mouth, breathing in her scent, that evocative musky rose. It twined its way around his senses, making every part of him tighten with anticipation. He pressed a kiss to her palm and said softly, ‘Thank you for telling me about your brother, Cara.’
By the time they were pulling up outside the villa on the bike she was a quivering wreck. During the ride Vicenzo’s top had risen up, so that Cara’s hands had been in direct contact with his naked lower belly. When she’d tried to move her hands at one stage, Vicenzo had placed his hand over hers. The temptation to explore and feel that hard belly, and lower, under the top of his jeans, had been sheer torture not to give in to. Every jolt along the road had forced her against him even more, and right now she didn’t think she’d be able to stand once she got off the bike.
Before she could do anything Vicenzo had taken their helmets and put them away, and then he lifted her bodily off the bike and into his arms.
Cara looked up in surprise and saw that his face was tight with need, a muscle clenching in his jaw.
‘You know there’s only one place this evening can end, don’t you?’
Cara tried to breathe, tried to force some clarity and rationality into her mind. But all she could see and all she could think about was Vicenzo. It took a monumental will, but she pushed back and forced him to put her down. She avoided his eye and the clamor of her pulse. If he took her to his bed she feared that she’d break into tiny pieces. It had been so much easier to deal with him when he mistrusted her. Had believed the worst.
‘Look, I don’t want—’
A hand came under her chin, forcing her head up to meet his incendiary gaze. ‘You don’t want what, Cara? This?’
He pulled her into him and she melted. She tried to fight it but she couldn’t. She was already breaking into tiny pieces and she couldn’t stop it.
‘I want you, Cara.’ He framed her face with both hands and pressed a kiss to her lips.
Her eyes closed in mute desperate supplication. How she wanted him too.
This time when he picked her up into his arms and looked at her she just gave a defeated little nod. That was all he needed.
Vicenzo carried Cara through the silent house to his bedroom. Her heart was thundering so badly she felt a little faint. Inside the darkened room Vicenzo put her down and turned on a lamp near the bed. It cast a small pool of light, but Cara couldn’t take in her surroundings; she could only see Vicenzo.
She started to tremble, and her breath hitched when she felt Vicenzo come to stand behind her. He lifted the hair from the nape of her neck and pressed a kiss there. She felt his fingers come to the buttons of her shirt, opening each one, his fingers grazing her skin as it was bared. The trembling got worse.
Vicenzo’s blood was roaring through his veins and his arteries. He was so hard he quite literally ached. He turned her around and looked down. Her eyes were huge pools of hazel-green. Her mouth was a plump invitation that he had no intention of ignoring. Kissing Cara was like tasting the sweetest nectar. His lips slanted over hers and she opened her mouth in such an innocently provocative way that he forgot all about taking off her shirt, and concentrated on tasting and exploring her sweet mouth. It was only when he felt her hands fluttering near the bottom of his top that he drew back and sucked in a breath.
She was looking up at him and with a glint in her eye she lifted up his top. Vicenzo raised his arms and helped her to pull it all the way off. She reached out and explored, feeling how the muscles moved and clenched under that satin olive skin. Hard flat nipples stood up to blunt points when she touched them, and they got even harder when she leant forward and explored with her tongue. Vicenzo grabbed her head, tangling his fingers in her hair, then pulled her head back, slightly shocked at how turned-on she was making him.
He drew her shirt off until it fell in a pool of black at her feet. Cara’s gaze didn’t waver from him, but her breathing got faster. She watched as Vicenzo’s eyes dropped. His hands went to her jeans, opening them, and he drew them down over her hips and off.
The material of her bra was sheer, and Cara felt her nipples painfully tight against the fabric. Vicenzo cupped one breast before rubbing a thumb back and forth over its hard tip. Pure sensation shot through Cara, and she had to put her hands on his arms to steady herself.
Vicenzo quickly dispensed with her bra, and with a flick of his wrists pushed down her panties. Cara was fast turning into a ball of heat when she saw him impatiently take off his own clothes, until they stood before each other naked. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and she could feel the ends brushing against her breasts.
Vicenzo pulled her in close and bent his head to kiss her again deeply. He couldn’t seem to stop kissing her, and Cara didn’t care. Being kissed by this man was like being sucked down into a whirlpool of pleasure. His erection was thick and hard, pressing against her belly, and she moved enticingly against him.
He had to tense in order not to explode right there. He’d never been so close to coming after so little lovemaking. Every time with this woman was more explosive than the last. He finally broke away from kissing her with a moan. ‘Cara…’
She spoke completely without thinking as she reached up a finger to touch his mouth. ‘Enzo…’
Her eyes were passion glazed and her chest was moving jerkily up and down, fast unraveling Vicenzo’s barely leashed control. And she had called him Enzo…
Vicenzo couldn’t rationalize anything now. All he had strength for was to spread Cara under him and take her. He picked her up and carried her over to the bed, laid her down. Her hair billowed out around her head in a riot of color. The paler parts of her skin that the sun hadn’t reached, her breasts and between her legs, enticed him to kiss and explore, until Cara was writhing, her hands clutching desperately.
She moaned softly. ‘Enzo…please…’
All Cara knew was that Vicenzo had to enter her now, or she would die from waiting, from being held on this knife-edge of sensation. He had kissed her down there, his tongue had probed intimately, and she’d nearly fallen over the edge.
He moved his sleek, strong body up the bed. She felt the weight of him between her legs and she spread her own in anticipation, arching herself into him. His huge shoulders were above her as, resting on his hands, he penetrated her slowly, his eyes holding hers, looking into hers with such intensity that Cara felt tears threaten. He was killing her with sensuality and tenderness and she didn’t know if she could survive.
Vicenzo looked down into those unbelievably beautiful eyes. At that moment she arched her hips up and into him, causing him to slide in deeper…all the way. And with a fractured moan of total capitulation Vicenzo lost himself in the fragrant world of the woman beneath him, until they both fell over the edge and into the bliss of healing oblivion.
The next morning when Vicenzo woke he enjoyed the novel situation of allowing the lingering pleasures of the night to be felt in his body. With his eyes closed he could remember in every detail how Cara had moved and bewitched and beguiled him to take her, again and again. His body was already hardening in anticipation of reaching out a hand and finding her soft and silky smooth skin. Her rose scent…
He put out a hand, expecting to find that body close by, and felt nothing.
His eyes flew open and he sat up. The bed was empty. Cold. She’d been gone a long time. Anger and something else rushed through Vicenzo as he got up and pulled on his jeans. He went out into the corridor and with no ceremony went straight into her room. The bed had been slept in. He frowned. She had come back to her own bed? The thought made him feel almost incandescent—and where the hell was she now? The sun was barely up outside.
With irrational anger mounting, Vicenzo strode through the house, looking into the dining room, kitchen, living room, out onto the terrace and by the pool, until finally he found himself outside his study door.
Feeling a tightness in his chest, he pushed the door open silently and walked in. The tightness intensified when he saw Cara, her back to him, sitting cross-legged on the floor in jeans and a loose shirt, hair pulled back, with Doppo, as ever, beside her and all the papers they’d been working on strewn about her. Déjà vu smacked him right between the eyes.
Cara had known the minute he came into the room. She’d even, much to her chagrin, sensed somehow when he got up. He walked in barefoot and stood in front of her. She looked up, and a flame raced through her body.
He towered above her, six feet something of potent masculine male, bare-chested and with his jeans button open, drawing her eye to the line of dark silky hair that led down… Cara swallowed past a dry throat.
When he’d fallen asleep holding her she’d been so tempted just to give in and sleep too. But the awful acrid fear had risen up that she would wake and find him sitting in a chair across the room, looking at her with that same stony visage she’d woken to in London. She couldn’t cope with that again—ever. That was what had driven her from his bed last night, and also in Rome, the night of the marriage.