The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011(44)

Dry-mouthed she watched his eyes narrow in question, before he came closer, the dark of his eyes warm and rich and assessing every last part of her from her upturned hair to the glint of her satin sandals and every curve along the way. Lingering on those points along the way. Sienna felt her sensitized breasts swell under his scrutiny, her nipples ache as if he’d stroked them with his hot breath. ‘Sebastiano,’ he acknowledged, without taking his eyes from her, ‘what is the meaning of this?’

Sebastiano cleared his throat and murmured his low response, so low that the pack of men behind could not overhear, so low that even Sienna had to strain to catch his response. ‘Signorina Wainwright wished to accompany you to the recital.’

Rafe stared at her so hard she took a faltering step back and reached out a hand to Sebastiano for rescue, in case he might suddenly leave without her. ‘I’m sorry. It was all my idea. I … I don’t have to stay. I can go.’

And then she heard a sound and looked back, and when she saw where he was looking, she realized it had been Rafe who’d made that low guttural noise, Rafe who had spied the gown’s clever secret as she’d turned. And the darkness of his eyes gleamed so thick with passion and need that she could feel the heat coming from him, feel it insinuate itself into her flesh and sizzle along her veins.

For the first time, Rafe nodded in Sebastiano’s direction. ‘Thank you, Sebastiano. You may leave now,’ he said, before he slid his hand through her arm and turned to the openly curious audience behind. ‘Gentlemen,’he said, with an ease at handling an unexpected situation that she envied, ‘Let me introduce to you Signorina Sienna Wainwright, my companion tonight.’

The next few minutes were a blur of names and smiling faces and more hands than she could ever recall shaking in one day. Because it was the scent that coiled inside her now, that marvellous scent of clean unprocessed man. And it was the hand at the centre of her back that had her full attention, the heat generated by the fingers that were stroking her skin and stoking her own need along with it.

Someone pressed a glass of champagne into her hands and she clung to it like a storm-tossed sailor clung to anything he could grasp in the hope of staying afloat. With Rafe filling her thoughts and senses she was in danger of going under.

Finally they were led into a grand ballroom, the dimensions of which took her breath away. What looked like hundreds of people were already seated and waiting for the official party to take their seats—seats, Sienna gathered, that had had to be hastily rearranged in deference to her presence. A hush fell over the crowd as she entered on Rafe’s arm and stood beside him in the royal box, a hush that immediately descended into the whispered questioning of a crowd.

Rafe leaned closer to her as the strains of the Montvelattian national anthem died down. ‘Do you realise that wearing a dress like that you have well and truly set the cat amongst the pigeons?’

‘Do you mind?’

And he gazed down at her with such an intense look of desire that her bones were reduced to jelly. He lifted one gloved hand and pressed the back of it to his mouth. ‘What I mind most is that I have to wait until this recital ends before I can take you home and peel that damn dress right off you.’





CHAPTER TEN


SIENNA gasped, the power of his need echoing tenfold inside her, so that right then and there she felt as if he’d already peeled the dress away and that she stood naked and exposed in front of him.

He wanted her. That was good, wasn’t it? That was what she had planned. He had to want her if there was any chance it could develop into anything more than a marriage of convenience.

But her plan relied on her being the one in control, the one to steer him to her purpose. Right now, though, she was being carried along on a tidal wave of his making, and that wave was towering and powerful and all-consuming.

And she wasn’t sure she wanted the ride to ever end.

The recital had been interminable, the greetings they’d received on their exit taking for ever, and the purposeful silence of the car ride back to the Castello, during which she’d worried that he’d changed his mind, had been an agony.

But finally they were back within the fortified walls, where silence and discretion reigned, and Rafe took her hand and pulled her towards him. ‘What did you mean by dressing like that and coming after me tonight?’

She edged backwards, fearful that he’d somehow seen her plan as the desperate attempts of a woman who wanted to be needed, but his arms held her tight and close enough for her to know his intentions hadn’t changed in the least. ‘Who says I wanted anything?’