'When you respond like that, all I can think about is plunging inside you,' Luca groaned, sliding between her thighs.
The hot, hard thrust of his powerful penetration took her breath away. Nothing had ever felt so good. Her whole being was centred on the feel of him inside her, boldly stretching and filling, and giving such intense pleasure she would have died had he stopped.
'You told me I was absolutely brilliant at this,' Luca reminded her, gazing down at her with a staggering mixture of lust laced with reluctant amusement as he plunged deeper still and watched her eyes close on a wave of electrified and utterly naked pleasure.
'Gosh, you're incredibly good at this too..." you said, in such surprise. I wondered if you were going to score my technique on a questionnaire afterwards—'
'Shut up!' Darcy moaned with effort.
'You said that too.'
She stared up at him, at a peak of such extraordinary excitement she was ready to kill him if he didn't move.
And Luca vented a hoarse laugh. He knew how she felt. And his own struggle to maintain control was etched in his taut cheekbones, the sheen of sweat on his dark skin and the ragged edge to his voice. With a muffled groan of urgent satisfaction, he drove deeper into her yielding body. Her heart almost burst with the force of her own frantic response.
Mindless, she clung to him as he took her with a wild vigour that destroyed any semblance of control. Her release brought an electrifying explosion. As the paroxysms of uncontrollable pleasure overpowered her, her nails raked down his damp, muscular back. Luca cried out her name and shuddered over her, as lost in that world of physical sensation as she was.
The most unearthly silence reigned in the aftermath of that impassioned joining.
Luca disentangled himself and rolled over to a cooler part of the bed. Darcy stared fixedly at the footboard. Even before the last quakings of sated desire and intense pleasure faded, she felt rejected.
So you slept with him, a little voice said inside her blitzed brain.
Did you do it to make this a real marriage that couldn't be annulled? Did you do it to hang onto the Folly? Or did you do it because you just couldn't summon up sufficient will-power to resist him? After all, you knew how fantastic he would be.
Darcy flipped her tousled head over to one side to anxiously scan Luca. He looked back at her, his strikingly handsome face taut but uninformative, expressive eyes screened. Darcy's throat closed over.
At that moment she wanted very, very badly to believe that she had sacrificed her body for the sake of her home. It might have been a morally indefensible move, but her pride could have lived with such a cold-blooded decision...
It would be an infinitely greater challenge to co-exist with the ghastly knowledge that she had made love with Luca because she found him totally and absolutely irresistible, even when she ought to hate him... but, unhappily for her, that was the dreadful truth. And any denial of the fact would be complete cowardice.
It was equally craven to lie in the presence of the enemy behaving like a victim, drowning in defeat and loss of face. Darcy flinched from an image infinitely more shameful to her than any loss of control in Luca's arms. It was unthinkable to let Luca guess that making love with him could reduce her to such a turmoil of painful vulnerability.
'Right,' Darcy said flatly, galvanised into action by that awareness and abruptly sitting up with what she hoped was a cool, calm air of decision. 'Now that we've got that out of the way, perhaps we can talk business.'
'Business?' Luca stressed in sharp disconcertion, complete incredulity flaring in his brilliant dark eyes.#p#分页标题#e#
CHAPTER EIGHT
'Business,' Darcy confirmed steadily.
'We have no mutual business interests to discuss,' Luca delivered rather drily.
'That's where you're wrong.' Her eyes gleamed at that dismissive assurance. 'As you were so eager to point out yesterday, the Folly estate is still on the brink of bankruptcy.' She breathed in deep.
'I only married you because I assumed that my bank manager would increase my overdraft limit once I explained to him about my godmother's will. However...he refused.'
From beneath dense ebony lashes, Luca surveyed her with something akin to unholy fascination.
'So as things stand,' Darcy recounted tautly, 'not only am I in no position to re-employ the staff laid off after my father's death, but I am also likely to have my home repossessed before that six months is even up.'
'One small question,' Luca breathed in a slightly strained undertone. He was now engaged on a fixed surveillance of the elaborate plasterwork on the ceiling above. 'Did you happen to mention my name to your bank manager?'