Chapter 39

'W-wrong?'

'You have the look of a murderer caught burying the body,' he murmured thoughtfully. 'Or is that my imagination?'

'Your imagination.' Avoiding his far too perceptive eyes, she tried to sidetrack him by reaching up and starting to undo his tie.

'My imagination rarely plays tricks on me.' He watched her struggling with his tie. With an expressive sigh, he covered her small shaking hands with one of his. 'You don't trust me, do you? I won't hurt you ever again, bella mia. I promise you that.'

Unbearably touched and suddenly rent with guilt, her eyes clouded over.

'I was only twenty-seven when I met you.' He ran a questing fingertip along the taut curve of her cheek. 'And I didn't want to meet someone like you. I set out to get you on my terms and I knew it wasn't what you wanted or what you deserved. You loved me too much, cara. You let me get away with murder. So, I took you for granted.' His superb bone-structure was prominent beneath his suntanned skin, his eyes very dark. 'I thought you would always be there. And then one day you were gone and I realised that even you had your breaking point. I realised that a little too late for it to make any difference.'

'Luc, I—'

He brushed his fingers in a silencing motion against her lips. 'I don't want to talk about the past now. It casts shadows. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, hmm?' he cajoled. 'But not tonight.'

She turned her mouth involuntarily into the warm palm of his hand, tears wet on her cheeks. He appealed to her for understanding and Luc was not given to appeals. Strain clenched his dark features. The break with the tradition of keeping his own counsel hurt.

He trailed his tie off, shed his jacket with a lithe twist of his shoulders and pulled her into his arms, emanating now all the raw self-assurance that came so naturally to him. 'I scarcely slept last night,' he admitted softly. 'And I intend to keep you awake all night as punishment.'

His breath warmed her cheek and then his tongue slid between her lips, thrusting them apart to explore the moist interior she so freely offered him. The floor under her feet seemed to fall away, and she clung to him while he took her mouth again and again with a stormy intensity that stirred a dulled ache in the pit of her stomach. Her silk dress pooled on the carpet without her even being aware that he was expertly removing it. Lean fingers slid caressingly over her hip, encountering lace, and, disregarding the fragile barrier, he made her jerk and moan beneath his marauding mouth.

He laughed soft and deep in his throat, ceasing the provocation only to pick her up and carry her over to the bed, following her down in fluid motion, reacquainting her with every sleek line of his lean body. His shirt had come adrift and she ran her hands up over his smooth brown back, feeling every muscle tauten to her reconnaissance. He ground his hips sensuously slowly into hers, and for mindless seconds she was ruled by the hunger he could evoke and completely lost.

He looked down at her, dark eyes aflame with gold satisfaction and desire. 'Remember that first night in Switzerland?' he whispered huskily. 'You were so exquisitely shy.' He strung a line of kisses across her delicate collarbone. 'So innocent. I was a bastard, bella mia. It should have been our wedding night.'

'I pretended it was.'

A faint flush of colour irradiated the high cheekbones that intensified his raw attraction. He captured the fingers lacing into his black silky hair and pressed them to his lips, dense lashes concealing his gaze. 'I'd never made love to a virgin before. I wanted it to be special for you. That's why I took you to Switzerland.'

'It was special,' she managed unsteadily. 'Very special.'

'Grazie…grazie tanto, cara,' he teased. 'It was so special for me that I had to keep you all to myself, being of a naturally selfish disposition.'

She had never seen him so relaxed, not this last week, not ever. But for a split second he reminded her so powerfully of Daniel. The same beautiful dark eyes, the same wide mouth that could yank at her heart-strings with the faintest smile. Her breath caught in her throat, but he was brushing aside the lace cups of her bra, letting his tongue and then his mouth circle the taut pink nipples he had uncovered, and her mind became a complete blank, her fingers clenching together as sensation began to build, drawing every tiny muscle tight beneath his ministrations.

There was a mirror above the bed. She blinked bemusedly and then the imagery of his brown hands on her paler skin and his dark head bent so intimately over her took over. 'There's a mirror up there,' she whispered.

'How shocking.' His voice was indistinct, abstracted. 'Tell Christian he has outrageous bad taste next time you see him.'

'This is his villa?'

Luc eased back from her reluctantly, rolled off the bed and proceeded to strip. She couldn't take her eyes from him. Wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, lean hips and long, muscular thighs. He was very aroused, superbly male, supremely beautiful.

'Looking at me like that does nothing for my self-control.' He came down beside her again, dispensed with the wispy lingerie and curved her into his arms. The dark hair hazing his chest rubbed against her tender breasts, one lean thigh hooking over hers as he stared down at her, so much unashamed hunger in his probing appraisal that she was breathless. 'You wouldn't have done it.'

'Done what?'

'Walked away at the airport.' A wry smile challenged her shock. 'I wouldn't have let you go. Did you think I didn't know? Sometimes I know what you think before you think it.'

Having devastated her, he took advantage by ravishing her swollen mouth with a fierce, driving sweetness. Time and thought were banished. She got drunk on the taste of him. The warm masculine scent of him flooded her, making her even more light-headed. She could feel herself sliding out of control. Breathing hurt her lungs. Tiny sounds she was barely conscious of broke from her lips, and when his hand touched her where she most ached for fulfilment, she went wild, writhing with his burning caresses, hungrily searching out for herself the compulsive heat of his mouth.

It was agony and ecstasy but he wouldn't give her what she sought as she blindly arched her hips in a silent expression of need as old as time. She was twisting in the heat of a fire that demanded assuagement. Her fingernails raked hi

s back in torment and protest. And then, in the shuddering, explosive tension of his body, she felt the flames leap and scorch through him as well. Suddenly he was all aggressor, all savage demand, spreading her out like a sacrifice to some primitive god and falling on her, hands bruising her thighs as he took her with all the strength he possessed in a driving surge of passionate intensity.

It went on and on and on, more and then incredibly more until she was sobbing her pleasure out loud, lost to everything but the remorseless demands of her own body. The release came in a frenzied explosion of exquisite sensation that left her awash with the bliss of satiation.