Escape for Easter: The Brunelli Baby Bargain / The Italian Boss's Secret Child / The Midwife's Miracle Baby

Cesare spoke. ‘You know, if we’re going to keep on ripping each other’s clothes off every time we’re in the same room I think we should get married.’

Embarrassed colour flared in Sam’s cheeks as she smoothed down her top. ‘I have my clothes on,’ she replied with dignity. And so did he, she thought as her glance drifted to the V of golden skin visible where the top button of his shirt was unfastened. Her stomach quivered.

‘That situation can be changed.’

She sucked in an audible outraged breath, which seemed a bit crazy considering that he knew every inch of her body intimately… She tried not to think about how intimately. He was obviously of the same opinion as his rumble of laughter was wicked and warm.

‘You’re blushing, aren’t you?’

Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know?’

‘You have a very eloquent range of gasps and I can feel the changes in your body temperature from here.’ Without warning he reached out and placed his open hand against her chest. ‘From here it is easier—I can feel your heart trying to beat its way out. It’s ironic—I’m blind and I’ve never come across a woman who is easier to read than you. How do you go through life showing so much?’

Sam stared mesmerised at his fingers splayed against her breast and shook her head. Sometimes the truth was the worst thing to say and this was one of those times. She knew it yet still she said it.

‘It’s only with you.’

His eyes darkened as he rasped, ‘Come here.’

Sam’s heart was hammering so loud it blocked out everything else as without thinking she raised herself up on her knees and leaned in to him until their faces were almost touching.

His fingers speared deep into her bright hair as he inhaled the fragrance that came from the silky skein. ‘This is a side to the arrangement which would be most pleasurable for us both, cara,’ he husked, resting his nose beside hers.

‘The kissing…?’

His expression was solemn but his eyes fierce as he explained, ‘Obligatory for married people.’ He kissed the side of her mouth before dropping his head to trail a line of delicious damp kisses down her neck.

‘Oh, God!’ she groaned. ‘I don’t know why you can do this to me.’

‘That makes two of us, but who cares?’

Sam couldn’t approve of this reckless attitude and she said so, but he didn’t seem to take her seriously—possibly because she was already unfastening the buttons of his shirt with shaking but determined fingers.

A deep sigh of pleasure escaped her throat as the material parted and his gleaming torso was revealed to her greedy gaze. ‘You are just so beautiful… What?’ she asked suddenly in hoarse protest as he grabbed both her wrists and lifted her hands from his warm skin.

‘Marry me, Samantha.’

Her disbelief was tinged with indignation. ‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’

‘You mean will I withhold my favours if you don’t say I do?’ He laughed, but underneath the laughter the tension that pulled the skin taut against the magnificent bone structure of his face was visible. ‘Good idea, cara,’ he admitted. ‘Only one problem—I’m really not endowed with that sort of self-denial.’ Not where she was concerned anyway.

‘I don’t even like you,’ she whispered against his mouth.

‘Liking has nothing to do with it,’ he rasped, tracing the shape of her full upper lip with his tongue before sliding it deep inside her mouth. A groan was wrenched from Sam’s chest as she opened her mouth to increase the sensual penetration. ‘Why fight it?’

Sam wasn’t. Fighting was the very last thing she wanted to do. ‘Is this supposed to be the clincher? You think you can kiss me into agreeing to marry you? Cesare, you’re really not that good.’

But he was!

She found her fingers in his hair and kissed him on the mouth, the pent-up hunger she had been carrying around for weeks finding some release, but not enough.

‘There are more powerful, primitive instincts at work here. We have a sexual connection.’

‘I don’t want a sexual connection!’ she wailed.

His lips curved into a fleeting smile, but his expression remained intent as, with his heavy lids half closed, his fingers slid under her top.

‘But you do want this, don’t you?’ he slurred, lifting the cotton top she wore and skating lightly across the smooth skin of her midriff before moving to cup one breast through the thin light lace covering of her bra. His thumb moved across her nipple; the seductive motion of his lips on her neck made her head spin. She felt on fire, out of control and loved it.

She watched him as he peeled the top over her head and flung it to one side.

He bent his head and, with one arm wrapped around her narrow ribcage, applied his mouth first to one straining breast, pulling the nipple into his mouth, and then administering the same exquisite torture to the other. Sam clung to him, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders as her head fell back.

Fingers splayed across her spine, he brought her upright until their faces were almost touching. There was a fine mist of sweat over his skin and he was breathing as hard as she was. ‘Marry me,’ he said thickly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SAM lifted a hand and ran it down the hard curve of Cesare’s jaw.

‘Couldn’t we just go to bed?’ she suggested hopefully.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a wolfish smile as he ran a finger slowly down the curve of her cheek. ‘You’re offering me some sympathy sex, cara?’

‘I’m offering you me.’

He gasped, and she could feel a shudder run through his hard lean frame.

‘I don’t seem to have any pride where you’re concerned. I’m utterly shameless.’ She had never imagined that she could surrender herself so unconditionally to any man, let alone a man like Cesare.

She was totally unselfconscious but at the same time more aware of her femininity than she had ever been in her life. Everything about this man was a contradiction and so were her feelings for him. The antagonism and attraction she felt for him bled into one confusing, powerful, all-consuming entity.

‘You’re utterly delicious,’ he contradicted thickly. ‘I have been thinking about being inside you.’

The erotic image his words created in her head made the ache low in her pelvis intensify. She stared into his eyes, she saw her reflection, saw the predatory glow and felt an equally primal response clutch like a tight fist deep inside her. Reckless desire tugged like a silken thread at Sam’s senses as she watched her bra go the same way as her top. She shivered as the cool air touched her overheated skin.

‘Then do it,’ she whispered.

‘Marry me.’

‘Will you stop saying that? People don’t make decisions just like that,’ she protested, pressing her lips to his throat and tasting the salt of his skin.

‘Forget people. We’re not people, we’re us. We made a baby, Samantha. He needs us.’

He made a compelling argument. Feelings struggled and warred inside her; her sex-soaked brain wouldn’t work. On one level what he was saying made sense and it was attractive, on another it terrified her witless!

‘What about me? Doesn’t it matter what I need?’

‘You need me.’ And right now he needed her. The hunger roared in his blood like a furnace, drowning out the nagging edge of guilt over his manipulation of the situation.