Italian Mavericks: In The Italian's Bed: Leonetti's Housekeeper Bride / Inherited by Ferranti / Best Man for the Bridesmaid

The master bedroom was a huge airy space with a tiled floor and a bed as big as a football pitch. The bathroom was fitted out like a glossy magazine spread and she revelled in the wet room with the complex jet system. Everything bore Gaetano’s contemporary stamp and the extreme shower facilities were not a surprise. She had been feeling very warm and the cold water gushing over her before she managed to work out how to operate the complicated controls cooled her off wonderfully. Clad in a light cotton sundress, she wandered back downstairs.

Black hair curling and still damp from the shower, Gaetano joined her on the terrace to slot another glass of wine into her hand. ‘From our own award-winning winery,’ he told her wryly. ‘Rodolfo takes a personal interest in the vineyard.’

Poppy surveyed him from below her lashes. He was so beautiful, she found it a challenge to look anywhere else. His spectacular black-lashed eyes were reflective as he leant gracefully up against a stone pillar support to survey the panoramic landscape, his lithe, lean, powerful body indolently relaxed. A faint shadow of black stubble roughened his strong jaw line, accentuating the wide sensual curve of his mouth. A tiny nerve snaked tight somewhere in her pelvis as she thought of how long it had been since he kissed her and whether a kiss could possibly be as unbelievably good as she remembered it being. Likely not, she told herself, for she had always been a dreamer. How else could she have imagined even as a teenager that Gaetano Leonetti would ever be seriously interested in her?

And yet, here she was, a little voice whispered seductively, Gaetano’s wedding ring on her finger, and mortifyingly that awareness went to her head like the strongest alcohol. But their marriage still wasn’t real; it was still a fantasy, the same little voice added. She had been a fake fiancée and a fake bride and now she was a fake wife. In fact just about the only thing that wouldn’t be fake between them was their wedding night.

The very blood in her veins seemed to be coursing slowly, heavily. She finished her wine and set down the glass, insanely aware of the tightening prominence of her nipples. She lifted the tiny handwritten menu displayed on the table, glancing with a sinking heart through the several courses that were to be served.

‘You know, I’m not remotely hungry and I don’t think I could eat anything,’ Poppy confided truthfully. ‘I hope that’s not going to offend Dolores...’

Gaetano glanced at her, eyes flaming golden as a lion’s in the sunset lighting up the sky in an awesome display of crimson and peach. Mouth suddenly dry, she stopped breathing, frowning as he strode back into the house and disappeared from view. A few minutes later she heard a noisy little car start up somewhere and drive away. Gaetano reappeared to close a hand over hers and tug her gently back indoors.

‘Do we have to eat in some stuffy dining room?’ She sighed.

‘No, we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,’ Gaetano told her, bending down to lift her up into his arms. ‘I’ve sent Sean and Dolores home. We’re on our own until tomorrow and I am much hungrier for you than for food.’

‘You can’t possibly carry me up those stairs!’ Poppy exclaimed.

‘Right at this moment I could carry you up ten flights of stairs, bellezza mia,’ Gaetano admitted, darting his mouth across her collarbone so that her head fell back to expose her slender white throat and her bright hair cascaded over his arm. ‘Congratulations on being the only woman smart enough to make me wait...’

‘Wait for what? Oh...’ Poppy registered with a wealth of meaning in her tone while distinctly revelling in being carried as though she were a little dainty thing, which, in her own opinion, she was not.

Gaetano settled her down on the bed. Helpfully she kicked off her shoes and wished she had taken a painkiller for her sore throat and head. But she couldn’t possibly take the gloss off the evening by admitting that she was feeling under par, could she? And she would have to admit it to get medication because she had packed nothing of that nature, indeed had only brought her contraceptive pills with her. She wasn’t about to make a fuss about a stupid cold, was she?

He ran down the zip on her dress but only after kissing a path across her bare shoulders and lingering at the nape of her neck where her skin proved to be incredibly sensitive and she quivered, her insides turning to liquid heat beneath his attention.

‘I have died and gone to heaven...’ Gaetano intoned thickly as the dress dropped unnoticed to the carpet, exposing his bride in her ice-blue satin corset top and matching knickers.

‘This is your wedding present,’ Poppy announced, stretching back against the smooth white bedding with a confidence that she had never known she could possess.

Of course it would be different once he started removing stuff and nudity got involved, she conceded ruefully. For now, however, having guessed that Gaetano would be the type of male who found sexy lingerie that enhanced a woman’s figure appealing, Poppy felt like a million dollars. Why? Simply because somehow Gaetano always contrived to look at her as if she had the most amazing female body ever and that had done wonders for her self-image.

‘No, you are my wedding present,’ Gaetano told her with conviction. ‘I’ve been counting down the hours until we were together.’

Her luminous green eyes widened in surprise and she bit back the tactless retort that anyone would consider that a romantic comment. After all, Gaetano was fully focused on sex and neither romance nor commitment would play any part in their marriage. And wasn’t that all she was focused on as well? As Gaetano came down on the bed beside her, his shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned to display a sleek, bronzed, muscular six-pack, Poppy was entranced by the view. He was stunning and, for now, he was hers. Why look beyond that? Why try to complicate things?

Loosening the corset one hook at a time, Gaetano ran a long finger down over the delicate spine he had exposed and then put his mouth there, tracing the line below her smooth ivory skin. ‘You are so beautiful, gioia mia.’

Poppy hid a blissed-out smile behind her tumbling hair and closed her eyes as he eased off the light corset and lifted his hands to cup her breasts. Her back arched, her straining nipples pushing against his fingers until he tugged on the tender buds and an audible gasp escaped her.

Gaetano lifted her and turned her round to face him. ‘I want to be your first,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘It will be my privilege.’

‘Careful, Gaetano...you’re sounding nice.’ Now outrageously aware of her naked breasts, Poppy crossed her arms to hide them.

‘I may be many things, but nice isn’t one of them,’ Gaetano growled, pulling her down on the bed beside him and covering her pouting mouth hungrily with his own. Unbridled pleasure snaked through her as his tongue merged with hers. An electrifying push of hunger gripped her as his hands shifted to toy with her breasts. He pushed her back against the pillows and lowered his mouth to her pouting nipples.

‘Palest pink like pearls,’ Gaetano mused, stroking a tender tip with appreciation as he gazed down at her.’ I wondered what colour they would be...’

Her green eyes widened. ‘Seriously?’ she prompted.

‘And they’re perfect like the rest of you,’ he groaned, lowering his head to lick a distended crest. ‘You were so worth waiting for at the church.’

Poppy wasn’t quite as pleased as she would have assumed she would be by having that much appreciation directed at her physical attributes. Gaetano was interfering with her fantasy, that fantasy that she had not even acknowledged was playing at the back of her mind, the fantasy in which Gaetano loved her and appreciated her for all sorts of other reasons that went beyond lust.

‘And so were you,’ Poppy told Gaetano, deciding to turn the tables as she sat up to dislodge him and pushed him back against the pillows. He studied her with questioning dark golden eyes semi-veiled by black curling lashes. She spread her fingers across his hard pectoral muscles, stroking down over his sleek ribcage to his flat abdomen.

‘Don’t stop now,’ he husked.

Her fingers were clumsy on his belt buckle and the button on the waistband of his trousers, her knuckles nudging against the little furrow of dark hair that disappeared below his clothing. She reached for the zip. Her lack of expertise was obvious to Gaetano and the oddest sensation of tenderness infiltrated him as he noted the tense self-consciousness etched in her flushed face.

‘Why do I get the feeling this is a first for you?’

‘Everyone is a learner at some stage...’ she framed jerkily.

Gaetano yanked down his zip for himself and then tossed her back flat on the bed again while he divested himself of his trousers and his boxers. ‘If you touched me now, it would all be over far too fast,’ he told her thickly. ‘That’s why I’m going to do most of the touching and you will lie back and let me do the work.’

‘If you think of it as work, I don’t think you should bother.’

‘Nothing would stop me now. I can hardly wait to be inside you.’ Gaetano leant over her, his urgent erection pushing against her hip. ‘Having you in my bed has been my fantasy for weeks.’

‘Fantasy never lives up to reality,’ Poppy said nervously. ‘I don’t want to be a fantasy.’

‘Sorry, it’s my fantasy,’ Gaetano traded, stroking a wondering hand down over the slender curve of her hip to the hot, damp secret at the heart of her.

Her hips jerked and her eyes shut as he traced between her thighs. Her breath snarled in her throat. She was so sensitised that she shuddered when he circled her clitoris with his fingertip. Her whole body was climbing of its own volition into a tight, tense spiral of growing need. Even the brush of a finger against her tight entrance was almost too much to bear. Her hips pushed against the mattress, her heart thumping like thunder inside her chest as he shimmied down the bed, fingertips delicately caressing her inner thighs as he pushed her legs back, opening her.

‘No, you can’t do that!’ she gasped in consternation.

‘Stai zitto...’ he told her softly. ‘You don’t get to tell me what to do in bed.’

The flick of his tongue across torturously tender nerve endings deprived her of voice and then of thought. Her head shifted back and forth on the pillows, the thrum of hunger building up through her body to a siren’s scream of need. She gasped, she cried his name, she moaned, she lost control so completely and utterly that when the explosive release of orgasm claimed her it took her by storm. And the world stopped turning for long minutes, her body still quaking with wondrous aftershocks while Gaetano looked down at her with satisfaction.

As Gaetano tilted her back she felt the smooth steel push of him against her still-throbbing core. The tight knot low in her pelvis made its presence felt again, the hollow ache of hunger stirring afresh. He slid against her, easing into her by degrees, straining her delicate sheath.

‘You’re so tight,’ he groaned, pulling back again and then angling his hips for another, more forceful entrance.

The sharp stinging pain made Poppy flinch for a millisecond and then her body was pushing on past that fleeting discomfort to linger on the satisfying stretch and fullness of his invasion. A little moan broke low in her throat and she moved her hips to luxuriate in the throbbing hardness of his bold masculinity.

Gaetano swore in Italian. ‘You feel like heaven,’ he growled in her ear. ‘Am I hurting you now?’

‘Oh, no,’ she told him truthfully.

And then he moved again, withdrawing and spearing deep enough to wring a cry of startled enjoyment from her. From that moment on her eagerness climbed in tune with Gaetano’s every measured thrust. Her heart raced, her legs clamping round his lean hips as she lifted to him, matching his driving rhythm while the electrifying excitement continued to build. And when she reached that peak for the second time she plunged over it in a fevered delirium of intense quivering release and lay adrift in pleasure.

‘That was amazing,’ Gaetano muttered thickly, rolling over onto his back while curving an arm round her trembling body. ‘You were amazing, bella mia.’

Poppy felt totally exhausted and she was content to lie there in the circle of his arms and marvel at the sublime sense of peace she was experiencing. Belatedly, she acknowledged that her throat and head had now become seriously sore. She hoped that Gaetano wouldn’t catch her cold and felt guilty for not warning him.