Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

It was the foreplay in a long seduction, she knew, because she’d been caught up in its spell so many times before. He was making love to her with his eyes, with his voice, with every intimate weapon he had in his super-sensual armoury.

‘Why?’ she asked him suddenly.

‘Because I want you,’ he answered, not even attempting to misunderstand the question.

Faults and all? she was about to challenge when his fingertips came up to rest against her mouth. ‘Don’t question me—ask yourself what you want.’

She wanted him, she admitted. She had always wanted him. She wanted tonight to go on for ever and the past to disappear altogether and for the sadness of tomorrow to never come.

So when he kissed her as they left the restaurant she let him, his hands gently crushing her shoulders beneath his leather jacket, the light brush of the bodies a teasing taster for what was to come.

On the way back to the car Luca suddenly left her side with a murmured excuse and disappeared into one of the little shops that sold everything. He came out a few minutes later carrying a box, which he handed to Shannon with a lopsided grin. It was a box of chocolate-coated truffles, more confirmation of what they were going to be doing soon because they always used to indulge in chocolate-coated truffles, feeding them to each other while reclining on the bed, still wearing the bloom on their naked flesh from a long, slow loving.

He was pulling out all of the stops here to recreate their old magic. And she was so busy blushing that she almost missed his other hand slipping something small into his pocket, and even then she just assumed it was some folded paper Euros and dismissed the incident to the back of her head in favour of—other things.

They continued walking towards Duomo with anticipation beating a tender pulse of its own. They got into his car as that pulse grew quicker. They drove without speaking, which speeded it all the more. They climbed out of the car and arrived at the basement lift. He reached out to press the call button at the same time that his other hand drew her close.

‘You’re trembling,’ he said.

She tried a laugh that didn’t quite work, then his mouth was capturing hers and they were kissing so deeply she was unaware that the lift had arrived until he broke away to manoeuvre them inside its cool metal casing. Then he was propping her up against the wall with his body while he activated security. They rode the lift with his hands cupping her hips, and his lips pressing small kisses all over her face.

She did not push him away. She did not say no to this, so why was she beginning to feel anxious the closer they came to that point at which she was going to move beyond the point of saying no?

The lift doors opened; their bodies separated as they stepped out.

Everything was the same—everything. The cream walls, the inlaid floor—Apollo standing to one side of the arch. Electric lights burned, softly activated by a time switch so no one ever arrived here in the dark.

She moved on legs that felt like sponge now, her heart beating oddly in her breast.

Did she want this?

Luca was behind her—close behind her. The lift doors closed and he was turning her round to face him again, capturing her eyes and keeping the past safely merged with the present with the luxurious dark promise burning in his. His jacket was taken from her shoulders and tossed aside on a nearby chair. His hands replaced it, closing over slender shoulders, then stroking down her arms before moving to the tingling base of her spine where he pressed her into arching contact with his body and recaptured her mouth with a deep, deep kiss that sent the question marks flying away.

They moved on to her bedroom, the door closing them into their carefully constructed world where no outside forces were allowed to intrude. She put the box of truffles aside on a chest of drawers, then wound her slender arms around his neck, her head tilting sideways as her mouth searched for his again, lips parted, warm and pulsing with invitation. The breath shuddered from him as he accepted the invitation and he shuddered again when she rolled her tongue around the inner tissues of his mouth. They were joined—already—even without the rest of what was to come. It had always been like this for them.

They kissed like that for ages, immersing themselves in a deep, dark, sensual mist. He stroked her arms, he stroked her body, he slid his hands beneath her hair and slowly slid down the zip to her dress. She sighed at the pleasurable caress of his fingers against the silk-smooth flesh on her back, stretching and arching in perfect accord with his demands as he urged her arms down so he could peel the dress away. The tight cuffs on the sleeves snagged on her hands and he gave a sharp tug to get them free. Then he was collecting up her wrists and kissing them as if to soothe away that small piece of violence—because violence had not been allowed to come into this room with them. It belonged to the past when they’d fallen on each other in a rage of untrammelled lust.

No, she thought, don’t remember that, as another moment of indecision feathered her skin.

The dress slithered to the floor, and Luca followed its progress with the dark glow of his eyes while his hands moved on to unclip her bra. Pretty cups of blue lace trailed away from two pale globes with protruding crests of tight rose-pink. He licked one of them and she released a gasp of pleasure, closing her eyes on that unwanted moment of question in favour of this. Her shoulders went back, her head tilting with them so as to lift her breasts up towards his mouth.

Luca laughed; it was a soft and low sound of recognition. She had always been a delightfully receptive lover. He moved his tongue to the other breast and elicited the same response. In the right mood he could make her come just by standing here doing this and nothing else.

But not tonight, he told himself as he sent his hands stroking across skin like satin, gently moulding her slender body then bringing the arching of her hips into contact with the waiting thickness between his. She felt the thrust of his penis and moved against it, instinctive and unreserved when it came to pleasuring the senses.

‘Undress me,’ he said.

She opened her eyes, blue slow to focus, but smiling a siren’s sensual smile when they did. She reached out to free buttons, smoothing back fabric to reveal the power built into his chest and scraping fingernails through the dark springy hair that covered finely leathered dark golden skin. The shirt fell away and she leant forward to trail wet, warm kisses from one bulging pectoral to the other while her fingers went to unzip his trousers so they could slide inside to explore.

It was a touch like no other. Luca closed his eyes as a wave of desire rolled over him. His breath scored his throat and she whispered something incoherent. When he opened his eyes he saw her tongue running a moist circle around her lips and he knew why it was doing it.

She could hide nothing—never could. Heat roared up from the pit of his very essence and on a growl he picked her up and took her to the bed, bent to throw back the quilt, then laid her on the cool white sheet. She watched him strip off his clothes, still hiding nothing of what she wanted as she followed his movements with her sensual eyes and matched them by stripping away stockings and blue panties, long legs slithering against white linen giving him tantalising glimpses of womanly folds hidden within a burnished copper cloud.

His mouth wanted to swoop and take possession. But not yet, he thought and gave his hand the pleasure of sliding between those restless thighs as he came down beside her, leaving his mouth free to take what it needed from her hungry, hunting mouth.

They kissed, they touched, they rolled together; when he plunged fingers inside her she groaned in shuddering delight. He knew everything about her, where to touch, what to do to launch her into space.

‘Need you,’ she kept on saying over and over. ‘Need you—need you,’ until he was dizzy with hearing it, with triumph, with a need of his own that piled on the heat.

Her hands weren’t still. He might know Shannon inside and out but she was as well acquainted with him. She knew where to stroke to get his senses roaring, she knew how to torment him and earn herself a flame-hot response, until his blood sang and his breathing became ragged. By the time he let her guide him into her he was already lost to everything but her and this raging pleasure.

She arched her hips in hungry welcome; he made his deep, plunging thrusts without holding anything back. She clung where she could and he rode her like a man chasing after something he should never have lost. The heat of her electrified his senses, her tightness enclosed the length of his shaft. Their mouths were fused, their hearts thundering, their flesh bathed in sweat, limbs gripping or clinging, all parts of them trembling in a hot and gasping journey towards the mercurial finish.

She toppled first, taking him with her, the rippling response of her orgasm fiercely exciting his own. He groaned and kept on groaning with each shuddering stab of his body that released his juices into the path of pulsating muscles that greedily gathered them in.

Eventually it slowed, the tight, speeding rush of the senses steadied, tension eased and he became aware that Shannon was taking his full weight. He slid away from her, then lay on his back with his eyes closed, waiting for the silver-white flood of deep satiation to become a slow ebb.

After a while he found the energy to look at her. She hadn’t moved at all. Levering himself up onto a forearm, he looked down to find that her eyes were still closed and she looked quite pale. Had he hurt her? Anxiety shot tension back into his shoulders because he could have done; there had been moments there when he had been lost in a blackness that had roared in his head.

‘OK?’ he asked huskily and touched his lips to her soft lips, then gently fingered some damp strands of hair from her cheek.

Her lazy, ‘Mmm,’ swam through him in a river of relief.

‘Then open your eyes and look at me,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t like it when you lie so still.’

Her eyelids fluttered upwards, dusky lashes spiky with mascara—and she smiled. ‘You’re so wonderful, do you know that?’ she told him softly.

In true macho style he agreed with a lazy grin, then touched another kiss to her lips. He had just enjoyed the most amazing experience in his entire life and managed to take his woman along with him. So he felt wonderful.

‘Truffles,’ she announced suddenly, and was going from satiated stillness into live-wire movement within the single blink of an eye.

Allowing her to wriggle from beneath him, Luca lay on his side and watched through slumber-dark mocking eyes as she climbed off the bed and strode across the room to collect the box of chocolate-coated truffles from where she had placed them on the chest of drawers by the door.

The moment that Shannon picked up the box, something began to nag at her from the back of her mind. She turned round slowly, frowning down at the chocolate-coated truffles while trying to capture whatever that niggling something was.

It was then that it hit like a blinding flashback bursting forth to replay itself. She saw Luca coming out of the shop wearing that smile on his face as he handed her the truffle box. But it was what his other hand was doing that she was focusing on now. She’d thought he’d been sliding some folded Euros into his pocket. She could see it so clearly now that she couldn’t believe she had made such a stupid mistake!

He hadn’t gone into that shop to buy truffles! Those had been a mere afterthought to the more serious purchase he’d made.

A packet of condoms. He had bought condoms in preparation for the carefully nurtured love-fest!

‘I cannot look at you without wanting to be inside you,’ he murmured in a low, dark rasp.

Her chin jerked as she lifted her face to look at him. He was lying in typical, relaxed Luca fashion, on his side with his dark head propped up on a hand and a long, powerful leg casually bent. The naked pose hid nothing. Not the breadth of his chest or the length of his long torso covered with dark hair. Nor did it cover that other cluster of hair that surrounded his sex.

A proud and very potent sex.

She began to shake, with rage or with terror—she wasn’t sure which and it was probably a combination of both.