Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

From what she was beginning to turn into.

A betrayed woman with the terrible—terrible desire for another man.

She shuddered, despising herself for feeling like this. Still hurting in so many ways and clearly so darn desperate to prove she was worthy of the title “woman” that she was sitting here having to squeeze her thighs together in an attempt to cut off these tight little tugs that were so much a pleasure as well as a sin.

Sin.

She picked out the word and looked at it. What sin? Whose sin? Where was the sin in wanting to make love?

Her mother’s sin. Her mother’s cold assessment of what sexual desire could do to you. It could turn you into a slave to your own body cravings and the faceless property of the man who took those cravings and used them to slake his own.

Why him though? If she had to turn into this sex-needy person, why did it have to be for Carlo Carlucci of all men? Why couldn’t it have been Angelo? Maybe their relationship could have stood a better chance if she’d been more forthcoming on the physical side. Maybe he would not have gone looking elsewhere and the rest of this dreadful night would only exist in some far-off nightmare and she would be in bed by now—with Angelo—sublimely content in her blindness to what his true character really was like.

Is that what she wanted? she then asked herself. To be lied to so long as she didn’t have to face the miserable truth?

She heard his step in the half-open doorway, felt him pause when he saw the way she was sitting here. Tears burned. Her heart burned. That place between her thighs grew hot on a fresh flurry of excitement because she wanted him.

She wanted him.

Not Angelo. She had never wanted Angelo. Not like this, she groaned silently. Blind didn’t begin to excuse the way she had been behaving around Angelo in the name of that thing called love.

‘I’ve brought your case.’

She nodded. Love was nothing but an illusion anyway, she thought as she listened to his footsteps taking him across to the bed. Love was nothing but a word invented for women to use to justify giving in to this hot sexual ache and for men to use to give them the right to tap into that ache.

Her head twisted at the sound of his footsteps. Heat gathered in her cheeks this time, her eyes glued to him as she followed his approach. Tall, dark, breathtakingly alluring to her newly awoken senses, they drank in the width of broad shoulders and long, lean torso covered in white shirting that did nothing to hide the promise of what she envisioned lurked beneath. The butterfly collar of the shirt had been unfastened and the bow-tie now rested in two loose black strips against the shirt.

He looked relaxed; he even offered her one of his tilted smiles as he bent to take hold of her hands to break the clasp they held on her knees.

‘Come on,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve had enough. It’s time to go to bed.’

He pulled and she uncoiled to land on her feet in front of him. Removing the jacket from her shoulders, he tossed it onto the window seat then turned his attention to the line of bronze studs holding her denim jacket in place.

The word bed made her throw a hooded glance at him, the way he was casually removing her clothes tingled her spine—and he smiled again at those two very revealing actions. ‘It’s OK. The ravishment of Francesca Bernard has been put on hold for the time being,’ he assured her lazily.

‘Shame,’ she heard herself say—then caught her top lip between her teeth and wished the floor would open up and swallow her when he went perfectly still. She attempted a weak smile. ‘Joke,’ she said.

He went back to what he’d been doing but his mouth had a grim look of disapproval about it now.

Disapproval? she repeated inwardly and uttered a thick laugh. The person who disapproved of her around here was herself!

‘Why the laugh?’

‘Don’t ask,’ she advised a little wildly. Because the cool backs of his fingers were brushing against her breasts and making them tingle and if anyone wanted the ravishment of Francesca Bernard then it was Francesca Bernard!

Denim parted and was eased from her shoulders. She shivered as the fabric trailed down her arms, exposing her flesh to the cooler air seeping in through the window behind. The jacket landed on the window seat on top of his jacket then, with the touch of a master at undressing women, he slid his hand to the side of her ribcage to locate unerringly the concealed zip that held the dress in place.

‘I can do the rest myself,’ she told him stiffly.

‘Why rob me of the pleasure?’ he mocked—silkily—bringing her eyes up to clash with his.

He knew what she was thinking, what was happening to her, what she wanted to happen. And the look in his eyes was daring her to just come out and say it.

Ask! that look challenged.

She looked away again—moved away. His hand pulled her back again. She came into full contact with his full length. Her senses took flight on a mad ride of desire, she shivered and shook and sparked up like a firework. Her breathing fractured, her breasts heaved a gasp. His free hand lifted to burrow beneath her hair and his fingers clenched, imprisoning a thick swathe of her hair to use it to pull her head back.

She couldn’t tell if his eyes were angry or on fire with desire. His mouth still looked hard, his cheekbones taut. ‘What do you want from me, Francesca?’ he demanded on a low, dark growl.

The impact of the question quivered its way right down to her toes because she knew exactly what she wanted from him. She wanted him to give her sensual escape. She wanted to lose herself in him and become that other person she had just seen lying in naked abandon on that bed.

And she wanted to emerge the other end of this dreadful night a completely different woman, a sexually liberated woman who could state with confidence—to hell with you, Angelo, I know what I am now and you will never know what you missed out on!

‘I want everything,’ she whispered.

There, she’d said it. She didn’t even regret saying it, she told herself defiantly as his eyes narrowed on her flushed face. Now it was up to him whether he took what she was offering or rejected it.

He didn’t reject it. He took with a swift, dark passion that blew her apart. Her mouth was taken, its inner recesses invaded by the urgent probe of his tongue. She joined in this electric-charged fire dance with an eagerness that could have suggested she always kissed like this, when the opposite was the truth. It didn’t matter, she was with that kiss all the way—totally committed to it, totally committed to greedily learning anything he could teach her that would fuel the fires of what was happening to her. The side zip to her dress gave suddenly, the tight bodice springing free so the dress fell without stopping to the floor, leaving him free to explore new areas of exposed flesh with one hand while the other maintained its fierce grip on her hair to keep her face turned up to the kiss.

It was a very potent display of masculine domination—she knew that even as she surrendered to it. He stroked her waist, her back, her shoulders, he ran his fingers beneath the thin back strap to her flimsy strapless bra—testing its tension before trailing those fingers down the indent of her spine to the edge of her very brief high-leg panties to test their tension as his hand slid beneath.

She’d never felt a man’s hand against the smooth, rounded flesh of her bottom before. She’d never been touched like this at all. It felt strange but so exquisitely sensual she wriggled. He gripped and lifted her into contact with what was happening to him.

The movement tangled her feet in silk organza. On a curse he released her mouth so he could glance down. She was panting and clinging to his neck, too delirious to notice the way his eyes paused to linger blackly on the rise and fall of her breasts cupped in blood-red silk that was losing the battle to keep the tight thrust of her nipples covered. On a soft growl he clamped an arm around her waist and lifted her off the floor to swing her free of the dress—then he held her there, trapped against him, and closed his mouth around one of her breasts. The hot lick of his tongue sliced an arcing sense of tight pleasure across the tight nipple. She gasped out a thick breath, shaken and shuddering, her fingers clutching at his shoulders, and he tugged on her hair again to arch her backwards to bring the other breast pointing invitingly upwards for the delivery of the same experience.

Then they were kissing again, and he was turning with her still clamped against him as he walked towards the bed. That was not all he did on that short journey. With the strength of his hands he lifted her higher, somehow guiding her legs around his hips. The pulsing centre of all this madness made contact with the bulging hardness of his penis and her hips lurched in shock then writhed as a new pulsing wave of pleasure caught fire.

As he let her slide slowly down his length her bra sprang free. Two full, rounded breasts fell out of their bra cups, and she looked down to watch with a kind of fascination as their stinging tips settled against his shirt front.

He muttered something. She looked up into blazing black eyes and an oddly pale complexion. ‘Are you sure you want this?’

She gave him his answer by capturing his mouth with a reckless hunger. When he broke away from her she felt bereft.

Then not so bereft when he began stripping his clothes off, watching her as she stood watching him with a strange mix of fascination and shyness flickering across her expressive face. His shirt was peeled off and tossed away to reveal broad shoulders that gleamed like satin in the fire glow, and a taut, bronzed torso matted with dark hair. His shoes were heeled off and kicked to one side then his fingers went to deal with the fastener and zip to his trousers—and that was the moment when she had to look away.

Her eyes went straight to the bed with its red silk coverlet and its flame-licking promise of what was to come. She dragged in a breath, her senses fluttering on the beginnings of uncertainty, but that was all the time she was given to doubt this because his hand snaked out to cup her chin and he was making her look back at him. He was naked—naked, and so utterly beautiful it was no wonder he could strip with such ease.

His mouth closed over hers again, not fierce but gentle and soft. His other arm coiled around her waist and slowly drew her in. Nothing had prepared her for what it felt like to be held against a naked man. The warmth of him, the intoxicating differences between smooth and rough textures, the heady power of his scent, the unyielding strength in him, the uncompromising evidence of his manhood pressing against her abdomen and the way he moved against her leaving her in no doubt as to how much he wanted this. She released a shaken little breath in response to that knowledge and he stole it from her with a flick from his tongue.

He kissed the heat burning in her cheeks, her shyly lowered eyelids—he drew her that bit closer to him then pressed moist kisses to her shoulder, her neck, then her mouth again while she stood absorbing each tiny pleasure without being aware of how still she was.

‘If you’ve changed your mind and want to stop, this is the moment to say so,’ he said gently.

She frowned, not understanding why he kept asking that question. ‘I don’t want to stop.’

‘Then why are your hands clenched into fists at your sides?’

They were…?