A Clash With Cannavaro (10 page)

He moved across her now, feeling like a king rather than a plunderer when he saw her eyelids grow heavy as he fondled her tender breasts, feeding on her soft moans of pleasure when he drew each perfect pale orb into his mouth in turn.

Her skin felt like silk, he thought, finding her whole body as soft and yielding as his own was hard. She was ready for him, he realised, as she writhed beneath him and her legs splayed wider like butterfly wings wanting to soak up the sun. But he had promised her everything and he was never a man to renege on a promise, he reminded himself. And then, with a mentally wicked smile—no matter how much of a punishment it might be for him to keep it!

He heard her breathing quicken in anticipation as his lips moved over the taut plane of her abdomen, and when his mouth found that most secret part of her she gave a shuddering gasp of pleasure.

She hadn’t been a virgin when they had come together first but, from the way she had responded to him and was responding to him now, making him feel as if he was the only man in the universe, she might only ever have been his, and suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of any other man making love to her.

It filled him with such momentary possessiveness that he knew a sudden atavistic desire to impregnate her. To stamp his mark on her and watch her middle grow big with his child. Their child. The thought of entering her unprotected and feeling nothing but her soft warm flesh around him produced an ache in his body that almost made him lose control.

But she wouldn’t welcome such reckless behaviour from him. Oh, perhaps to begin with! he thought, while they were both driven by their mutual hunger and need for each other. But not later, when she realised the implications of what they had done. Besides, they had Daniele, and he already loved the infant as if he were his own. How could he not? he thought distractedly, when his brother’s blood flowed in the child’s veins and bound him to Daniele, just as it bound Lauren to him, connected her to him irrevocably—whether she wanted to accept that or not.

Breathing raggedly, she lay unmoving with her eyes closed as he withdrew a little to do what he had to do. Then he moved over her again and, parting her thighs with gentle fingers, positioned himself above her before sinking deeply into her.

She cried out from the pleasure that echoed his own throaty growl as he lifted her hips to meet his with each increasingly deep surge of his body.

She started to climax almost at once, only a second before he gave one final driving thrust and felt his seed exploding out of him.

Shuddering with release, he collapsed against her, his breathing heavy, his body throbbing while she gripped him tightly with each contraction of her eager body, holding him there, high up in the cushioning warmth of her femininity.

* * *

It was only just dawn as the yacht brought them towards the cove below Emiliano’s house, but he had promised Lauren the previous night that they would be back before Daniele awoke.

It was a brand new vessel, Emiliano had told her, which he had purchased in Florida on his last visit, and which he had had diverted from its planned route by the very efficient Italian crew he had employed.

‘So you did plan it!’ Lauren chided softly after they had come up on deck to watch the sun as it rose above the lush vegetation spilling down to the aquamarine water. ‘Was this all part of your scheme when you warned me I’d be coming out with you the other night?’

‘Not at all. And there certainly was no scheme,’ he assured her firmly. ‘My original plan was to have them bring it straight here before taking it to Barbados, but I didn’t realise it was so close to the island until my skipper rang me just before dinner last night to let me know they were ready to bring the vessel in. I thought it would be a surprise and particularly enjoyable for you if they changed course and picked us up from the lagoon, so that I could give you a starlit cruise back to the house last night instead of returning by road.’

Just like that! Lauren realised, amazed by how effortlessly things worked when you were as rich and important as Emiliano. And naturally the car would be returned to the house as if by magic too!

‘Having you spend the night in my bed was an unexpected bonus that I certainly did not plan.’

‘Well, you definitely made the journey home particularly enjoyable!’ she laughed with a delicious little shiver running through her. She was still basking in the aftermath of a night spent in his arms, and one or two tender places on her body certainly bore lingering mementoes of their passionate lovemaking.

‘And what did you mean by my
warning
you that I was intending to take you out?’ he enquired, pretending to look put out by her remark. ‘I think I was the one in the greatest danger last night,
mia cara
. It had to be the first time in my life that I found myself alone with a woman who
ordered
me to take off my clothes.’

‘I hadn’t realised you were so deprived!’ she laughed, with her stomach doing a somersault from remembering how magnificent he had looked in his nakedness and, in particular, had felt, beneath her caressing fingers. ‘If I’d known, I would have been far, far more adventurous with you!’

Laughing with her, he said, ‘What are you doing? Trying to tempt me,
mia bella
? I have sixty-five feet of hull I need to steer into that cove,’ he reminded her, confirming that even though he had entirely competent employees to do the job for him, there were always some things that he just had to do for himself. ‘However...’ the sun struck his slim gold watch as he crooked his arm to consult it ‘...we are not there yet.’ Laughter lit his eyes, which were shining with an almost amber fire because of the dazzling reflections bouncing off the water. But they were burning with another kind of fire too, Lauren noted excitedly, as he said, grabbing her hand, ‘Which means you will just have enough time left,
cara mia
, to show me exactly how...adventurous you can be.’

* * *

It was the first time he had given her carte blanche to please him without any intervention from him, she thought, as she lay with him in the luxurious cabin, knowing he was a man who usually liked to take control.

But now she delighted in his voluntary and totally uninhibited surrender as she watched his long lashes feather down against the wells of his eyes, and his forehead groove in tortured ecstasy as she brought every ounce of sexual tension ebbing from him in the most intimate and pleasurable way.

Later, lying with her hair spread like flaming silk across his chest, Lauren stretched languorously like a contented she-cat and, bringing her arms down, murmured, ‘Was that adventurous enough for you?’

He didn’t even open his eyes as she raised herself up on an elbow. Instead, he simply breathed in response, ‘It is rather soon to tell. I think we will just have to try that again some time.’

Laughing softly, Lauren ran her hand over the crisp hair of his chest. He was beautiful, she thought, gazing down at him. He made love to her with so much passion, and yet so much consideration too, taking his time, putting her pleasure first, which made him an exciting and incredible lover.

She wondered how anyone who had known such indifference in their childhood could have matured into such a well-balanced, thoughtful and attentive man. She had told him last night that she had lost everyone who mattered to her. But at least she had known she was loved and cared for, while he...

He had lost his mother so young, she reflected, with her heart going out to him. And then, not just his father, but his brother too, when he had been shut out of the family on the whim of an uncaring stepmother. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that he wanted Daniele, she realised, understanding now. The toddler was the only blood relative he had left to hang on to. The only survivor of a family where everyone else had let him down.

Her heart ached for him so much that it actually hurt.

I love him
, she thought, in the instant that he opened his eyes.

‘What is it,
cara
?’ His forehead pleated with concern as he ran a hand along her arm to the smooth curve of her naked shoulder. ‘Is something troubling you? You are not regretting it, no?’

He meant the whole night and the stage their relationship had now reached. But what stage had they reached? Lauren wondered anxiously. From Emiliano’s point of view, she was probably just another willing partner who had agreed to share his bed, while she...

She had recklessly and very unwisely turned that corner she had nearly turned two years ago after only a matter of hours in his bed and fallen hopelessly in love with him. But, unlike before, she now knew so much more about him—knew the pain and the very complex issues that had made him the man he was. She also knew that this time there could be no turning back

‘No, of course not,’ she replied, because whatever happened from now on, she knew she would love him for ever and that, no matter what he said or did, she would live on the memory of her time on this yacht with him for the rest of her life.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘S
O
TELL
ME
about Stephen,’ Emiliano suggested casually a couple of days later as they reclined under a large green parasol on the beach below the house.

‘Stephen?’ Lauren echoed, frowning. They were sharing the same luxuriously padded sun lounger and Lauren was leaning back with her head resting against his bare chest. In nothing but a pair of navy blue swimming trunks, his body felt warm and smelled deliciously masculine. ‘Oh, Stephen!’ He had asked her about him that day when he had helped her untangle Brutus from the wire, and she remembered taking a warped pleasure out of withholding what he really wanted to know. ‘Why?’ She was glancing up at him over her shoulder, her green eyes twinkling wickedly. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘If I have reason to be after what we have been doing over the past few days,’ he commented with mock sternness, ‘then obviously I have not been doing my job properly.’

‘Then you’ll just have to practise more,’ she purred with a sensuous little wriggle and earned herself a firm tightening of his arm across her middle.

‘Tell me what he means to you,’ he insisted.

He sounded deadly serious now and she knew it was time to stop teasing him.

‘He means everything to me—when I’ve run out of eggs,’ she couldn’t resist saying nevertheless. ‘Or if Danny and I are desperate for some milk on our porridge. So does his wife of thirty years. Or even one of his older sons. As long as there’s somebody serving in the dairy.’

‘You little...’ He left the noun hanging with a promise of some delightful pay-back.

Sitting beside them on the sand under a smaller matching parasol, Daniele was demolishing a fort that she and Emiliano had made for him earlier. Now, looking up at them, his little spade suspended in mid-bash, he gave them both a cheeky grin before resuming his demolition job.

‘What about you?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Do you have someone like a Stephen—or should I say a Stephanie—stashed away somewhere?’

‘Not at present,’ he drawled, stroking her hair back off her shoulder so he could tease the soft skin he had exposed with a spine-shivering caress of his tongue. ‘Not even one I could claim supplies me with eggs.’

Lauren’s tense little laugh was broken by another sensual shudder as his long fingers slid ever so subtly under the band of the little white triangle spanning her lower body.

Not at present,
he had said. Did that mean that there was likely to be someone in the near future? she wondered, a little deflated.

She couldn’t dwell on that, though, not when his teeth were nipping the sensitive area at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and his other hand had come up under her breast, supporting, yet not actually claiming its full swell in its palm.

Frustration was a torment that had her wriggling again and quietly groaning this time. Her breast was aching for him to reach a little higher and drag his thumb across it, while her femininity craved for him to slide those skilled fingers further inside her bikini briefs. But she knew he wouldn’t—that they couldn’t—take things any further with Danny there.

‘You know...lying in the sun seems to make you incredibly sexy,’ Emiliano remarked, bringing his lower hand up to rest casually—at least casually where
he
was concerned, Lauren thought, tingling with need—across her abdomen. She noticed how dark his splayed fingers were across her comparatively paler flesh, like hard bronze against the softer, more malleable gold.

‘The sun?’ Her breathing came a little more shallowly than it had a few moments ago. ‘Perhaps it’s an aphrodisiac. Or perhaps it has something to do with you.’

Suddenly she realised what this little game of sensual torment was all about. She had been teasing him about Stephen, and women didn’t tease men like Emiliano Cannavaro in that way and get away with it.

‘No,
carissima
.’ His endearment was huskily
spoken, the flick of his tongue exquisite torture across the sensitive chamber of her ear. ‘It has very little to do with me.’

That last word coincided with the depression of his hand against her tummy, an action so arousing that she let out a small shocked gasp from the sharp contraction it produced at the very core of her femininity.

‘I’m going in.’ She sat up quickly, trembling, breathless. ‘Will you bring Danny back?’ She was already on her feet, burning up with sexual frustration. ‘Or shall I take him?’ She only knew she couldn’t stay there another minute.

‘I’ll bring him back,’ he drawled.

Whether he was affected by what he had been doing to her, she wasn’t sure. She was too disconcerted to look at him as she grabbed her small beach bag and started back over the sand, seeking only the calming atmosphere inside the house and the merciful isolation of her own room.

The cool water of the shower did little to ease her frustration. The crests of her breasts were peaked beneath the application of the shower gel, and her very womb felt as if it were aching from the promises it had been denied.

You wait!
Emiliano Cannavaro
, she promised in return, wondering how big a fool she was being for loving him. Yet it wasn’t his deliberate attempt to frustrate her out there that was making her angry to the point of tears. It was because of that moment when she had asked him in a roundabout way if there was anyone that
she
should be jealous of, and he had answered simply, ‘Not at present’!

What was she supposed to deduce from that? she asked herself. That he was currently between girlfriends and would be taking up with someone else the minute he’d finished amusing himself with her?

She didn’t hear the door to the bathroom open, or the door to the shower cubicle, so that when she turned round and saw Emiliano stepping in beside her she gave a gasp of shocked surprise.

‘That was not very kind of me, was it?’ he admitted with a self-effacing grimace. ‘But one thing you will grow to learn about me,
cara mia
, is that if ever I make mistakes, I always believe in putting them right.’

Which put him there. With her. And naked! she realised with shuddering pleasure as he drew her against him.

But it was what he had just said: those five words—
you will grow to learn—
that seemed to wash away her despondency, in the same way his hard, warm body was promising to wash away her aching need. Didn’t they imply that she would be part of his life for a while at least? That he didn’t intend just to throw her over for someone else the instant these few glorious weeks with him were over?

She couldn’t think any more because his mouth had swooped and was covering hers and all she wanted was to be with him like this. Today. Here and now!

And now it was
his
hands that were lathering her breasts, driving her demented with longing as he caressed their aching fullness, teasing their blossoming buds with infinite skill.

His mouth was hard and hungry—as hungry as hers was for his insistent and deepening kiss.

The slipperiness of their wet bodies was unbelievably erotic, the gel with which he had been massaging her making his flesh as slick as hers.

Lauren’s hands moved over the thrilling musculature of his back, the unleashed power she could feel pulsing beneath his firm flesh making her crave fulfilment as she had never craved it before.

If he didn’t love her soon she would die of wanting!

But he was as desperate as she was, she realised, as he forced her back against the tiles and it was with only a mild distraction that she realised he was already prepared.

Clutching at his shoulders, she swayed towards him as he guided himself into her wet and willing body and then, with one powerful thrust, drove deeply into her, making her cry out as her body shuddered with spiralling pleasure.

She had never made love standing up before, let alone under the relentless jets of a shower. The whole experience heightened her arousal as he pushed even more deeply into her, driving them both into a wild rhythm of sensation that was as swift as it was hot, and which brought them, collapsing and breathless when it was over, against the luxurious marble tiles of the cubicle.

* * *

It had been by tacit agreement that she had progressed from her own beautiful room at the back of the house to the understated luxury of the master suite with its polished cedar furniture and richly patterned furnishings, since once Emiliano had had her in his bed, he was, it seemed, unequivocally determined to keep her there.

‘You are where you belong,
mia bella
. Accept it,’ he had said to her when she expressed her concern over what Constance and the rest of his staff might think. ‘Constance has three robust sons who did not arrive on this planet through wishful thinking. And I think by now,
cara
, that my employees would think it very strange if you were not sharing my bed.’

So that told her, Lauren thought, wishing she could adopt the same nonchalant attitude. But she wasn’t as worldly or as free-thinking and casual about sex as he seemed to be, and she guessed that that was part of her problem: having people assume that she was happy to be merely a diversion—a sex toy—in the bed of a man who clearly didn’t love her.

Also, since that night on the wharf, before he’d taken her to his yacht, he hadn’t said another word about Daniele’s future.

Was she living in a fool’s paradise? she wondered then, and again that same evening when they had been in the
salon
listening to one of Emiliano’s blues albums—which surprisingly she had grown to love—and she’d heard Etta James belting out something about rather losing her sight than watching the man she loved walk out of her life.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, Etta. But you’re close
, she’d thought achingly, and had taken herself off to bed, where she’d pretended to be asleep when Emiliano joined her.

It was earlier than usual when she awoke, and Emiliano’s side of the bed was deserted.

Taking a quick shower in the master bedroom’s luxurious en suite bathroom which, though not necessarily more splendidly appointed, was nearly twice the size of her own, Lauren donned a strapless white sundress with an elasticated top before going along the landing to check on Daniele.

Finding his room deserted, and craving a fruity drink, she made her way quickly downstairs to the large and sunny kitchen which, despite all its up-to-the-minute equipment and stainless steel appliances, still managed to maintain a very welcoming feel.

Wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and tie teemed with light suit trousers Emiliano was leaning against one of the counters, browsing through a newspaper. Daniele was already in his high chair with a half-eaten piece of papaya in front of him. His eyes were fixed on the wall-mounted television beside the huge refrigerator, which was showing a local programme about underwater exploration.

‘Buongiorno,’
Emiliano greeted her softly, closing his newspaper. ‘I trust you slept well.’ Those all-seeing eyes of his were tugging over her dress as though he knew she was wearing nothing but a skimpy brief beneath it. ‘After...’

‘Yes,’ Lauren said quickly because, for all her pretending last night, she hadn’t been able to sleep at all at first, a fact he had soon become wise to and had swiftly and effectively done something about. Apart from which, Constance had just emerged from the walk-in larder.

Returning her warm greeting, yet needing a diversion from her suddenly racing thoughts, Lauren went over and kissed Daniele’s dark, downy head.

‘Hello, darling.’ She picked up the small succulent piece of yellow fruit from his plate and popped it into his mouth. ‘What are you doing in the kitchen?’ Normally he would have had his breakfast in the nursery, or out on the terrace with her.

‘Vega!’ Daniele said excitedly, pointing at the screen.

‘He was restless,’ Emiliano explained, laying his folded newspaper on the counter, ‘so I brought him down with me so that he wouldn’t disturb you.’

Like a father would, Lauren thought, impressed. Or a caring husband...

‘Vega!’ Daniele exclaimed again, dragging her thoughts back from the unwise direction they had taken as he patted her arm to gain her attention.

‘What is this “Vega”?’ Emiliano asked, his baffled gaze following his nephew’s to the colourful coral reef on the screen.

‘Vega’s his goldfish. Well, one of them,’ Lauren explained. ‘He calls every fish he sees now “Vega”.’

‘You name your
goldfish
?’ Amusement laced his voice as he exchanged a conspiratorial glance with his housekeeper. They enjoyed a particularly good rapport, Lauren had noted, almost enviously, from day one.

‘Where I come from fish is for eat’n,’ Constance proclaimed in her lyrical island dialect as she busied herself with checking cupboards for necessary provisions.

‘And do they all have names?’ Emiliano directed at Lauren, still looking amused.

‘We’ve only got three. And yes...’ She paused before adding, ‘The other two are Altair and Deneb.’

‘Ex
cuse
me?’ He was leaning back against the worktop, muscles bunching in his folded arms, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘They make up the Summer Triangle,’ she told him, wishing he didn’t look quite so darn sexy, and not caring that he might think her daft. ‘The three brightest stars in the night sky. In the northern hemisphere, that is.’

‘Of course.’

‘In summer.’

‘Naturally.’

‘You’re laughing at me!’ she accused, trying very hard now not to mind.

‘No, I’m not.’ But he was still chuckling and she could hear stifled snorts of laughter coming from the direction of one of the cupboards.

‘Yes, you are.’

‘So how did you come by this...illustrious trio?’

His eloquent use of English—with barely any hesitation—never ceased to surprise her, even though it tumbled from his lips with that honey-thick accent of his that always sent delicious little quivers along her spine.

‘I rescued them from a neighbour whose pond had a hole in it.’