This and so many other things.
This was excitement. Heart-stopping, pulse-racing, nerve-jangling excitement and if he wanted her, then she couldn’t begin to describe just how much she wanted him.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE FELL BACK compliantly when he pushed her gently so that he could lever himself up to stare down at her. His breathing was a heavy rasp and his eyes were dark with passion, unfocused, as though he had been transported to another world.
He ran his hand along her side and then up along her ribcage. The almost dry swimsuit was an irritant, a scratchy barrier between them that Cordelia wanted to yank off but, again, her lack of experience was paralysing. She didn’t have the confidence to take the reins and she wondered whether that lack of confidence and experience would be a turn-off for him.
He was so...sexy. So dark, so exotic, so unbelievably, sinfully compelling. You didn’t have to let your imagination wander too far to realise that he wouldn’t have lived a life deprived of adoring women and it wasn’t just about his looks. Over the past few days, she had seen the three-dimensional man who had not been in evidence when he’d been in and out of sleep for the first couple of days after she had rescued him.
He was dry, witty, funny and a brilliant listener. He had painted such vivid images in her head of the bright Italian sun streaming down on acre upon acre of carefully cultivated vineyards. He could describe the colour and texture of the fat, juicy grapes with the detail of a poet and his adventures...the places he’d visited! Cordelia could only assume that he used the pay he made working in the wine industry to travel the world when the harvesting season came to an end.
In every way, shape and form his life was a window to a faraway world she could only dream of.
And here he was, with her, and the need to have this man and enjoy this moment was overpowering.
She tentatively drew his hand to her breast and felt him shudder against her.
When he made a half-hearted motion to remove it, she held it fast and was filled with a sense of reckless daring.
‘Cordelia,’ he groaned under his breath. ‘Like I said...this isn’t a good idea...’
‘Why? If you fancy me and I fancy you, why isn’t it a good idea?’
‘A million reasons,’ he murmured, but he was touching her, massaging the full weight of her breast in his big hand and then slipping a finger under the strap of the swimsuit so that he could slowly draw it down.
Her eyelids fluttered shut and she sighed and then arched up as the swimsuit was pulled down. She twisted and moaned and linked her fingers behind his head and drew him lower. She could feel the conflict inside him but she knew that temptation was stronger than the voice of reason. Inexperienced she might be, but she knew that with unerring, feminine certainty. He wanted her and he couldn’t help himself and that filled her with a sense of heady power.
Everything about this man was an eye-opener and she was loving it.
His mouth circled her nipple and he flicked his tongue over the stiffened bud and began teasing it into such fierce arousal that a hum of sensation began between her thighs, growing in intensity until she was rubbing her legs together in an attempt to control it.
She was desperate for his hand to be there and, as if reading her mind, he cupped her between her legs. When she wriggled against the palm of his hand, he obligingly and gently pressed down.
Her body was behaving in all sorts of wild and wonderful ways.
Not knowing what she was supposed to do with him, she slid her hand over his muscled thigh and shuddered.
‘All in good time.’ Luca’s voice was husky and only just the right side of controlled.
He nuzzled her breast and then moved to the other and laved it with his tongue.
It was unbearable. She parted her legs and trembled when he immediately slid his hand under the stretchy Lycra of the swimsuit, distorting it as he began to rub her there.
He removed his hand and then began easing the swimsuit off her, all the while licking her nipple and suckling on her breast. She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t think at all.
She just wanted him on her and in her and she wanted it in a hurry.
Her hands scrabbled at his swimming trunks.
Luca stilled. There was enough common sense still left in him to realise that this was not in the plan. Yes, he’d looked at her and discovered that his libido could reach heights he could never have anticipated, but he’d fast worked out that that was only partially to do with the fact that she was attractive.
Maybe more than just attractive.
He’d worked out that it was due to a combination of things, not least the fact that he was away from normality, away from the trappings of power and wealth that had always defined him and away from the people who lived in that rarefied world. He was a free man here and so everything was heightened, including the mystifying power of his attraction to the woman lying in this slice of empty paradise.
So many responsibilities awaited his return that freedom had never tasted sweeter.
Was it, therefore, so surprising that he could barely string two coherent thoughts together when he was around the woman?
He’d replaced his computer on day four when he’d headed out to get himself a handful of new clothes to replace the ones he had borrowed from her father. He’d hit the nearest town, headed for an Internet café and rebooted his working life, but even the pressing emails
