‘Penny for them.’
Cordelia’s eyes shot to the bathroom door where Luca was lounging against the doorframe with a towel slung round his waist. They had already made love that morning and yet she could already feel herself getting turned on all over again. One look at him and stuff inside her ignited and exploded, leaving her wet and weak and at the mercy of his clever mouth and hands and fingers.
‘I was just looking out of the window and thinking how beautiful this all is,’ she confessed truthfully, watching as he moved from doorway to wardrobe to extract a white linen shirt and a pair of loose trousers, which he dumped over the back of the chair.
Slowly Luca began to dress.
She was, of course, right. It was beautiful, although in truth he rarely noticed the scenery here. In fact, he couldn’t think of the last time he had visited this particular property. For Luca, downtime wasn’t something he enjoyed very often. The last time, he now mused with some surprise, was when he’d vanished off to Cornwall to get his thoughts together, and look at where that had got him.
A baby on the way and...his eyes roved over the delectable sight of his wife-to-be, pink-faced and tousled, her white-blonde hair spread across the pillow, one long leg draped over the duvet, the other tucked away underneath.
Even when she was relaxing, even when his libido was at rest and sex wasn’t on the menu, there was something intensely appealing about her. He was finding that he couldn’t keep his hands off, which was just as well considering the situation.
And that situation, he had to admit, was doing very well. He had never, not once, having found out that she was carrying his baby, contemplated not making her his wife. Anything else would have been out of the question, and when she had turned his offer down flat with all that talk about ‘love’ and ‘finding the one’ he had momentarily been disconcerted at the notion that she might, actually, walk away from him.
That instant of panic was something he had never experienced before and certainly never in connection with a woman, but she wasn’t like anyone else. She was unique insofar as his money was immaterial.
He had appealed to her longing to see the world. It had been, first and foremost, a deliberately well-considered plan to open her eyes to what richness lay in store for her and for their child, and the funny thing was that he had begun to see his own country in a slightly different light.
Had begun to view his own possessions through different spectacles and was appreciating what he had spent a lifetime taking for granted.
He couldn’t offer her love, but he could offer her a lot more besides and he could tell that all those bonus extras were weaving their magic.
‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ he murmured, moving to perch next to her at the side of the king-sized bed. ‘You have yet to see the splendour of Rome and Florence, although we will try and visit those two cities when there are fewer tourists. Then there is the Riviera...’ He couldn’t help himself. He drew down the duvet exposing her breasts, bountiful orbs tipped with ripe pink, pouting nipples that begged to be suckled.
‘Don’t,’ Cordelia sighed weakly, relaxing back against the pillow and instinctively arching her naked breast to his mouth. ‘We have a lot to do today. Sailing...oh, Luca...oh, yes...’ She clasped her hand behind his head as he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked and licked until she was panting and writhing helplessly on the bed.
‘The things you do to me,’ Luca groaned, vaulting up to strip off the shirt with unsteady hands while his eyes burned into her.
He had work to do. At least a couple of hours before the day could be theirs and yet...he couldn’t resist her.
Nor did he intend on shortening the time he had with her, which meant that work would have to take a back seat, which was a first for him and would have been hugely disconcerting if his mind had actually been able to focus on anything other than the woman looking back at him with a helpless yearning that mirrored his.
Their lovemaking was fast and hard and he came with such intensity that the breath left his body for a few wild moments.
It took him a while to come down from the high. Goodbye any work at all, he thought. Emails would have to be handled later. At some point.
He lay back and flung one arm over his eyes and Cordelia wriggled against him. Warmth spread through her at the feel of his arm heavy across her back and shoulders.
His body was slick with perspiration and she flattened the palm of her hand on his chest.
She loved him. It was as simple as that and the realisation barely shook her because it was something that had crept up slowly but surely, sinking into her consciousness until it was just a fact of life.
She was in love with this guy and that was why she had agreed to marry him. Or at least, it had been a very strong motive, underneath all the very logical reasons she had told herself.
If she had truly felt nothing for Luca but bone-deep indifference, then she would have walked away. Yes, she would have made sure contact was maintained for the sake of their child, but she could never have borne living with someone she didn’t care about.
Curiosity and recklessness had propelled her into doing something she would never have dreamt possible given all the principles she had always lived by and, bit by bit over those three weeks, she had fallen for him and fallen hard.
The past week and a half had only made that love deeper, because she had seen him for the good guy that he was underneath the power and the wealth.
All this time he’d taken to
