To know she trusted him was significant, for the thought of her misplacing her trust in someone else left him cold.
He watched the black sky turn to a steel grey and, even though Gian knew his logic was flawed, when the silver mist of a new day dawned and he heard her little cry, Gian went through and sat on the bed.
Ariana was far from a temptress at dawn. She covered her face with one hand as he came in, and little bits of last night played like taunting movies.
‘Did I make a complete fool of myself?’ she asked in a pained voice.
‘Of course not,’ he said magnanimously, then teased her with a slow smile. ‘You just pleaded with me to make love to you.’
‘Perhaps it was the cognac,’ she said hopefully, but they both knew it had been a small sip and that had been back in Luctano. There had been a lot of walking and talking since then and she could hardly blame the chestnuts! ‘I’m sorry for my behaviour. I don’t actually fancy you, Gian.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, sometimes a bit, but then I remind myself that you are just a hunk of good-looking...’ She liked his slow smile. ‘I remind myself how mean you can be...’
‘Mean?’
‘One glass of champagne at my interview!’
He smiled for he thought she hadn’t noticed the absence of a bottle.
‘Ah, that.’
‘A meal at your bar instead of your restaurant...’
‘You make it sound like the local dive.’
‘Perhaps, but even so I deserved five stars last night. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when I do find myself fancying you, I remind myself how remote you can be and how humourless you are.’
‘Well, it’s good you’ve come to your senses,’ Gian said, ‘especially as I don’t have condoms with me. I tend not to keep them in my funeral suit.’
She stared back and resisted smiling, determined to prove her humourless point.
‘Except we wouldn’t need them.’ He held up a purple foil packet of contraceptive pills. ‘What are these for?’
‘You’ve been snooping.’
‘Not really, I wanted toothpaste. I just wondered what you were doing on the Pill if you’re not sleeping with anyone...’
‘Yet!’
His jaw was set in a grim line. He had this vision of Ariana chasing some bastard who sensed her fragility, yet she was not fragile now. Ariana was looking right at him and there was none of last night’s desperate need for comfort, just the desire that had always been beneath it.
‘So?’ he asked. She looked at the purple Pill packet and was about to lie, as she so often did, and say she was on the Pill for her skin, or so that it made her cycle more predictable, or whatever she would say if her mother found them.
But Gian was certainly not her mother.
And with Gian there was no reason she could see to lie.
‘I went on it because I feel like the only person in the world without a sex life, and when I go away with friends I don’t want them to know I’m the only one...’ She shrugged. ‘Pathetic, huh...’
‘No more pathetic than when I was younger and would have condoms on me, just to have them on me...’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
They shared a smile in the thin dawn light but then hers wavered. ‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve made things even more awkward between us. I should never have foisted myself on you. I was all a jumble.’ She looked at his suave good looks and then at his chest. His tie was gone and his shirt unbuttoned, though just at the top—enough to see a glimpse of chest hair—but she reminded herself of how empty a vessel his chest was and again tried to salvage some pride. ‘And it’s not as if I enjoyed kissing you last night. In fact, it was like kissing a screen. I felt nothing...’
‘Really?’
The thin morning light disappeared as his face came closer, but she refused to be moved by the brush of his lips and the softness of his mouth, just as he had refused to be moved by hers.
Except his kiss was more refined, more skilled, more measured and she found she could not quite catch her breath as her mouth fought not to relent.
‘Like kissing a screen?’ he checked.
‘Yes,’ she said, and felt the scratch of his chin drag on hers. As his fingers came to her jaw, his tongue slipped in, and she absolutely refused to moan at the bliss. In fact, she held her mouth slack as his tongue moved in and out. He tasted divine, all minty and fresh, but there was nothing clean about his kiss—it was filthy, in fact. Thorough, probing and potent with skill, his tongue felt like it ran a wire straight down between her legs and she bunched her hands into fists rather than reach for his head.
‘Still nothing?’ he checked, and now his hand was stroking her breast through her top and Ariana was sure that if she hadn’t been lying down she might have fainted.
‘Nothing,’ she lied.
‘Do you want me to stop?’
‘No.’
‘Do you understand it is just this once?’
‘Oh, stop with the lectures,’ she said, as his fingers slid inside her top. ‘I accept the terms and conditions...’
He laughed.
Gian actually laughed. Not that she saw it, for he was pulling her T-shirt over her head, and Ariana was loose limbed and compliant and letting him.
‘Please get naked,’ she said. ‘I want to see you.’
‘For a virgin, you certainly know how to provoke me,’ Gian commented as he rose from the bed and started to undress.
‘Because you provoke me,’ Ariana responded. She felt a blush spread across her chest as he removed his shirt and discarded his clothes.
Oh, God. She had always known he was stunning, but he looked so toned, and so male—his chest hair, the thick line on his stomach—and she was holding her breath in nervous, excited anticipation as he unzipped.
He was the most beautiful thing she had
