delicious hands to move into more dynamic territory.
To urge him on she writhed a little against his muscled frame, and was rewarded to feel a hard convincing prod against her abdomen, at the same time as his hand slid to her breast and closed around it in a thrilling hold.
‘…me. Er…sir. Excuse me, sir, madam. If you wouldn’t…’
An irritating, wispy little buzz-fly in her ear solidified itself in her consciousness as a human voice, and she wrenched herself from the escalating delights and sprang guiltily from Alessandro’s grasp.
Trembly with arousal, she took a much-needed drag of air, and made some hurried adjustments to her dress.
The waiter, his boyish shiny face tinged with pink, stood with his gaze fixed on the wall, menus clutched to his chest. Through a hot flustered haze she saw beyond him to the neighbouring table, where two couples were now being seated, casting sly smirking looks their way.
She risked a glance at Alessandro, and wished she hadn’t. He was devouring her with his eyes, looking as famished as a wild beast, and she felt her flush deepen.
‘Sir…Would-would s-sir and madam care for a dessert?’
She noted Alessandro snap from his contemplation of her and turn away, glancing thoughtfully around at the architecture while running a nonchalant hand through his hair. He responded to the lad with almost his usual poise, though his deep voice had developed a flattering hoarseness.
‘Give us ten, twenty minutes to think about it.’ He exchanged a narrow, man-of-the-world glance with the boy and the lad responded to it with a knowing nod. Then, as coolly as if nothing unusual had happened, Alessandro held her chair for her, before resuming his own place.
The boy presented them with their menus and departed at high speed.
Still embarrassed, and hyper-conscious of their neighbours, especially the women, who could hardly keep their eyes off Alessandro, though now he was angled away from them they couldn’t catch more than an occasional stunning profile, Lara leaned over and whispered, ‘I think we should go now.’
‘Ah,’ he said silkily, his eyes lighting, ‘but where? Where should we go, tesoro?’
‘Well…home, I suppose.’
‘Your place?’
‘God, no.’ She felt his hand come to rest on her knee under the table, and her heart rocked into a dance number. ‘I mean, that is…’
Under stress, her brain cells were capable of some pretty rapid calculation. Her place was out of the question. But, though time was running out, she was having such a good time, all stirred up like a flesh-and-blood woman for the first time in years. Home would have been such a tame end to things.
Alessandro began an absent-minded, gentle stroking motion along her leg. It might have been comforting, if it hadn’t been so arousing. She struggled with herself to pull away, but her limbs were still heavy with the intoxication of the kiss.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, panting a little, hardly daring to meet his eyes for fear of alerting him to what his supple fingers were absent-mindedly doing, and breaking the fabulous connection, ‘perhaps we could have-dessert at your hotel.’
He didn’t smile, exactly, but satisfaction settled into the lines of his sensuous, chiselled mouth.
She was so grateful for long linen tablecloths. More places should have them, she thought. Especially when, to her absolute shameless pleasure, his fingers slipped under her dress and to the inside of her leg, and traversed her silky stocking all the way to the top.
‘Although,’ he said, holding his menu in his other hand to peruse, ‘it says here that they have wild strawberries with dark drizzling chocolate. Couldn’t we enjoy drizzling our wild strawberries with chocolate?’
That bare skin at the top of her stockings was even silkier than the stocking, and Alessandro’s fingers seemed to know that and adapt accordingly. Absent or not, his very fingertips acquired a magic touch that roused her skin cells to heights of delight, inside her thigh, nearly all the way up to the elastic edge of her pants.
Inside the flimsy fabric, skin cells yearned in burning anticipation for their turn at the magic fingers. How high would those clever, artful fingers go?
She noticed a slight beading of sweat appear on Alessandro’s upper lip.
‘Oh, oh, perhaps…’ She managed to sit perfectly still, though she parted her thighs a little further to give greater access and her breathing started to come in short quick gasps. With her breasts rising and falling like an abducted maiden’s in a sheikh film, her voice had a husky, breathless quality, brought about by trembling, pleasurable suspense. ‘Perhaps strawberries in sauce can be a little messy. With-the strawberries being so-so juicy, and all…’
‘Oh, no, carissima,’ he said in his most velvet voice, gazing at her with grave assurance. ‘I am sure nothing- well, hardly anything-could be tastier. What’s a little juice?’
Hypnotised, she felt his soft fingers trail across the fabric of her pants, every subtle stroke delivering shock waves of delicious, tingling pleasure to the yearning delta beneath.
‘Sorry, what was that you said?’ He was teasing her, wicked laughter in his eyes, knowing her difficulty in speaking while swooning with the forbidden ecstasy.
‘Oh,’ she gasped, ‘I mean, yes, yes, Alessandro, Alessandro…’
The waiter hovered into view, to her intense regret, and Alessandro swiftly removed his sinful hand, leaving her in a severely aroused and unresolved state while attempting to appear like a model citizen, and not to pant.
The boy stood by their table once more, and Alessandro smiled charmingly at him and said, ‘You know, I don’t think we’ll stay for dessert after all.’
Outside in the small foyer as she buttoned up her coat, Alessandro said, ‘The taxi shouldn’t be long.’
‘Can’t we just walk? I don’t want to stay here another second.’
‘Oh.’ He looked rueful. ‘And I thought you were enjoying yourself.’ She glowered at him, and he added, ‘I don’t want you to get cold. I was shocked by how thin that dress is. I could feel everything through it, every curve, every little hill and valley.’
She said repressively, ‘I need to be cold.’
He laughed, and she pushed open the street door and threw him a stern glance.
‘Are you coming?’
Outside, her face registered the blessed chill, but despite her brisk tone there was a bubbly exhilaration in her blood that had an insulating effect against the night air. It had been so long since she’d been seduced by a gorgeously sexy man with smiling eyes and no morals. Still, did that mean she should allow herself to plunge enthusiastically back into being his wanton plaything?
A shameless part of her was almost inclined to think it did. Having gone so far…with nothing resolved…
For God’s sake, though, even if he didn’t, she had principles, and responsibilities, and loyalties that came first. And then there was the time element. It was well after nine, and she needed to be home early enough for her mother to make her hospital shift.
Despite the chill night there were people strolling around the streets, gangs of tourists taking snaps of each other, spilling from the crowded cafes. Didn’t Sydney people ever stay at home?
She shouldn’t, she knew, lose sight of the fact that she’d aged. Twenty-one was a million years from twenty- seven, in terms of smoothness, slenderness and muscle tone. Certainly she was still slim, but it was a different sort of slim at twenty-seven. It was the slimness achieved from washing, cleaning, ironing, bending to pick up toys, staying constantly alert to the whereabouts of a small dynamo, and running, running, running.
Would he notice the difference?
She walked quickly, his long stride keeping easy pace with hers. Their words hung in the air in little drifts of vapour. She made an earnest attempt to chat about neutral, non-inflammatory things-the unusually hard winter, the boutiques and lighted shop windows they passed, occasional alluring little laneways and their fascinating old houses. She even seized one promising moment when they passed a children’s bookshop for some deep probing into his attitudes about early childhood education, but instead of looking at the books, his dark sensual gaze remained on her.
In fact, it would be true to say that every conversational gambit she tried evoked an amused glance from Alessandro, while inside she was a turbulent sea of indecision.
