stroked caressingly behind her ear and against the vulnerable
flesh of her neck, and a small betraying shudder
of reaction galvanised her whole body.
His lips brushed hers, the silver-grey eyes glinting
with a knowledge that made her whole body burn as
he demanded silkily, 'Don’t you even know how to
kiss properly? And you were betrothed! Open your
mouth.'
Faced with a choice of being branded as a woman
so sexually inept that she couldn’t even kiss, or giving
in to his arrogant demand, Jodie chose female pride
over anger. Her lips softened and parted, the golden
shimmer of her gaze meshing recklessly with the hypnotic
silver of Lorenzo’s as though it were a lodestone
luring her to a destiny she couldn’t escape. Her mouth
clung to his and her arms lifted to wrap around his
neck. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her
back, but it was the heat of Lorenzo’s touch that her
flesh was responding to, the sensation of his hand
spread flat against the bare skin of her back beneath
her nightshirt, whilst she stood on tiptoe, arched
against him, kissing him with a sensual intimacy that
would normally have shocked her.
She could feel his hand shaping her waist and then
moving upwards to cup her bare breast beneath the
nightshirt, his thumb-pad brushing with deliberate
emphasis against her suddenly tight nipple, making it
and her quiver as readily as a bow drawn by an expert
archer. His other hand was massaging the base of her
spine and then moving lower, pushing aside her briefs
so that he could stroke the naked rounded curve of
her bottom.
The sudden fierce sexual thrust of Lorenzo’s
tongue against her own brought her up intimately
against him, her breath escaping on a soft, shivered
rush of pleasure. 'What is it?' Lorenzo whispered.
'Do you want me to stroke your breasts? To kiss them
and caress them? Do you want me to take your nipple
into my mouth and bring it and you to the highest
pinnacle of pleasure? Is that what you are asking me
for with that wanton thrust of your hips against
mine?' As he was whispering to her Lorenzo’s hand
moved round to caress the soft swell of her sex.
This was what she had longed for so much from
John — desire, intimacy, sensuality — and she absorbed
it into herself with each and every one of her senses,
lost in a private world of erotic pleasure.
It was the sound of angry footsteps crunching
across the gravel beneath the balcony that brought her
back to reality, her body stiffening in outraged rebuttal
as she wrenched her mouth from beneath
Lorenzo’s.
'You had no right to do that,' she told him angrily.
'So why didn’t you stop me?' Lorenzo shrugged,
infuriatingly matter-of-fact.
She hadn’t stopped him because she had been enjoying
what was happening too much to want to,
Jodie realised guiltily. 'You said there would be
no…no intimacy between us,' she retorted, sidestepping
Lorenzo’s charge.
'That wasn’t intimacy,' Lorenzo informed her. 'If
I’d wanted intimacy with you, I’d have taken you
somewhere where we couldn’t be overheard, and right
now, instead of standing here glowering at me, you’d
be lying under me, and the only words you’d be uttering
would be your eager pleas for my possession.
As I warned you, I was simply demonstrating for
Caterina’s benefit the fact that you and I are to marry.
Or is that glower you are giving me because you are
not lying beneath me right now, while I show that
virginal body of yours what sex is all about?'
'I am not—'
'You are not a virgin? Is that what you were going
to tell me?'
'I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that
I’m not interested in having sex with you.'
'So you are a virgin?'
'What if I am? Is it a crime?'
'In law, no. Against nature, yes. Where is the plea-
sure in a closed book that has never been read? A
song that that never been sung? A scent that has never
filled the air with its fragrance or a woman who has
never cried out her fulfilment to the lover who has
taken her to it?'
Beneath them the golden silence of the morning
was suddenly broken by the sound of a car arriving
in the adjacent courtyard.
'That will be Alfredo,' Lorenzo told her, suddenly
businesslike. 'Come through into my office as soon
as you are dressed. Alfredo will want to go through
all the necessary paperwork for our marriage.'
As she watched him leave, Jodie wanted very badly
to tell him that she had changed her mind; to break
through his arrogance and to pierce his pride the way
he had pierced hers. How could she possibly have
reacted to him as she had? How could she have let
her guard down so far that she had actually physically
responded to him? Now he obviously thought that he
could use her own vulnerability against her to make
