She stepped into his bedroom and stood as close to
the door as she could, refusing to look at the bed.
Lorenzo had walked over to the tallboy, where he'd
picked up something, and now he was walking back
towards her.
'Knowing how you feel about the emerald, I
thought you might prefer to wear this instead. Oh, and
you can keep it afterwards if you wish,' he told her
with a dismissive shrug.
Silently Jodie took the small box from him and
opened it. Inside was a perfect pear-shaped solitaire
diamond. Mutely, she looked at it.
'I couldn’t possibly keep that. It must have been
very expensive.'
Lorenzo was frowning at her as though her refusal
displeased him. 'As you wish,' he agreed curtly. 'It
isn’t of any real consequence.'
'Like our marriage,' Jodie heard herself saying
shakily. 'I really would have preferred not to have
had a church ceremony. It made me feel—' She broke
off and shook her head as she realised the impossibility
of making Lorenzo understand how she had felt.
The sudden action caused a wave of dizziness to
swamp her, followed by the shocked realisation that
she was about to faint. Instinctively she made grab
for the nearest solid object, which just happened to
be Lorenzo. As she swayed towards him Lorenzo
caught hold of her.
'It’s the dress,' she managed to tell him. 'It’s laced
so very tightly…'
The next minute he was turning her round, supporting
her with one arm whilst he inspected the fastenings
of her bodice and demanded grimly, 'Why
didn’t you say something? How the hell does this
thing come off?'
'The skirt and the train have to come off first, before
I can remove the bodice,' Jodie told him weakly.
'They’re just hooked onto it.'
Before she could stop him he was feeling for the
tiny fastenings, unsnapping them with ruthless speed.
When they were all free the train and skirt sighed
softly to the floor, leaving Jodie standing in her silk
stockings, high heels, tiny boy-short briefs — and the
unbearably tight bodice.
'What on earth possessed you to wear something
so tight?' Lorenzo demanded.
'It wasn’t my idea. It was the stylist's,' Jodie admitted.
'She insisted on it being so tightly laced.'
'How does it fasten?'
'It’s laced on the inside, and then fastened with
hooks and eyes.' Just the effort of speaking was making
her feel sick from her inability to draw enough
air into her lungs.
'Don’t move,' Lorenzo told her, leaving her standing
in the middle of the floor as he went over to the
tallboy and opened a drawer. When he came back he
was holding a pair of scissors.
'No, you can’t—' Jodie protested weakly, but it
was too late. He was already cutting into the fabric,
ignoring her protests.
She almost cried from the sheer bliss of simply
being able to breathe naturally as the corset fell away.
'Dio! It’s a wonder your flesh is not numbed and
dead,' Lorenzo said critically as he studied the red
marks on her pale skin where the corset had cut into
her. 'And why did you not say before now that your
leg is paining you?'
'Because it isn’t,' Jodie fibbed.
'Yes, it is. Go and lie down on the bed. I will
massage it for you.'
'there’s no need for you to do that,' she protested.
'I’ll be fine now that I’m free of the corset.' She
folded her arms over her breasts, suddenly, now that
she didn’t have to worry about taking her next breath,
acutely conscious her state of undress, but as she
shifted her weight from one foot to the other a sharp
pain shot up her injured leg, causing her to smother
a gasp of pain.
Lorenzo muttered something she couldn’t translate
and then picked her up, ignoring her tired protest as
he carried her over to the bed.
'You are the most stubborn woman I have ever
met,' he told her grimly as he put her down. 'Now,
lie down and I will massage your leg for you.'
She wanted to refuse — out of pride if nothing
else — but the truth was that her leg was really hurting,
and the thought of having the pain massaged away
was too tempting to refuse.
Silently she lay down on her front and closed her
eyes. She had forgotten about the stockings she was
still wearing, and tensed as Lorenzo removed them—
as clinically and efficiently as though she were made
of plastic rather than female flesh and blood, she acknowledged
wryly. But her flesh knew that he was
male, and its response to the firm massaging movement
of his fingers against the aching muscles in her
thigh was most definitely not clinical.
She had originally lain on her stomach to conceal
from him both her naked breasts and her expression—
