Italian Mavericks: In The Italian's Bed. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ worked her shift in the café, her mind buzzing like a busy bee throughout. Had she been too hard on Gaetano? It was true that he was a snob but what else could he be after the over-privileged life he had led since birth? But Rodolfo’s clear desire to rush his grandson into marriage had shocked Gaetano and naturally that had put him in a bad mood, she conceded ruefully. Evidently when Gaetano had suggested their fake engagement he had seriously underestimated the extent of his grandfather’s enthusiasm for marrying him off. Only an actual wedding was going to satisfy Rodolfo Leonetti and move Gaetano up the last crucial step of his career ladder. An engagement wasn’t going to achieve that for him, which pretty much meant that everything Gaetano had so far done had been for nothing.

      When Poppy finished work, she was astonished to glance out of the window and see Gaetano waiting outside for her. Street light fell on his defined cheekbones, strong nose and stubbled jaw line. One glance at his undeniable hotness and he took her breath away. Why had he come to meet her? Colour washing her face, she pulled her coat out of the back room and waited for the manager to unlock the door for her exit. Gaetano’s gaze, dark, deep-set and pure gold, flamed and he moved forward.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked to fill the tense silence.

      ‘You can’t walk back to the house on your own at this time of night,’ Gaetano told her.

      ‘Well, I suppose you would think that way,’ Poppy remarked, inclining her head to acknowledge his bodyguards ranged across the pavement mere yards from them. Gaetano was never ever alone in the way that other ordinary people were alone. ‘Why didn’t you just send one of them to look out for me?’

      ‘I owed you,’ Gaetano breathed, unlocking the sleek sports car by the kerb. ‘I was out of line earlier.’

      ‘You get out of line a lot...but that’s the first time you’ve admitted it,’ Poppy said uncertainly.

      Gaetano swung in beside her and in the confined space she stared at him, her breath hitching in her throat, heartbeat thumping very loudly in her eardrums. Black-lashed eyes assailed hers and she fell still, her mouth running dry. He lifted a hand, framed her face with spread fingers and kissed her. Her hand braced on a strong masculine thigh as she leant closer, helplessly hungry for that connection and the heat and pressure of his strong sensual mouth on hers. Her body went haywire, all liquid heat and response as his tongue delved and tangled with hers, and a deep quiver thrummed through her slender length. The wanting gripping her was all powerful, racing through her to swell her breasts and ignite a feverish damp heat between her thighs. In a harried movement, Poppy yanked her head back and forced her trembling body back into the passenger seat. ‘What was that for?’ she asked shakily.

      ‘I have no excuse or reason. I can’t stop wanting to touch you.’

      ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this...with us,’ she mumbled accusingly through her swollen lips.

      Long brown fingers circled over the top of her knee and roved lazily higher, skating up her inner thigh. ‘Tell me, no,’ Gaetano urged in a harsh undertone.

      ‘No,’ she framed without conviction, legs involuntarily parting because with every fibre of her being she craved his touch.

      ‘You’re pushing me off the edge of sanity,’ Gaetano growled, shifting position to claim her mouth again. With little passionate nips and licks and bites he took her mouth in a way it had never been taken and sent hot rivers of excitement rolling into her pelvis.

      Long fingers stroked over the taut triangle of fabric stretched tight between her thighs, lingering to circle over her core. A warm tingling sensation of almost unbearable excitement gripped her and she bucked beneath his hand, helplessly, wantonly inviting more. Give me more, her body was screaming, shameless in the grip of that need. The fabric that separated her most sensitive flesh from him was a torment but he made no attempt to remove or circumvent its presence. She ground her hips down on the seat, nipples straining and stiff and prickling, the hunger like a voracious animal clawing for more inside her. That hunger was so terrifyingly strong and her brain felt so befogged with it she shivered, suddenly cold and scared of being overwhelmed.

      ‘This is not cool,’ Gaetano whispered against her lips. ‘We’re in a car in a public street. This is not cool at all, bella mia.’

      ‘It’s just lust,’ she tried to say lightly, dismissively, and she tried to summon a laugh but found she couldn’t because there was nothing funny about the power of the physical urges engulfing her or the nasty draining aftermath of blocking and denying those urges.

      ‘Lust has never made me behave like a randy teenager before,’ Gaetano growled. ‘Around you I have a constant hard-on.’

      ‘Stop it...stop talking about it!’ Poppy snapped, ramming her trembling hands into the pockets of her flying jacket.

      ‘That’s impossible when it’s all I can think about.’ With a stifled curse he fired the engine of the car. ‘But we have more important things to discuss.’

      ‘Yes. Rodolfo called your bluff,’ she breathed heavily, struggling to return to the real world again.

      ‘That’s not how I would describe what he did. I’ve been mulling it over all evening,’ Gaetano admitted grittily. ‘I’m afraid you hit the target last night when you accused me of ignoring the human dimension. I’m great with figures and strategy, not so good with people. But this afternoon looking at Rodolfo and listening to him talk I saw a man aware of his years and afraid he wouldn’t live long enough to see the next generation. All my adult life I’ve read him wrong. I thought all I had to do to please him was to become a success and be everything my father wasn’t but it wasn’t enough.’

      ‘How wasn’t it enough?’

      ‘Rodolfo would have been a much happier man if I’d married straight out of university and given him grandchildren,’ Gaetano breathed wryly.

      ‘Why regret what you can’t change? Obviously you didn’t meet anyone you wanted to marry.’

      ‘No, I didn’t want to get married,’ Gaetano contradicted drily. ‘I’ve seen too many of my friends’ marriages failing and my own parents fought like cat and dog.’

      Poppy grimaced and said nothing. Gaetano was very literal, very black and white and uncompromising in his outlook. He had probably decided as a teenager that he would not get married and had never revisited the decision. But it did go some way towards explaining why he never seemed to stay very long with any woman because clearly none of his relationships had had the option of a future.

      ‘At some stage you must have met at least one woman who stood out from the rest?’ she commented.

      ‘I did...when I was at university. Serena ended up marrying a friend and I was their best man. They divorced last year,’ Gaetano volunteered with rich scorn. ‘When I heard about that, I was relieved I had backed off from her.’

      ‘That’s very cold and cynical. For all you know you and she could have made a success of marriage,’ Poppy commented tongue in cheek, mad with curiosity to know who Serena had been and whether he still had feelings for her now that she was free. Her face burned because she was so grateful he had not persevered with the wretched woman. She was just then discovering in consternation that she couldn’t bear to think of Gaetano with any other woman, let alone married to one. When had she become that sensitive, that possessive of him? She had no right to feel that way and that she did mortified her. Was this some pitiful hangover from СКАЧАТЬ