Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ beautiful one, Amber thought frantically; she didn’t want to be anything to him! And why, now, when she was little prepared for it, when it was the last thing she wanted, did he have to say her name in that very special way that he had, with the last R rolled out on his tongue, sounding almost like a deep, deep purr? A tiger’s purr.

      Just for a second hysteria threatened again. Her lips trembled, her mind shaking…

      And then Guido lifted the veil and their eyes met and suddenly every last thought of laughter, or fight—or anything—went right out of her like air out of a pricked balloon, leaving her limp and lost and unable to think.

      Unable to think beyond…

      ‘Guido…’

      Beyond the fact that she remembered those eyes looking down into hers. She remembered the scent of his skin, the touch of his hands. She remembered how it had felt to have that devastatingly sensual mouth on hers, to taste his lips, feel the caressing sweep of his tongue. She remembered it—and she wanted it all over again.

      She wanted it so much that she could almost taste it. That when she let her own tongue slide across her parched mouth, she could almost believe that there would be the taste of him lingering there. Even after all this time.

      ‘Amber…’

      And she knew that tone too. Knew the thickness in his voice that meant he had been caught on the raw by the sudden rush of sensuality. The one that had her in its grip too—drying her mouth and changing her eyes as it darkened his, turning them from burning bronze to the blackness of passion. She watched the heavy lids slide half-closed in a way that gave him a slumberous, barely awake look in a way that she knew from experience was deeply deceptive.

      When he looked like that, then he was far from sleep. In fact he was at his most vividly awake, most fiercely aroused. His blood was heating with passion, his body waking to need, and if she stood any closer then she would feel the hard, proud force of that hunger pressed against her in evidence of the way he was feeling.

      Guido made a rough, raw sound in the back of his throat, and snatched in a breath as if he could hardly make his lungs work to keep himself alive.

      ‘I have to…’he said huskily and she could hear the fight he was having with himself in the jagged edge to the words, the way his voice sounded hoarse as if it hadn’t been used for days.

      She knew the moment too that he lost the fight. It was there in the momentary way that he closed his eyes, the breath that hissed through his teeth, before, in a moment that was part conquest, part defeat, he lowered his dark head and took her mouth with his.

      CHAPTER THREE

      IDIOTA!Idiota!

      The reproach to himself was a refrain over and over inside Guido’s head.

      Corsentino, you are a fool!

      He shouldn’t be doing this—it was the last thing on earth that he should be doing! But he couldn’t stop himself.

      From the moment that he had lifted the veil and seen Amber’s face, green eyes looking up into his, breathed in the scent of her skin, warm and soft, and vanilla and spice, he had known what was going to happen. His gaze had fixed on her mouth, softly sensual, partly open, and he could remember so vividly how it had tasted, how it had felt under his.

      And he wanted to experience that again.

      So he gave up the fight to stop himself. Gave in to the impulse that pushed him. Gave himself up to the need that was nagging at him.

      ‘Amber…’

      The sound of her name was a breath between their lips, a moment before they met, before he felt…

      A year was a long time. Too long without the taste, the feel, the scent of the woman whose body had once driven him out of his mind with lust.

      Once?

      Guido’s breath caught in his throat as he almost let the disbelieving laughter escape.

      Once, be damned. He had known from the minute he had set eyes on her again—set eyes only on her back, for God’s sake!—that he was lost. Lost again. Caught up in the coils of the hunger that had bound him to her the first time. Burned in the heat of the need she could create just by existing. Drawn by the silent, instinctive signals that her body somehow sent out to his.

      That was why he had stayed when everyone else had walked out.

      Even her mother had walked out—sweeping past him with her nose in the air and an expression that said he was less than the dirt beneath her feet.

      But at least she had looked at him. She hadn’t even spared her daughter a second glance.

      She hadn’t looked at Amber, sitting there in a crumpled heap on the altar steps. She hadn’t shown a hint of care or compassion or—anything! She had just walked straight out of the church, following the groom’s mother and father as if they were all that mattered. As if they and not her daughter were her real family.

      It had only taken a few moments and then they were alone together, with Amber still curled into a miserable little ball on the marble steps to the altar.

      Guido had tried to turn. He had wanted to go—he’d done what he came for, stopped the bigamous and illegal wedding, had the revenge he needed for the way she had treated him, the callous way she had walked out on him when she’d decided that he wasn’t good enough for her. He’d even avenged the way that Rafe St Clair had treated one of his own family not too long before. It was what he’d planned—walk in—blow the proceedings and her hope of an aristocratic marriage to hell—and walk out again.

      But his conscience wouldn’t let him.

      His conscience and something deeper, harder, more primitive. Something that kicked him hard in the gut—and lower—when he tried to turn round and leave.

      Something that had nothing to do with sympathy and caring and everything to do with hunger and need and the eternal, endless fires that burned between men and women from the start of the world until the end of time. And had flamed between him and this woman from the very first moment in which they’d met.

      He simply couldn’t walk out on her as she had done to him and that was an end to it.

      And he couldn’t walk out without touching her, tasting her—taking her mouth just one more time.

      And so he ignored all the warnings that his brain threw at him, listened instead to the most primitive, most male parts of himself, and bent his head and kissed her.

      ‘Ahh, Amber…’

      The scent of her body surrounded him, flooding his head. Those warm pink lips, previously clamped tight to hold back bitter and violent emotions, seemed to tense even further for a second then, slowly, painfully slowly, gave, softened…opened…

      His throat clenched, his heart jerking. His body hardened. And the thoughts that filled his mind were definitely inappropriate, positively sinful, given the place where he stood, in the centre of those altar steps.

      She was warm and soft against him. Melting pliantly into the hardness of his body. СКАЧАТЬ