Hot-Blooded Italians. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ because at this moment he wanted her. And didn’t she want him, too? If she was being honest, then she had never really stopped wanting him. So why couldn’t she have this one last time before all the recriminations started? One last taste of bliss before the dark clouds descended.

      ‘Vincenzo,’ she groaned as she reached up to cling onto his broad shoulders and felt their muscular power. ‘Oh, Vincenzo.’

      He closed his mind to the memories stirred up by her breathless words, instead pulling her closer into his arms, feeling her petite frame trembling beneath his touch and the soft, silken spill of her hair as it brushed against his cheek. The fierce throbbing at his groin was setting him on fire, and he kissed her more thoroughly than he could ever remember kissing anyone before—his lips exploring hers as if he couldn’t bear to tear his mouth away. What was it that she did to him?

      ‘Touch me!’ he urged huskily. ‘Touch me the way you used to.’

      The faint sense of vulnerability in his deep voice was almost too much to bear—as intoxicating as his shuddered entreaty—or was Emma just imagining that? Hearing what she wanted to hear. But either way, she was in too deep to want to do anything other than what he wanted—and she ran her hands luxuriously down over his chest, feeling the roughness of hair beneath the fine silk of his shirt.

      ‘Like that?’ she whispered.

      ‘Piu!’

      ‘More?’

      ‘Sì! More. Much more.’

      Her fingers whispered down to his groin, where he was unashamedly aroused, and he bit out a remark which sounded like some Sicilian curse, and she thought that it probably was. As if he despised being in thrall to his senses like this, even while his body revelled in it. ‘Like this?’

      ‘Sì, exactly like that. Ah, Emma,’ he groaned. Pale witch of a woman! Experimentally, he ran his hands over her body—this body he knew so well—as if he were feeling it for the first time. And maybe he was. He frowned. It felt different. Not only a diminishment of flesh, but her breasts seemed to be a different shape, too—or at least as much as he could tell while she was still covered up. He cupped one and let his thumb graze across it.

      ‘Take this damned dress off,’ he instructed.

      But even in the midst of her body’s heated clamour, Emma was assailed by nerves. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to leap up and start stripping off for him—the way she might once have done when they were newly married? In view of their situation wouldn’t that be impossible? Why, she would feel as if he was buying her. And isn’t he? jeered the mocking voice of her conscience. Isn’t he?

      But Emma closed her ears and her mind to the uncomfortable taunt and licked her dry lips. ‘You…you take it off.’

      ‘If you insist,’ he murmured.

      He was good at that, of course. He must have removed a million dresses in his time. And how many other women had he undressed since the last time she’d been in his arms? wondered Emma painfully as he peeled the cheap little garment from her body, letting it fall disdainfully to the floor.

      As he moved away from her his black eyes scorched over her like a diabolical laser beam. ‘Let me look at you.’

      She wanted to shrink her arms over her chest and bunch her knees up to hide from the inevitable critical assessment of her scrawny body and her plain underwear, and her…

      ‘Tights!’ he bit out derisively. ‘Since when did you start wearing tights?’

      Since she stopped being a billionaire’s possession, that was when. Maybe her estranged husband didn’t realise that sliding into silk stockings and suspender belt wasn’t exactly compatible with getting up at the crack of dawn to feed a baby.

      The thought of the baby and what she was going to have to tell Vincenzo was enough to make Emma freeze momentarily—to want to call a halt to it and tell him that this was a fruitless exercise. But by now he was tugging the tights down over her ankles and off her toes and burying his head into the apex of her thighs—kissing her there, over her plain cotton panties, until she was wriggling impatiently, wanting him with a fierce desire which was almost unbearable.

      ‘Vincenzo,’ she gasped.

      ‘You want to go to bed?’ he demanded hotly.

      And break the mood? Giving her time for second thoughts? Allowing reason to creep in and ruin something that was making her feel more alive than she had done in so long? Her head said this was probably one of the craziest things she had ever done but her body had other ideas. And he was still her husband, Emma thought achingly—surely this was her right as much as her pleasure.

      ‘No,’ she whispered, tangling her fingers in the ebony waves of his hair, the way she’d done innumerable times before. ‘Let’s do it here.’

      Vincenzo groaned at her easy capitulation—at her effortless transformation from ice queen to siren. But he had always loved the fiery passion which lay beneath the cool blonde exterior. That streak of sensual unconventionality he had coaxed from her—at least until those last glacial months of the marriage. He had taught her everything she knew—why should he not taste the fruits of his labour one more time, to see if she had improved during his absence from her bed? ‘Take off my shirt,’ he gritted out.

      Her trembling fingers struggled to slide the delicate fabric over the infinitely silkier surface of his skin, her fingers gently clawing in little circles at the whorls of hair which grew there, but he stilled them with the flat of his hand. ‘Later,’ he said unsteadily. ‘There will be time for that later—but for now…’

      He was pulling at the buckle of his belt and Emma was thinking that there would be no later—a certain knowledge told her that even while her nagging conscience urged her to tell him. Tell him now. But she did not heed it—she could not—for a broken little sound was torn from her throat as she touched her lips greedily to his shoulders and his neck. Her lips brushed against the rough rasp of his jaw, grazing softly along its proud, curved line, and she heard his ragged sigh of pleasure.

      How cruel sex could be, she thought, with a shiver. And not just cruel, but clever, too—because it could make you feel things which weren’t real. It could make you believe that you still loved someone…and she didn’t love Vincenzo—of course she didn’t. How could she possibly love him after everything that had happened?

      She watched as he moved away to remove the last of his clothing and then pushed her back against the sofa as he came to her—with a dark, sexual power she had almost forgotten. For a moment time was frozen as he towered over her like some dark and golden colossus before he slid down onto her waiting skin.

      ‘Vincenzo!’ she gasped as he entered her with one long and delicious thrust, filling her completely. For a moment he stilled and looked down at her, his black eyes opaque with lust and a fleeting glimpse of something else, too—something which looked like anger. But surely not anger at a time like this? ‘Vincenzo?’ she said again, only this time on a question.

      He shook his head slightly as he began to move within her, despising her sexual power over him even as he felt it rip his senses apart with such an overload of sensual delight. He stared down at the vision she made beneath him—her eyes tightly closed and her cheeks growing pink as she lifted those perfect legs and wrapped them tightly around his back.

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