The Ranieri Bride

All the way, was the answer he gave himself as he felt his body pumping up to meet the slow, knowing stroke of her fingers beneath the encouraging pressure of his. The thick slurry of desire was already taking him over, the need to be naked and doing this fogging out his common sense. The fine scrape of her nails against his chest was making the muscles beneath his skin quiver, and she could still kiss like a shy and tremulously eager virgin. She was warm and soft and erotically compliant, sweet-tasting and hungry but tantalisingly unsure of herself.

It was wonderful—sensationally, gloriously, gorgeously, intimately Enrico, Freya thought helplessly. She’d adored this once, loved it, learned to want more and more of what this man could make her feel. He was beautiful, so sexually expert at making her feel unbelievably special she didn’t even want to stop him when she felt his fingers releasing the buttons on her jacket.

Her first chance to grab sanity came when he released her mouth so he could look down at what he’d uncovered. Dark eyelashes lay against the framework of his cheekbones as he viewed the lack of clothing beneath the thin jacket, save for a lacy white bra.

‘So you could not throw all of me away.’ The soft laugh he released tingled like magic across her newly exposed flesh.

Blushing like fire and angry because of it, Freya reached out to tug the jacket shut but he was there first, his kiss-moistened mouth tilted by a smile as he reached to trace the shape of the bra’s scalloped edge with a feather-light finger. Her creamy smooth flesh swelled and quivered. His smile deepened as he watched it happen and the next thing she knew his thumb had slipped inside her bra and was gently circling a tingling, tightening nipple, encouraging it to spring out.

Unable to stifle a soft gasp of pleasure, Freya closed her eyes and whispered helplessly, ‘Oh, please, don’t do this to me.’

‘Sex with your first lover is a life-long aphrodisiac, cara mia,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Old and withered, if I walked into a room with you in it, I would still make you feel like this.’

‘But I don’t want to!’

‘I know,’ he laughed harshly, then licked her small sob away. ‘It is what makes this so exciting.’

Glancing at his face, she saw that the flush of passion written across it was spoiled by the glint of anger burning in his eyes. He wanted her like crazy—but he was still hating her like crazy.

And didn’t she hate him the same way?

Yes, she told herself. Yes! So what are you doing here?

About to have sex like the cheap tart he believes you to be, she answered her own question.

One kiss and you’re any man’s.

Sanity returned with a shuddering thump. ‘Let go of me,’ she breathed in utter skin-crawling horror.

His hands sprang away from her in a mocking gesture of compliance. The fact that her hands still possessed his chest and the hard ridge of his penis made her shudder some more as she stepped back from him, snaking her fingers away at the same time.

She felt pale and icy but looked hot and flushed. Her jacket was hanging open and her

breasts were no longer seated in her lacy bra cups. Two tight nipples were pointing defiantly up at her and she had never, ever despised herself as much as she did just then as she pushed her taunting breasts away while he just leant there, arms folded across his front now, watching her without giving a care to the fact that his own arousal was still lying tight along the zip of his trousers.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered.

‘So you keep saying.’

‘I want to kill you!’

‘But then that would leave our son without a father,’ he smoothly pointed out.

Freya stilled, fingers clutching the edges of her jacket, which she had been about to yank shut. Head lowered, eyes frozen by a silence that, this time, she could not bring herself to break with the denial that stung the tip of her kiss-swollen tongue.

‘Ah, we make progress,’ Enrico drawled lazily, unable, while she was still frozen, to stop his eyes from following the warm tide of silk red hair flowing around her shoulders and her arms.

Unutterably exquisite, he observed grimly, even with split ends in need of attention. She always had been the most delicious and exciting package he’d ever had the pleasure of unwrapping, whether from workaday clothes, leisure-wear or sexy, very expensive gowns. Pinned up, tucked in, shapeless or just plain ugly, unwrapping Freya Jenson was a man’s kind of pleasure he had wanted to keep all to himself.

Then along had come Luca.

‘Found your conscience at last, cara?’ he taunted on the back of that final reminder. ‘Thinking about all those poor people out there you will put out of work along with yourself if you don’t learn to curb your lying tongue?’

She heaved in a breath. ‘Nicky is—’

‘Nicolo Alessandro Valentino Jenson,’ he inserted with the silky dark luxury of his Italian accent. ‘You just could not resist naming my son after me…’

CHAPTER FOUR