The Unforgettable Husband

Home, he’d called it. Her home. Their home. ‘It’s looks a bit big for just two of us,’ she remarked.

‘It’s a— It’s been in the family for a long time.’

Something in the way he hesitated then changed what he had been going to say made her stop and look up at him. But all she saw was the silken curve of dark eyelashes covering his expressive eyes. Beginning to look away from him again, she caught a glimpse of his mouth as it moved, suddenly hardening into the kind of sneer that made her fingernails dig into his arm in puzzled alarm.

The action sent his eyelashes flicking up to reveal his eyes again. Something hot was burning there, something hard and so angry she drew in a sharp breath and tried to step right back.

The burn became a flash, followed by a full explosion. ‘Oh, to hell with this!’ he hissed, and bent and lifted her into his arms.

‘What are you doing?’ she cried out, feeling her heart jump to her throat as hard-packed muscle met with her shock-quivering frame. ‘I’m not an invalid! I don’t need carrying!’

‘You are my wife,’ he gritted back. ‘I don’t need an excuse to do anything with you!’

‘My agreement would be nice!’ she snapped right back as he strode angrily towards the house.

He stopped on the threshold, bent his head and kissed her with such untamed passion it was as if he actually meant to turn her bones to dust.

By the time he lifted his head again he knew he had succeeded. ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘You might not know who you are but you will know what you are before this day is through,’ he vowed.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she cried. ‘Why are you so suddenly angry?’

‘Wife!’ he snarled as if that answered everything. ‘My wife! Ma femme a moi!’ he rasped in French. ‘La mia moglie!’ he declared in a harsh Italian—staking his claim on all fronts like an impassioned new groom who was carrying his virgin bride to her fate.

Only she was no new bride, and nor was she a virgin, as they’d already well and truly substantiated once already today. Nor did whatever his intentions were frighten her in the slightest. If anything, she felt terribly exhilarated.

The door slammed shut behind them, and she gained a vague impression of a classical Georgian interior: pastel silk walls; elegant cornices; oil paintings that must have cost the earth but went by in a blur as he kept on walking down a rectangular hall towards the stairwell.

‘André—’

‘Shut up,’ he cut in, chin jutted and locked in grim determination. ‘Don’t so much as dare say my name until I’ve got you safely horizontal.’

‘Why?’ she asked curiously.

‘Because you usually avoid saying it. In fact, you only say it when you don’t realise you’re saying it. It makes me wild,’ he gritted. ‘Makes me feel as though I only take physical form in the realms of your imagination.’

He began mounting the stairs while Samantha absorbed what he’d said and realised he’d said it perfectly. Touch him and she knew him. Stand apart and he became a shadowy figment she could never quite see in full, physical shape.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered, and touched an apologetic kiss to the rigid line of his jaw a kiss that immediately became something else entirely.

A bite, an open-mouthed, fully fledged, salacious bite, that sank its teeth into warm and living skin on bone and would have drawn blood—only that was not the objective. The objective was to flick a tongue over rasping skin in need of shaving and taste the man—taste him. It was compulsive. A desire that arrived from nowhere and completely took her over.

His shoulders flexed, his skin grew hot, and the air left his throat on a hoarse scrape. ‘Witch,’ he gritted. But he liked it. She could feel the pleasure rippling through him as another door opened and closed. Then he was leaning heavily back against it, and with a jerk he freed his jaw and paid her back by claiming her mouth with a kiss that was hot and deep and so hungry it wanted to devour.

Samantha was quite happy to be devoured. It was that elemental.

Even when he allowed her feet to slide to the floor, that kiss wasn’t broken. This was need, hot and fevered. This was sex at its most animal. He grabbed the edge of her top and raked it up her body and over her head. She lifted her arms up to aid its departure, groaning in anguish when their mouths had to part to allow the top to pass between them.

He removed his own shirt with no help from her; she was too busy touching his hair, touching his face with hungry fingers. And after that she became lost in a world of male textures. Satin-smooth shoulders, springy black chest hair—tight male nipples that she took greedily into her mouth.

His breathing had gone haywire, chest rising and sinking in rapid rhythm with his heartbeat. And where his fingers slid in the most excruciatingly light caresses she became a live conduit to pure sexual pleasure. Her bra sprang free. With a boneless fluidity that defied the fact that she was standing on her own two feet, she stepped back and flicked the bra away, then stood, chin up, eyes like emerald fires, proudly offering him the chance to taste.

On a growl, he came away from the door. ‘You haven’t forgotten this, have you?’ he gritted. ‘You still remember how to seduce me out of my skin!’

She touched that skin. One long and slender arm made another fluid movement and her fingers were resting against a hair-free, satin, taut pectoral.

Hard muscle flexed beneath her fingers. She sent him a provoking smile.

It was a smile that made him lose touch with the last dregs of reason. ‘You’re not of this world,’ he muttered rawly, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her back off her feet.