Possession gushed through her, plus a fierce sense of heart-bursting pride and a far more unrighteous sense of feline power—for, no matter how incredible he had made her feel last night, Joanna knew without a doubt that Sandro had felt it all just as deeply.
It was that same sense of power that brought on the very provocative response he received from her.
‘Nice legs,’ was all she remarked, before turning casually back to what she had been doing with a pile of fresh oranges and a juice-squeezer, deliberately ignoring the rose—just as she’d used to do.
She heard him move, felt the tingle of anticipation begin at her toes and start to run through her as his bare feet brought him to stand behind her. His hands slid around her waist and his dark head bent to nuzzle her nape, making her smile as she tilted her own head to give him better access.
‘Mmm, this is the life,’ he murmured. ‘My sexy wife smelling of oranges and wearing my cast-off shirt.’
She turned within his arms so she was facing him. ‘Here,’ she said, and held her sticky fingers up for him to suck clean.
He did so quite happily, while his eyes held onto hers, filled with dark, lazy promises. But, for all her nonchalance, she felt a shy blush coming on, and she lowered her gaze to watch her slicked fingers collect the rose from the waistband of his shorts.
‘Where do you keep producing these from?’ she asked curiously.
‘Secret,’ he said. Then he was suddenly very serious. ‘No more ghosts left now?’ he questioned gently.
She shook her head, smoothing the deep red rose across her lips, then absently doing the same thing with it down the centre of his hair-roughened chest ‘Do you forgive me for the hell I’ve put you through?’ she countered.
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ he said. ‘You were in trauma. It closed you in behind a wall no one else could get through. I tried. Molly tried. And, although we did not understand why you were like you were, we were perceptive enough to realise something pretty dreadful must have happened to you to change you so radically, what seemed like overnight.’
‘Did you ever guess at the truth?’
‘I considered it as the most logical option,’ he said. ‘But, as you yourself pointed out, you had no cuts, no bruises, no evidence that pointed to a physical assault on your person...’
She shivered, then sighed and moved closer to him, so she could wrap her arms tightly round him. ‘I want to forget it now,’ she whispered sadly.
‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘Why not? Three years is more than long enough to le
t something as bad as that obsess your mind.’
‘And today is the—fourth day of my new life,’ she said, lifting her face so she could smile at him. ‘What shall we do with it?’
His eyes began to gleam. She blushed again.
‘Are you insatiable or what?’ she chided.
‘With you, satiation holds no bounds,’ he murmured huskily. ‘And I have three long years of wretched celibacy to catch up on.’
‘Oh, Sandro—no!’ she groaned in remorseful protest.
He actually looked shocked at her response. ‘You think I would accept less than the best?’ he demanded.
‘But you told me you had a mistress!’ she cried.
‘You would have preferred it if I had used another woman as a substitute for you?’
‘No,’ she confessed huskily. ‘But I would have understood it if you had done.’
‘My pride may have demanded I mention a mistress,’ he ruefully conceded, ‘but I could not even bring myself to look at another women—never mind fancy one! But—hell,’ he added on a small sigh, ‘I was bitter about it. Especially during this last year, when you had disappeared altogether. I felt you had stripped me clean of my ability to be a man, amore,’ he disclosed heavily. ‘It was not a nice feeling, I promise you!’
‘I do love you so,’ Joanna informed him anxiously. ‘I never wanted to treat you like that; I just couldn’t help myself!’
‘I was actually beginning to convince myself that I was much better off without you when you called,’ he admitted.
Joanna groaned and hugged him tightly, in case he might decide he was still better off without her—in which case it would be her turn to refuse to let go!
‘But the moment I heard your voice on the telephone it was as if something inside me caught alight,’ he went on softly. ‘I felt alive again suddenly—bursting with it, sizzling with it So much so that even before you arrived at my place of work I had decided that you were never going to escape me again, even if I had to imprison you to keep you there! Then I was going to chip away at every last damned bloody stone in the wall you stood behind until I found the woman I fell in love with!’