The Commanding Italian's Challenge

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He nudged her against the tree, exhaling in satisfaction as her soft curves moulded to him. It was almost as if she had been made for him, if one believed in such whimsy.

He most certainly didn’t. This was simply a combination of chemicals, aligned to trigger base instincts. Nothing more. He would walk away as soon as this insanity was dispensed with.

He spiked his fingers into her hair, angled her face up for a deeper kiss. A deeper taste.

And felt her hands on his chest.

Pushing him away.

Maceo levered himself away, disbelief dripping ice and reality into his veins, reminding of where he was. Who he was.

‘Stop. I...I can’t,’ she said, her voice husky with arousal but firm enough to push him back another step.

While he’d been lost in her allure the lights had come on. A metaphor for his shameful actions, perhaps? Too late, his hand drifted to his breastbone. But of course he’d left the list in his bedroom. Because he didn’t want to be reminded of it? A deeper shame crawled over his skin as the answer arrived in the throbbing of his groin.

‘Maceo?’

‘Hurry along then, bellissimo arcobaleno. Consider your reprieve granted.’

Her eyes widened and her lips worked as if she would object. But a second later she turned her back and walked away. Leaving him in a far greater torment than he’d wrestled with only an hour ago. Because, as he’d suspected, even the simple act of watching her walk away challenged his every vow. Threatened to erode the foundations of the belief that had guided him so steadily for a decade.

His turmoil was nowhere near battened down when he rejoined the party and played host with forced alacrity. And when the last guest had departed and he went upstairs, not towards his own suite but in her direction, he told himself it was because he needed to face this new demon head-on.

His knock was loud and rough, echoing the sensations inside him.

She opened the door wearing another concoction of bright colours, this time a thigh-skimming nightie that left the expanse of her long, magnificent legs on display.

Maceo swallowed a thick sound he was sure stemmed from this woman’s torment of him and watched her wide indigo eyes latch defiantly on to his.

‘Is there something you need, Maceo?’

Diavolo, si. He wanted this madness to end. Pronto. He wanted his belief in the promises he’d made to remain unshaken, to accept his solitary state, to remain the sole survivor left behind to honour the sacrifices of his family.

He most certainly didn’t want his head crowded with thoughts of this woman. To be tortured with elusive glimpses of what stepping off the path he’d chosen for himself might look like.

So he forced his hands to remain at his sides, his shoulder braced against the doorjamb as he cast an indolent eye into her suite. ‘Pico. Where is he?’

She blinked in bewilderment. ‘You’re here about the dog?’

‘Si. My dog. Whom you’ve commandeered for far too long. Where is he?’

He gave a low whistle. From behind her shoulder, fully ensconced in her bed and looking infinitely content with his lot, Pico raised his head. He proceeded to eye Maceo warily, warning him not to ruin his good fortune.

Maceo was both ashamed and irritated by his intense jealousy of his pet.

‘He’s comfortable where he is,’ Faye stated—as if Maceo didn’t have eyes.

‘That may be so, but I recall giving specific instructions that you were to stay away from him.’

She huffed in annoyance. ‘Are you really here to tell me off about Pico?’

With a compulsion he couldn’t resist, he reached out and stroked the irresistible smoothness of her neck. ‘Yes,’ he answered truthfully. Gruffly. ‘But there’s another matter that needs attention...’

His hand caressed lower, to the sweet juncture where her neck met her shoulder.

She shivered, but remained bold. Ferociously staring him down. ‘Is there?’