Now he was where he wanted to be, the sensation was like lightning crashing, and the soft deluge of sweet summer rain breaking over his naked, hungry, overheated body in an unstoppable downpour. With the powerful physical release of orgasm had come the onrush of long-held in emotion and the breaking open of the desolation that Luca had experienced leading up to and after his wife’s death. Suddenly it was exposed to the light, and shockingly he struggled with keeping away his tears.
He had not cried since he was a small child… not even at Sophia’s funeral. Instead, he had withdrawn from the world for a while as much as he could, and isolation and loneliness had become familiar companions after she had gone. His parents had died too, so there was no one to console him. It had taken him quite some time to reconnect with people again. Work had been Luca’s refuge and his solace. Was it wrong of him to desire this woman so much—a woman who swore it was his baby she carried in her belly— when her touch right now was as essential to him as his breath? Should he feel even guiltier than he was already that his wife had not been able to bear the child they had both longed for? Had he not suffered enough that he still had to pay for what had happened?
Katherine’s mouth was at his shoulder, and the tender little kisses she was delightfully bestowing upon him commanded that it was she and not his past he concentrate on. A sense of grateful relief shuddered through Luca, dispersing his melancholy, and with it came a fragile yet tangible sense of peace.
Examining Katherine’s face as she drew back to glance up at him, her lips tenderly swollen from the passionate kisses they had shared and her dark eyes shimmering like starlight, he knew at that moment that her beauty easily surpassed the lovely signorina in the painting.
‘Come sei bella,’ he drawled, the corners of his mouth lifting in a seductive little smile. ‘Look at you. How lovely you are!’
His gaze moved lower, to her smooth-skinned belly with its just discernible round curve, and he laid his hands over it, silently marvelling that the seed of a child—please God, his child—was flowering inside. A new, more alarming thought suddenly pierced him. What if he had been too passionate in his lovemaking with Katherine? What if he had unknowingly caused some potential harm to the growing infant?
‘What’s the matter?’
He had not been quick enough to hide his concern from his lover’s watchful glance, and she lightly stroked his arm as if to minister comfort even before he answered. ‘I didn’t hurt you…or the child?’
‘What?’ Her slight frown was quickly followed by a smile that was like the dawn breaking. ‘Of course you didn’t! It’s all right, Luca. It’s perfectly safe to make love when a woman is pregnant—and I’m over the three-month mark now, so there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘You are sure?’ Still guilt weighed heavy on him.
‘Of course I’m sure.’
At last he let himself relax, and the sight of her sweet face, and her irresistible scent that seemed to permeate his skin, easily started to arouse him all over again.
Just before lowering his head to steal another hungry kiss, Luca glanced enquiringly into Katherine’s soulful dark gaze. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked her, smiling.
Her dark gaze shyly looked away.
‘I mean for food!’ he chuckled, delighted by her understandable misinterpretation. ‘I said I would give you dinner, and Luisa, my housekeeper, has cooked authentic Italian pasta in your honour!’
‘Can it wait a little while longer?’
‘Sì…it can. I only have to heat it in the oven, so we can eat whenever we like. What did you want to do in the meantime, hmm?’ he teased.
Focusing her eyes more boldly back on his, Katherine gave a softly anticipatory sigh, which feathered across Luca’s already waiting mouth.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong…but weren’t you just about to kiss me again?’ she whispered, and his lips sealed hers even before she had finished speaking…
Later that evening, as Luca’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce pulled up outside the crumbling age-worn edifice of the Victorian end-of-terrace where Kate’s ground floor flat was situated, she turned to the man sitting beside her with a suddenly self-conscious frown.
‘What time did you say we were leaving tomorrow?’
‘Our flight leaves around two-thirty, so I would probably say one…one-thirty at the latest. Why?’
‘Look…it’s going to take me a while to pack everything I need. Why don’t I meet you in the morning instead of coming back with you tonight? Then you won’t have to wait for me and I won’t feel under pressure to rush.’