‘Then I’ll send out for a replacement,’ he drawled as the white dress pooled to her ankles and he briefly lifted her up so she was free of it. ‘There are plenty of shops close by.’
It was an arrogant assertion and Nicole’s heart sank as she acknowledged that this was the way he operated. You ripped a woman’s dress off and then you bought another. And she realised something else, too. That whatever his love-life had been since their marriage ended—Rocco wouldn’t stay celibate forever. Of course he wouldn’t. One day he would be renting a post-lunch room with someone else like this and ripping off her dress.
But that uncomfortable realisation was banished by the practised touch of his fingers as they skated over her quivering flesh. With one-handed dexterity he unclipped her bra and let the lacy garment fall to the ground, his lips immediately locking around her nipple and making her moan softly. He was undoing the belt of his trousers as Nicole began unbuttoning his shirt, her fingers sliding eagerly over the silken warmth of his bare chest. The only sound she could hear was the growing intensity of their laboured breathing until the final piece of clothing was removed and they were both naked.
Impatiently, he threw aside the silken cushions and laid her on top of the bed, stretching her arms above her head as if she were some kind of ancient sacrifice. And didn’t it feel a bit like that, as he licked at her nipples before turning his attention to the hollow of her navel? It felt primitive and exciting and somehow inevitable. Nicole held her breath as his tongue traced a sinuous path to her parted thighs, at last flickering over the gloriously aroused bud until she was brokenly pleading for him to stop teasing her. She wanted him. All of him. She wanted him inside her.
‘Can’t you wait, piccolo?’
‘No!’ she gasped.
‘So I see.’ His laugh was low and exultant as he stroked on a condom and his hard body came down on top of hers.
‘Rocco!’ she moaned, tilting her hips towards him, and suddenly he was making that first deep thrust which filled her and the lips she’d opened to cry out her pleasure were being silenced by the hungry pressure of his kiss.
Nicole had never experienced anything quite so intense. Was that because for the first time she really felt like his equal—a lover who knew how to please him? Who could meet him on his own terms instead of being the unlikely mistress or the doormat wife? Her head thrashed wildly against the pillow as he drove into her and very quickly tipped her over the edge. Her body started convulsing and almost immediately she felt Rocco bucking inside her as he gave that shuddered groan she recognised so well. His body warm and spent, he collapsed against her, his heart pounding against her damp breasts, and her fingertips automatically moved up to stroke the ruffled tendrils of his hair.
In silence they lay there and must have fallen asleep, because when Nicole’s eyes eventually flickered open it was to find her lips pressed against Rocco’s neck. The tip of her tongue edged out so that she could taste the saltiness of his damp skin. If only they could stay like this for ever, she thought dreamily. If only all the stuff which had kept them apart didn’t exist. But it did. Because this was sex. Nothing but sex. He hadn’t dressed it up or cloaked it in promises. He’d booked a room and she’d gone there willingly. And if at this moment they were equals—then maybe she should capitalise on that. Because they hadn’t quite finished that conversation of earlier, had they?
‘Rocco,’ she said, her finger tracing a slow path along the darkened stubble at his jaw.
‘Mmm?’
‘Can I ask you something else?’
There was a trace of post-coital indulgence in his voice but also the merest note of warning. ‘If I say no, will that stop you?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so.’ He rolled away from her. ‘So what is it now, Nicole?’
If only she’d had time to prepare—like when you went to see the doctor and were supposed to write down all your symptoms on a piece of paper in case you forgot them. As it was, the words came stumbling out in an unplanned rush. ‘When you told me earlier that you are the kind of man who hurts women, I wondered...well...’ She stared at the stillness of his profile. ‘Do you know why?’
‘I don’t hurt them,’ he corrected, his voice growing cool. ‘I am simply unable to meet their expectations, which are always predictable.’
She arched her brows but deep down she knew what was coming. ‘Oh?’
‘Women want love,’ he said softly. ‘And I don’t do love.’
‘Why not?’
He flexed and unflexed his fingers, the burnished skin looking very dark against the rumpled white sheet.
‘Because I can’t,’ he said at last. ‘I’m like someone who was born with no sense of smell—wave a rose underneath my nose and you’d be wasting your time. I don’t feel the stuff which other people claim to feel. That’s just the way it is. Blame it on the way I was brought up, if you like. Perhaps you have to witness something in order to experience it and there was no real love in our house—at least, not between my parents. Their marriage was based on duty, rather than joy.’
‘I see,’ said Nicole slowly, trying to absorb what he’d told her. Had he fallen into a familiar pattern when he’d married her, because that too was based on duty? Was that why he’d written her those letters insisting she came back—because he’d felt he had to? ‘So they weren’t happy?’
‘Not with each other, no.’
‘But they never considered divorce?’
‘With three children to consider?’ Rocco’s mouth hardened. ‘No way. And divorce at that time would have been frowned on, especially in that part of Sicily. I guess all their simmering resentment had nowhere to go and was one of the reasons why they lived life so dangerously.’
She shifted her weight slightly, so that she was propping herself up on her elbow. ‘What do you mean, dangerously?’
He turned to look at her and Nicole thought she caught a flash of vulnerability in his eyes, but it was gone so quickly she might have imagined it.
‘They got their kicks out of high-risk stuff,’ he said. ‘I gather it’s a guilt-free way of getting your adrenal buzz, rather than breaking your marriage vows. They opted for dangerous spor