‘What does it look like? I’m touching you. Do you like it?’
Megan cleared her throat. ‘I don’t think…’ she began, but her voice trailed off as he began stroking the soft underside of her wrist with one finger. It sent shivers racing up and down her body and threw her already confused mind into even more of a state of flat-out panic.
‘That’s good.’
‘What is…?’
‘Not thinking.’ He lowered his magnificent eyes and watched his finger as it traced tiny circles on her wrist. She was wearing an old pink dressing gown, and he would swear that it was the same one that she’d used to wear at university. Same colour anyway. She had always liked pink. ‘Just going with the flow. I thought a lot. I thought that Victoria was the perfect woman for me. I thought she complemented me in every way possible. And, more importantly, I thought she was eminently suitable because she didn’t stress me out.’
‘So I believe you’ve told me before.’
‘What are you wearing under your dressing gown?’
Megan told herself that she didn’t want to hear these questions, she didn’t want him looking at her like that, and she definitely didn’t want his fingers like a branding iron on her skin. But she wasn’t pulling away, was she? And this wasn’t just about being kind to a fellow human being who was upset. For starters, she couldn’t imagine Alessandro ever being upset, at least not upset in the way most normal people would be. Nor was he just another fellow human being.
‘Will you let me see?’ he continued.
‘See what?’
He didn’t answer that one. Instead he raised his hand to push aside the opening of her dressing gown, and Megan gasped as the flat of his hand came into direct contact with her breast and brushed against the nipple, which stiffened and throbbed and wanted more.
‘Alessandro, no!’ She pulled back and shot to her feet, but she was shaking all over. ‘I’m sorry your relationship with Victoria hasn’t worked out,’ she said shakily, clutching her gown together as though it might open up of its own accord unless forcibly restrained. ‘And now that you’re here I guess I’m willing to hear your sob story. But don’t think that you can come here and expect me to be your consolation prize.’
‘Come back and sit down,’ was all he said.
‘I’m not coming anywhere near you!’
‘I’ll keep my hands to myself.’
Megan looked at him dubiously. He now had his hands behind his head and, God, she couldn’t believe how much she still wanted him. He lay there as beautiful as some classical statue, brought to life by a vengeful God who wanted to mess with her head by dangling temptation in front of her.
‘You’d better,’ she warned him unsteadily. ‘Or else I’ll scream and Charlotte will come rushing down the stairs….’
‘Like a rottweiler on the loose, ready to chew me to bits…? Since when did you ever need a keeper? Okay, okay. I’ll tell you my sob story and we can take it from there.’
Take what from where? Megan tried to fathom out what exactly he meant by that, but her brain wasn’t functioning properly. She gingerly went back to the chair, but pushed it away a couple of surreptitious inches.
‘Victoria,’ he told her heavily, ‘seemed the perfect solution. Intellectually challenging and on the same wavelength as me. I never thought that you would come along and throw everything out of joint. I made it my aim to have a life that yielded to my absolute control. I hadn’t bargained on the element of surprise.’
Megan fought hard to remain indifferent, but that was sweet, sweet music to her ears.
‘Throw everything out of joint?’ she encouraged. ‘Element of surprise? What do you mean?’
Alessandro raised his eyebrows. The look in his eyes told her that he knew exactly where she was going with her apparently concerned question. ‘Fishing?’ he drawled, and Megan flushed. ‘No matter. You want me to explain—I’ll explain. You made me question whether I had overestimated the notion of suitability. I’d forgotten how…stimulating…you could be. I’d also forgotten how good we were together…sexually.’
The music was getting sweeter all the time.
‘Do you like hearing that?’
‘I don’t care much one way or the other,’ Megan lied airily.
‘Don’t lie. You forget how well I know you. I saw you, and it didn’t take me long to realise that there was still something between us. I know you felt it too.’
‘You’re imagining things.’
‘Am I? Why don’t you come and sit a little closer to me, and then you can say that again.’ He sat up so that they were facing one another, and she could hear her treacherous heart beating like a drum inside her. ‘I decided that it was no good pretending that I wasn’t attracted to you, and it was no good being engaged to one woman when I was very busy thinking about another one.’