A Dangerous Solace

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WAKE UP, SLEEPING BEAUTY.’

A deep, sexy male voice nudged her out of her dream.

Who says I’m not a passionate woman? Ava thought happily as the landscape of his face enlarged, each delicious detail communicating itself to her—the olive perfection of his skin, the line of his sensuous lips, eyes so golden they blistered like a flame over black heat until all she could see was the darker rim of his iris, like an eclipse of the sun. Everything was dark and warm and...real.

He was kissing her. The feel of his lips coaxing hers so confidently had all the hormones in her body popping like seeds coming to the surface of the earth after a long winter. She strained towards him and long fingers tangled in her hair as he murmured against her lips, ‘Cosi dolce, cosi dolce, mi baci bella.’

So romantic...so enticing...so real...

She lurched to full consciousness. Her eyes flew open and fixed on the living, breathing version of the dream she had entertained too many times over the years. All two hundred pounds of prime female fantasy.

‘You!’

‘Yes, me, bella. Who did you think you were kissing? Or do we all blur after a while?’

What on earth was he talking about?

Lifting her hands to his chest, she gave him an almighty shove. But he was fixed over her, his expression nowhere near as friendly as his mouth had been.

‘Get off me, you—’

Ava wasn’t sure what to call him, but the solid weight of all that hard muscle under the flat of her hands, the appealing masculine scent of him curling around her, and her mouth still tingling like an electrical storm after his kiss made her protests sound a little feeble to her ears.

He clearly thought so too. He gave her an intriguing appraisal from her bed-head hair, to her raccoon eyes, to her bare shoulders.

Bare shoulders.

Ava clapped a hand to her chest. She was naked. Holy hell! She was too well-endowed to be going around without a little stitching and support. She wriggled. No, not naked. She definitely had her knickers on. Vaguely she remembered flinging her clothes off. She was pretty sure no one else had been involved.

‘Get off,’ she slung at him again.

‘I like you better when you’re unconscious,’ he commented. But before she could process that he had sprung up with a lithe, muscular grace she could only envy and was heading for the door.

Ava struggled to sit up and keep the sheet gathered modestly under her arms. Her eyes widened slightly, because for a moment there she thought she’d glimpsed a distinct bulge in those jeans.

A band tightened around her skull and she winced.

‘Where are you going?’ she groaned.

‘It’s a new day, Ava. Get dressed.’

And with that smooth-as-silk instruction he was gone.

Ava stared at the door he’d shut behind him and then down at her own long shape, wrapped in a white sheet like a mermaid. Instinctively her fingertips caressed the fabric—a thread count so high it felt like water on her bare skin. For a moment her mind went fuzzy again, and she felt the softness of his breath mingling with hers, the solid weight of him under the press of her hands and the new knowledge that he was every bit as susceptible as she.

Come back, her libido pleaded.

She slapped a hand to her head. What had got into her? Her hormones had led her into all this trouble and she was still letting them run riot!

The pulsing behind her eyes gave an extra punch, as if to remind her of the evils of giving in to rogue impulses, and she lowered her head carefully back down onto the pillow. It felt like a brick.

Get dressed, Ava... He could go to hell...

Ava... Get dressed Ava.

Ava.

She almost fell out of bed. He knew.

* * *

He needed a cold shower.

Gianluca stood under the pulsing jets in the wet room, massaging out the tension bunching in the tendons behind his neck.

Ava Lord.

Not Evie—Ava.

For seven years when he’d thought of her—and it was about time he acknowledged he had thought of her—it had been as Evie.

It had been one night, years ago. How could he be expected to get her name right? But he had never known her real name. Somehow he’d misheard, and she hadn’t corrected him, and right now that was the sticking point for him. Had it been so anonymous for her she didn’t need names? And why was that little detail bothering him? A better question was why did his gut muscles clench when he remembered rolling over and finding her gone?

He’d been twenty-two at the time, had what he’d imagined was success, in the form of a media frenzy around his soccer career, and girls had been climbing down drainpipes to perform for him. He’d been an idiota plenty of times in those early years when it came to women, and he’d been pretty jaded by the time Evie...Ava dropped into his lap.