A Dangerous Solace

She’d given a sigh, gazing dreamily up at him as if awaiting his pleasure. There had been only one thing for it under the circumstances.

He’d leant down and found her lips with his, and that kiss in the piazza last night had been pushed aside by the sweetness of this one. Her mouth had been as luscious as he’d remembered, and just like last night she had responded. This time there had been no fury in her—just sleepy, soft sensuality.

Even half asleep she had kissed a man as if her heart and soul were involved, and he had found himself tangling his hands in her thick, silky hair until...

‘You!’

He had drawn back and seen the shock and accusation in her eyes. As if she’d had no idea who she was kissing. As if she responded to every man who put his arms around her, drew her close, put his mouth on hers with the same incredible abandon.

Dio mio, he told himself now, as he put his hand to the door. It wasn’t jealousy of other men that had driven him from that room this morning into a cold, cold shower. It was a matter of good taste.

This was not some woman he’d just picked up last night. There would be no indiscriminate coupling. Not now that he knew her identity.

She was his guest. She was Alessia’s sister-in-law. She was the one woman in Rome he definitely wouldn’t be sleeping with.

This time he made sure he knocked before shoving open the door. He didn’t know what he expected—at the very least a woman dressed. Her hair would be better neatly combed away into that ugly knot she’d been wearing yesterday—before all of this got out of hand.

Instead she was sitting in the middle of the bed, legs tucked under her, wearing the sheet.

Still wearing the sheet.

Naked.

‘Santa Maria,’ he snarled. ‘For the sake of decency, will you put some clothes on?’

Her head jerked around and for a moment she looked almost shocked. But it must have been a trick of the light because those green eyes instantly narrowed and she yanked at the sheet, winding it more securely under her soft, pale arms.

Bene. That was exactly what he wanted. Her covered up. Except if anything the gesture only exaggerated the spill of flesh beneath her fine collarbones and made her more of a feast for his male senses.

He hadn’t realised until this moment how incredibly appealing a voluptuous woman could look in nothing but a bedsheet. He’d clearly been sleeping with far too many skinny girls. She was every inch Venus emerging from the foam. A goddess of love and sex and the secrets of the flesh. If she went about in nothing else but a sheet there would be riots on the streets of Rome...

‘That’s what you’ve got to say to me?’ She sounded incredulous.

He tore his thoughts away from her bountiful cleavage and told himself he needed to tackle this rationally—and for that to happen ideally certain things needed to occur. He needed another cold shower and she would need to be dressed. But, frankly, he didn’t have time.

He folded his arms. ‘I’ve got plenty to say to you, Signorina Lord,’ he said heavily. ‘Given your lack of modesty, we’ll get started now. Does your brother know you’re here?’

She blinked at him. Clearly it wasn’t what she’d expected him to say.

‘My brother?’

‘Si—the brother you so cleverly omitted to mention.’

She shook her head. ‘Why are you interested in my brother?’

‘I suspect he would have been interested in me seven years ago, when I deflowered his sister in a public park.’

The look on her face was priceless.

She clearly understood nothing. His position, hers, how everything had now taken on a different complexion.

‘I am the head of the Benedetti family. You are a de facto member of that family by marriage. I hold responsibility for your safety while you’re here in my city.’

It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Gianluca waited for her response. A little feminine reserve would go a long way at this moment. She would ask for his assistance and he would give it.

She gave him an incredulous look. ‘You are kidding?’

Gianluca knew in that moment this was going to be a long morning.

‘I rarely...kid.’

‘Then I’d kindly ask you to keep your nose out of my private business. You most certainly are not responsible for me—and nor, may I add, is my brother.’

‘In point of fact,’ he responded with bite, ‘I am responsible for your brother. I employ him.’

‘You do not,’ she asserted confidently. ‘Josh runs a vineyard in Ragusa.’

‘Si—on my land in Sicily.’

Ava frowned. This wasn’t the picture Josh had painted in their rare phone calls. She had thought he was doing well, that he was his own man and the vineyard he owned was thriving. In point of fact when she’d last talked to him a few days ago he’d used the start of the harvest as an excuse not to see her.