‘Was he…?’ Poppy compressed her lips on the question she was dying to ask, but then discovered that she was unable to hold it in. ‘Was he always faithful to her?’
It was an issue that Santino had never before discussed and she was coming back at him on an angle he had actually never once considered. He stilled in angry unease, looked at Poppy’s intent face and wondered why the hell he was suffering from a sudden need to justify a decision he had not once wavered from in fifteen years. It had been that little word ‘cruel’ that had shaken him, disturbed him in a way he could not have believed. Dark colour marked his superb cheekbones.
‘You’re not sure he was…are you?’ Poppy whispered, recognising the rare flash of uncertainty now lightening Santino’s dark gaze. ‘Yet you still judged her and not him. But then I’ve heard that it can be harder for boys to forgive their mother’s…er…mistakes.’
‘Tinkerbell…the oracle?’ Santino derided with all the cutting force of his own unsettled emotions. ‘That’s got to be a new one.’
Poppy flinched as though he had slapped her and every ounce of her natural colour drained away. He had never utilised that tone on her before, much less looked at her with a pure dismissive contempt that bit right through her tender skin to her bones and made her feel about an inch high. And, of course, he was right, for what did she know about such a situation? Some of her friends had lived through their parents’ breaking up but she had no personal experience. Who was she to tell him that he had been unjust and cruel?
‘You’re right…’ Her voice emerged slightly thickened by the stark rise of tears threatening her again and she slid off the arm of the sofa in a hurried movement. ‘I can’t even solve my own problems, much less tackle other people’s. A-and as you’ve already said,’ she stammered in growing desperation as she turned round in a blind uncoordinated circle, ‘you don’t have a problem in the first place—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Santino bit out in a rather raw undertone.
‘Never mind. I’m hardly the world’s most diplomatic person…especially after a few drinks,’ Poppy mumbled, narrowly missing a sculpture on a pedestal in her haste to reach the door. ‘Maybe I was even a bit jealous.’
‘Jealous?’ Santino echoed in incomprehension as he tracked her the whole way across his office.
‘Yeah…’ Poppy had to force herself to turn back. ‘You said your mother loved you very much. If mine had ever loved me like that she might answer my letters more often.’
Santino groaned something in Italian and reached for her hands to prevent her from getting any closer to the door. ‘Come here…’ he urged thickly.
CHAPTER FOUR
SUDDENLY extraordinarily short of breath, Poppy stared up at Santino and as she met his beautiful dark golden eyes she drowned there in her own reflection.
Santino inched her steadily closer until bare inches separated them. ‘I want to kiss you…’
‘Seriously…?’ Her wide gaze clung to his.
‘I want to take you home to my bed,’ Santino confessed raggedly. ‘In fact, I can’t think of anything else…’
Poppy blinked. It was as if a little buzzer went off in her brain and allowed her to think again. But what he was telling her was still such an enormous surprise, she just ended up staring up at him again, dark pupils dilated, moist lips parted on her own ragged breathing. He wanted to kiss her? That revelation wholly enchanted her. But the second was too much to handle for as yet no man had contrived to persuade Poppy either to go home with him or allow him to come home with her.
‘But I’ll settle for a kiss…and then supper somewhere public, cara mia.’ Santino noted the sudden anxious expression in her gaze and the rise of colour in her cheeks with the strangest, newest sense of protectiveness he had ever experienced. He didn’t know what he was doing and, for the first time in his very structured life, he realised that he didn’t care.
Poppy’s heart was playing leapfrog with her ribs. He was attracted to her, too? She couldn’t believe it. She was achingly conscious of his hands holding hers and such a flood of happiness filled her that she felt literally light-headed with it and her throat ached. ‘Kiss…’ she selected her favourite option, the one she could least bear to wait for.
Santino smiled, his heartbreaking, stunning smile that lit up his vibrant bronzed features and sent her pulses racing. ‘Only one kiss…otherwise I might not stop.’
‘One’s a bit mean,’ Poppy argued. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Oh, good heavens, you’ve left your girlfriend downstairs!’ she suddenly gasped, her expression one of comical horror.
‘Jenna’s just an old friend and she’s already left,’ Santino assured her with a laugh of appreciation.
As relief at that explanation travelled through Poppy, Santino was already drawing her back across the office towards the corner with the sofas. It was so cool and natural the way he did it, too, that she was helplessly impressed. She couldn’t dredge her attention from his lean, strong face, couldn’t quite accept that what was happening was really happening. Her legs went weak under her at just the thought of his wide, sensual mouth on hers and she was so keen for it to happen, she was ashamed of herself.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Santino murmured silkily.
‘Kissing you…’ Poppy told him, but in truth she was equally enthralled by the new and more intimate side of Santino that she was seeing. It occurred to her that he was in his element, she the one floundering and following his smooth, assured lead.
‘Kissing me…’ Santino repeated huskily as he tugged her down onto the sofa, wound long fingers through her hair, curving them to the nape of her neck to angle her mouth up to his.
‘You’re good at this,’ Poppy muttered, trembling with the most wicked amount of anticipation.
‘Ought to be…’ Santino treated her to a slashing irreverent grin that acknowledged his own experience and her eyes clung to his lean, powerful face, her heart hammering. ‘But I’ve never got this close to a woman in the office before—’
‘No?’
‘Feels forbidden and…fantastic,’ Santino growled in a throaty purr of hunger.
Poppy quivered, every skincell leaping, and when he brought his mouth down on hers, when he hauled her close, fantastic was in her opinion a serious understatement. She fell into that explosive kiss as though she had been waiting all her life for it.
He captured her lips with intoxicating urgency and with sensual slowness let his tongue slide into her mouth in a darting, probing invasion that was unbelievably exciting. Poppy had never felt what she felt then, not that rise of inner heat or that sudden charged impatience for more that gripped her like a greedy vice. She couldn’t get enough of his hot, hard mouth. Every so often sheer necessity forced them to break off just to breathe but they welded back together again fast, Santino groaning low in his throat and muttering fiercely against her swollen mouth, ‘You blow me away, cara.’
He pulled back from her to shrug free of his suit jacket and wrench at his silk tie to loosen his shirt collar. Sucking in a shallow, shaken breath, Poppy slumped weak as water back against the arm of the sofa and just watched him. The tie was discarded on the carpet beside his jacket and as he straightened he swept her ankles up so that she was lying full length. He slid off her shoes and let them drop as well. Poppy collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and she had never been so electrified with sheer excitement in her entire life.
Santino ran deceptively indolent eyes over her as she lay there all of a quiver, his attention lingering with potent appreciation on her. ‘I love your hair…it’s incredible and you’ve got a very, very sexy mouth…’
‘Don’t stop talking,’ Poppy whispered helplessly.
‘If I talk, I can’t kiss you,’ Santino pointed out thickly, scanning her feminine curves in a more bold and intimate appraisal that sent the blood drumming at an insane rate through her veins.