The Italian's Wife

'What do I have to do to get a ten?' she heard herself whisper.

'Just lie there. I'm in a very uncritical mood,' Rio murmured with

considerable amusement. 'And during the next couple of weeks I intend to

teach you everything I want you to know, bella mia.'

She watched him peel off his shirt with scant ceremony and dispense with

his well-cut trousers. Watching him thrilled her, she decided, so she

could hardly blame him for enjoying her visual attention. He was all

bronzed, hair-roughened skin and taut, strong muscles with not an ounce

of superfluous flesh on his athletic frame. She couldn't tear her gaze

from him or unlock herself from the mesmeric hold of those dark golden

eyes. It had barely been four days since he had first made love to her

but her body was behaving as if it had been denied for months.

He came down over her, teasing fingers flirting with the garter. 'An

old-fashioned girl?'

'Yeah...'

'So what was old?'

"That jewellery you loaned me.'

'It's not on loan and that set is only a small part of it,' Rio informed

her, running an unsettling hand in an exploring motion down over a slim

stockinged thigh as he stared down at her. 'It's all yours. I'm the head

of my family and you are my wife.'

And then he kissed her and it was different from the last time in a way

she could not identify. Then within seconds she lost the ability to

discriminate and to think. A kind of slow, drugging heat began to warm

her in secret places and she speared her fingers into his thick, silky

hair, raising herself to him, unable to restrain her own hungry impatience.

Rio settled her hands back to the bed and lifted his head, heavily

lidded eyes narrowed to a glint of hot, determined gold. 'We've got all

night...I want this to last-'

'I don't want to beg...' she mumbled shakily before she could think

better of that admission, for every time she remembered how she had

behaved the last time not even a recollection of the ecstasy could wipe

out the sense that she had demeaned herself and been something less than

she should have been.

Slight colour burnished the sudden taut angle of his fabulous

cheekbones. 'It won't be like that again.'

He framed her face with his hands and claimed her lips again, and it was

so sweet but so intense that she could feel the burst of heat low in her

stomach, the quivering readiness of her own wretched body, and it

crossed her mind then that he did not need to make her beg. He turned

her on so much she might well end up begging all on her own. He eased

himself down over her and found her swollen apples with his mouth,

suckling her tender flesh, sending arrows of arousal right to the very

heart of her so that her

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hips shifted and squirmed against the mattress. He drifted on down,

skimming her panties away in a motion so smooth that she only noticed

the cool of the air hitting her where she was warm and damp.

'Relax...' Rio urged thickly as she tensed instinctively.

She could not comprehend such an instruction when he was doing things to

her that made relaxation a total impossibility. She shut her eyes,

panting for breath and restraint, striving to be what he wanted without

even knowing quite what that was but dimly suspecting that greater

control was what it was all about. But keeping still, preventing her

hands from rising to his broad shoulders and clinging, was the most

dreadful challenge when she was trembling and hot and far too eager for

his every move.

He let his lips travel down over her flexing tummy and her spine arched

of its own volition, the burning tingle in her pelvis already starting

to torment her. 'Stop it...' he told her raggedly.

And then he roved in a direction that was entirely unexpected and her

startled eyes flew wide. 'What are you doing?' she gasped in dismay.

'What do you think?' Rio angled a dark, wicked smile up at her and eased

her thighs apart, his intent unhidden.

Her face burned. She wrestled with fierce embarrassment, curiosity and

secret craving, and while she was engaged in that massive inner struggle

he splayed his hands beneath her slim hips and just did what he wanted

to do. And the chorus of urgent complaint she'd believed to be on her

lips remained unspoken, because the instant that he made contact with

the most sensitive spot in her whole shivering body was the same moment

that any idea of her staying in control was vanquished.

Never had she ever imagined that level of sensation, so it was like one

glorious shock piled onto another, so that

she lurched mindless and wordless from one splintering wave of

excitement into the next, and all the time the tormenting hunger was

notching up higher inside her. She moaned, she sobbed and she jerked in

a wild response beyond any denial, and when she was within what felt

like touching distance of the satisfaction she craved with every sense

he settled himself between her thighs and surged into her with measured

force and cool.

And suddenly she was snatched up into the eye of the storm. The feel of

his hot, hard fullness stretching the slick, wet centre of her inner

heat just exploded through her in a cascade of multicoloured, blinding

sensation and she hit a peak of ecstasy that burned through her in an

explosive flood of pleasure.

'Good?' Rio tugged her head up and kissed her breathless in the

aftermath, male satisfaction and fire in his smouldering gaze as he

looked down at her and started to move again, slowly, almost teasingly,

allowing her shaken still trembling body a little time for recovery.

'Unbelievable...' Holly muttered shakily.

'Oh, you can believe, bella mia,' Rio asserted in ragged promise,

sending a reawakening surge of excitement through her with a subtle

encircling motion of his lean hips. 'We're going to have an incredible

honeymoon.'

Getting out of bed the next morning was something of a challenge for

Holly and she was pretty much shell-shocked by the amount of raw energy

Rio had and his ability to spring out of bed as though he had had a full

eight hours' sleep.

Yet the urgency with which she longed to hold Timothy in her arms again

would have sent her to the airport at dawn, had that been an option. As

Rio had promised, her cases had been brought down to the Priory. She

dressed at

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speed but had to sit through a long breakfast while Rio behaved as

though they had all the time in the world.

Her baby was not his baby, Holly reminded herself. They were only having

one night away from Timothy, which was very, very reasonable of him. How

many blokes wanted to drag a nanny and a baby off on their honeymoon?

But he had not even mentioned the option of leaving Timothy behind.

At the airport, the minute Timothy laid anxious eyes on his mother he

went frantic, waving his arms and legs in excitement and relief. Sarah

confided that Holly's son had had a rather unsettled night. Holly's eyes

stung with tears and she got

Timothy out of his seat restraint so fast

there might have been a fire alarm howling. Clasping his warm, cuddly

little body to her, she hugged him tight, only becoming conscious of her

husband's scrutiny some minutes later.

Rio looked grim. 'Don't you ever let me do that to you again,' he

breathed in a driven undertone of reproof.

Holly turned pale. 'Do...what?'

'Timothy spent the night fretting for you and you couldn't get here fast

enough this morning because you missed him so much,' he spelt out

flatly. 'I didn't know I was doing that to you. Why didn't you say

something?'

Too many frank words hovered on her lips. Timothy was not his son and

there had to be limits to even his tolerance at this stage of their

marriage, she thought fearfully. The very last thing she wanted was to

turn him off with the downside of parenting. He was used to complete

freedom of choice and he was not used to the restrictions of being with