Roccanti's Marriage Revenge (Marriage by Command 1)

‘I can change.’

‘I was rather looking forward to taking that dress off for you, cara mia,’ Vitale admitted with a charismatic smile playing attractively at the corners of his beautifully shaped mouth.

‘Well, you’re going to have to help me get out of it. Getting into it was a two-person job,’ Zara confided, thinking of the complex lacing that ran down her spine. ‘I would never have managed without Bee’s help this morning.’

As they reached the imposing marble staircase Edmondo appeared to show them the way and set off ahead of them at a stately pace that very nearly gave Zara a bout of irreverent giggles. Her dancing eyes meeting Vitale’s in shared amusement, she had to swallow hard. The massive bedroom Edmondo displayed for their benefit was full of such extravagantly gilded furniture, embroidered, tasselled and fringed drapes and grandeur that Zara thought it would have been better suited to a reigning monarch. But there was no mistake because their luggage awaited them beside a pair of monumentally vast mirrored wardrobes.

‘Wow …’ she framed in a fading voice once they were alone again, unable to even imagine sleeping in that huge bed festooned in crimson drapes falling from a giant ceiling-mounted golden crown.

‘What do you really think?’ Vitale prompted as she bent to open her case and extract a change of clothing.

‘It’s hideous but I’m sure the antiques are worth a fortune and very historic,’ she added in a rush, recognising that she might just have been tactless in the extreme.

‘We could put them in storage and refurnish. It’s not my style either,’ Vitale admitted, stepping behind her to unknot the satin lacing closing the back of her dress. ‘But Edmondo is a stickler for tradition and this is where the owner of the palazzo has always slept.’

‘My goodness, your predecessors must’ve enjoyed their pomp and ceremony.’ Zara shivered a little as cooler air brushed her bare shoulder blades and the fitted bodice of her gown loosened and fell forward. ‘While you’re a dab hand at unlacing.’

Vitale bent his head and pressed his lips to the tender side of her throat where a tiny pulse was going crazy. Lingering to enjoy her smooth, delicately perfumed skin, he used his mouth to nuzzle the soft skin there. His attention to that particular spot was unbearably arousing and a helpless gasp was wrenched from her as streamers of fire shot to every erotic zone she possessed. Stretching back against him for support, she caught her reflection in one of the wardrobe mirrors. She looked wanton, possessed, her hair shimmering round her shoulders, her face turned up eagerly to his, her breasts swelling and straining over the slightly too small cups of her lace strapless bra.

‘I look like a shameless hussy,’ she cried in embarrassment, her hands reaching down to pull up her dress again.

‘Shameless works a treat for me, angelina mia,’

Vitale told her, his hands releasing her hold from the fabric so that her gown slid off her hips and down to her ankles. He lifted her out of the entangling folds and brought her down on the bed where he studied her scantily clad body with smouldering appreciation. ‘You look gorgeous, Signora Roccanti.’

Selfconscious heat seemed to flood Zara from her head to her toes. She felt as though she were burning up inside her skin while her nipples tingled into straining buds and the tender flesh at the heart of her tingled with awareness. Dispensing with his tie, his waistcoat and his jacket and shoes, he lay down beside her, eyes full of anticipation. Zara propped herself up on her elbows, secure in his admiration, satisfied that she was both wanted and desired. He captured her lips with devastatingly erotic urgency so that even before he eased a small breast free of the bra her breath was parting her lips in rapid, uneven gasps. He rubbed the stiff rosy peak between thumb and forefinger and then dropped his mouth there to tease the throbbing tip with his lips and his tongue. As he simultaneously stroked the band of taut silk fabric stretched between her legs and felt the dampness there he groaned out loud. ‘I’ve been fantasising about this moment for weeks,’ he confided in a roughened undertone.

Only as he undid her bra to remove it did he spot the small blue badge she had attached to it. ‘What’s this?’ he questioned.

‘The something blue from the wedding luck rhyme and to remind me of my brother. He got it at school for playing rugby or something,’ she muttered vaguely.

‘I didn’t even know you had a brother.’

‘Tom was my twin. But he died in a car crash two years ago.’ Flinching from her poignant recollections, she let her fingers delve into his tousled black hair to draw his mouth back to hers again and when he took her invitation to stop talking and kiss her it was so exhilarating that all sad memories left her head.

Her bra melted away, quickly followed by her panties. Vitale reared back on his knees to shed his remaining garments with a great deal more haste than cool. She revelled in his impatience, his eagerness to make love to her.

‘I wanted this to be slow and perfect, unlike the last time,’ Vitale admitted in a tone of frustration.

‘Human beings don’t do perfect,’ she quipped, lifting a slender hand to run her fingertips gently down hi

s cheek. ‘And I don’t expect it.’

‘But you should,’ Vitale informed her, eyes welded to her like padlocks.

With a gentle laugh of disagreement she arched her back below the hands curving to the pert swell of her sensitised breasts.

‘Is it my imagination or is there more of you than there was a few weeks ago?’ he teased.

‘Falling pregnant does have some advantages,’ she told him seductively. ‘Alcohol may not be a good idea but I’m getting very bosomy indeed.’

Vitale laughed and kissed her breathless. She quivered as he found her clitoris with the ball of his thumb and pleasured her, gently delving and stroking until she moaned in helpless response to his stimulation. She was twisting and turning, her hips rising long before he rose over her and eased into her honeyed depths in a long deep thrust that sent a wave of excitement currenting through her.

‘Don’t stop,’ she told him at an ecstatic peak of pleasure when it was a challenge to even find her voice.

She couldn’t lie still as his fluid movements grew more insistent, more passionate and the intolerable tightness and tension within her gathered with every heartbeat and then exploded into an earthshaking climax. She hit that high with a startled cry of delight that she muffled by burying her mouth in a strong brown shoulder. She was as weak as a kitten once the tingling ripples of rapture had slowly coursed away from her again.

‘I don’t want to stroke your ego but that … that was perfect,’ Zara whispered shakily, her hands sliding down from his shoulders to his back and instinctively massaging the roughened skin there with a gentle touch. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked him abruptly.