He laughed with husky appreciation, slid long fingers into the thick fall of her hair to tug her head back and look at her again. Beneath the harsh lights in the lift, the clarity of her blue eyes mesmerised him for he could read every passing thought: the shy uncertainty laced with the stubborn bravado of her pride and deeper still…the feverish hunger for him that she could not hide.
He devoured her mouth with an urgency that left her reeling. She could not spare the time or the energy to breathe and she lost herself in the earthy taste of him, revelling in the eagerness of her own desire. When he straightened to walk her out of the lift again, she let her head rest against his broad shoulder while she drank in air to aid her starved lungs.
Her mind was in turmoil. She could barely believe that what she was feeling was real but was at the same time impossibly greedy for that no-longer-connected-to-planet-earth sensation to continue. He employed a card to open a door that led into a very luxurious suite.
Not having until that moment taken the time to consider where he was taking her, Pippa was aghast to appreciate that he had accommodation in the hotel itself and that she had unthinkingly allowed him to bring her back up there with him.
‘Are you expecting me to stay the night with you?’ Pippa demanded in dismay.
CHAPTER THREE
ANDREO dealt Pippa a level challenging appraisal. ‘That’s entirely your decision.’
Colour swept Pippa’s face and she could have bitten her tongue out in embarrassment. Of course that was her decision! It was a good half-century since women had been raised to think that what a man expected a woman should invariably try to deliver. She walked over to the tall windows that overlooked the spectacular city skyline but she could only think of how foolish she must have sounded to him. Like a nervous virgin who had never been alone with a man in a hotel suite before? All the heat drained from below her fair skin to leave her pale.
Unfortunately, Hilary had only managed to make her over on the outside with a smooth sophisticated façade and inside she was still the same old Pippa Stevenson, she acknowledged. Pippa, who had attended an all girls’ school and whose evenings and weekends had been filled with extra classes and academic study, rather than social events and flirting. Boys had always seemed as remote and strange to her as alien entities and she had never learned what to say or how to behave around them. At the age of seventeen she had been humiliated by the young man she’d been infatuated with and, from that day on, hurt pride had become her strongest source of protection.
Time might have moved on but once bitten twice shy had proved to be her motto. Since then she might as well have been living on a single sex planet, she conceded ruefully, for she had never again risked pain or rejection. For almost six years she had been her father’s carer and while it was true that the older man had demanded that she devote all her free time to his needs and his interests, it was equally true that she had not offered much of a protest. It had been easier to be a dutiful daughter and accept without question that she was the ‘big strapping lass’ her parent had often called her and highly unlikely to appeal to any man. From the age of twelve, when she had first shot up in height to tower over all her classmates like a lanky beanpole, Pippa had loathed her extra inches and had pointlessly longed to be small and dainty like her pretty mother.
But now, for the first time, she shook free of that memory without regret and reminded herself that Andreo appeared to admire her just as she was. She stole a covert glance at him and collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and her mouth ran dry. He was breathtakingly handsome.
Andreo watched her, for she was so still that she might have been a living breathing statue. Her feathery lashes lowered above the pale perfect line of her cheekbones and she looked incredibly vulnerable. It was obvious that she was having second thoughts. Was there another guy in her life? Someone to whom she felt she owed loyalty? Whatever, he chose patience over the risk of losing her altogether. ‘Perhaps I should just take you home,’ he murmured evenly.
Pippa went rigid, for that unexpected offer only heightened her tension. Go home? It would be the sensible thing to do. Yet her whole being rebelled against the concept. Sensible Pippa. When had she ever been anything else? And where had it got her? She had become a workaholic with no social life and no man had looked twice at her either. When had she ever felt for any male what she was feeling now?
‘Is there anyone else?’ Andreo breathed, his tension palpable.
‘No…’ She drew in a slow steadying breath. ‘You?’
‘No.’ The blonde who had last shared Andreo’s bed was modelling in Mexico and he saw no reason to confess that the lady had become yesterday’s news at the exact same instant that he’d seen her successor before him.
The atmosphere buzzed.
‘I don’t believe that I’ve ever wanted any woman as much as I want you, bella mia,’ Andreo confided with raw honesty.
‘I want to stay…’ Pippa whispered in a rush and, shaken though she was by the force of her own craving for him, she was equally entrapped by the simple acknowledgement that she still had a whole new dimension of life to explore. Her body seemed to be developing responses all of its own. The fabric of her dress felt abrasive against the taut peaks of her breasts and there was a swollen heaviness low in her pelvis that made it a challenge for her to remain still.
‘You won’t regret it.’ His slashing smile of satisfaction was sufficient reward for her agreement. Her heart hammered so hard inside her ribcage that she felt dizzy. He was so beautiful and when he looked at her she felt beautiful too. She crossed the room on lower limbs that felt as unreliable in the support stakes as bendy twigs. She was trembling but she reached for his silk tie like a woman who meant business, a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.
Averse to her clumsy approach, his wretched tie refused to cooperate and went into a tight, immoveable knot. Just when she was on the brink of screaming for a pair of scissors, lean brown fingers intervened and jerked loose the knot with apparent ease. He cast the tie aside and drew her raised hands into his own to fold her back into his arms. She was as boneless as a rag doll until he crushed her into the hard, muscular wall of his chest, one masculine hand knotting into her bright hair to angle her head back. Then she shivered, stretched up to him, helpless in the thrall of her own wild anticipation.
His expert mouth swooped down to taste hers again and a soft moan of encouragement broke low in her throat. He traced her lips, penetrated them and a series of little gasps were torn from her as she clung to him to stay upright. He bent down and swept her up into his arms.
‘Aren’t I too heavy?’ she mumbled through swollen, stinging lips and a sense of wonderment as dangerous as a hypnotic spell. He was, she was convinced, ‘the one’, the one special guy who she had always hoped and prayed might be waiting out there for her. The guy she was going to fall madly in love with. The guy who was hopefully going to fall madly in love with her. Well, maybe not madly, she adjusted hurriedly, fearful of hoping for too much and ending up with precisely nothing as a punishment for daring to be so ambitious. Even if he fell just a little bit in love with her, she would be content, she swore to herself.
‘Light as a doll, cara mia…I’m just an unrepentant show-off,’ Andreo teased as he strode into the elegant contemporary bedroom next door and set her down again onto her own feet.
One of her shoes had fallen off and she kicked off the other, but he had already stepped back from her to unbutton his shirt. Eyes wide, she became his audience. Her toes curled in the luxury carpet while she watched as the shirt fell open to display a sleek bronze wedge of masculine torso, his powerful pectoral muscles delineated by a triangle of rough dark curls. Her tummy flipped
and she felt alarmingly short of breath and very hot. Knees wobbling, she backed up until her legs hit the edge of the bed and she sank down on the luxurious mattress.
‘What…?’ A wicked smile slanted over his wide, sensual mouth and golden eyes gleamed from below dense black lashes. ‘Did you want to take off the shirt for me?’
‘No…er…I’m not into shirts,’ Pippa framed, dry-mouthed and serious, for she had decided there was nothing less cool than struggling with male apparel.
‘You can always practise on my tie, cara,’ Andreo teased with intense amusement for he had found her lack of dexterity and the inexperience implied by that trait endearing.
‘Is that a fact?’ Pippa strove to match his mood with a quip while acknowledging that his sheer masculine presence both thrilled and intimidated her.