The Heat Of Passion

A hectic flush coloured her cheekbones. Her soft mouth tightened. She felt entrapped by her own weakness, as easily read as a pre-teen suffering from a giant crush. Carlo let his eyes wander with sensual intensity over her, his attention lingering shamelessly on the taut buds of her tilted breasts plainly visible beneath her camisole. She threw up her chin. 'It's the air-conditioning!' she snapped in outrage.

Carlo was still laughing when they were airborne. He twisted his head and said something to Spiros, who was seated behind him. The younger man left his seat as the stewardess appeared with a tray of drinks and her attention was so entirely pinned to Carlo that she very nearly spilt Jessica's.

But she might as well not have existed. Carlo's attention was centred with smouldering potency on Jessica. Releasing his belt, he slid upright and settled down beside her. Removing her drink from her nerveless fingers, he pulled her out of her seat with easy strength and yanked her down on top of him. He took her by surprise, and she collapsed across his hard thighs in a tangle of limbs.

'What the hell ?'

Both lean hands pinned to her cheekbones, he drove his tongue deep into her mouth in a hot, erotic invasion

that sent her every sense into instant, shuddering meltdown. With a husky groan, he repeated the assault in a blatant imitation of a far more intimate possession and a tight, coiled spring of need fired her every skin cell. She couldn't get enough of him. He was a feast after a famine, the heat of the tropics after a long, endless winter and she was helplessly greedy for every sensation so long denied.

"There's a very comfortable bed in the cabin.' His palms still framing her face, brilliant golden eyes, blazing with desire, scanned hers.

Simultaneously, her nostrils flared. Obsession. A definable aroma of the exclusive perfume clung to him. Her stomach twisted painfully. Carlo had been in close bodily contact with another woman. Nausea doused her excitement. She jerked her head free and slid upright on wobbly legs.

‘No doubt you're very familiar with those kinds of facilities.'

An ebony brow elevated. 'Do you want the truth or a polite fiction? Of course there have been women in my life, but never more than one at a time.'

Furiously she turned her head away. All she could smell was that perfume and it was turning her stomach now, reminding her what a fool she was in this male's presence. He made her wanton, reckless. It was one thing to acknowledge his attraction, another thing entirely to accept that that same attraction could humiliate her. Her lips still stung from the carnal imprint of his, her unsatisfied body still ached. But she was torturingly certain that Carlo was not suffering from similar rigours of celibacy. Carlo had been with another woman...and why not?

This was the son of one of the twentieth century's most renowned womanisers. Four wives and innumerable mistresses. And six years ago Carlo had acted like a real chip off the old block, offering her nothing

but sex and the good life and the cool assurance that marriage wouldn't feature anywhere in the equation. Perhaps it was time she reminded herself that all Carlo was doing now was putting a sensual gloss on their supposed relationship for his father's benefit.

'What do you want from me?'

The answer came inwardly. Much more than you will give... It shook her.

'Together we're sexual dynamite. Why deny yourself the pleasure I can give you?' Grimly amused dark eyes rested assessingly on her taut profile and unexpectedly she turned and caught the gleam of mockery.

'You didn't expect me to go into that cabin with you...did you?’

'I like watching you torment yourself,' Carlo confided, the full intensity of his probing gaze resting on her. 'You're a fascinatingly complex little creature. Passionate and repressed. Wild and inhibited. And secretive, intensely secretive...'

Her lips compressed bloodlessly. 'I don't know what you mean.'

Carlo laced lean brown fingers calmly round his glass and surveyed her as if she were a specimen under a microscope. 'What made you what you are? What goes on inside that beautiful head? Most of my women have told me the story of their lives by the end of the second date. But you tell me nothing and you never did. Not about your family, not about your marriage. You keep it all locked up tight inside...'

'I am not one of your women, Carlo.' But it was a shaken retort. She was appalled by the direction of the conversation. It was an attack on the privacy she cherished.

'If it were not for your father, I wouldn't even know how your late husband died.' Carlo seemed to be selecting his words with immense care. 'I find it surpassingly strange that this great love that encompassed so

many years of your life should never, ever be mentioned even accidentally. But I've yet to hear his name pass your lips.'

She stared at him with huge amethyst eyes dark with

pain. 'I don't want to talk about it '

'But isn't that unnatural? He's only been dead a year and I understand that you nursed him for many months beforehand,' Carlo continued with merciless persistence, 'leukaemia... that must have been a harrowing experience...'

Jerkily, Jessica swung away from him. She wanted him to shut up. She wanted to cover her ears. She wanted to run away but there was no place to go. Carlo had chosen to stage his interrogation well. She folded her arms. 'It's none of your business.'

'But I've made it my business,' Carlo pointed out gently. 'By the time we part, all of my questions will have been satisfied. I will know everything about you.'

It was a threat. In defiance of her own inner insecurity, she thrust up her chin. 'And do you plan to be similarly expansive?'

'I doubt it. I tend to keep my own counsel'