Lucca ripped off his shirt and sent a couple of buttons flying. Slim and pale and a magnet for his mesmerised attention, she stretched, enjoying the shafts of sunlight warming her skin and revelling in his interest.
He was fascinated. ‘When did you get to be so shameless?’
‘After a week of you,’ she whispered daringly, and she felt wild and brazen and she loved the sensation.
‘I’ve never brought another woman here,’ Lucca confessed, shedding his jeans. ‘I came here for peace and solitude.’
It was her place. She should have known it in her bones, she thought happily. He scored an appreciative hand over the silken swell of her small, full breasts and lowered his head to taste a lush rosy crest. A short, sharp gasp parted her lips and her fingers speared into his black hair as her tender flesh peaked into rigid response. He put his mouth there and she was lost.
Every nerve ending she possessed tingled and she trembled, wildly aware of the moist, tight sensitivity between her thighs. She shifted beneath him, squirmed, hauled him down to her, craving what only he could give and too hungry to hide it. He looked down into her passion-glazed eyes. ‘I want you so much I ache…’ he told her raggedly.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she whispered back, staring up at him, adoring every sleek, hard, masculine line of his bronzed features and most of all the stunning golden eyes welded to her. ‘I’m yours.’
‘You weren’t when you walked away—’
‘If I can forgive you…you can forgive me,’ she breathed, holding his intense gaze with her own. ‘I’m back and I’m staying.’
He seized on that encouragement with a passion and a level of fierce hunger that blew her away. Afterwards he sprawled back against the tumbled pillows, all-conquering hero and momentarily replete. Shell-shocked by the amount of pleasure he had given her and just a little mortified by the intensity of her own response, she let him rearrange her limp and satiated body on top of him.
‘How was I?’ he said wickedly.
She breathed in the intoxicating scent of his damp skin and smiled to herself before mumbling, ‘You need lots and lots of practice.’
; Lean fingers tipped up her chin and she went off into helpless giggles. He rolled her under him and held her fast. ‘Was that a complaint, bella mia?’
‘Marco will think we’ve got lost,’ she said guiltily. ‘We’d better get up before he misses us.’
Lucca headed into the shower. Her body deliciously relaxed and heavy, she could easily have fallen asleep. When the phone by the bed began ringing, she groaned and reached out and answered it.
For a moment silence buzzed on the line.
‘Vivien? Is that you? Is that really you?’ a familiar female voice exclaimed on an excited high. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you speak!’
It was Lucca’s sister, Serafina, and Vivien sat up with a start, suddenly fully awake and aware.
‘Oh, my gosh…oh, my gosh, you’re with Lucca at Il Palazzetto! You and my brother are back together again. That means you’ll be at my wedding on Saturday. This is the best gift I could ever have!’ the bubbly brunette proclaimed chokily. ‘Were the two of you just going to turn up together without telling me?’
‘Let me get Lucca…’ Vivien dropped the receiver as though it had burned her. She really did not know what to say to Serafina, to whom she had grown very close during her marriage. But when Vivien had left Lucca, Serafina had spoken up with spirit in her brother’s defence. Looking back, Vivien could have wept for her own refusal to listen. It had seemed easiest back then to let her contact with the younger woman die.
Vivien called Lucca to the phone and tried not to feel hurt about the fact that he had not even told her that his sister was engaged and about to get married. Had he been planning to take her to Serafina’s wedding? It would be difficult for him to do otherwise now.
A towel knotted round his lean hips and crystalline drops of water still beading his hair-roughened chest, Lucca swept up the phone and Vivien left him to freshen up and get dressed as fast as she could.
‘Serafina is planning a night out on the town with her friends tomorrow evening and she wants you to join them,’ Lucca volunteered with a grimace when she reappeared in the bedroom. He was still on the phone. ‘I’m trying to tell her that that kind of thing just isn’t your style.’
The rebel inside Vivien rose up. She assumed that he preferred to keep his sister and her apart and she saw no reason why she should play along. ‘You’re wrong…I’d love to go, and thank her for asking me.’
Lucca looked startled and disapproving.
Vivien felt like a ninety-two-year-old who had confessed to a desire to go clubbing with teenagers. But Serafina was only four years her junior. He passed the phone back to her. His sister chattered on at an incredible rate of knots, confided that she couldn’t wait to see Vivien again and finally rang off.
‘To whom is she getting married?’ Vivien enquired rather stiltedly then.
His lean, strong face was taut. ‘Umberto, he’s an architect…and he’s besotted with her.’
Vivien dropped her head. ‘I’m happy for her. Did you tell her how things were with us?’ she asked, fishing and shockingly grateful for the excuse to do so. ‘She was really jumping to conclusions.’