He had watched with rapt fascination the build-up of tension in her slender frame. The darkening of those wintry eyes. The way her head moved distractedly from side to side so that her hair fanned the pillow like a silky blond cloud. Her back began to arch and her legs to stiffen, and just as her body began to convulse helplessly around him, he saw the rosy darkening of her skin above her tiny breasts.
‘Dante,’ she gasped again, and mumbled something else, but he didn’t know what it was, and frankly, he didn’t care. Because he’d been holding off for so long that he couldn’t endure it for a second longer, so that when eventually his orgasm came, he felt the rush of blood and pleasure as his senses began to dissolve—and he felt like he was floating.
CHAPTER TEN
TO WILLOW, IT felt like living in a dream.
Dante Di Sione was her lover and he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. And the feeling was mutual.
But it
wasn’t a dream. It was real. She needed to remember that. To remind herself that this was temporary. That it meant nothing. It meant nothing but sex. He’d told her that himself.
She pulled the rumpled sheet over her and listened to the sound of running water coming from the en-suite bathroom.
The trouble was that when you really wanted something it was easy to start constructing fantasies—the kind of fantasies which had got her into trouble in the first place. She started thinking about Dante’s lifestyle. About his dislike of weddings and expressed distaste of settling down and doing the ‘normal’ stuff. What would he say if she told him she didn’t care about all that stuff either? And that they might actually be a lot more compatible than he thought.
But thinking that way could lead to madness. It could make you start hoping for the impossible—and hope was such a random and unfair emotion. Hadn’t she watched her young friends die in hospital and vowed that she would never waste her time on useless hope?
So just enjoy what you have, she told herself fiercely. Store it all up in your mind and your heart—so that you can pull it out and remember it when you’re back in England and Dante Di Sione is nothing but a fast-fading memory.
It started to feel like a real holiday as he showed her around his home territory and introduced her to places he’d grown up with. He took her to tiny restaurants in New York’s Little Italy, where the maître d’ would enquire after his grandfather’s health and where Willow ate the best pasta of her life. They spent a day at a gorgeous place in Suffolk County called Water Mill, where a friend of Dante’s had the most beautiful house, surrounded by trees. They visited Sag Harbor and spent the night having sex in a stunning hotel overlooking the water, and the following day took a trip out on the Di Sione boat, which was anchored offshore. But when she told him she wanted to see the guidebook stuff as well, he took her to Manhattan and Staten Island, to Greenwich Village and Gramercy Park—where the beautiful gardens reminded her of England. And when he teased her about being such a tourist, he couldn’t seem to stop kissing her, even though the wind blowing off the Hudson River had felt icy cold that day.
‘What are you smiling about?’ questioned Dante as he came in from the shower, rubbing his hair dry.
Willow shifted a little on the bed. It was weird how your life could change so suddenly. One minute she’d been someone who knew practically nothing about men—and the next she was someone watching as one headed towards her, completely naked.
Don’t get used to it, she thought. Don’t ever get used to it.
‘My thoughts are my own,’ she said primly.
‘I suspect you were thinking about me,’ he drawled. ‘Weren’t you?’
‘That’s a very...’ His shadow fell over the bed and she looked up into the glint of his blue eyes. ‘A very arrogant assumption to make.’
He bent to trace a light fingertip from nipple to belly button, weaving a sensual path which made her shiver. ‘But you like my arrogance,’ he observed.
Willow shrugged as guilty pleasure washed over her. ‘Sometimes,’ she murmured. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I do.’
I like pretty much everything about you.
He smiled as he sat down on the edge of the bed and slid his hand between her legs.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘I think you know the answer to that question very well, Willow Hamilton.’
She tried telling herself not to succumb as he began to move his fingers against her, because surely it would be good to turn him down once in a while? But she was fighting a losing battle. She couldn’t resist him when he started to touch her like that. Or when he brushed his lips against her neck. And suddenly it was not enough. It was never enough. ‘Come back to bed,’ she whispered.
‘I can’t. I’m expecting a call from Paris. There isn’t time.’
‘Then make time.’
‘And if I say no?’
‘You’ll say yes in the end, you know you will.’
Dante laughed softly as he lay down beside her, smoothing his hands over her body as he drew her close. He stroked her breasts and her belly. He brushed his lips over her thrusting nipples and the soft pelt of hair between her thighs. For a while the room was filled with the sounds of breathing and kissing and those disbelieving little gasps she always gave when she came and then in the background the sound of his work phone ringing.