The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

He was acting against his own nature, he acknowledged grudgingly. In reality, he wanted to fall on her like a sex-starved sailor on shore leave and keep her awake all night. Instead he was likely to spend half the night in a cold shower. He should have made more of an effort to see Celine. Clearly, it was the lack of regular sex that was playing merry hell with his hormones.

Lizzie awakened as Cesare half walked, half carried her into the town house only to stop dead as Goffredo and his stepmother, Ottavia, appeared in the doorway of the drawing room.

‘Your daughters are still partying,’ Cesare announced. ‘Lizzie was falling asleep, so I brought her home early.’

‘Cesare is a party pooper,’ Lizzie framed with difficulty.

Goffredo grinned and Ottavia chuckled and the older couple vanished back into the drawing room.

At the foot of the stairs, Cesare abandoned the pretence that Lizzie could walk unaided and swept her up into his arms.

‘I like it when you do this,’ Lizzie told him. ‘It’s so...so...masculine.’

‘We are lucky you don’t weigh more,’ Cesare quipped, barely out of breath as they reached the top of the stairs.

A sudden lurch in the stomach region made Lizzie tense and she crammed a stricken hand to her mouth, mumbling, ‘Cesare...’

To give him his due, Cesare was not slow on the uptake and he strode through the nearest door at speed and deposited her in a bathroom.

Lizzie was ingloriously ill. He pushed her hair out of the way, gave her a cloth, extended a toothbrush, which he unwrapped, and politely ignored her repetitive apologies for her behaviour. When she couldn’t stand up again, he removed her shoes for her and supported her over to the sink.

‘I don’t make a habit of this,’ she declared, rinsing her mouth several times over while hanging onto the vanity unit.

‘I should hope not, bellezza mia.’

‘What does that mean? The Italian bit?’

And he told her that it meant ‘my beauty’.

‘But that’s a downright lie,’ she protested, studying her bleary-eyed reflection in dismay. The make-up girl’s artistry and the hairdresser’s skill were no longer apparent in the flushed face, smudged eyeliner and tousled hair she now saw in the mirror.

‘You need to lie down,’ Cesare asserted, lifting her again so that the bathroom spun and then the bedroom that followed.

Lizzie lay flat and dead still on the bed, afraid to move lest her surroundings began revolving again. ‘Where’s Archie? I want Archie.’

‘Archie stays downstairs.’ Cesare reminded her of the household rule, announced by Primo, his imperturbable manservant, on the day she moved in.

‘But that’s just mean... He always sleeps with me,’ she mumbled.

Cesare almost groaned out loud. She lay splayed across his bed, clearly trusting him when he didn’t trust himself because she was displaying a wanton amount of bare slender thigh.

‘If I can’t have Archie for company, I’ll have you,’ Lizzie muttered. ‘Lie down.’

Cesare snatched up the phone and issued a terse instruction. Within the space of a minute, Primo arrived at the door with Archie. Cesare clasped Archie and carried him over to the bed, whereupon the dog curled up obediently at Lizzie’s feet with his head resting across her ankles.

‘You should get into bed...you can’t sleep in your clothes,’ Cesare told her.

‘Why not?’

Cesare released his breath in an exasperated hiss and came down on the bed beside her to run her zip down.

‘What are you doing?’ she whispered curiously as he smoothed the straps of the dress down off her slim shoulders.

‘Making you more comfortable.’ Business arrangement, business arrangement, bloody business arrangement, Cesare was dutifully repeating inside his head as he eased her out of the dress to expose a filmy and provocative bra and panties set in turquoise lace. He wasn’t looking, he wasn’t reacting, he told himself doggedly while his dark golden gaze clung of its own volition to the surprisingly full, plump curves swelling the lace cups, revealing pale pink nipples that made his mouth water and the shadowy vee at her crotch. He yanked the sheet over Lizzie’s prone length so fast that she rolled and, having been disturbed and crammed in below the sheet without warning, Archie also loosed a whimper of complaint.

Lizzie stretched out a searching hand, her eyes closed. The room was going round and round and round behind her lowered eyelids and she felt lost and nauseous. ‘Where you going?’

Weary after a day spent travelling and his last-minute sprint to deal with Lizzie, Cesare surrendered to the obvious. If he left her alone, might she wander off? Sleep on the floor? Have an accident? Stumble into the wrong bedroom? And what if she was sick again? ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ He stripped down to his boxers and lay down on the other side of the bed. A small, callused hand closed over the thumb of his right hand and held on tight. He wasn’t used to sharing a bed and he liked his own space.