The Heat Of Passion

Instead, he dropped his arms to her waist, bent and swept her up off her feet. At the same instant he covered her startled lips with a dark, fierce hunger that de-

voured. She felt the leap of response inside her and fought it to the last ditch.

He laid her down on a bed in the moonlight. 'I don't want this, Carlo,' she protested tautly. 'It isn't enough for me.'

He slung his tie aside, shrugged fluidly out of his jacket and came down beside her. 'What would be enough?' he demanded darkly, harshly, and before she could roll away out of reach to the other side of the wide bed he brought both hands down hard on hers, imprisoning her. 'What did he have that I didn't? What could he give you that I couldn't?'

Stunned by the seething anger she had ignited, Jessica

stared up at him. He was talking about Simon again. 'It

wasn't like that. You couldn't understand '

"Then bloody make me understand!' Carlo invited in raw challenge. 'Was he a better lover than I was?'

Torn by a pain she had never shared with another living soul, Jessica wrenched her head to one side, seeking to evade his glittering scrutiny. 'Carlo...'

'I want to know,' he intoned, twisting one powerful hand into her hair to force her eyes back to his. 'So you tell me, what was it about him that made him so special?'

'I'm not going to talk about this!' Tears stung her eyes in a blinding surge.

'I want to talk about it. I offered you everything I had

to give and you walked away...' Carlo returned with

smouldering bite. 'And yet it was me you wanted '

Wo!' she gasped.

'Si...' Carlo

snarled down at her.

'Wanting isn't enough!’ she suddenly screamed back at him.

'But without it, there's nothing,' Carlo pointed out with devastating simplicity.

And the reality of that fact was like a knife twisting inside her. A tortured sob escaped her convulsed throat. She had had a marriage that was five years of nothing.

'Don't cry...' Carlo smoothed a not quite steady hand over her damp cheek and she found herself turning into the seductive warmth of that caress like a homing pigeon.

The awareness that she could not restrain her physical impulses this close to him merely added to her torment. She was her mother's daughter, a little voice said, and a sick sense of shame stirred inside her. Carlo had eased a supportive hand beneath her shoulder blades to raise her up and her fingers accidentally brushed against his broad chest and heat sprang up beneath her fingertips, the raw heat of his flesh below the thin silk shirt.

He trembled, and for some reason that made her want to do it again. He muttered something rough into the veil of her hair and she let her hand stay where it was, listening to the ruptured rasp of his breathing and feeling the thunderous crash of his heartbeat against her palm.

The atmosphere was explosive, abruptly, inexplicably exhilarating as adrenalin surged through her veins. She let her fingers spread and flex and without warning Carlo groaned, sweeping her with a sudden current of live-wire excitement.

'MaledizioneV Carlo muttered thickly, dragged her lithely back down on the bed. 'With you I have less control than a teenager!'

He was shaking in the circle of her arms. When had she closed her arms round him? It didn't seem important. Briefly, crazily, she experienced an extraordinary sense of power. A heartbeat later it was torn from her by the burning assault of his hungry mouth. Her body leapt into throbbing life and rational thought ended for long, timeless minutes.

The scent of him was so achingly familiar it was an aphrodisiac. His shirt was open and she found the sleek, smooth brown skin of his shoulder with her tongue and he shuddered against her, chest to breast, thigh to thigh in a pagan feast of agonising, uncontrollable excitement. Carlo rolled over and wrenched violently at

her dress. She heard something tear. It meant nothing to her.

With a ragged gasp of pleasure he bent over her bared breasts, shaping her, touching her. She closed her eyes, arched her slender throat and was lost in a world of sensory overdrive, more powerful and more primitive than anything she had ever dreamt of experiencing. Scorching heat surged through her shivering body in an unstoppable surge.

Her hands fluttered over every part of him she could reach, torn between the black silk luxuriance of his hair and the oiled smoothness of the muscles flexing on his back. She wanted to touch him everywhere at once, burned to explore him as intimately as he was exploring her.