The Reluctant Husband

‘Nothing but pleasure,’ Santino promised in growling repetition.

A hot, melting sensation had begun deep down inside Frankie. Before she knew what was happening to her she was giving back kiss for kiss with frantic, driven urgency.

‘You’re very passionate,’ Santino muttered with hoarse satisfaction, curving a firm hand over the thrust of one full breast and unerringly locating the swollen tender nipple beneath the cotton.

Involuntarily Frankie’s spine arched, and a soundless gasp was torn from her as he gently, deftly used that barrier that she had naively hoped would frustrate him to excite her beyond all bearing. As, with his guidance, the coarse grain of the fabric massaged and tormented those achingly sensitive buds, Frankie started burning all over and found it quite impossible to stay still.

An arrow of piercing heat twisted between her restive thighs. He lowered his mouth to the straining peaks and still the screening material failed to lessen the depth of her response. Indeed her whole body jackknifed under that fresh onslaught. A strangled moan was wrenched from her and instantly he covered her mouth with his again, silencing her.

‘Hush, cara...’ Santino instructed in his deep, dark drawl as he ran an exploring and incredibly arousing hand down the quivering length of one securely cotton-shrouded thigh. ‘I haven’t even begun yet.’

But, whether he had begun or not, Frankie’s sensationstarved body was already out of her control, and seething with a feverish, needy passion utterly outside her experience. She clutched at his shoulders with straining fingers, striving to find his mouth again for herself. And then, still quite tormentingly indifferent to the shielding thickness of the nightdress, which was now driving her to the heights of screaming frustration because she wanted so badly to feel her skin naked against his, Santino discovered the most sensitive place of all with an impossibly gentle hand.

A tortured moan of intolerable hunger escaped Frankie. ‘Take the wretched thing off,’ she pleaded.

‘Shush,’ Santino soothed, while doing everything possible to ensure that the only way she could keep quiet was either to bite him or bite the pillow. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

It was more than Frankie did. Twisting and turning against him, out of her mind with excitement, her entire body was clenched unbearably tight by the burning hunger he had ignited with his touch. Lost and driven without her own volition to a shattering peak of hunger, an explosion of ecstatic pleasure burst without warning inside her, plunging her into wave after wave of drugging sensual delight. At the same moment Santino crushed her under him and sealed his mouth to hers to swallow every gasping cry she made.

When he freed her and she was able to breathe again, Frankie was in so much shock she was a shadow of her usual aggressive self, limp with the satiation of physical gratification and simultaneously devastated by the experience.

In the thundering silence, Santino scanned her shaken face and dazed eyes with a disturbingly shrewd look of satisfaction. ‘Now that was definitely a first for you.’

Assailed by the most outraged sense of seething mortification, Frankie thrust him away from her with wild and frantic hands. Turning her back on him, she curled up as warily stiff as a hedgehog ready to repel attack. The light went out. She lay there, boiling alive with shame at the awareness that Santino had watched her lose all control while he caressed her wanton, hatefully responsive body. And he hadn’t even had to take her nightdress off...though she had actually begged him to remove it, she recalled strickenly, absolutely horrified by her own behaviour.

A long arm plucked her off the very edge of the mattress and drew her remorselessly back into all too physical contact. Frankie went rigid but Santino ignored the fact. Flipping her over, indifferent to the imprisoning folds of the nightdress entrapping her, he sealed her into relentless connection with his long, lithe body. In the moonlight, her eyes flew wide. Against her stomach she felt the shocking proof that he was still very aroused. He had given her the pleasure he had promised but had as yet taken none for himself.

‘You said if I waited until tomorrow night you’d do anything I want,’ Santino reminded her, with terrifying timing and truly devastating effect. ‘A provocative offer... and for me? Pure erotic temptation. So for what remains of tonight I will practise patience and selfrestraint...’

Whipped back into life by that tigerish taunting purr, Frankie very nearly exploded with temper. And then she bit her lower lip so hard she hurt herself, but contrived to practise some much needed restraint of her own while she continued to squirm at the memory of him cutting off her whimpers and moans of excitement with kisses.

‘Unless you’ve changed your mind...?’

‘No...no, I haven’t,’ Frankie mumbled, wondering if she had been temporarily insane to say such a thing to a virile male as experienced as Santino. Precisely what would he want her to do? Hurriedly shutting that enervating thought back out again, Frankie breathed in slowly and carefully to calm herself. Tomorrow night felt like a long way away.

Frankie stared into the little mirror propped on top of the chest of drawers and hated what she saw. A woman who had let herself down a bucketful. If she had reacted with revulsion when he’d touched her, Santino would not have persisted. But then what might he have done? Gone back to his original plan to evict Della and prosecute her for fraud? Frankie shivered. No matter how badly Della had behaved, Frankie couldn’t bear to think of her mother being humiliated to that extent.

And Frankie was painfully aware that she had betrayed herself to Santino. He had recognised her hunger and chosen a punishment calculated to decimate her pride. And why shouldn’t he have? she conceded, with new and bitter acceptance of the situation she had impulsively put herself in. After all, she had stood herself beside Della and had deliberately taken on the guise of a mercenary little confidence trickster.

Now she was reaping the benefit of Santino’s angry and vengeful contempt. Santino who knew her so much better than anyone else alive; Santino who knew exactly how much her pride meant to her... Santino who would be quite capable of tearing her to tiny emotional shreds in the space of three weeks. For she didn’t know Santino, not as he was now.

She was so vulnerable where he was concerned. And it wasn’t just that she still found him wildly attractive. Ninety-nine out of a hundred women would take one look at Santino and go weak at the knees. He had spectacular looks and an electrifying aura of sensual dominance. But Frankie was also threatened by infinitely more subtle and dangerous promptings. For Frankie, Santino had just always been so special. So terrifyingly, hopelessly special...

The door opened without warning. In the act of plaiting her hair, Frankie flinched. Santino stilled in the doorway, lean, mean and magnificent in a black shirt and black close-fitting moleskin jeans. ‘Breakfast is almost ready.’

As she collided reluctantly with lustrous dark golden eyes, her entire face burned. It seemed to her that there was a new knowledge in his steady gaze, a sardonic male savouring of her abandonment in his arms only hours earlier. Turning back to the mirror, she said coldly, ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

‘Don’t you h

ave a skirt in that case?’ Santino enquired drily.

Frankie skimmed an irritably self-conscious hand down over her navy cotton trousers. ‘I don’t like skirts.’

‘I do...and what I like you have to like for the next three weeks.’ Santino delivered the reminder without remorse.

‘You think I’m going to turn into some sort of combination sex-slave and dress-up doll?’ Frankie enquired, tight-mouthed, breasts swelling with chagrin as she sucked in a deep restraining breath. ‘Well, you’ve got the wrong woman—’

‘I don’t think so.’ Santino appeared behind her in the mirror and she tensed in surprise. He loosened the plait with ruthless cool and planted the brush back into her nerveless fingers. ‘You can’t suppress that passion in the same way that you strive to conceal that glorious hair. I won’t let you.’