The Reluctant Husband

‘I’m not in the mood right now—’

‘I’ll put you in the mood, cara. I also think I should have tipped you head-first into the horse trough to sober up last night! You suck up sympathy like a vacuum cleaner, you always did, and you don’t deserve my care and consideration.’

Releasing her arms, Santino tugged free the sash at her slender waist in one smooth movement.

The robe fell open. Frankie froze, breath feathering in her convulsive throat, heart racing so fast she felt light-headed.

Santino ran burnished and unashamedly hungry eyes over the enticing feminine curves he had revealed. He reached an assured hand up into her tumbling bright mane of hair and slowly, sensually drew her down onto the pillows. She arrived there with a stifled gasp, just in time to see him close one beautifully shaped hand over the pale swell of one full breast. She trembled, wide-eyed, shaken by both sight and sensation. The heat of his rawly masculine body against her cooler, slighter frame, even the fairness of her skin against his lean, sun darkened length, wa

s as instinctively enthralling as the expert fingers which rose to caress the pouting pink nipple.

A low, jerky sigh escaped her, her head falling back as the sweet ache of her sensitive flesh made her clench her teeth, blanking out her mind to everything but the power of sensation he possessed, and when he bent his dark head and delicately employed his teeth and his tongue on the same straining rosy bud she moaned out loud.

‘What a temptress you are, Francesca,’ Santino breathed in a tone of roughened discovery. ‘You surrender yourself so completely to pleasure.’

The fog in her brain was pierced by sudden shame. Her lashes lifted again just as Santino pushed a supporting arm beneath her and eased her free of her robe, to cast it carelessly aside. He thrust the bedding back, tumbling her onto a crisp white cotton sheet scented with the faint evocative aroma of crushed rosemary.

Santino focused on her intently, his strong dark features taut. ‘Rosemary for fertility—not a concern that I assume I need to consider with you...?’

Frankie’s gaze was blank, inward-looking. A tide of burning colour washed over her skin because she wasn’t listening; she was picturing herself just seconds earlier, a willing, wanton captive to what he could make her feel. And yet wasn’t this what she wanted too? This driving hunger of the flesh satisfied so that she could be free again, free as she had never been in five long years? Inwardly she repeated the comforting mantra that had strengthened her only the day before. Making love with Santino would close this chapter in her life and then she would move on.

‘And you still blush...a charming if deceptive consequence of that superb English-rose skin,’ Santino contended, brushing away the top sheet she had automatically drawn over herself so that he could feast his attention upon her again.

Frankie stared up at him, as entrapped as if he had her in chains, shyness overpowered by her incredibly deep and strong craving for his admiration. It made her feel so good about herself, so happy. Breasts that had seemed too full for her slender stature, hips that had seemed too angular no longer mattered. Her own new and wondrous sense of perfection was born in that instant in Santino’s deeply appreciative appraisal.

‘You’re exquisite, cara mia,’ Santino murmured intently. ‘At this moment, I don’t care about anything else.’

‘There is nothing else,’ Frankie whispered, thinking that there would be just this one time and then they would part, for he had already referred to their leaving the village. A hazy image vaguely reminiscent of Brief Encounter seduced her with its drama and romance.

Her hand lifted and curved over a broad brown shoulder, fluttering in an instinctive wondering caress over smooth, taut skin covering a spectacular blending of bone and muscle. It felt so daring and yet so right, here in this bed and in this house, the world shut outside, just the way it might have been five years ago—just the way it should have been, she reflected helplessly. A spontaneous and natural event because she had never been infatuated, she had been deeply in love. And, just as then, looking at Santino melted her deep down inside. Her breathing fractured, her quivering body clenching on the all-pervasive sense of dissolving liquidity between her thighs.

‘When you look at me like that,’ Santino confided, his deep, dark drawl like abrasive sand on silk, ‘I want to forget every preliminary I ever learned and fall on you like a sex-starved teenager.’

‘Do you?’ A dreamy smile of satisfaction curved Frankie’s generous mouth, the last shred of uncertainty forgotten as she rejoiced in the sheer power of being a woman.

Santino leant over her and kissed her with a plundering urgency that both shook and excited her simultaneously. He wound a ruthless hand into her hair and held her captive, crushing her lips and invading her mouth with an erotic thoroughness that swiftly changed the status quo—because she became a creature of all feeling and no thought, dragged down into shivering excitement by his innate sensuality.

His hands were slightly rough against her softer skin, the knowing exploration of his fingers over her achingly tender breasts a tormenting pleasure as she strained helplessly up to him, her whole body awash with response and reaction to his every tiny move and caress. She felt dominated and confined and she liked it, and she laced her seeking fingers ecstatically into his thick black hair, holding him tightly to her.

He dragged himself free, shone an innately ruthless smile of satisfaction over her confused face. Her treacherous heart contracted in response.

He looked so dangerous, his slashing confidence unhidden. ‘I’m not going anywhere, cara...your hunger is the one true gift you have to give me and the only thing you cannot lie about or control. The completeness of your surrender will be my triumph.’

Her stomach twisted, apprehension threatening to break through the unstoppable waves of hunger that controlled her as surely as he did. But with a soft taunting laugh Santino kissed her again, with all the fiery carnal expertise she was defenceless against. Her body burned, no longer willing or able to do her bidding. She was possessed by her own need, her own ever more desperate hunger. She wanted to sink inside his skin and share it with him.

His mouth teased at the straining buds of her swollen breasts. Slow, sure fingers skimmed through the damp curls that guarded her femininity to touch where only he had ever touched. The sensitivity of her flesh was almost unbearable and the explosive, agonising pleasure which seized Frankie in its relentless hold made her jerk and twist and whimper in mindless abandonment.

‘You’re so ready for me,’ Santino groaned.

His lean, strong features harsh and intent in passion, he rose over her, lifting her trembling thighs back and settling himself fluidly between them. As she felt him, hot and urgent and alarmingly male against her tender entrance, Frankie gasped and tensed, and yet with every contrary fibre of her being she would have died of frustration had he stopped. Then he moved, and pleasure splintered into shocking pain as he thrust deep and a startled cry was wrenched from her.

For an instant Santino fell still. He surveyed her with lancing golden eyes that scorched like flames over her hectically flushed and shaken face. ‘If ever anyone got the punishment they deserved for lying...’ he breathed, unexpectedly deepening his invasion with a powerful twist of bis hips. ‘I would have been slow and gentle if I had known the truth.’

So intent was Frankie on the alien intrusion wreaking such upheaval inside her tormentingly sensitised body, she barely caught his words. She was afraid to move until the pain faded, and then she gazed up at him in open surprise. ‘It feels so strange,’ she whispered.

‘It gets to feel good,’ Santino promised, with a reluctant laugh and a slanting, almost tender smile.

She couldn’t imagine that, but then it was happening and suddenly she couldn’t concentrate any more and that instant of control was wrested from her again. Her whole being centred on his every movement, over her, inside her, and the raw power of his possession filled her with wild energy and impatience. It was timeless, utterly absorbing, and she lived each second on an edge of excruciating all-encompassing craving and then she was splintering and shuddering, flung in shock to the furthest boundaries of pleasure. With a hungry growl of release, Santino followed her there, and when she surfaced from that drugging languor of satiation she found herself clutching him with a sense of feverish possessiveness.