‘Any time…’ Andreo husked, strolling forward with all the formidable and yet daunting grace of a prowling tiger to lean down and close his large hands over her smaller ones and raise her upright.
That close to him her nostrils flared on the clean, husky male scent of his lithe, lean physique. She quivered, a curl of heat igniting low in her stomach. Shorn of her shoes as she now was, he struck her as awesomely tall and broad.
‘Santo Cielo…you’ve shrunk a little,’ Andreo mocked. ‘But promise me that you will always wear those heels around me. Seeing you top all the guys around me gives me a high—’
‘It…does?’
‘Sì. You looked as disdainful as a queen too.’ He shed his shirt and reached behind her with complete calm to unzip her dress for her.
‘Couldn’t we put the lights out?’ Pippa mumbled in as humorous a tone as she could manage, the cooler air brushing her spine merely reminding her that when the dress went she had only one more layer left to hide behind.
Andreo actually laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, bella mia!’
Perspiration beaded her short upper lip. ‘I guess I was…’
He skimmed the straps down from her taut shoulders and let her slinky little blue dress fall to the carpet. He spread long fingers to frame her cheekbones. ‘You are stunning…’
But Pippa had already closed her eyes sooner than risk seeing his disappointment when he saw how thin and flat-chested she was when stripped back to her bra and briefs. Nerves strung high, she shivered and he gathered her up into his arms and came down onto the bed with her cradled across his hard thighs. He tasted her mouth long and slow and the forbidden heat in her tummy flickered up again in spite of her tension.
‘Sexy…’ Andreo growled, appreciating the satin-smooth softness of her delicate white skin.
Nobody had ever called her that before and the temptation was too great: her lashes lifted on bemused eyes as blue as sapphires. ‘Sexy?’
‘Very…’ He found everything about her sexy: her hair, her eyes, her height, her incandescent smile, the air of fragility that she exuded that gave him a curious urge to open doors for her, the sort of courteous but unfashionable stuff he normally only did in the radius of his female relatives.
Mesmerised by the intensity of his dark golden appraisal, she missed out on the deft movement with which he unclipped her bra. ‘Honestly…?’
As her firm little breasts were bared his breathing fractured. Air chilled the tightly beaded tips and she looked down at her own bare flesh in dismay before bringing her hands up to cover herself from his intent appraisal. ‘Lights…’ she said in a wobbly voice.
‘I love your body…’ Andreo told her.
Feverish colour flooded her cheeks as she scrambled off him and dived with more haste than elegance below the fancy quilted spread and tugged it back up to her chin.
Andreo elevated a level dark brow and surveyed her with a frown. Her cinnamon hair was fanned out like polished silk round her face, which was hot pink to her hairline. Her eyes were evasive.
‘I think I need a drink,’ she gasped, amazed that after all the alcohol she had imbibed she still felt almost as sober as the proverbial judge.
Andreo sprang upright and strolled over to the mini bar to withdraw a chilled mineral water. Opening it, he emptied it into a crystal tumbler and wandered back to extend it to her.
Clutching the spread to her, Pippa accepted the glass. She did not have the nerve to tell him that she had expected to receive an alcoholic beverage. ‘You must be thinking I’m a little strange,’ she muttered in a rush.
‘Why would I think that?’ Drinking water from the bottle he had helped himself to, Andreo rested his lean hips on the edge of the cabinet opposite while he contemplated her tense and embarrassed face.
No way was she having another intoxicating drink. He liked his partners to know what day it was. But there was another guy in her life, he was sure of it. That was why she was so jumpy. His competitive spirit soared into the ascendant. He would talk his way into that bed with her tonight. He might only get this one chance to pull her and once the deed was done, it would squash the competition. And if she didn’t squash the competition after the event, he most assuredly would take care of that necessity for her. He didn’t share and she was his. Dio mio, never before had he kissed a woman in a public bar or been so challenged to restrain his overwhelming hunger to possess her. Together they were hotter than a volcano and if she didn’t yet appreciate that fact, he would soon teach her to do so.
The silence stretched and with the galling cool of an expert interrogator he made no attempt to break it.
Pippa sat up in a driven motion and hugged the spread beneath her arms. ‘There’s something I ought to mention…’
Andreo tensed. He really did not want to hear about the other man. Everything she told him would linger in his memory and annoy him. He didn’t know how he knew that. He didn’t even know why he was thinking that, for he had never been one of those weird possessive types. But he did know that he did not want to hear the low-down on her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. ‘I don’t believe in exchanging stories about other lovers.’
‘Neither do I…and I’m not even sure I should make such an issue of this…but—’ Pippa sucked in a jerky breath and shot him an anxious glance ‘—it seems only fair to warn you that I haven’t done this much.’
Andreo was touched. He didn’t want to hurt her pride so there was no easy way of telling her that she had made her relative lack of experience pretty obvious. He was fine with that. But then he was a very open-minded guy, he reflected.
‘In fact…’ Pippa hesitated, worrying at her full lower lip with her teeth, her quiet voice dropping lower and lower in level until he was leaning forward without realising it to catch her words. ‘…to be really, really frank, I haven’t done this at all…’
His winged black brows pleated. ‘Say that again…’