She had surprised him. His forbidding expression lightened perceptibly, his sensuous mouth tilted at the corners in the beginnings of a smile. ‘Damn you, Lexi...you confuse me to hell.’ A masculine chuckle escaped him, his anger waning. ‘But I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ And, swinging her in his arms, he carried her to the bed, his body following her down; he shifted his weight until he was lying heavily across her chest, crushing the soft roundness of her breasts against his chest.
His mouth came down on hers in a hard, hot kiss. His hands slid down her body, along her thighs, pushing her legs apart. He kissed her again, a ruthless demand that contained the lingering traces of anger and masculine frustration. She felt a shiver of fear ripple down her spine, but somehow she knew he would not hurt her, and she opened her mouth to welcome him, surprising him yet again. He reared back, a question in his navy blue eyes.
Lexi smiled and deliberately lifted her small hand and stroked the firm skin of his stomach, and lower, entranced by the lightning response of his aroused body. Jake moved over her, his tongue driving into her mouth, and she had the feeling she was being seduced, physically dominated, as if he needed to show her he was in control.
‘You want me, you can’t help yourself. Whatever else you are, Lexi, in this you are mine and mine alone,’ he husked, and lowered his head to suck on the rosy tips of her breasts, bringing them to throbbing peaks of desire; his fingers slid down between her parted thighs, and began moving in quick sensuous patterns that had Lexi trembling all over.
Lexi’s eyes widened to their fullest extent, her body arched, the breath nearly crushed from her, but she was ready for him as Jake drove into her soft, moist centre with a fierce aggression that made her shudder on the pinnacle of delight. For a timeless space he did not move, making her aware of the full weight of his possession, while withholding the release she craved. She cried his name. The sound of his name on her lips shattered Jake’s control. Their bodies, bathed in perspiration, slid together, rocking, moving in a shimmering white-hot culmination so closely entwined they spun as one into the fiery rapture of climax.
Ages later Lexi groaned, but still she clung to Jake, reluctant to move, if not incapable of movement, she thought fuzzily. Finally, she lifted heavy lashes to find Jake staring down at her. She smiled lovingly, her soft gaze roaming over his darkly flushed face.
Jake rolled on to his side, one large hand supporting his head; a smile curved his lips and sparkled in his eyes. His other hand deliberately stroked across her full breasts. ‘I could easily get addicted to this siesta idea,’ he offered lazily, rubbing his mouth lightly against hers. ‘But right now, I need lunch.’
It was hardly the words of love she had been dreaming about, but it was a step in the right direction, she thought with hope in her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
LEXI, wearing a brief black bikini with a floaty black and pink silk patterned overblouse on top, and carrying a matching beach bag, the whole ensemble a present from Jake, strolled out on to the terrace and down the steps to the swimming-pool. Shrugging out of her shirt, she flopped listlessly on to a convenient sun-lounger, rummaged in her bag and found her sunglasses and pushed them on her nose. Sweeping her long hair round to one side of her neck, she lay back down on the lounger and tried to relax.
The heat was almost unbearable, in the nineties; she glanced around the colourful sweet-scented garden, the pool, and the view of the sea beyond. She had watched Jake leave after a shared informal lunch in the comfort of the air-conditioned kitchen. He had said he had business to attend to... Maybe he had...right at this moment she didn’t give a damn!
Tomorrow it would be exactly two weeks since she had moved into the villa. This morning, as she had been idly looking through her diary, ruefully reflecting on the fact it had been chock-full of appointments up until Jake had stormed back into her life and cost her her job, it had suddenly hit her. She was a week overdue with her period. She tried telling herself it wasn’t important. What was a week, for heaven’s sake? But, for a girl who had never been so much as a day late except the one time she had been pregnant, the week was beginning to assume gigantic proportions.
Instinctively her hand stroked across her flat stomach, her feelings ambivalent. She had always longed for a child after her tragic miscarriage, she freely admitted, but in the circumstances...
Restless, she jumped to her feet and dropping her glasses on the lounger she took a running dive head-first into the pool. The shock of the cool water was a balm to her overheated flesh. She swam a few quick lengths and then turned over on to her back and floated, her mind idly wandering over the past.
Yesterday Jake had taken her in his power-boat to Capri. They had strolled around the town and Jake had ushered her into a myriad designer boutiques, and insisted on buying her a host of clothes: the bikini she was wearing now, and an extravagant evening gown he told her she had to have for a special engagement tonight. Another of his secrets!
Sexually they were compatible, the chemistry between them explosive. Jake made love to her every day—sometimes he came to her bed at night, sometimes by this very pool. He just had to look at her a certain way, a touch of his hand; their passion for each other was insatiable.
Ever since their trip to Pompeii, when Jake had talked about the loss of their child, they seemed to have developed a kind of rapport. They had long, interesting, sometimes argumentative conversations about music, art, the state of Italian politics, which was a subject one could debate a lifetime without running out of steam, Lexi thought with a grin. She could almost convince herself that her plan to win his love was succeeding, except for the fact that they still never woke up in the morning sharing the same bed. Lexi had not the nerve to ask why. She wasn’t sure she would like the answer.
Jake never shared his thoughts, his inner self, as he had when they were first married. Though, her own innate honesty forced her to admit, she was just as guilty in that respect. Her pride and fear of being hurt contrived to prevent her revealing her own feelings.
Things could be worse, Lexi conceded, though he had infuriated her about her car. Jake had arranged for it to be delivered back to the hotel, saying there was no way he would allow her to drive the ‘old wreck’ and, in any case, strictly speaking it belonged to the hotel. He might as well have said she could not go out without him, because that was what it boiled down to. But, to give Jake his due, he had taken her out every day. To Sorrento, Naples and some of the smaller islands, and they had had fun. Jake was a good companion when he wanted to be, she mused. But one major problem was the same as always—Lorraine. The woman was forever calling Jake, and he dashed off at the summons. Lexi knew it was business, and she didn’t really think Jake was still having an affair with Lorraine, mainly because she doubted that even Jake had that much stamina, given how often he and Lexi made love. But a nagging suspicion about the relationship haunted Lexi. There was something...
‘Aghhh...’ she screamed, a second before her head slid under the water. A hand had caught her ankle, pulling her deeper and deeper beneath the water, and then a strong arm wrapped around her and she was shooting back to the surface. Choking and spluttering, trying to sweep her tangled mass of hair from her face and at the same time dry her eyes, she screeched, ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ And tossing back her head, she looked up into the wickedly laughing face of Jake.
Clasping her around the middle, he hauled her between his muscular thighs. His lips brushed hers and, grinning, he said, ‘Sour grapes... You looked so relaxed floating around, while I’ve spent the last few hours hot and harassed driving into Naples. When I got back and saw you from the window I couldn’t resist the temptation.’
‘Pig,’ she retaliated, whacking her hand through the water and splashing him in the face. He jumped back, his legs releasing her, and Lexi chuckled at his astonished expression.
‘You wanna fight rough, babe?’ Jake drawled in a mock American accent, before placing his hands on her shoulders and dunking her again.
Lexi stayed under the water and swam between his long legs. Surfacing behind him, she flung her arms around his neck and tried to pull him over backwards. But his superior strength showed as he put his hands behind him under her stomach and flipped her high in the air and she found herself swung up and over his head in a somersault to land flat on her back in the water.
‘Had enough?’ Jake taunted, hauling her up by the front clasp of her bikini top.
Treading water, she yelled, ‘You beast!’ It was all right for Jake, he was so much taller that he could stand on the bottom with no trouble, she fumed, and tried to splash him again. Their laughter echoed on the summer air, until Lexi let out a yelp as she realised Jake was waving the top of her bikini around his head. She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Pervert, give me it back.’
‘One down, one to go.’ Jake let out a war cry and dived on top of Lexi. In a tangle of arms and legs they sank to the bottom of the pool.
When Lexi surfaced again, she was folded once more in Jake’s strong thighs, one of his hands supported her back so she was almost lying on top of the water and in his other hand he was proudly holding aloft both parts of her bikini.
‘To the winner, the spoils,’ he crowed triumphantly.
Lexi’s gaze slid over his broad shoulders up the strong line of his throat to his proud head; his hair was plastered to his skull and he looked like a young boy again. Her heart squeezed in her breast, she loved him so. He must have seen something of what she was feeling in her eyes because he said her name.