A Shadow of Guilt

Slowly Valentina nodded her head. ‘Yes, I want this.’

Looking slightly tortured Gio just asked, ‘Are you sure?’

He was giving her a chance to go, to think about this. Her heart lurched. She nodded again and said firmly, ‘Yes.’

Valentina was lifted into Gio’s arms against his chest so fast that her head swam. He shouldered his way into the bedroom off the main living area and Valentina could see a huge bed dressed in dark grey linen. The sun was setting outside, bathing the room in a dusky glow.

‘What is this place?’ she asked far too belatedly, a little stunned at how fast everything was moving.

‘It’s mine, sometimes I stay overnight.’

Gio carefully lowered her to stand by the bed. For the first time in what felt like aeons there was space between them and already Valentina felt bereft. It scared her. But not enough to put more space between them.

Gio’s face was flushed and the first indication of stubble darkened his jaw. He opened his mouth and Valentina quickly put her hand up to cover it, afraid he was going to ask her again if she knew what she was doing. She didn’t want to think or rationalise what was happening. She just wanted to feel.

Gio took her hand down and a small smile touched his mouth as if he understood. He held her hand against his chest where she could feel his heartbeat fast but strong, and with his other hand he wrapped it around her neck and pulled her towards him.

This time the kiss was hungry and devouring. It became heated in seconds, and Valentina curled her hand into his shirt, bunching it up. Her other hand went to his hip and found the hot skin underneath his shirt. Emboldened, she slid it around to his back and explored under his jeans, feeling the cleft of his smooth buttocks. Gio broke the kiss and said thickly, ‘I need to see you.’

His hands were on her shirt, undoing her buttons. Valentina shivered with anticipation and looked down. Gio’s hands looked huge and very dark, long fingers grappling with tiny buttons. She heard him curse softly when the buttons eluded his grasp and brought her own hands up to do the job. To be standing here, undressing in front of Gio … it was too huge to think about.

When her shirt fell open to reveal her lacy bra, Valentina blushed hotly. Gio pushed her hands aside and pulled open the shirt even more, until it came off her shoulders and down her arms and fell to the floor.

She couldn’t look up at him. A hand snaked around to her back and undid her bra. He pulled the two straps down her arms and her bra joined her shirt on the floor. Instinctively Valentina went to cover her breasts but Gio stopped her arms. ‘Don’t …’

He tipped up her chin so that she had to look at him and his eyes were molten with heat and need, dissolving Valentina’s inhibitions. ‘You’re beautiful.’

She saw his eyes drop to take in the swells of her breasts and their tips tingled painfully. With two hands he cupped them, and moved his thumbs across the sensitised peaks. Valentina moaned softly, closing her eyes. It was too much to see his hands on her flesh like that.

Somehow Gio manoeuvred them so that he was sitting on the bed and he brought Valentina between his hard thighs, trapping her between them. With one hand on her waist holding her steady, he cupped a breast with his other and brought his mouth forward, and fed that hungry aching tip into the hot cavern of his mouth. Valentina sucked in a tortured breath and her hands went to his shoulders, holding on for dear life as shards of intense pleasure went from her nipple to between her legs.

Gio was remorseless, sucking and teasing the peak into throbbing stiffness. Flicking it with this tongue before sucking fiercely again. Valentina wasn’t even aware of her hand going to the back of his head to hold him there. She cried out when he moved to the other breast and administered the same exquisite torture. Valentina had never known a pleasure like it. It was awakening an even more intense need in her body, down low, where her legs were pressed together by Gio’s thighs.

Suddenly Valentina pulled back from his wicked mouth and looked down. Her eyelids felt heavy. Thickly she muttered, ‘I want to see you too.’ And she bent down to pull Gio’s polo shirt up and over his head. When his magnificent torso was revealed she could only look at it as reverently as he’d looked at her.

He was beautifully muscled, not an ounce of fat. Dark olive skin and a very masculine dusting of hair. Gio’s eyes glittered fiercely and he said, ‘Come here.’ Valentina obeyed without question but this time she straddled Gio’s thighs so that she was sitting on his lap. He brought both arms around her and the sensation of her bare breasts and wet nipples against his chest made her gasp. He pulled her head down to his and covered her mouth, swallowing her gasp. Her arousal levels rose to fever pitch. She’d never known there could be so many kinds of kisses. This was dark and wicked and she could feel the bulge of his erection underneath the apex of her legs. She wriggled, heightening the sensation. Gio’s hand went to the front of her jeans and Valentina broke off the kiss with a gasp when she felt his fingers come between her jeans and skin.

Her hair was falling down her back, making every nerve end stand on edge. Gio’s fingers were hot against her lower belly and as she looked into his eyes he flicked his thumb and opened the top button. With the top button gaping open and the zip pulled down, Gio spread his hand around the back of her waist and delved underneath, cupping one firm buttock.

Valentina arched upwards against him, and Gio took advantage, his mouth and tongue unerringly finding a turgid nipple and sucking fiercely as his hand went deeper and his fingers found the damp cleft of her body.

Valentina cried out, her legs pressing tight against his thighs as if that might assuage the delicious torture, but then suddenly the earth was moving and she was on her back on the bed with Gio looming over her, his shoulders impossibly broad, a lock of dark hair falling messily onto his forehead.

Valentina wanted to reach up to touch that lock, invaded by a dangerous tenderness, and had to clench her hand to a fist to stop it. Thankfully Gio was far too busy distracting her to see anything of this turmoil within her.

With a fast economy of movement he had opened her jeans fully and was pulling them down and off so now she was in nothing but her knickers. This was more naked than she’d ever been in front of anyone apart from her mother and Valentina bit her lip when trepidation and insecurity lanced her.

Something pierced through the heat haze in Gio’s brain when he saw the flicker of trepidation on Valentina’s face, and the full plumpness of her bottom lip caught between small white teeth. Like a cold bucket of water being thrown in his face, something occurred to him. His hands stilled on the button of his jeans and he frowned. ‘Valentina … are you a virgin?’

CHAPTER SIX

GIO SAW VALENTINA’S face flush and a heavy weight settled in his gut. She brought up an arm to cover her breasts and just like that the temperature in the room zoomed down from about a million degrees to minus forty.

Stifling an almost overwhelming urge to smash his fist into the nearest solid object, Gio stepped back from the sinful provocation of Valentina’s practically naked supine body. A body he would have been sinking into right now and discovering for himself just how innocent she was, with scant thought of being gentle.

On stiff legs he went straight to the bathroom and lifted the robe from the back of the door and came back, holding it out to Valentina, who he avoided looking at on the bed. Discovering she was innocent was not something he’d expected in a million years and this changed everything. She could not really want him to be the one to take her innocence, and when the heat of passion died away, she’d realise that and hate him even more.

‘What are you doing?’ Her voice, soft and husky, grated over his exposed and sensitive nerves. The muscles in his arm bunched and he said more curtly than he intended, ‘Take the robe, Valentina, I don’t sleep with virgins.’