The Marriage Surrender

‘What time is it?’ she asked, because she felt the need to say something and that was all she could come up with just then.

His long, lush lashes lifted higher, revealing yet more of those rich, dark, slumberous eyes as he glanced at the silk-draped window through which a golden dawn was see

ping softly into the room.

‘Around five at a guess,’ he judged, then the eyes were back on her again. ‘You had a bad dream last night,’ he seemed compelled to remind her.

She nodded. ‘I remember.’

Another silence fell between them. Not tense, for a change, but wary. Because that barrier of space still lay between them? she wondered. Neither of them had moved so much as a finger or toe since he’d opened his eyes. She was afraid to, too frightened of beginning what she sensed was only just staying hidden beneath the surface of all this uncanny stillness.

‘It’s still early,’ he murmured. ‘Go back to sleep. We have a couple more hours left before we need to think about moving from here...’

Sleep, she repeated to herself as she watched his eyes close, watched those lashes lower over rich brown irises then settle against his satin-smooth cheekbones.

Sleep, when her hands wanted to reach out and stroke him, when her lips wanted to taste that warm, dark skin.

Sleep, where she would only dream of him, instead . of lying here being able to look at the real thing.

No, she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to stay wide awake and hoard the moment, gather it up and hold it close as she always did with her special moments with this special man.

Then, that strong brown arm above her head moved—not much—but the corded muscles flexed a little and she was instantly aware of the defensive tensing of her own muscles in response.

His eyes flicked open as if he sensed the very moment when all the old anxieties came bubbling up inside her. Anger sparked in their dark brown depths, and she didn’t blame him for letting it because he hadn’t even touched her! Hadn’t so much as accidentally brushed a single hair on her head!

‘I’m sorry,’ she jerked out anxiously.

‘Too damned late,’ he bit back, and suddenly he was most definitely touching her, his naked upper torso rolling across her, hot and hard, pressing her into the mattress, big arms curving about her head so his hands could frame her anxious face. ‘One day soon,’ he muttered, ‘I am going to drag you out from behind your insecurities and lay you out naked in front of me! Then I am going to devour you, cara mia! I am going to eat every single last morsel of you and not even bother to spit out the bones!’

‘I said I was sorry!’ she cried. ‘I didn’t mean to do it! I was just—’ Engrossed in looking at you, she had been going to say, but stopped herself.

So Sandro put his own biting conclusion to her cutoff sentence. ‘Reacting predictably!’

‘No!’ she denied. ‘I was startled, that was all!’

He didn’t believe her. ‘Prove it,’ he said. ‘If you were only “startled”.’ He mocked the word deridingly and moved against her, his forearms taking most of his weight, though there was enough of it for her to feel completely overwhelmed by the man. ‘Prove it,’ he repeated challengingly. ‘And convince me you were not about to run screaming for cover.’

Her heart began to hammer. This situation was quickly racing out of control. She began to wish she had run screaming for cover, had taken her chance when she’d had it earlier and just got the hell out of this bed before Sandro even opened his eyes!

‘I don’t know what it is you expect me to do to prove something that was sheer reflex!’ she snapped out irritably.

‘Well...’ he drawled, and suddenly he was no longer angry but lazily sardonic, a much more dangerous mood when she found herself trapped beneath him. ‘You could try another reflex reaction, and put your arms around my neck, then pull me down so you could kiss me.’

‘I don’t want to kiss you.’ She stiffly rebuffed the suggestion.

‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘You were dying to kiss me a few moments ago,’ he taunted provokingly.

Her eyes flashed with comprehension. ‘You were watching me look at you!’ she accused him in mortified horror.

‘Mmm,’ he admitted with a lazy smugness. ‘I found it most arousing to have your eyes caress my body like that.’

She shut those stupid eyes, wishing herself a million miles away from here now, and tried to move out from beneath him. Only to go perfectly still when the movement made her so intensely aware of his long, lean, warm nakedness that her cheeks bloomed with heat—the same heat that began running along her veins in a helter-skelter ride of wild exhilaration.

‘Are you going to kiss me?’

She shook her head, keeping her eyes tightly shut while her breasts heaved against his resting chest, and her abdomen began to curl with tension.

Did he know what was happening to her? She was sure he knew, because of the way he laid his next silken challenge before her. ‘You would prefer it if I moved away from you?’ he suggested. ‘Give you back your own space?’