The female voice drifted in and disturbed him, bringing him back to life in her arms. It was the word must that jarred the most. An unfamiliar word.
Nico opened his eyes to her soft pink face bent over him, her russet hair all mussed, her mouth dark from kissing, her breasts naked and soft, digging into him.
Che cosa stava accendendo?
It took a second or two for him to realise.
The girl from the boat! He had come to her house and then made love to her. He raised his wrist and shot a narrowed glance at his watch. Pretty fast, too.
He flicked his gaze back to her. ‘Ciao, bella,’ he said softly.
Ella tensed as some indefinable quality changed him from the man who had said her name on that broken note at the height of passion. Suddenly he looked forbidding—no, maybe it was more than that. Unknown. A darkly erotic stranger she had just made love to.
‘We ought to move,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Move?’
How stupid to feel shy after what had just happened. ‘Upstairs,’ she elaborated. ‘To bed. Just in case…’ She shrugged as she pointed towards the windows. ‘Well, I would hate it if someone saw us! You know…’
Nico froze.
Oh, yes, he knew all right. He knew people who would pay countless amounts for information about just such a damaging scenario. His mouth tightened. What had he been thinking of? Carefully he moved her away from him and sat up, shaking his head in disbelief and anger at himself as he became fully aware of their disarranged clothing.
‘Do you have a bathroom?’ he asked tersely.
The bubble burst into a myriad of rainbow droplets. How dared he use that tone of voice to her? ‘What do you think?’ she snapped.
He saw the look of anger on her face and wanted to applaud her for not bothering to mask it behind a smile. But why should she? he asked himself. She doesn’t know who you are!
Without warning, Ella moved off him and got to her feet, automatically reaching for her camiknickers until she remembered that he’d ripped them apart. ‘I’ll show you where it is,’ she said furiously, ‘and then you can go.’
But he was on his feet in an instant, mesmerised by the sexy thrust of her bottom, and even more by the peremptory way she was dealing with him.
He caught her by the waist and lifted her hair to nuzzle the back of her neck with the rasp of his chin. ‘Do not be angry with me, Gabriella, cara mia.’
‘Then don’t make me angry.’
He nuzzled at her neck again. ‘Am I making you angry now?’ he murmured.
She shut her eyes. ‘You’re scratching me, actually,’ she said weakly, as his chin scraped against her.
‘But you like it?’
Oh, yes, she liked it all right—but then she liked just about everything he had done since he had first rung on her doorbell. And yet if she stopped to analyse it they had behaved like two…two…
She spun round to face him. ‘Do you make a habit of this kind of behaviour?’
‘Do you?’ he countered.
‘Of course I don’t!’
‘Well, you should,’ he mused thoughtfully. ‘You really should. You are exceptionally talented at getting the very best out of a man—’
She lifted her hand to slap him, but with lightning speed he captured her wrist before it could make contact and levered her towards him.
‘You dare to strike me?’ he questioned, outraged.
She realised what she had almost done and her face crumpled. ‘Oh, God, Nico—I’m sorry! I’ve never tried to hit a man before! Never!’