OK, let’s be sensible about this, she thought. There’s got to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she was lying with her legs entangled with his. She was still in her piglet pyjamas. All the buttons were still done up. Maybe she’d just drifted to sleep and unconsciously reached for him. Or maybe he had reached for her. Why, then, hadn’t she woken up and moved out of reach?
Could she somehow wriggle away and leave without him waking?
Before she could get her scrambled thoughts together, he turned and looked at her.
‘So you slept with me after all,’ he said.
‘I did not!’
He smiled a smile that tugged on something deep inside her belly, like a small needle pulling on a tiny thread. ‘You did too,’ he said. ‘I heard you snoring.’
‘I do not snore.’
He picked up a lock of her hair and slowly wound it around one of his fingers. She couldn’t help noticing it was the same finger he had slipped inside her the evening before. She felt her inner core give a little tremor of remembered pleasure. ‘You snuffle,’ he said.
‘Snuffle?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘That doesn’t sound much better.’
He gave her hair a gentle tug, his eyes holding hers in an erotic lock. ‘Come here,’ he commanded.
Bella let her breath out in a fluttery rush that felt like the pages of a book being rapidly thumbed inside her chest. ‘Don’t do this, Edoardo,’ she said.
His eyes read the message her mind was relaying, not the one her mouth had just uttered so breathlessly. ‘You want me,’ he said. ‘You curled yourself around me during the night. I could have taken you then and there.’
‘I’m about to become engaged to another man,’ Bella said, but right at that very moment she wasn’t sure if she was reminding him or herself.
‘Call it off.’
She looked at his mouth, her belly turning over itself as she thought of how it had felt to have those sensual lips moving against hers. She forced her gaze back to his blue-green one. ‘I can’t call it off,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to call it off.’
He tugged on the tether of her hair; it was part pleasure and part pain. But wasn’t that just typical of what she felt for him—a confusing mix of emotions she didn’t want to examine in too much detail? She hated him and yet her body wanted him as it had wanted no one else. His mouth came closer and closer, stopping just above hers. ‘I could talk you into it,’ he said. ‘All it would take is one little kiss.’
Bella put a finger against his lips, the graze of his stubble sending a dart of longing straight to her core. ‘I can’t.’
He opened his mouth and sucked her finger into his mouth, gently snagging it with his teeth as his eyes held hers in a silent challenge that made her insides quiver like not-quite-set jelly.
A sweeping wave of red-hot desire coursed through her.
She felt her body gravitate towards him like a magnet attracting metal. Temptation was like a surging tide she had to swim against without the use of limbs. She felt the hard ridge of his erection against her belly and ached to hold it in her hand, to stroke him, to explore him, to taste him. Her hand moved forward but then she snatched it back, shocked at her own wantonness. ‘Let me go,’ she said, pulling at the lock of hair still tethered to his finger. ‘Please?’
His eyes smouldered with unmet needs. She felt the echo of them like a drum beat in her body. He slowly unwound her hair until there was nothing connecting them but the desire that throbbed like soundwaves in the air.
He got off the bed and hauled the T-shirt he was wearing over his head.
‘What are you doing?’ Bella asked, pulling her knees up to her chest as she sat up on the bed.
‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he said and stepped out of his boxer shorts.
Her eyes widened at the sight of him so gloriously male and so potently aroused. She gulped and quickly covered her eyes with her hands. ‘For God’s sake, can you stop parading yourself around like a peacock?’
He gave a mocking laugh. ‘Stop acting like a shy little virgin,’ he said.
Bella didn’t know why but she felt like a virgin when she was with him. His wealth of experience was so much broader than hers. She knew it just by looking at him. She sensed it in her body. He only had to look at her with those blue-green eyes of his and all her nerves and senses would go off like rescue flares.
She didn’t open her eyes until she heard the en suite door close. She quickly scrambled off the bed and bolted, not stopping until her bedroom door was shut tight against the temptation of his touch.
Edoardo worked outdoors all day in spite of the freezing weather. He wanted Bella so badly it was like a persistent ache in his body. Lying next to her last night had been a form of torture. He had wanted to cover her body with his, to thrust into her softness and finally claim her as his. She had crawled all over him during the night, her soft little hands reaching for him, her warm, sweet breath dancing all over his chest as she snuggled close. It had been so hard not to peel those ridiculous pyjamas from her body and plant kisses all over her skin. He had wanted to explore her in intimate detail, to caress her breasts, to taste them again, to roll his tongue over those tight little nipples. He had wanted to slip his finger inside her hot moistness, to feel the delicious clench of her body, to taste her saltiness with his tongue.
But instead he had stared fixedly at the moonlight reflected on the ceiling as he had slowly run his fingers through the gossamer silk of her hair while she slept.
He never spent the whole night with anyone. It was a rule he had never broken. His nightmares were both terrifying and dangerous. He was always so frightened he might hurt someone by lashing out while he was reliving the horror of his childhood.
He loathed the weakness of his body. His migraines were not as frequent as they once had been but they more than made up for it when they came. Last night’s had been the worst in a long while. The doctors had told him stress was a contributing factor. Bella pushing him for information about his childhood had been the trigger; he should never have allowed her to get under his guard like that. She had a way of slipping under his defences, ambushing him with her concerned looks and softly spoken words.
He could just imagine the shock and disgust on her face if he told her about his past. For all these years she had goaded him, taunted him with words about his background that were a whole lot closer to the truth than she probably realised.
He felt filthy. He had lived in filth so long he still felt dirty underneath his skin even though the outside was now clean.
He felt uncivilised. His childhood had been a black hole of despair. He had wanted to die at times rather than endure it. His anger and rage at the world had been like a cancer growing inside him. He had hit out at everyone. He hadn’t trusted anyone to do the right thing by him. He could not afford to get his hopes up only to have them brutally dashed down again. It had been so much harder to summon the will to live after a let-down.
Bella had grown up with every privilege. She had never wanted anything she couldn’t have had at the click of her finger. She had never had to fight to stay alive.
He was still fighting his demons. They plagued him when he was awake and they tortured him when he was asleep.
Sometimes he wondered if he would ever be free.
It was late in the afternoon before Bella saw him again. She was coming back from a walk to the lake when she saw him up on a ladder doing something to one of the second-storey windows. She would have walked past without acknowledging him but the ladder shifted as he reached for one of the tools