If only she could remember those last missing pieces. What had happened with her father was becoming clearer. She’d waited on his doorstep for his housekeeper to find him. She didn’t need the actual memory to know the housekeeper had returned with the message that he didn’t want to see her. Orla knew it in her heart.
The memory she most wanted back was the accident. Where had she been going? She’d been two hours from home on the main road to Dublin…
Her desperate thoughts, barriers to help her pretend that the electricity bouncing over skin wasn’t really happening, dissolved. The weight and warmth of Tonino’s skin against hers made coherent thought impossible.
‘I would sleep much better if I was in your bed,’ he murmured.
A loose breath escaped her throat, barely audible above the humming in her ears.
She should move her hand from his and move her body away too. Instead she found her fingers lacing through his. When his thigh pressed tighter against hers and his shoulder leaned against hers, she smothered a gasp at the throb that pulsed through her abdomen and sent an ache rippling through the rest of her.
She didn’t dare utter another word. She didn’t dare look at him.
There was an excitement in her belly that was both new and yet familiar. She didn’t remember the feelings but knew, in the same instinctive way she’d known she was pregnant and that Finn’s father was Sicilian before the memories came back, that she’d felt them before.
His fingers squeezed then unlaced from hers to rest lightly on her thigh. The heat from his touch fizzed right into her veins.
Her fingers spread themselves over his thigh before her brain could compute what they were doing.
Slowly, slowly, his fingers crept upwards, gently caressing until they reached the apex of her thighs. She squeezed reflexively and gasped when his thumb brushed over the material covering her femininity.
She found herself helpless to stop her fingers slowly dragging themselves up the muscular thighs, closer and closer to…
Orla swallowed hard when the tip of her finger brushed something solid.
Dimly she was aware that Tonino’s breaths had become heavy. In the echoes of her mind she heard her own breaths too, ragged bursts as erratic as her heartbeats.
She pressed her pelvis against his hand.
He shifted so his chest pressed against her breast. His mouth pressed against the top of her head. Hot breaths permeated through her skin, darts of need careering through her veins and down to her liquid core.
Feeling drugged, she turned her face up to his. The heat swirling in his dark hooded eyes only heightened the sensations that had taken control of her body. The whispers of his breaths danced over her lips.
He covered her hand and gently slid it to cover the bulge between his legs. A thrill so powerful shot through her that her breath hitched, and it took a moment for her to register his hand no longer covered hers but had moved to her shoulder. Slowly it brushed down, over her breasts and stomach to the part of her body now aching with torment.
And then the warmth against her lips changed. It solidified, flesh forming from the air…
Tonino’s mouth was grazing against hers…
This time she could not hold back the gasp that flew from her throat. The firm pressure of Tonino’s lips against hers muffled the sound but did nothing to muffle the shaking of her right knee.
When his mouth moved she found her own mouth moving in time. She found her chest straining to him…all the cells in her body were straining to him. She barely noticed he’d undone the button of her trousers until he slipped his hand into the loosened space and burrowed into her knickers. Her gasp was muffled again by the delicious pressure of his mouth. Her mouth flooding with moisture, Orla cupped his cheek and tried to hold on to herself but it was a battle she’d lost before she’d started. A thick finger slid over her swollen nub, making her gasp again and turning her breaths into shallow pants that echoed around her. Wantonly, she pressed against the finger, heightening the sensation, and moaned into his mouth.
Her fingers moved from his cheek to cradle his head and she closed her eyes, letting her body and Tonino’s clever manipulations guide her responses.
Clinging tightly to him, their breaths merged together, she bucked against him with increasing urgency until the pleasure consumed her in its entirety and she was whimpering against him, her face burrowed in his neck, sensation that felt as if it had been dipped in nectar flooding her throbbing pelvis.
She had no idea how long it took for reality to snake its way into her delirious consciousness.
She opened her eyes.
That was Tonino’s neck her face was pressed against.
That was Tonino’s strong arm holding her so tightly and protectively against him.
That was his heartbeat thudding through his chest and reverberating in her ear.
That was his hand…
That was her hand…
Suddenly awash with mortification, Orla snatched her hand away from his crotch and yanked his hand away from hers and turned from him to fasten and straighten her clothes.
Tonino didn’t make a sound or a movement until, moments later, the car came to a stop and he shifted beside her.
She swallowed and kept her gaze fixed forward, afraid to look at him.
How could she ever look at him again?
‘We have arrived, dolcezza,’ he said huskily. His breath danced against her cheek. She closed her eyes.
A finger touched her chin.
Her heart jumped.
The air around her shifted again. Tonino had moved even closer.
There was not an inch of her skin that didn’t reawaken. Anticipation bubbled but still she kept her eyes closed.
The finger on her chin skimmed lightly over her cheek, reaching her ear. A hand plunged into her hair. Fresh tingles capered joyously on her sensitised skin.
‘Are you going to invite me in?’ he whispered into her ear.
‘What?’ Dazed, she opened her eyes, her stare immediately captured in the swirling depths of Tonino’s hungry gaze.
He captured her chin again and kissed her. Kissed her properly. Kissed her so hard and so thoroughly that the heat rebuilding deep inside her liquefied her bones as it bubbled to the surface.
The hand in her hair drifted down her back. ‘Invite me in,’ he whispered against her lips before crushing her mouth again. His hand reached her bottom and squeezed then ran over her thigh, squeezing and massaging, his mouth devouring her, sensation running amok through her.
It would be so easy to invite him into her home and lead him up to her room rather than Finn’s…
And just like that, sanity reared its gloriously ugly head.
Fixing their son’s image in her head and focusing only on that, she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him off. ‘No.’
He sat back, breathing heavily. ‘No, what?’
‘No, I am not going to invite you in.’ Heart hammering furiously, she groped for the door handle but found herself all fingers and thumbs.
A large, warm, hard body lightly covered hers. ‘Let me,’ he murmured. And then he opened the door.
Before she could escape, he palmed her cheek and