‘You’ve barely touched alcohol today,’ Cesare commented, wondering why she had fallen so quiet. Not that she was ever a chatterbox, he acknowledged wryly. In fact there was always a stillness about her, a sense of tranquillity at the heart of her that was disconcertingly attractive.
‘In the light of our...er...plans,’ Lizzie muttered awkwardly, ‘I thought it was better to abstain.’
‘You’re referring to the alcohol and pregnancy safety debate?’
Kill me now, Lizzie thought melodramatically. ‘Yes. The argument about what might be a safe level goes back and forth, so it seems wiser just to avoid it altogether.’
‘Is that why you made the most of your hen night?’ Cesare asked, strong jawline tensing as he remembered her on the dance floor, full of vital energy and playfulness as she cast off her usual restraint.
‘No. That wasn’t planned. I missed Chrissie,’ she admitted, colouring, ‘and it had just been a very long time since I had been out like that and I overindulged.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ Cesare urged, stunning dark golden eyes shimmering in the candlelight against his bronzed skin.
He was so...hot, he was literally on fire, Lizzie reflected dizzily. And she was married to him, about to share a bed with him...and she was fretting, shrinking, sighing over the fact? What was wrong with her? That chemistry he had mentioned was in overdrive, lighting her up from the inside out with a prickling, tingling energy that her body could no longer contain. In an abrupt movement, she rose from the table and walked to the edge of the terrace to study the lights of the fortified village on the other side of the valley.
Her heart was as locked up tight as that village, hidden behind high defensive walls, she reminded herself bracingly. Having sex with Cesare didn’t mean she was about to get silly ideas about him and start pining when he was no longer available. She had watched her mother careen blindly from one man to the next, hooked on love, her drug of choice. Lizzie had loved once and learned her lesson. If she couldn’t even make it work with Andrew, there was little chance of it working with anyone else. She would have a baby to love though, she told herself in consolation.
‘You’re very tense, cara.’ Cesare sighed, stilling behind her and gently resting his hands on her taut shoulders. Her delicate frame was dwarfed by his. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do...’
That he could read her nervous tension that accurately mortified Lizzie. In truth the problem was that she wanted him too much and feared the strength of that yearning. He turned her slowly round into the circle of his arms and she looked up at him and her knees went weak and her heart leapt in helpless response.
‘I know that,’ she asserted valiantly, wondering why he found the sudden change in their relationship so much easier. Were men just built that way? Was he more adaptable than she was? Or more relaxed at the concept of a marriage in which the only glue keeping them together would be sex and the hope of parenthood? Just sex, nothing worth fussing over, he had said after he got out of a bed where he had literally rocked her world. It was true that the only pleasure had been hers but his cold-blooded, practical take on what had happened between them had still knocked her for six. Yet she still couldn’t drag her gaze from his beautifully shaped, passionate mouth.
Cesare studied her with veiled eyes, black lashes rimming the glint of smouldering gold. Desire was lancing through him with lightning-force potency, sending tiny ripples of tension through his big, powerful frame. He couldn’t take his eyes off her lush mouth and the pouting crowns of her small breasts, which stirred softly below the fine silk of her top every time she shifted position.
It was years since Cesare had been so aware of a woman and he loathed the edgy bite of frustrated hunger that made him tense. He wanted to have sex with her and persuade his libido and his brain that, after all, she was just like any other woman he had bedded. He hadn’t been with anyone since the day he had first met her and that bothered him. He hadn’t wanted Celine when he’d had the opportunity and no other woman had since attracted his attention. Of course the problem was doubtless that his affair with Celine had run its natural course and left him bored. Lizzie was new and different, which had obvious appeal. There was even something strangely, weirdly sexy about the idea of getting her pregnant. He wasn’t sure what it was but he knew that just the thought of it made him hard and ready. Given even the smallest encouragement, he would’ve ditched Maria’s wedding banquet of a meal and headed straight for the bedroom.
Shaking off that foolish thought, Cesare gazed down at his bride with the sudden piquant recognition that she was his wife. His legal wife, his to have and to hold, his to protect. Without further ado, he pulled her close and kissed her, a husky growl sounding in the back of his throat when her firm little breasts brushed against his chest. She liked being carried; he remembered that and smiled. He hoisted her up into his arms and Archie scrambled up from his position of repose by the sun-warmed wall and barked in consternation at the sight of them.
‘Keep quiet, Archie,’ Cesare groaned. ‘You can’t come between a man and his wife...and I warn you, Lizzie, he’s not sleeping with us tonight or any other night.’
Lizzie was challenged enough to think of sleeping with Cesare and her mouth was still tingling from the hungry pressure of his mouth. As he carried her upstairs she decided that she was turning into a shameless hussy. A gasp escaped her lips when she saw the bedroom, which had been transformed into a bower of candlelight and flowers while they had been dining. Candles flickered light from metal lanterns set round the room and lush vases of pristine white flowers completed the magical effect.
‘Did you organise this?’ Lizzie asked in wonderment when he settled her down at the foot of the bed.
Cesare laughed. ‘No. Maria has waited a long time for me to find a wife and I think she’s celebrating.’
Sudden shyness reclaimed Lizzie as he gazed down at her, the lights picking out the hollows below his high cheekbones, lending him an enigmatic quality. In that lambent light, he was truly beautiful, sleek and dark, exotic and compellingly male. With sure hands he pushed her hair back from her face, letting the long, silky strands flow down her back. He tipped up her face and claimed another kiss, feeding from the sweetness of her mouth with hungry fervour, crushing her soft full lips below his while her fingers clung to his shoulders.
‘I’ve been thinking about this from the first moment I saw you,’ Cesare growled against her reddened mouth, his dark deep voice vibrating down her spinal cord, the very essence of masculinity.
‘You do talk nonsense sometimes and please don’t tell me that’s a compliment that I should gratefully receive. The first time you saw me I was in my dungarees and looked a complete mess!’ Lizzie protested on the back of a rueful laugh.
‘There’s no accounting for taste or the male libido,’ Cesare quipped, impervious to her disagreement. ‘I saw your face, your skin, your eyes...it was enough, delizia mia.’
‘I like it when you talk Italian,’ Lizzie confided breathlessly. ‘You could be reciting the multiplication tables but it wouldn’t matter. It’s your accent, your voice, the pitch you use.’
Surprised by that unexpected burst of loquaciousness, Cesare grinned, a slanting wicked grin that utterly transformed his lean, darkly handsome face, wiping away the cool vigilance and control that was usually etched there. ‘What I like most about you is that you surprise me all the time.’
‘Right now I’m surprising me,’ Lizzie told him truthfully, uncertainty darkening her hazel eyes as it crossed her mind that she was behaving impulsively, not something she made a habit of after growing up with an impetuous mother. But then she was