All she could hear was her own heartbeat.
Fast.
Excited.
Rows of closed doors stretched away from her. Tentatively approaching one, she pressed her ear to the wood—reclaimed, no doubt—not that she could have cared less—and listened.
Nothing.
She slid along to the next door and listened again.
Silence.
In frustration she opened the door and looked inside. It was a bedroom, dominated by the biggest bed she’d ever seen. Sulkily she wandered in, her bare feet practically disappearing into the thick white carpet. It was decorated in the same aggressively modernist style, the huge canvases on the walls depicting unintelligible blobs and shapes which looked vaguely erotic. Anna stopped in front of one that seemed to show the curve of a woman’s breast against the sweep of a male buttock.
Or was she imagining that?
She tried to imagine it hanging in the château, and felt a shiver of distaste ripple down her spine.
Of course it was distaste.
She tore her gaze away abruptly and pushed open the door into an en suite bathroom. Or shower room, she mentally amended, looking round the spartan cell derisively. There was nothing so luxurious and water-wasteful as a bath tub in there. In fact, maybe it wasn’t finished, she thought, taking a step forward. The room was lined in tiny glowing green glass tiles like the scales on a mermaid’s tail, but apart from that it was empty.
Suddenly jets of water exploded on to her bare skin from all sides, soaking her. She screamed and tried to dart out of the way, but the whole room was filled with tiny water outlets and she had moved directly into the firing line for freezing cold jets.
She screamed again. Louder.
Just as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun, the water stopped. Dripping, shivering, incoherent with shock and fury, she pushed back her streaming hair from her face and looked up to find Angelo lounging in the doorway.
Laughing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I SEE you discovered the wet room.’
Anna tried to frame a coherent sentence but found herself able to do nothing more than mouth impotently. The only words that came to mind were too offensive for her to even utter.
‘Pretty impressive, no? Designed to use as little water as possible. All the shower jets incorporate tiny vacuum pumps to aerate the water as it comes out and so increase the pressure.’ He’d been lounging against the door-frame, but now he levered himself upright. ‘That way, you get a very powerful shower while using a minimum amount of water, and the whole thing is operated by sensors.’
‘Thank you,’ she spat. ‘I think I’d just about worked that bit out for myself.’
The second part of the sentence came out as a dry croak as she watched him unbuttoning his shirt. She took a step backwards, unable to take her eyes off the rippling golden chest that was gradually being revealed.
‘What are you doing?’
He looked up and grinned as he slipped his shirt off. For a fleeting moment she thought she might pass out.
He held out the shirt to her.
‘Here. Put this on.’
‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’
She made to walk past him, but as she did so he caught hold of the tie at the back of her sodden bikini. And pulled.
She breathed in sharply, making a small shivering sound.
In an instant he was behind her and, with swift, capable hands, had drawn the tiny triangles of fabric over her head, in the same seamless movement wrapping his shirt around her. She was aware of nothing but the warm scent of him, imprinted into the whisper-soft linen, the firm pressure of his hands.
‘Now, take off those wet shorts.’
She spun round to face him. ‘No! No—I—’
He took a single step towards her and reached out. She had to bite her lip against the gasp that sprang from her, the flicker of fiery arousal that licked up her belly in anticipation of his touch. But he only took hold of the shirt and started to do up the buttons. Through a mist of agonizing desire, she glanced up at his face.
His eyes gave nothing away.
He had moved upwards and was now buttoning the shirt over her bare breasts. She was aware of the painful thrust of her nipples against the fabric and closed her eyes for a second in blissful submission.
‘There. Perfectly respectable. It almost comes down to your knees, so you’re perfectly safe to take off your shorts. I won’t look.’
Her eyes fluttered open and she swung blindly away from him, fumbling with the stiff button of the wet denim. But her hands were slow and clumsy with confusion. ‘I—can’t.’
‘Then allow me.’
Gently he drew her towards him. Unable to raise her eyes to meet his, she watched, mesmerized, as his long elegant fingers undid the button of her shorts, aware of the flat plane of his tanned stomach only inches from her own. His thumb brushed the quivering flesh of her midriff, sending a cascade of shooting stars up her spine, almost making her knees give way beneath her. Slowly, he tugged down the short zip and, slowly, deliberately slid the wet denim downwards. Helplessly she felt her hips wriggle beneath his hands, as if they had a mind of their own and were desperate to free themselves of the layers that separated her from him.
He dropped to his knees in front of her and she let her head fall backwards, lifting her hands and instinctively winding them into her wet hair as she fought to keep control of the murmurs of pleasure his touch aroused in her. His warm hand slid down one leg, then the other, stopping at her foot, his fingers tracing a swift arc of fire across her instep before gently picking it up and making her step out of the shorts. Looking down, she saw him bent before her, his tousled dark blond hair contrasting with the paler gold of the skin of his bare shoulders, beneath which the muscles flexed and rippled. Dimly she was aware of her own fingers twisting her hair into knots of desire, and she opened her eyes as he straightened up before her.
His thumb kneaded her parted lips, his fingertips caressing the hollow beneath her jaw, then trailing down the long, exposed column of her throat as she arched her back and pressed her hips to him.
She ached.
His fingers crept into the damp tangle of her hair, supporting the heavy weight of her head as she waited for his lips to meet hers. He brought his head down to brush his mouth against the side of her neck, where the pulse beat frenziedly beneath her damp skin.
‘Time to go,’ he murmured dryly. ‘A-list celebrities can be very touchy about complete strangers having sex in their bedrooms.’
Her eyes flew open as he drew away and bent to scoop her discarded shorts up off the floor. Without looking back, he walked perfectly steadily across the room to the door.
Anna dragged a hand across her burning lips and swore softly.
Striding after him, she caught up with him in the doorway and snatched her clothes from him. Then she ran ahead of him down the stairs and out into the sunlight.
Closing the front door behind him, Angelo paused briefly and rubbed the frown from his forehead.
Careful, he warned himself, but his knuckles were white on the large iron door handle. He needed to get this deal completed and return Anna to the safety of dry land, because if this carried on much longer he knew his resolve wouldn’t hold and he’d have to bed her.
He wanted to, but he’d glimpsed a vulnerability