He brushed a lock of hair away from the smoothness of her cheek. ‘I’m afraid I might break you.’
‘You won’t break me, Dante. I’m a woman, not a piece of glass.’ Her voice trembled a little as she lifted her chin and he saw the sudden light of determination in her eyes. ‘Don’t be different towards me just because I’ve never done this before, or because once I was sick. Be the same as you always are.’
‘Be careful what you wish for.’ With a little growl, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Carefully, he laid her down on the bed before moving away and beginning to unbutton his shirt, telling himself that if she looked in any way daunted as he stripped off, then he would stop.
But she was watching him like a kid in a candy store and her widened eyes and parted lips were only adding to his desire—if such a thing was possible. He eased the zip down over his straining hardness and carefully watched her reaction as he stood before her naked—but her face was full of nothing but wonder, and hunger.
‘Oh, Dante,’ she said, very softly.
It was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. He went over to the bed and bent over her, tracing the pad of his thumb over her trembling lips and following it with the slowest, deepest kiss imaginable. It made his heart kick and his groin throb, and when he drew back he could see she looked dazed. You and me both, sweetheart, he thought, his fingertip stroking along the delicate lace of the bra which edged her creamy skin, and he felt her tremble.
‘Scared?’ he said.
She gave a little shrug. ‘Scared I might not meet your expectations.’
He unclipped the front clasp of her bra, so that her delicious little breasts sprang free and he smiled as he bent his head to trace each budding nipple with his tongue.
‘You already have,’ he murmured throatily. ‘You’re perfect.’
Willow didn’t react to that because she knew she wasn’t. Nobody was and in her time she had felt more imperfect than most. But the look on his face was making her feel pretty close to perfect and she would be grateful to him for ever for that.
And now his thumbs were hooking into the sides of her knickers and he was sliding them all the way down her legs.
‘Mmm...’ he said, his gaze pausing to linger on her groin. ‘A natural blonde.’
And Willow did something she’d never imagined she’d do on her long-anticipated initiation into sex. She burst out laughing.
‘You are outrageous,’ she said as he dropped the discarded underwear over the edge of the bed.
‘But you like me being outrageous, don’t you, Willow?’
And that was the thing. She did. Dante Di Sione was both arrogant and outrageous, yes. She could understand why they called him a maverick. But he was a lot of other things too. Most men in his position, she suspected, would have bedded her before now—but Dante had not. He had tried to do the right thing, even though it had gone against all his macho instincts. He had resisted and resisted until he could resist no more. He was strong and masterful, yet he had a conscience which made her feel safe. And safety had always been a big deal for her.
‘I think you know the answer to that question,’ she murmured as she tipped her head back so that he could kiss her neck.
And Dante did know. He gave a groan of satisfaction as he explored her. He touched her wetness until she was trembling uncontrollably—until she had begun to make distracted little pleas beneath her breath. She was so ready, he thought, his heart giving a thunder of expectation as his hand groped blindly towards the bedside locker.
Thank God for condoms, he thought—though as he rolled the contraceptive on, it was the only time she seemed uncertain. He saw her biting down on her lip and he raised his eyebrows, forcing himself to ask the question, even though he could barely get the words out.
‘It won’t be easy and I can’t promise that it won’t half kill me to do it, but if you want to change your mind...’
‘No,’ she said fiercely, her eager kisses raining over his eyelids, his jaw and his mouth. ‘Never! Never, never, never.’
Her eagerness made him smile and when finally he entered her there was only the briefest moment of hesitation as he broke through her hymen, and he was filled with a powerful sense of possession.
‘Does it hurt?’ he said indistinctly, fighting against every instinct in his body as he forced himself to grow still inside her.
But she shook her head. ‘It feels like heaven,’ she said simply.
Dante closed his eyes and finally gave himself up to the rhythm which both their bodies seemed to be crying out for, though already he could sense she was very close to the edge.
Gripping her narrow hips he brought himself deeper inside her, bending his head to let his tongue flicker over her peaking nipples while she twisted like some pale and beautiful flower beneath him.
‘Dante,’ she gasped, but she didn’t need to tell him what he already knew.
He had watched with rapt fascination the build-up of tension in her slender frame. The darkening of those wintry eyes. The way her head moved distractedly from side to side so that her hair fanned the pillow like a silky blond cloud. Her back began to arch and her legs to stiffen, and just as her body began to convulse helplessly around him, he saw the rosy darkening of her skin above her tiny breasts.
‘Dante,’ she gasped again, and mumbled something else, but he didn’t know what it was, and frankly, he didn’t care. Because he’d been holding off for so long that he couldn’t endure it for a second longer, so that when eventually his orgasm came, he felt the rush of blood and pleasure as his senses began to dissolve—and he felt like he was floating.
TO WILLOW, IT felt like living in a dream.
Dante Di Sione was her lover and he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. And the feeling was mutual.
But it wasn’t a dream. It was real. She needed to remember that. To remind herself that this was temporary. That it meant nothing. It meant nothing but sex. He’d told her that himself.
She pulled the rumpled sheet over her and listened to the sound of running water coming from the en-suite bathroom.
The trouble was that when you really wanted something it was easy to start constructing fantasies—the kind of fantasies which had got her into trouble in the first place. She started thinking about Dante’s lifestyle. About his dislike of weddings and expressed distaste of settling down and doing the ‘normal’ stuff. What would he say if she told him she didn’t care about all that stuff either? And that they might actually be a lot more compatible than he thought.
But thinking that way could lead to madness. It could make you start hoping for the impossible—and hope was such a random and unfair emotion. Hadn’t she watched her young friends die in hospital and vowed that she would never waste her time on useless hope?
So just enjoy what you have, she told herself fiercely. Store it all up in your mind and your heart—so that you can pull it out and remember it when you’re back in England and Dante Di Sione is nothing but a fast-fading memory.
It started to feel like a real holiday as he showed her around his home territory and introduced her to places he’d grown up with. He took her to tiny restaurants in New York’s Little Italy, where the maître d’ would enquire after his grandfather’s health and where Willow ate the best pasta of her life. They spent a day at a gorgeous place in Suffolk County called Water Mill, where a friend of Dante’s had the most beautiful house, surrounded by trees. They visited Sag Harbor and spent the night having sex in a stunning hotel overlooking the water, and the following day took a trip out on the Di Sione boat,