Marrying the Italian: The Marcolini Blackmail Marriage / The Valtieri Marriage Deal / The Italian Doctor's Bride. Caroline Anderson

as he flirted with the danger of finally letting go.

      In the end Claire gave him no choice. She intensified her caresses. Even when he made a vain attempt to pull away she counteracted it, pushing his hand aside as she drew on him all the more vigorously. She heard him snatch in a harsh-sounding breath, his fingers almost painful at they held on to her hair for purchase. He exploded in three short sharp bursts, his body shuddering through it, his chest rising and falling, his face contorted with pleasure as the final waves washed through him.

      Claire sat back, a little shocked at how wanton she had been, when only minutes before she had been insisting she was not going to share a bed with him. She had shared much more than a bed now, she realised. The act she had just engaged in was probably the most intimate of all between couples.

      She could still remember the first time she had done it. She had been shy and hesitant, wondering if somehow it was wrong, but Antonio had coached her through it with patience, all the time holding back his passion until she had felt comfortable enough to complete the act. It had taken a few tries, but he hadn’t seemed to mind. And besides, he had done the same to her—many times. The first time he had placed his mouth on the secret heart of her she had nearly leapt off the bed in reaction, so intense had been the feelings. But over time she had learned to relax into the caress of his lips and tongue, forgetting her shyness and simply enjoying his worship of her body demonstrated time and time again.

      Antonio pushed her gently back down on the pillows, his ink-black eyes meshing with hers. ‘I owe you,’ he said.

      Claire felt her belly quiver like unset custard. ‘I feel like a hypocrite,’ she confessed.

      ‘Why is that?’ he asked as he brushed his mouth over her right breast.

      She pulled in a sharp breath as her nipple tightened. ‘I told you I didn’t want to sleep with you, but that is clearly not the case—given what just happened.’

      ‘So, who is sleeping?’ he asked, looking at her with a smouldering look.

      She began to gnaw at her bottom lip again, her brow furrowing.

      ‘Hey,’ he said, stroking her lip with the tip of his index finger. ‘Stop doing that. You will make yourself bleed.’

      Claire ran her tongue over her lips and encountered his finger. The contact was so erotic she felt a tug deep inside her abdomen.

      He was giving her that look—the look that meant she was not going to go to sleep tonight without experiencing the cataclysmic release he had planned for her in return for what she had done to him.

      ‘Lie back,’ he commanded deeply.

      Claire shivered as she eased back down on the mattress. Her nakedness would barely even have registered in her consciousness if it hadn’t been for his searing gaze, drinking all of her in. She saw the way his eyes focussed on her breasts, the way his gaze moved down over her belly to where the triangle of her womanhood was barely concealed by the tiny landing strip of dark, closely cropped curls. It was as close to a Brazilian wax as her pain centres had allowed on her last beauty salon visit, but now she wished she had gone the whole distance. She wanted to please him, to surprise him, to show him she was no longer an innocent girl from the Australian Outback, starstruck by his good looks and status. She was a woman now—a woman who knew what she wanted. And what she wanted was him.

      If it was only going to be for three months then she would settle for that. She had dealt with loss before and survived. She had made the mistake of living in the past too long. It was well and truly time to move on, to live in the moment as so many of her peers did. They didn’t worry about a few weeks of pleasure with a casual lover. They didn’t agonise over whether or not they should sleep with a man they were seriously attracted to. They just did it and enjoyed every minute of it.

      Claire’s life, on the other hand, had become an anachronism; she had locked herself away in a time warp, not moving on with the times, not dealing with the past, stuck in a blank sort of limbo where her true feelings were papered over most of the time—until Antonio Marcolini had reappeared in her life and turned her world upside down and inside out.

      From that first moment when she had heard his voice speak her name on the phone everything had changed. The feelings she had tried to squash had risen to the surface. They were bubbling even now, like volcanic mud, great big blobs of feeling, spluttering, popping with blistering heat, unpredictable, driven by forces outside of her control.

      He kissed her mouth lingeringly, deeply and passionately, leaving her in a state of mindless, boneless need. Desire rippled through her as his tongue brushed against hers, calling hers into a sensual duel that left her gasping for more and more of his touch.