Athena whipped her head round and instantly regretted moving so quickly as the room and her stomach lurched in unison. Luca was sitting in an armchair close to the bed. He was dressed entirely in black, and his tight-fitting sweater moulded his torso so that she could see the delineation of his powerful abdominal muscles beneath the fine wool.
Lifting her gaze higher, she noted that the night’s growth of dark stubble on his jaw accentuated his raw sexual magnetism. His mouth was curled in an even more cynical expression than usual, and she felt unnerved by the assessing expression in his amber eyes. The fact that he was dressed seemed to indicate that he had not accepted her drunken invitation the previous night, but Athena was desperate for confirmation.
‘If I spent last night in your bed, where did you sleep?’
His black brows snapped together, but his voice was deceptively soft as he drawled, ‘Where do you think I might have spent the night?’
Her jerky glance at the rumpled sheets betrayed her. Luca’s eyes narrowed and he swore. ‘Are you suggesting that I took advantage of you while you were paralytic? Could you be any more insulting?’
She swallowed and rested her aching head against the pillows. ‘I’m sorry...but I don’t remember anything that happened after you brought me to your suite last night...and I need to know if you...if we...’
He moved with the speed of an attacking cobra as he sprang up from the chair and leaned over the bed, placing his hands on either side of her head.
‘You are not in my bed. This hotel suite has two bedrooms. Let’s get a few facts straight,’ he said grimly. ‘Number one—if we’d had sex I guarantee you would remember. Number two—I only make love to women who are conscious and capable of participating. Number three...’ Luca’s wolf’s eyes gleamed with a hard brilliance ‘...I dislike being manipulated, Miss Howard.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked shakily.
His face was so close to hers that even without her glasses she could almost count his thick black eyelashes. The rigid line of his jaw warned her that his hold on his temper was tenuous. But despite his anger Athena did not feel the wariness that she usually felt with men. Far from it. She hardly dared to breathe as her senses reacted to the warmth emanating from Luca’s body and the intangible scent of his maleness.
Molten heat washed over her entire body and pooled between her thighs. She was painfully aware of the ache in her breasts and her pebble-hard nipples chafing against her lacy bra cups. The intensity of her desire shocked her, yet deep down she felt relieved at this proof that she had normal sexual needs just like any other woman, and that the assault when she was a teenager had not destroyed her sensuality.
She pictured Luca lowering his body onto hers and pinning her to the mattress with his hard thighs. She imagined how it would feel to have her breasts crushed against his chest and her lips crushed beneath his mouth as he kissed her with fierce passion.
The urge to moisten her dry lips with the tip of her tongue was overwhelming. She saw his eyes narrow as he watched the betraying gesture, and she sensed from his sudden stillness that he knew she wanted him to kiss her.
He jerked upright, leaving her confused by her reaction to him and pink cheeked with embarrassment.
‘This is what I mean,’ he said harshly, dropping a pile of newspapers onto the bed.
Athena tried to ignore her pounding headache as she sat upright and peered at the headline on one of the papers. ‘What does it say? I can’t read it without my glasses. Thank you...’ she murmured when Luca shoved her spectacles into her hand.
She put them on and drew a sharp breath as she saw clearly the newspaper headline and the photograph below it of Luca holding her in his arms in the hotel bar. She had her arms wrapped tightly around his neck and a silly grin on her face that in the cold light of day made her want to die of mortification.
‘Bride Jilts Toff for Italian Playboy!’ screamed the headline, followed by a paragraph explaining how The Honourable Charles Fairfax had been left heartbroken after his fiancée Athena Howard had run off with his old school friend from Eton College, famous fashion designer Luca De Rossi, an hour before their lavish wedding was due to take place.
‘Oh, my God,’ Athena said faintly. There were a hundred questions in her mind and she voiced the top one. ‘How did the journalists know you had brought me to your hotel?’
‘Drop the innocent act,’ Luca growled. ‘Obviously you tipped off the press about our location and told them this lie about us having an affair.’
‘No... No, I didn’t!’ she stammered, suddenly realising that behind Luca’s unreadable expression his anger was simmering like a volcano about to erupt. ‘Why would I have done that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you had a row with Charlie and wanted to hurt him. You used me as your stooge. I helped you to escape from Woodley Lodge because I believed your helpless “I can’t marry Charlie because I don’t love him” routine, and this is the thanks I get,’ he said savagely as he picked up another newspaper with a similar sensational headline and screwed it up in his fist. ‘I don’t know why you did it. Who understands what goes on in women’s minds?’ Luca muttered.
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