There was a sensual quality in his voice that impacted directly on her pulse, making it go faster. Afraid to open her mouth again, in case she sounded even more panicked, Lara reluctantly went towards Ciro. Her jacket had fallen off her shoulders and she shivered slightly in the night breeze.
‘Cold?’
She rubbed her arms. ‘No, I’m fine.’
I’m not fine.
Lara’s hip bumped against the terrace wall. Ciro reached out and caught a strand of her hair, tugging her a little closer. The air between them grew taut. Expectant.
He looked at her hair as it slipped through his fingers, and then he said musingly, ‘I don’t despise you, Lara. I will admit that I felt humiliated by you for some time, but then I had to acknowledge that it was my own fault for having believed the façade you’d projected when I should have known better. No woman had ever managed to fool me before you.’
Lara’s heart squeezed. It hadn’t been his fault at all. ‘Ciro, I didn’t—’
He put a finger to her mouth. ‘I don’t care about that any more. All I care about is that I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you and I should never have denied myself this...’
‘This’ was Ciro putting his hands to Lara’s waist and urging her towards him. Unsteady in her heels, and taken by surprise, Lara fell into him, landing flush against his body.
The effect was instantaneous. From the moment this man had first touched her, kissed her, two years ago, it had been like this. She cleaved to Ciro like a magnet drawn to its true north. His mouth touched hers and she gripped his shirt to stay standing. When she felt the slide of his tongue against the seam of her mouth she opened it instinctively, allowing him access.
Sicily and this place, even in such a short space of time, had touched something raw inside her. She could no more deny herself or Ciro this than she could stop breathing.
He gathered her closer and she could feel every ridge and muscle of his chest against hers, through the thin silk of her dress. And, down further, the press of his arousal against her belly. Desire pulsed between her legs. She wanted this man with a ferocity that might have scared her if she’d been thinking rationally for a moment. It was as if she was embracing the carnal to avoid thinking about anything rational.
Ciro’s whole body was taut with the effort it was taking him not to swing Lara up into his arms and take her to the nearest horizontal surface, so he could lay her down and banish the demons that had been stalking him for two long years.
She felt like liquid fire in his arms. The soft contours of her body melted into his as if they’d been made especially for him. A ridiculously romantic notion that he didn’t even have the wherewithal to reject right now, because he was so consumed with desire and need.
She tasted of sparkling wine and something much sweeter. And she exuded a kind of blind trust in Ciro, following and mimicking his movements. Darting out her tongue to touch his, as if she was afraid of what might happen if she was bolder. It ratcheted up his levels of arousal to a point where he had to bite back a groan. It reminded him of how she’d been before...which had to be his fevered imagination...
Her effect on him was as explosive as it always had been. Even though he now knew who she was and what she was capable of. It was as if that knowledge had added a darker edge to his desire. Because she was no longer an innocent—if she ever had been.
His hands couldn’t rest on her waist. He had to explore her or die. Tracing over the curve of her hip, and up, he felt the silk of her dress slide over her body under his hand.
Ciro held his breath for a moment when he found and cupped her breast, felt its lush weight filling his hand, the press of her nipple against his palm. He wanted to taste her there, explore the hard nub with his tongue and teeth, make her squirm with pleasure. Make her moan...
Lara was drowning in heat and sensation. She’d never felt so many things at once. It was overwhelming, but utterly addictive. The rough stroke of Ciro’s tongue on hers made her yearn to know what his tongue would feel like on her breast. He squeezed her there and her body vibrated with pleasure. It was too much. It wasn’t enough.
Lara knew that she should pull back, put a stop to this, but some vital part of her resolve was dissolving in Ciro’s arms and a fatal lethargy was taking over. A strong desire to put herself in the hands of this man. To capitulate to his every command.
‘I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you.’
She’d wanted him too—even though it had terrified her. And two years of purgatory had only made that wanting stronger. It was one of her big regrets that Ciro had never made love to her. That she’d had no palpable memory to comfort her in the long and lonely nights of her marriage.
It was also one of the reasons she’d found that superhuman strength to push her husband off her on their wedding night. The thought of any man but Ciro touching her had been utterly repulsive.
And now she was here in Ciro’s arms. And she wanted him to touch her so desperately that she blocked out all the inner voices whispering warnings.
But a tiny sliver of oxygen got to her brain and she pulled back with an effort, struggling to open her eyes and calm her thundering heart.
Ciro’s eyes were so dark they were fathomless. ‘Lara...’
Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth as she said, ‘Is this really a good idea?’
A COOL BREEZE skated over Ciro’s skin and he felt a prickle of exposure. Lara looked utterly wanton with her tousled hair and flushed cheeks. Her too-big eyes. Her plump and swollen mouth.
‘Yes. We are consummating this marriage. You want me, Lara. You can’t deny it.’
She looked down for a moment and it incensed Ciro. He had seen the way she’d morphed into another person in front of him once before. He tipped her chin back up, expecting to see some measure of triumph or satisfaction because she knew he couldn’t hide how much he wanted her, but there was nothing in those huge blue eyes except an emotion he couldn’t define. An emotion that caught at his chest, making it tight.
‘Say it, Lara. Admit it.’
She bit her lip and looked at him searchingly, as if trying to find the answer to some riddle. Ciro was so used to women jumping into his arms at the slightest invitation that this was a wholly new experience.
Except it wasn’t. Lara had been like this before. Hesitant. Shy. Lying.
‘I do want you, Ciro. I always have.’
Ciro couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice when he replied. ‘That was one thing that was honest between us at least.’
Lara didn’t want to be reminded of the past. She wanted to stay in this moment. This moment, when she could almost pretend the previous two years hadn’t happened.
A sense of urgency gripped her and she pressed against Ciro, spreading her hands on his chest. ‘Please, make love to me.’
Ciro looked down at her for such a long moment that Lara instinctively started to pull back, suspecting that perhaps this was all part of his plan to humiliate her when she was at her most vulnerable, but then he made a small rough sound and grabbed her hand, entwining his fingers with hers to lead her back into the palazzo.
Her heart was thundering so loudly she was sure he must be able to hear it. There wasn’t any sign of Isabella or Roberto and Lara was glad. This moment was too raw to be witnessed. This was no benign wedding night consummation.
Lara’s