Involuntarily, Belle faltered. ‘Ever? Seriously?’
‘Seriously,’ Dante intoned, framing her hectically flushed face with both hands. ‘And I wanted to peel your father limb from limb because I was jealous and that was another first for me.’
And once he had explained that, all the turmoil inside her stopped churning and the oddest sense of peace enclosed her. ‘Jealous?’ she echoed in surprise and tickled pink by the idea. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘You must’ve been the only person in our radius that didn’t realise. I almost made a complete idiot of myself assaulting your father,’ Dante pointed out grittily. ‘You were smiling at him.’
‘Was I?’ she muttered blankly, quivering as the heat of his big powerful body brushed against her lightly clad frame and his hands slid down from her face to her hips to tug her against him, the fabric tented at his groin, telegraphing his arousal as he ground against her with a low roughened moan that was compellingly sexy.
‘Where were you last night?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Were you with a woman?’
‘I got drunk and spent the night in a hotel. No woman. I wanted you but I couldn’t have you,’ he reminded her darkly.
What remained of her tension drained away.
‘Later you’re going to explain why you didn’t tell me about your father.’
‘Later?’
‘Right now, we have much more pressing stuff on our agenda,’ Dante husked as her bra drifted down to the floor and his hands swept up her ribcage to cup her full breasts, his thumbs teasing at the taut rosy buds that crowned them.
‘But we aren’t supposed to...’
‘No rules any more, no boundaries.’ Dante claimed her anxiously parted lips in fervent persuasion and a little moan escaped low in Belle’s throat as she shivered helplessly against him. ‘I can’t tell you where this is going, but I can tell you that we’re not going to stop before we’ve fully explored it because that would be crazy,’ he reasoned thickly.
And in the back of her mind she knew he had a point because she had stopped them dead, believing that that was the right thing to do to protect herself. But possibly that decision of hers had come too late in the day to be of any real use and the chemistry and the feelings he ignited were still racing through her like wildfire to wreak havoc with her control. And how could she be anything but secretly flattered when Dante confessed that he had been jealous? Surely that suggested that she meant more to him than a casual lover?
He backed her down on the bed, parting her from her panties simultaneously, backing away a step to strip with an impatience and a burning brilliance in his possessive gaze that could only thrill her. She lay back watching him, wanting him so powerfully that she felt light-headed and almost drunk even though she hadn’t had a single sip of alcohol. But then that was what Dante did to her, winding her up so tight with longing that she could barely function. The throbbing ache of need between her thighs was unbearable.
He came down to her, naked and bronzed and hot against her cooler skin, swiftly discovering that she was in such a state of anticipation before he even began to touch her that foreplay was unnecessary. He took the invitation and plunged into her hard and fast and deep. Her whole spine arched as the pleasure rolled over her in a wild, wanton surge. She couldn’t fight the hunger and she no longer wanted to. The lusty ferocity of his strong body over and in hers electrified her with breathless excitement. Her heart hammered, the mesmerising rise of pleasure expanding relentlessly as the pace picked up. She soared to new heights, her body clenching tight before the rippling aftershocks of convulsive delight seized her.
Dante slumped down. ‘Was I too rough?’ he groaned, running his mouth lightly across her peacefully closed lips.
‘No, I liked it.’
‘Was I fantastic?’ he murmured raggedly.
‘Nope, sorry, you’re never going to get that word out of me,’ she told him roundly.
‘But I did make you scream,’ Dante responded with an unholy grin of satisfaction.
Belle had been too far gone to know what she was doing, so she let him have his moment of glory. Dante leapt out of bed and lifted the house phone, speaking briefly before scooping her up to take her into the shower with him.
‘Time to tell me about your father and why you gave me the impression that he wasn’t part of your life,’ he chided.
‘Because he never has been and I only met him once before tonight,’ Belle admitted.
‘Once?’
‘Tracy was always very cagey about giving me any details about him. His name was on my birth certificate though. She told my grandparents that he was a deadbeat dad. She visited us when I was thirteen and she was in a real rage about Alastair refusing to pay for something and accidentally dropped a few details about where he worked,’ Belle divulged. ‘I faked being sick at school so that I could get out and I caught the train into London to track him down. I was curious...’ Her voice died away, her face shuttering.
‘Of course you were. And?’
‘I’ll explain his side of the story, which I only got tonight, because I don’t want you thinking too badly of him,’ Belle continued and, while she washed her hair, she told him about her mother’s greedy con tricks and threats and her father’s marriage.
‘I get that he would be hostile after she put him through all that,’ Dante conceded grimly. ‘But how did he treat you when you first met him?’
‘He seemed to think that I was there looking for money from him, which I couldn’t understand because I didn’t know then that the money Tracy gave my grandparents came from him and, of course, she was only giving them a tiny part of it. He said he didn’t want a daughter, that I was a...a mistake who had cost him a fortune and that he had no interest in having a relationship with me,’ Belle told him shakily as Dante urged her back to the bedroom where the late supper he had ordered for them already awaited them.
‘You were a thirteen-year-old,’ Dante remarked curtly. ‘That was inexcusable.’
‘I was devastated.’ Belle shook her head in troubled recollection, her eyes hollow. ‘I’d worked out by then that my mother had no natural affection for me, but for my father to be even colder and reject me completely was even worse.’
‘I’m beginning to wish I had punched him hard,’ Dante confessed grittily. ‘I don’t care how rough a time he had dealing with your mother. You were still his daughter and once he had first-hand knowledge of what a horror your mother was, he should’ve been checking up on your welfare, not putting his wife first, not keeping you a dirty secret, not blaming you for your mother’s greed.’
‘What does it matter? It’s all water under the bridge now,’ Belle reasoned ruefully. ‘I’m willing to give him a chance. I don’t have any other family, Dante...’
‘And if you can give me a second chance,’ Dante contended reluctantly, ‘I can scarcely argue about you giving him one as well. At least he’s finally got around to telling his wife about you.’
‘Yes, that was a relief,’ Belle agreed sleepily, setting down her empty cup and snuggling into him.
She was a snuggler. That was not Dante’s style.
He let her sleep before peeling her out of her towelling robe and setting her back below the sheets on her own side of the bed. Ten minutes later she was back snuggling against him and he heaved a sigh, finally and grudgingly acknowledging that he had begun to slide superfast into a relationship of the kind he had always avoided and that he still didn’t know how that had happened.
On the other hand, he had Belle back in his bed and