The action sent him even deeper, he shuddered and whispered something in Italian she did not catch, then he was folding her into the strong embrace of his arms and moving—moving, feeding them both into a sensuously searing rhythm that throbbed like a living entity inside her. Her fingers clung to his back as he increased the pace with each hot, pleasurable thrust. She knew where she was going but didn’t know how to reach it. She whimpered anxiously against his mouth.
He caught hold of her hair again to push her head backwards. ‘Look at me,’ he said, and she lifted heavy eyelids she hadn’t been aware of closing, to be trapped in the burning dark flames in his eyes. Then, like that, he made it happen for her, made her body quicken and finally surrender to the bright and sizzling accelerated rush.
Her first cry broke his rhythm from deep and slow to short and fast and she lost it—lost whatever it was she’d been desperately hanging onto as she shot on an explosion of fierce pleasure into wild white pulsating light, while he held her and watched her and orchestrated each wave as it battered into her, each helpless cry, each quivering, broken, convulsive tremor that just seemed to go on and on and on…until with a low, thick groan he joined her, spilling heat on the flames with a sharp stabbing movement that sent an ecstatic pleasure rippling through every muscle and bone and sinew he had.
Seduction, she acknowledged long minutes later when she finally drifted back to earth again. I’ve just been completely, beautifully, thoroughly and ruthlessly seduced.
He still hadn’t moved and his weight was heavy on her; she could feel the still-pounding beat of his heart against her crushed breasts. She became aware that her legs were still wrapped around him, though their bodies were no longer intimately joined.
Still, she knew the image of the two of them like this was going to live with her for the rest of her life.
Coupling, she named it.
It was that physical and basic.
Releasing the still trembling tension out of her limbs, she slid them away from him. As if her movement made him also decide to move, he levered himself up onto a forearm, reached out and switched off the light.
It was so abrupt, so stunningly final. He didn’t release her when he shifted his weight onto the bed beside her, but there were no words spoken between them, no clash of eyes. It was as if now it was over he was expecting them both to just fall asleep.
It hurt. It made vulnerable tears sting the backs of her eyes and her throat. She was damp between her legs and the lingering tremor of pleasure still worked within her as her stretched muscles slowly contracted back to their original state.
When she couldn’t bear it and tried to speak he just put his hand to the back of her head and pressed her face into the prickly dark warmth of his chest.
He fell asleep like that—holding her. Lizzy had never felt so wretched in her entire life. Had she brought it on herself? Was this grim silent aftermath her reward for persistently taking stabs at him—at his irritatingly unflappable control, at his prowess as a lover? She wished she knew why she did it. She wished she understood how she could resent him so angrily yet want him so badly. She just didn’t understand herself at all.
She tried to move away from him, but his powerful arms held her fast. Oddly—again—she found she liked being held by him and slowly let her muscles relax.
It didn’t occur to her that he was lying there with his eyes wide open, and that each time she moved against him he was having to fight to keep his response in check.
And she didn’t know that while she was seeing what they’d just done as a basic coupling, he was seeing it as the most soul-stripping experience of his cynical sexual life.
Lizzy drifted asleep in the warm cocoon of his arms and awoke late the next morning to find an empty place beside her in the bed. In a way it was a relief. No awkward moments having to face him while her defences were down, no stumbling around trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t come out sounding silly and vulnerable and gauche. She could shower at her leisure and get her act together.
No, she couldn’t. Instead she sank down on the edge of the plunge bath and let the whole high octane event of her wedding night rush through her head and her body in small explosions of remembered feelings, few of which made her feel good about herself—or about him.
What were they doing to each other? Why were they doing it? All Lizzy knew as she sat there remembering the hot tempo of their passionate coupling was that somehow, in the last week leading up to last night, she had allowed Luc De Santis to become a terrible fever of desire that had built and built inside her until it had taken her over.
Because she loved him—?
No! She stood up with a jerk. No, she didn’t love him. She didn’t want to love him!
Dear God, don’t let me go down that no-hope route.
Coming down the stairs half an hour later took courage because she still hadn’t reconciled last night in her head. And she ached all over, in places she didn’t think it was possible to ache, places that made her feel sensitive and self-aware and—yes, scared of what to expect from him when they met.
Unsure where to go once she reached the hallway, she followed her instincts and found herself back in the room they’d eaten supper in the night before. It was late, almost lunchtime by her reckoning, though her body clock was so up the creek, she wasn’t sure if that meant lunchtime in Italy or lunchtime here because she’d forgotten to put on her watch when she’d changed before she’d left the Lake Como villa.
The room looked different in the daylight. Bigger and bright, with the sun shaded from streaming in through the wide open windows by a huge striped awning she could see rippling softly in the breeze outside. Beneath it was a smooth stone patio stretching out to the glinting blue of a large swimming pool, and beyond that the lush colourful growth of a lovingly tended tropical garden leading right down to the edge of a blinding white sandy beach, then the rich turquoise-blue of the Caribbean sea. No sign of the gazebo from this side of the house, she noticed, and the waves that washed the shore lapped gently as if they were too lazy to foam and roll.
A sound from behind her made her turn sharply, expecting to find Luc, only to watch Nina come hurrying into the room with a beaming smile on her face.
‘Ah, so you have surfaced, signora. Mr Luc said to leave you to sleep your jet lag away, but I was beginning to worry that you would never wake up to this beautiful, beautiful day!’
The housekeeper’s gushing bright chatter eased some of the tension out of Lizzy’s body. Within minutes she was sitting in the same chair she’d sat in the night before, sipping freshly squeezed orange juice and eating slices of delicious fresh fruit with Nina still fussing around her like a mother hen taking care of a brand-new chick.
‘Please call me Lizzy,’ she said after the signora began to grate. She didn’t feel like a signora, she didn’t even feel like Mrs, though the gold ring on her finger told her she was.
Which then asked the question—what did she feel like?
‘Mr Luc went out after his breakfast to check on his farmers, as he always does when he arrives here,’ Nina was saying, gaining Lizzy’s attention quicker than anything else could.
‘His farmers?’ she prompted.
Nina gave a nod, pouring steaming coffee into her coffee-cup. ‘He didn’t tell you? This house and the land belonged to his grandmamma. Her portrait hangs in the main salon. I will show you later, if you like. Mr Luc spent a lot of his childhood here, during the school holidays. His grandmother was a forceful lady who pioneered the concept of collective farming on the island. Mr Luc has continued her success in the wake of her untimely death last year.’
Last year? Lizzy had not known that Luc had suffered such a loss so recently.
Nina nodded. ‘We still miss her—Mr Luc most of all. She made him human, he once told me.’ The housekeeper