‘Why don’t we make it real?’ Gaetano drawled, smooth as melted honey.
Her vocal cords went into arrest and respecting his space suddenly became much too challenging. ‘Real?’ Poppy exclaimed loudly. ‘What exactly do you mean by real?’
‘You’re not that innocent,’ Gaetano assured her lazily as he sprang into bed beside her.
‘So, you’re suggesting that we have sex because you don’t fancy celibacy?’ Poppy enquired, delicate auburn brows raised in disbelief.
‘We are stuck in this situation,’ Gaetano reminded her.
‘I can live without sex,’ Poppy told him tightly, feeling colour climb hotly towards her hairline because even saying ‘sex’ in Gaetano’s presence made her feel horribly self-conscious.
‘I can as well but not happily,’ Gaetano told her bluntly. ‘We’re very attracted to each other. We might as well make the most of it.’
‘Any port in a storm?’ Poppy remarked without amusement. ‘I’m here in the bed and, as you see it, available, so I should be interested?’
Gaetano leant closer, his stubbled jaw line propped on the heel of his upraised hand as he gazed down at her with absolutely gorgeous dark golden eyes. ‘I’m good, bella mia. You wouldn’t be disappointed.’
Poppy was as frozen with fear as a woman facing a hungry cannibal might be. But insidious heat and dampness were welling in the tender place between her thighs, striving to work their wicked seductive magic on her resistance. In fact she could feel her whole body literally wake up, sit up and take notice of Gaetano’s offer. He was offering her what she had once desperately wanted but on terms she could never accept. ‘I don’t want to be used.’
‘I’m surprised you’re so narrow in your outlook. Wouldn’t you be using me to scratch the same itch?’ Gaetano enquired softly.
Her whole face flamed and she flipped over on her side, turning her narrow back defensively on him. Get thee behind me, Satan, she thought helplessly. ‘No, thanks,’ she said chokily, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry at his blunt proposition. ‘If I want meaningless sex I imagine I can get it just about anywhere.’
Gaetano stroked a long brown forefinger down her taut spinal cord. ‘Sex with me wouldn’t be meaningless. It would be amazing. You set me on fire, gioia mia.’
Poppy rolled her eyes. He was so slick and full of confidence but that caressing touch lingered with her, lighting up little pockets of melting willingness inside her treacherous body. ‘I’ll keep it in mind. If my itch has to be scratched I will seriously consider you,’ she lied stonily.
‘What more do you want from me?’ Gaetano asked silkily. ‘I’m honest. I’m clean. I don’t lie or cheat.’
‘It doesn’t stop you from being a four-letter word of a man,’ Poppy told him roundly. ‘I thought Italian lovers were supposed to be the last word in seduction. You just turned me off big time.’
‘I was respecting your intelligence by not shooting you a line,’ Gaetano traded with husky amusement that laced through his dark deep drawl in a sexy, accented purr.
Poppy pictured herself flipping over and slapping him so hard his perfect teeth rattled in his too ingenious head. Her own teeth gritted aggressively. Without warning she was also imagining easing back into the hard, allmale heat of him while his arms closed round her and his hips moved against hers. And that sensual imagery was so energising that she felt boiling hot all over. Her nipples swelled and prickled and the heat in her pelvis mushroomed. Her face burned with shame in the darkness. Wanting was wanting, she reasoned with the sexual side of her nature, but it wasn’t enough on its own. Gaetano wasn’t the man for her, she reminded herself doggedly.
‘You know, if you were a nice guy—’
‘When did I ever say I was a nice guy?’ Gaetano cut in sharply.
‘You didn’t,’ Poppy conceded grudgingly, turning over to pick out the powerful silhouette of his head and shoulders in the dim light. ‘But you shouldn’t be thinking about your sex life. Right now you should be worrying more about how your grandfather is going to feel when this engagement falls through. Because he’s making such an effort to be welcoming and accepting of someone like me, I think he’ll be devastated when our relationship comes to nothing.’
‘Allow me to know my own grandfather better than you.’
‘You’re too focused on your career plan to see beyond it. What I saw today was that Rodolfo was incredibly happy about you getting engaged. How could he be anything other than upset when it breaks down?’
Gaetano grimaced and flung his dark head back against the pillows. She didn’t understand. How could she? He could hardly tell her that she was supposed to bomb as a fiancée so that her disappearance from his life again would be more worthy of celebration than disappointment. Time would take care of that problem. After all, she had most likely been on her very best behaviour at her first meeting with his grandfather and sooner rather than later she would probably let herself down.
‘You used to swear a lot,’ he remarked out of the blue.
‘I picked it up at school because everyone used bad language. For a while I did it deliberately because I was being bullied and I was desperate to fit in,’ she confided.
‘Did it make a difference?’
‘No,’ she admitted with a wry laugh. ‘Nothing I wore or did or said could make me cool. Being plump with red hair and living at Woodfield Hall with “those posh bastards” was a supreme provocation to the other pupils.’
‘What did the bullies do?’
Thinking of her getting bullied, Gaetano was experiencing an extraordinary desire to pull her into his arms and comfort her. But he didn’t do comforting. Indeed he was downright unnerved by that perverse impulse and he actually shifted as far away from her as he could get and still be in the same bed.
‘All the usual. Name calling, tripping me up, nasty rumours and messages and texts,’ she recited wearily. ‘I hated school, couldn’t wait to get out of there. Once I was out, I stopped swearing as soon as I realised it offended people.’
He was tempted to tell her that she had never been plump. She had simply developed her womanly curves before she shot up in height. But right then he didn’t want to talk and he didn’t want to think about curves, womanly or otherwise. His hunger for her was making him uncomfortable and that infuriated him because Gaetano had never hungered that much for one particular woman. Beautiful women had always been pretty much interchangeable for him. It was the challenge, he told himself impatiently. He only wanted her because she was saying no. But that simplistic belief didn’t ease his tension in the slightest. It was, he decided grimly, likely to feel like a very long engagement.
* * *
First thing in the morning, Poppy looked amazing, Gaetano conceded hours later, studying her from across the bedroom. Her red hair streamed like a banner across the pale bedding, framing her delicate face and the rosebud pout of her lips. A narrow shoulder protruded from below his slipped tee shirt and the sheet was pushed back to bare one leg from knee to slender ankle. And that easily, that quickly, Gaetano had a hard-on again and gritted his teeth in annoyance. What the hell was it about her? He felt like a man trying to fight an invisible illness!
‘Poppy...?’
She shifted in the bed, lashes fluttering up on luminous green eyes. ‘Gaetano...?’ she whispered drowsily.
‘I left that prompt sheet I meant you to study last night on the desk in my home office. I’ll see you at Rodolfo’s party at three.’
Poppy sat up in a panic. ‘What will I wear?’
‘Your usual clothes. Be yourself,’ he reminded her as he vanished out of the door.
Poppy