An Invitation to Sin(48)

She wound her leg around his hips and felt him shift slightly as he loosened his belt. Desperate, he fumbled for something and then his trousers hit the floor with the rest of their clothes and she felt the silken hardness of him against her thigh.

‘Ti voglio tanto—I want you.’ Switching between languages, Luca stumbled over the words, his hand behind her neck as he brought his mouth down on hers and captured her lips in a raw, explicit kiss that sent shock waves of sensation rocketing through her body.

‘Me too—me too…’ She was barely coherent as she closed her hand round the thick length of him, heard him groan and say something in Italian she didn’t understand and then his hands were under her bottom and he was lifting her, supporting her weight with his arms as he pressed her back against the wall and entered her with a single hard thrust that joined them completely. The feel of him deep inside her was so shockingly good she cried out. No silence for her this time as the hot, hard heat of him consumed her and no silence from him either as he released a raw, primitive groan that originated somewhere deep in his throat.

She was already so wet from the erotic torment of their silent foreplay at the opera her body welcomed his, clamping round the silken strength of him, testing his control. She knew a brief moment of relief that he’d used a condom and then sanity left her and there was only the madness they created together.

‘Cristo—’ His voice unsteady, he thrust deeper even though deeper didn’t seem possible because he was already part of her and they moved together, fast, hard, desperate as they let the feelings burn through them. Neither of them tried to stop it. Neither of them pretended this wasn’t what they wanted, because both knew it was. It was what they’d wanted from that first moment in the maze. It was wild, but they didn’t care. It was crazy, but they didn’t care about that either. They cared about nothing except the moment and when the moment came, when he drove her to another climax, she pulled him over with her, her body tightening around his, sharing each pulse, each thrust, each explosion of sensation as they tumbled together over the edge and into ecstasy.





CHAPTER SEVEN



LUCA WOKE IN a panic.

The reason came back to him before he opened his eyes.

He’d spent the night with a woman.

The whole night.

In his bed. In his home, where he never brought anyone.

Admittedly, more than half the night had been spent having sex. Wild, abandoned, selfishly indulgent sex. After the first time when they’d barely made it through the door they’d graduated to the rug on the floor, his luxurious shower and finally the bed where each had exhausted the other until they’d fallen asleep wrapped around each other.

Wrapped around each other…

Drenched in panic, he was about to spring from the bed when he realised it was empty and that Taylor was stumbling round the room, snatching up her clothes like a woman running for her life.

Distracted by the urgency in her movements, Luca forgot his own panic and absorbed hers. ‘Is Etna erupting and we have just minutes to escape? Should I call the emergency services?’

‘Go back to sleep.’ Dragging open a drawer, she locked her hand around the first item of clothing she encountered. Dressed only in her panties with her trademark hair clouded and tangled from a night of wild sex, she was still the hottest woman he’d ever seen.

Realising that for the first time in his life he was witnessing a woman who was even more panicked about relationships than he was, Luca relaxed slightly.

She pulled on the T-shirt without bothering with a bra, a decision Luca supported wholeheartedly.

‘This is like a strip in reverse but it’s surprisingly erotic.’ His own panic fading, he hooked his hands behind his head and watched as she yanked on jeans in such haste she almost fell. ‘Where exactly are you going in this much of a hurry? This is Sicily. No one rushes in Sicily. You’re not on New York time now, dolcezza.’ But he knew her frantic rush to get dressed and escape had nothing to do with a desire to get to work and everything to do with her need to escape from a situation that terrified her. It would have terrified him too, except that she was panicking enough for both of them.

‘I’m going out—’ she snapped the words and zipped her jeans so violently he flinched ‘—out…somewhere. Anywhere.’

She dressed with no thought and yet she looked effortlessly stunning. It occurred to him that women would break down and cry if they knew how little effort Taylor Carmichael put into looking as good as she did. She was thought of as an actress but she could just as easily have modelled, especially now with her expression as moody as Etna on a bad day and her hair pouring over her shoulders in wild disarray.