The Vengeful Groom. SARA WOOD

Thoroughly wanton. A hand crawled up her back, and she arched away when all her instincts told her to wriggle into the sweep of his palm and let him explore every curve of her warm body.

      With a sudden effort she broke free, her mouth strangely reluctant to do anything more than hold its crushed-kiss pout. Feeling sick with herself, she took a huge breath and said, “Get out!”

      “Sure. When I’m satisfied,” he replied in a sexy growl.

      Her eyes widened in alarm. She was alone. With a guy who couldn’t control himself. God, her sex drive had driven her mad! “Giovanni!” she whispered shakily. “You…you wouldn’t…” Fear cut off her vocal cords. He was gently stroking the shimmering skin that stretched over her collarbone, a look of dangerous lust in his eyes as he gazed at her.

      “I will do whatever I have to,” he said softly.

      His body shifted a little closer. She felt the warmth of him a breath or two away and her lips parted in a whimper. The blond head lowered, offering her the full impact of its glorious sun-bleached curls, tousled charmingly by the fall, cascading in touchable damp tendrils on his smoothly tanned forehead. Two dark eyes melted into hers.

      A spear of something unrecognizable caught her unawares and made her quiver from head to foot. Her head spun. Flu, she thought. A stomach bug. Just when she needed all her strength.

      And then she was swallowing back a cry of alarm because his powerful arms and body were forming an imprisoning cage around her, and she knew that if she attempted to come upright, she couldn’t avoid being pressed intimately against him again. The thought made her feel sick. That strong male body. The hard muscular thighs…

      A sudden flash of sexual reaction ripped through her, from loins to stomach, to breasts, throat and mouth, her lips flowering into an unwilling lushness. It wasn’t sickness, she thought, appalled. It was a totally unwelcome carnal excitement that had overtaken her and refused to go away.

      My sister is dead, she said to herself. Her child is dead. Gio killed them. The destructive desire receded a little. To her eternal shame, it ebbed away more slowly than it had come.

      He smiled mockingly as if he knew everything that was going on inside her and growled with sexy appreciation in his golden throat. “So it still happens,” he marveled. “You become aroused by a look, a gesture, by the passing of warm breath over your ultrasensitive skin.” He gazed at her through the dark fringe of lashes, his expression infinitely seductive. “I do so love the combination of madonna and whore in your makeup.”

      “That’s insulting!” she cried with hot-faced indignation. “Being near you makes me sick with disgust!”

      “Sure?”

      His knowing eyes played on her trembling body in a slow and devastatingly sexy prelude to possession, and to her utter dismay she felt each part tense painfully in turn and leave a tingle on the skin that seeped deeper into each receptive pore. Although he was caressing her only with his eyes, it was as though he was lightly drawing his fingers across her body in a sensual movement that snaked thrillingly down her throat and across her naked shoulders. She was sick with something—hunger, emptiness, a lost dream.

      Pain flashed through her, the pain of misery and violent need. The shock of her response thickened her tongue, and it was a great effort to say what she had to. “I’m sure,” she rasped, even those two words wavering.

      “I don’t think you’re sure at all. Your big blue eyes are a real giveaway,” he said with a contemptuous drawl. His voice became husky. “They’re glazed and they’re alarmed and they’re begging.”

      “No!” she denied, making them as narrow as she could.

      He smiled mockingly. “And your beautiful mouth is asking to be kissed so prettily,” he said, touching her hot swollen lower lip. His finger traced a delicate trail to the corner, and it was all she could do to keep her mouth closed and not groan in hunger. “Then there’s your breathing,” he murmured.

      “My…what?” she said jerkily, and blinked. She’d squeaked, actually squeaked! Her obvious horror at her own self-betrayal made him smile triumphantly.

      “Very shallow, rapid, rather rasping,” he observed with a solicitous smile. “Health problem or me?”

      Bodies were treacherous, she thought irritably. They had long memories. She suffered a cruel split-second reminder of their exciting union—wild, passionate, utterly satisfying and perfectly wonderful to her innocent mind and body. Pushing away the memory of his golden body above hers in all its naked glory, she squirmed beneath his knowing stare and tried to concentrate.

      “Anger!” she explained in a furious croak.

      His eyebrow lifted cynically. “Uh-huh.”

      “It is,” she muttered, incensed that he was able to invest such depth of meaning in one little “uh-huh.”

      “I’d advise you not to get angry too often, then,” he said. “The results do the most alarming things to your lovely breasts and only a saint would keep his hands off them. In case you hadn’t noticed,” he added unnecessarily, “I’m not a saint.”

      She folded her arms with difficulty. There seemed to be a lot of her in the way suddenly. “Keep your eyes and your mind off my body!” she mumbled. “And get in your dream machine and drive off into the blue yonder!” she added in despair.

      “I would if I could, believe me,” he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “But I have too many memories of your eager responses. Like when I was dating Beth and had dropped her off with her aunt. You and I were stuck in my car while the blizzard raged around us….”

      Tina bristled. “I was cold. You said you’d warm me up. You were the one coming on to me,” she said tightly.

      A faint smile tilted the corners of his expressive mouth, and Tina found herself staring at it, hopelessly remembering his first gentle respectful kiss. “I think you were with me every step of the way,” he said quietly.

      “I was scared,” she countered, ruthlessly obliterating the dreamlike quality of the kiss and her naively delighted demands for more. He’d obliged, of course. Till she was dizzy and intoxicated with love. “I needed comfort. I was afraid we’d be stranded,” she explained.

      “No, you weren’t. You hoped we might be,” he reminded her brutally.

      She lifted a stubborn chin. “Only because I wanted to miss study period.”

      Giovanni laughed, his even teeth dazzling white in his dark handsome face. Tina felt her heart lurch infuriatingly as it used to in the days when she’d been shamelessly and helplessly in love with her best friend’s lover. Being kissed by him in the car had been her secret dream come true. Other than Brent Powell, who’d been Giovanni’s rival in every walk of life, Gio was the most desirable guy in school.

      Brent was everything a mother would want for her daughter. Giovanni had an edge of danger, a rawness that made him exciting. Mothers didn’t want him for their daughters; they wanted him for themselves.

      “You’re deluding yourself,” he said in amusement. “You were nuts about me.”

      “I was nuts, all right,” she muttered. “You were a fake charmer. You fooled us all.”

      “But not anymore?” His eyes grew soft with warm melting desire and his fingers lightly brushed her bare arm. “God!” he breathed huskily. “You look sinfully wanton and inviting sprawled out like that!”

      Fear killed the initial flame of pleasure that lit her up inside. She edged backward, feeling the hard line of the stairs against her spine. Giovanni didn’t move, but she could see his muscles were tensed, ready, his eyes working over her body as though she were in a shop window or a cheap peep show.

      Against her rib cage, her heart beat frantically, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop the fear from welling up inside.