The Secret Casella Baby. CATHY WILLIAMS

in a strangled voice. ‘Not unless you want to see me react like a horny teenager who has never had sex!’

      Holly laughed and ignored him. The very first time they had made love, she had nervously wondered whether she had done all right. He was a man of infinite experience. She had known that the second he had trailed his finger along her cheek and down to her collarbone, watching her with a half-smile as she had shivered and shuddered and wondered whether she was doing the right thing.

      That had been on his third day of sharing the cottage with her. His curiosity about her had been thrilling and insistent. And she had been bowled over by his confidence, his easiness, his wit, his intelligence. She had been ripe for the taking and she had loved every second of it.

      ‘Tell me,’ he had murmured softly, washing away the dregs of her hesitation all that time back, ‘What could be wrong about this?’ And he had teased her body with a sexy, feathery touch until it had felt as though it would go up in flames. He had taken his time and she had been swept away on a tide of passion. There had been no chance of her finding anything to cling to, no chance of common sense pulling her back to safety. Every expectation she had ever had of a normal life with a normal guy doing normal things and progressing down a normal route had been turned on its head and she hadn’t regretted any of it for a minute.

      She was no longer insecure about touching him, not like that very first time. He made her feel wonderfully, deliciously needed. She touched his pulsating erection with the delicate tip of her tongue and he groaned and shuddered.

      ‘I can’t wait… Get your clothes off.’ He watched feverishly as she wriggled out of the annoying dress and the lacy underwear. He had introduced her to that concept the very first time he had returned to see her, only days after he had left: lacy underwear to replace the sensible cotton briefs. She had made a token protest but it hadn’t lasted long. Even she could see how outrageously sexy the tiny bits of lace made her look. Sometimes, he would strip her down to that lacy underwear and tease her through the lace with his tongue until she was on fire for him.

      That wouldn’t be happening tonight. Not when he could barely keep a lid on his own uncontrolled libido.

      She was divinely sexy lying on the bed with her hair rippling around her in waves of vanilla, caramel and gold. She let her legs drop open so that he could see the seductive details of her womanhood and he stilled in the process of pulling off his shirt when her fingers lightly touched herself. Her amazing eyes were half-closed but he knew that she was watching him, enjoying his reaction to what she was doing. He ripped the last two buttons of his shirt and subsided on the bed next to her.

      ‘If you want to touch something…’ He firmly guided her hand away from herself and back towards his erection. ‘Then you can touch me!’ He slid his fingers along her wetness and loved the feel of her moisture that made them slippery.

      ‘We should be talking,’ Holly whispered unevenly as insistent waves of pleasure began swelling inside her as he continued to stroke and rub between her legs.

      ‘You’d be shocked if I didn’t walk through that front door and grab you,’ Luiz said with masculine satisfaction. ‘You can’t resist me.’

      ‘You are so egotistic, Luiz Gomez!’

      ‘Just reporting on what your body’s telling me. Right now, you’re hot and wet and those are definitely not the signs of a woman who wants to talk…’ To emphasise his point, he straddled her in one easy movement and, on cue, she arched back, offering her breasts to him and closing her eyes as he began the languorous process of exploring every inch of them.

      He could spend hours teasing and playing with her breasts. He loved everything about them. He had long given up asking himself how he could ever have gone out with women who weren’t as generously built as the woman who was now writhing underneath him.

      Holly’s breathing was fast and interspersed with small little moans of satisfaction as he licked and nibbled. She half-opened her eyes to gaze lovingly at his dark head. When he nudged at her with his erection, she slipped into a bubble of pure ecstasy, and as he thrust forcefully in she was swept away. Their bodies moved in perfect harmony. She was already so excited that she could feel her orgasm building as he continued to push into her but she had learned to hold off until she could feel them both at the same point.

      It came quickly, then she let herself go. Her moans became cries until her mind and body parted company and she was no longer capable of thinking. She shuddered, raking her fingers along the length of his back and feeling the hardness of muscle and sinew under them. More than anything, she wanted to shout out how much she loved him but she held it in.

      Ages ago he had told her about a woman he had been seeing, a woman he had almost married whom he had believed was madly in love with him, only to find out that she had been stringing him along. He hadn’t given any details and Holly had known not to press. She had kept a steady smile on her face while he had told her this story in passing. Who was she to demand explanations when she, too, had once fancied herself in love, only to realise that once the first flush had faded there was just not enough there to pull them through.

      Now, of course, she could see that what she had felt at the time had been nothing. That said, instinct had told her that telling him how much she loved him might not be something he wanted to hear, even though they had now been seeing each other for so long that he must surely guess, just as she did.

      He fell back next to her on the sofa and flung his hand over his face before turning on his side and pulling her against him.

      ‘How do you do that?’ Luiz murmured. ‘How do you always manage to get me so worked up that I can’t control myself?’ He gave her a crooked smile and outlined her full mouth with his finger. Not only could she get him so worked up that he couldn’t control himself, she also managed the impossible feat of making him want to take her all over again within moments of being sated. No woman had ever been able to do that, but then again no woman had ever been so utterly lacking in any kind of agenda. It was just perfect.

      ‘Don’t tell me I’m the first to do that.’ Holly smiled back at him. She thought of that woman he had once been in love with, the woman she had had no trouble tossing away in a cupboard at the back of her mind. Except now, with a bottle of wine growing steadily warmer outside, and talk of a future between them on the cards, that mysterious woman was demanding some attention. ‘What about… you know, Clarissa… the woman you nearly married seven years ago.’

      Luiz frowned and drew back to gaze down at her flushed face with a quizzical expression. He had no idea how he had been persuaded into telling her about Clarissa, his biggest mistake and valuable learning curve. But, then again, hadn’t he told her a lot of things over time, from that very first moment when he had found himself confiding in her about his father and his feelings of grief that had blinded him to the dangers of the icy country lanes? The grief that had sent his car spinning out of control and landed him in her cottage and, not long after, in her bed. She occupied a special position, one which was far removed from his daily life and, as such, he had ended up telling her a hell of a lot more than he had ever told anyone else in his life.

      But now she was smiling and asking about Clarissa and his antenna was picking up signals that were sending little threads of alarm through him. Although he was sure that he was just imagining that. He relaxed and held her close to him.

      ‘Let’s not go there.’ He nuzzled the column of her neck and felt her shiver responsively. ‘The past should never be raked up. What’s the point?’ He moved to kiss her lips, a long, gentle lingering kiss that did all those wonderfully familiar things to his manhood. ‘I don’t ask you about your ex,’ he pointed out.

      ‘You don’t have to.’ For once, the feel of him against her and the rub of his arousal pushing to insert itself between her thighs was not enough to bring all her brain functions to a grinding halt. ‘You know everything there is to know about him.’

      ‘I don’t understand where this is coming from.’

      ‘I’m just curious. What was it about her that you fell in love with?’

      Luiz