Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain. Carol Marinelli

the senses exactly where it intended to fix them. If she’d ever wondered what a room designed to pull all the right sensual strings looked like then this would have been it. She even captured an image of herself lying there naked like a wanton on the red silk coverlet. She saw him with his dark golden flesh touched by the flames as he lay at her side.

      The vision alone was enough to put her right back into a panic. She turned on him. ‘I don’t…’

      Want this, she had been going to say but the words became lost in the feel of his light touch as he plucked the comb from her hair. The heavy twist quivered as it uncoiled its way to her shoulders. He stood observing the effect through dark, unfathomable eyes for a long moment then abruptly turned away.

      ‘I’ll go and get your case,’ he said. ‘Relax, take a look around, I won’t be more than a few minutes…’

      Threat or reassurance? Francesca wondered as she watched him disappear. Then she shivered and turned back to her new surroundings. Her gaze was instantly drawn to the four-poster bed, where those unnerving images still played with her head.

      Shame on you, she tried telling herself and tugged her eyes away then moved restlessly across the room towards a long window draped with more red silk. The window showed her a different view of the lake. Its surface wasn’t quite as frosted now, the moon having already continued on its way.

      What am I doing here? she asked herself.

      An answering tug on certain sensitive folds of flesh made her draw in air on a sharp catch of breath.

      ‘Oh,’ she choked, and dropped down onto the polished wood window seat, lost her shoes then pulled her knees up to her chin and dragged Carlo’s jacket tightly around her before she lowered her face to her knees.

      To hide.

      From what she was.

      From what she was beginning to turn into.

      A betrayed woman with the terrible—terrible desire for another man.

      She shuddered, despising herself for feeling like this. Still hurting in so many ways and clearly so darn desperate to prove she was worthy of the title “woman” that she was sitting here having to squeeze her thighs together in an attempt to cut off these tight little tugs that were so much a pleasure as well as a sin.

      Sin.

      She picked out the word and looked at it. What sin? Whose sin? Where was the sin in wanting to make love?

      Her mother’s sin. Her mother’s cold assessment of what sexual desire could do to you. It could turn you into a slave to your own body cravings and the faceless property of the man who took those cravings and used them to slake his own.

      Why him though? If she had to turn into this sex-needy person, why did it have to be for Carlo Carlucci of all men? Why couldn’t it have been Angelo? Maybe their relationship could have stood a better chance if she’d been more forthcoming on the physical side. Maybe he would not have gone looking elsewhere and the rest of this dreadful night would only exist in some far-off nightmare and she would be in bed by now—with Angelo—sublimely content in her blindness to what his true character really was like.

      Is that what she wanted? she then asked herself. To be lied to so long as she didn’t have to face the miserable truth?

      She heard his step in the half-open doorway, felt him pause when he saw the way she was sitting here. Tears burned. Her heart burned. That place between her thighs grew hot on a fresh flurry of excitement because she wanted him.

      She wanted him.

      Not Angelo. She had never wanted Angelo. Not like this, she groaned silently. Blind didn’t begin to excuse the way she had been behaving around Angelo in the name of that thing called love.

      ‘I’ve brought your case.’

      She nodded. Love was nothing but an illusion anyway, she thought as she listened to his footsteps taking him across to the bed. Love was nothing but a word invented for women to use to justify giving in to this hot sexual ache and for men to use to give them the right to tap into that ache.

      Her head twisted at the sound of his footsteps. Heat gathered in her cheeks this time, her eyes glued to him as she followed his approach. Tall, dark, breathtakingly alluring to her newly awoken senses, they drank in the width of broad shoulders and long, lean torso covered in white shirting that did nothing to hide the promise of what she envisioned lurked beneath. The butterfly collar of the shirt had been unfastened and the bow-tie now rested in two loose black strips against the shirt.

      He looked relaxed; he even offered her one of his tilted smiles as he bent to take hold of her hands to break the clasp they held on her knees.

      ‘Come on,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve had enough. It’s time to go to bed.’

      He pulled and she uncoiled to land on her feet in front of him. Removing the jacket from her shoulders, he tossed it onto the window seat then turned his attention to the line of bronze studs holding her denim jacket in place.

      The word bed made her throw a hooded glance at him, the way he was casually removing her clothes tingled her spine—and he smiled again at those two very revealing actions. ‘It’s OK. The ravishment of Francesca Bernard has been put on hold for the time being,’ he assured her lazily.

      ‘Shame,’ she heard herself say—then caught her top lip between her teeth and wished the floor would open up and swallow her when he went perfectly still. She attempted a weak smile. ‘Joke,’ she said.

      He went back to what he’d been doing but his mouth had a grim look of disapproval about it now.

      Disapproval? she repeated inwardly and uttered a thick laugh. The person who disapproved of her around here was herself!

      ‘Why the laugh?’

      ‘Don’t ask,’ she advised a little wildly. Because the cool backs of his fingers were brushing against her breasts and making them tingle and if anyone wanted the ravishment of Francesca Bernard then it was Francesca Bernard!

      Denim parted and was eased from her shoulders. She shivered as the fabric trailed down her arms, exposing her flesh to the cooler air seeping in through the window behind. The jacket landed on the window seat on top of his jacket then, with the touch of a master at undressing women, he slid his hand to the side of her ribcage to locate unerringly the concealed zip that held the dress in place.

      ‘I can do the rest myself,’ she told him stiffly.

      ‘Why rob me of the pleasure?’ he mocked—silkily—bringing her eyes up to clash with his.

      He knew what she was thinking, what was happening to her, what she wanted to happen. And the look in his eyes was daring her to just come out and say it.

      Ask! that look challenged.

      She looked away again—moved away. His hand pulled her back again. She came into full contact with his full length. Her senses took flight on a mad ride of desire, she shivered and shook and sparked up like a firework. Her breathing fractured, her breasts heaved a gasp. His free hand lifted to burrow beneath her hair and his fingers clenched, imprisoning a thick swathe of her hair to use it to pull her head back.

      She couldn’t tell if his eyes were angry or on fire with desire. His mouth still looked hard, his cheekbones taut. ‘What do you want from me, Francesca?’ he demanded on a low, dark growl.

      The impact of the question quivered its way right down to her toes because she knew exactly what she wanted from him. She wanted him to give her sensual escape. She wanted to lose herself in him and become that other person she had just seen lying in naked abandon on that bed.

      And she wanted to emerge the other end of this dreadful night a completely different woman, a sexually liberated woman who could state with confidence—to hell with you, Angelo, I know what I am now and you will never know what you missed out on!

      ‘I want everything,’ she whispered.

      There,