The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

doesn’t mean you don’t have it. In fact that very lack of awareness is incredibly appealing.’

      ‘I should check on Angelo.’

      ‘No, not tonight, bella mia,’ Angelo intoned as he sprang upright to reach for her hands and raise her slowly from her seat. ‘Tonight is ours. Angelo has two nannies and an entire household devoted to his needs. After all, he is the first child in the Zaffari family for a generation, and as such more precious than diamonds to our staff.’

      Her throat tightened as he looked down at her with glittering golden eyes fringed by ridiculously long lashes. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe or move. ‘Er...what are we standing here for?’

      ‘I want to see this horror of a bedroom,’ Vito said thickly and then he lowered his head and sealed his mouth to hers with hungry, driving urgency.

      Like a flamethrower on a bale of hay his passion ignited hers with instantaneous effect. Her arms closed round him, her small hands roving up over his strong, muscular back to cling to his shoulders. His tongue slid moistly between her lips and an erotic thrill engulfed her in dizzy anticipation. Her nipples prickled into tingling tightness while damp heat surged between her legs. She pressed her thighs together, struggling to get a grip on herself but still wanting him so much it almost hurt...

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      HAULING HOLLY UP into his arms, Vito carried her into the bedroom and settled her on the foot of the bed to remove her shoes.

      ‘I didn’t appreciate how dark it was in here,’ Vito admitted as he switched on the bedside lamps. ‘Or how hideous. My grandfather liked grand and theatrical.’ He sighed.

      Holly scrambled back against the headboard and studied him with starry eyes. He stood half in shadow, half in light, and the hard, sculpted planes and hollows of his lean, strong face were beautiful. She marvelled at the fate that had brought two such different people together and rejoiced in it too. Liking, respect, attraction, she listed with resolution inside her head, buttoning down the stronger feelings battling to emerge, denying them.

      ‘Did your parents occupy separate bedrooms?’ she asked curiously.

      ‘It was always the norm in this household. I didn’t want it for us.’ Vito came down on the bed beside her. ‘If you only knew how much I’ve longed for this moment. I wanted you with me in London before the wedding.’

      ‘But it couldn’t be done. I had responsibilities I couldn’t turn my back on.’ Holly sighed.

      ‘I could’ve made arrangements to free you of those duties.’

      ‘Not when they’re dependent on friendship, loyalty, and consideration for other people,’ Holly disagreed gently, lifting a hand to follow the course of his jutting lower lip and note the stubborn angle of his strong jawline. ‘You can’t rearrange the world only to suit you.’

      ‘Sì...yes, I can,’ Vito declared without shame.

      ‘But that’s so selfish—’

      ‘I will not apologise for being selfish when it comes to your needs and Angelo’s.’ Vito marvelled at her inability to appreciate that he would always place their needs over the needs of others. What was wrong with that? It was true that it took a certain amount of ruthlessness and arrogance, but he had fought hard in life for every single achievement and saw nothing wrong with an approach that maximised the good things for his family and minimised the bad. The way he saw it, if you made enough effort happiness could be balanced as smoothly as a profit-and-loss column.

      With his strong white teeth he nipped playfully at the reproving fingertip rapping his chin.

      Holly startled and then giggled and sighed. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

      ‘Anything you want... I’m up for anything.’ Vito savoured her, his dark golden eyes holding hers with explicit need for a heartbeat. He pushed her back against the pillows and then his mouth claimed hers with hungry, delicious force.

      Heat unfurled in her pelvis. Her heart raced and the tension went out of her only to be replaced by a new kind of tension that shimmied through her bloodstream like an aphrodisiac and made her heart race. Her breath came in quick, shallow gasps between kisses, each leading into the next until he rolled back and, having established that there was no helpful zip, he gathered the hem of her dress in his hands and tugged it up over her body and over her head to pitch it aside.

      ‘That’s better,’ he growled, pausing to admire the picture she made in her pretty bridal lace lingerie.

      ‘Except you’re still wearing far too many clothes,’ Holly objected, embarking on his shirt buttons.

      Vito yanked off his shirt without ceremony, kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks, only to halt there, his long, lean frame trembling while Holly’s hands roamed over the hills and valleys of his hard, muscular abdomen. Her reverent fingers took a detour to follow the furrow of dark hair vanishing below the waistband of his jeans.

      ‘I missed you,’ she said truthfully. ‘I missed this...’

      Unfreezing, lean dark features rigid with control, he unsnapped his jeans and vaulted off the bed to take them off. ‘It was the best night of my life, bellezza mia.’

      And yet he still hadn’t made any mention of seeing her again that night or the following morning. That still stung and Holly said nothing. Had he really not seen her note? Could she believe that?

      ‘That note I left at the cottage for you—’ she began breathlessly.

      ‘I didn’t see it.’

      ‘Would you have phoned if you’d had my number?’ she prompted in a reckless rush.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Vito responded quietly. ‘Certainly I would’ve been tempted, but on another level I distrust anything that tempts me.’

      His honesty cut through her. Even if he had found the note, he wouldn’t have phoned her, she decided painfully. He would have written off their night of passion as a once-in-a-lifetime experience and left it behind. That hurt, but there was nothing she could do about it. She wanted to know who else had since shared his bed but it wasn’t a question to be asked on their wedding night even though her heart cried out for reassurance. It would be an unfair question when he had not owed her loyalty. Of course there had been other women in the months they had been apart. That was yet another pain she had to bear.

      ‘I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you,’ Vito told her thickly.

      He flung a handful of condoms down by the bed and stripped naked without inhibition while she watched.

      Pink washed Holly’s face because he was fully aroused and ready.

      ‘I couldn’t get enough of you that night and that unnerved me,’ he framed abruptly. ‘You were a very unexpected discovery.’

      He reached for her again, deftly skimming off her bra and panties, twisting his hips away when she tried to touch him. ‘No... If you touch me, you’ll wreck me. I’m on a hair trigger after months of abstinence,’ he growled, lean brown hands roving over the full curves of her breasts, lingering over her pink pointed nipples to tug and tease until little sounds she couldn’t silence broke from between her lips.

      Vito flung back the sheet and settled her beneath him to pay serious attention to her swollen mouth and the glorious swell of her breasts.

      ‘Months of abstinence?’ Holly encouraged helplessly, her breath tripping in her throat as he sucked on a protruding bud while long, skilled fingers stroked her thigh.

      ‘I’m not an easy lay,’ he told her. ‘I’m very, very fussy.’

      ‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Holly framed in ragged reassurance, all the feeling in her body seemingly centred between her thighs where she was scarily desperate for him to