The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

to do would be a wise move now,’ Luciano spelt out softly, his intent gaze raking down over the fullness of her pink lips, the swell of her tantalising breasts and the slim legs on view. He had never lusted after a woman of her ilk before. What did that say about him? But lust was healthy and indifference was not, he reasoned fiercely, all too reluctant to banish the sexual energy infusing him when for the first time in much longer than he cared to recall he felt alive again.

      Suddenly restless, Jemima uncoiled her legs and stood up. ‘You’re trying to intimidate me.’

      The golden gaze grew ever more intense. ‘Am I?’

      ‘I’ll do everything that is reasonable but I won’t be intimidated and I won’t grovel,’ she framed tautly, extraordinarily aware of the darker, deeper note in his rich drawl and the warning flare of his brows.

      ‘You won’t?’ Luciano’s intonation was soft and slippery as silk brushing her skin as he stalked closer, all predator, all threat.

      And she should have backed away, she knew that was what she should do, but a current of inexplicable excitement was quivering up through Jemima and working its own seduction. ‘I won’t,’ she confirmed shakily, her own voice dropping in volume and, to her annoyance, emerging breathily.

      ‘But the idea of you grovelling at my knees is appealing, piccolo mia,’ Luciano confided huskily, eyes golden and predatory as a raptor’s locked to her upturned face. ‘The image of you giving me pleasure while you’re doing it gives me a high...’

      At first, Jemima just couldn’t credit that he had said that to her and then she told herself that he couldn’t possibly have meant that sexual innuendo. A surge of embarrassment and uncertainty caused a burst of colour to fly into her cheeks and she blinked, trying to close him out, trying to rescue her brain from the sudden erotic imagery he had filled it with. That wasn’t something that had ever happened to her before in a man’s presence. She didn’t imagine doing sexual things with men as a rule, but maybe if she had, a little voice whispered, Steven would not have been so stupefied by her infinitely bolder twin. Something about Luciano Vitale got to her on a primal level she had never experienced before.

      ‘Did you really just say what I thought you said?’ she mumbled unevenly.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      A HUSKY LAUGH escaped from Luciano. ‘Is that how you work this spell with men who should know better? You flutter your lashes and blush at will and act naïve? Let’s hit the bottom line and save some time. I don’t want naïve or shy or fake virginal, Jemima. I like women who aren’t afraid to be women...just as I am a man unafraid to admit when I feel like sex.’

      Jemima was out of her depth and didn’t know where to look or what to say. She couldn’t admit that she wasn’t a fake virgin and she couldn’t admit to being naïve or shy when Julie hadn’t had a shy or modest bone in her entire body. Julie had treated sexual invitations as ego boosts and had revelled unashamedly in male admiration. For just a moment, Jemima longed for the cool to emulate her late sister, who had taken her looks and sensuality for granted. He felt like sex? Involuntarily she glanced up at him again and a tiny little hot frisson ran up from her feminine core to pinch her nipples taut when she collided with his gleaming golden eyes. She felt the pull of his magnetic force then, the potent, compelling awareness of a powerful sexuality.

      ‘And equally unafraid to act,’ Luciano imparted, every predatory instinct in his big powerful body fired by her masquerade of innocence as he reached for her, determined to smash that façade that was so very foolish in the circumstances when he knew so much about her true character.

      Jemima regained the strength to move a little too late, her paralysed legs moving her clumsily backwards in the unfamiliar room. He had knocked her off her usual calm, rational perch and wrecked her composure with that blunt sexual come-on. He had truly shocked her but he had excited her as well because, on a level Jemima didn’t want to examine, she was hugely flattered by the idea that a male as gorgeous as Luciano Vitale could find her attractive.

      As he spoke Luciano reached for her and propelled her back against the door she had almost reached, one hand closing round her shoulder, the other rising to curve to her chin. ‘I like the chase. You’re right about that, piccolo mia,’ he told her incomprehensibly as if she had spoken. ‘But this is the wrong time to run away.’

      She was entrapped by his gaze, her chest swelling as she snatched in a needy breath, her throat tight with tension. Luciano Vitale wanted her. Her? The very concept turned her inside out because he was drop-dead beautiful in a way she had never dreamt existed. From the crown of his luxuriant black hair to his stunning eyes and flawless bone structure, he mesmerised her.

      ‘Your pupils are dilated...’ Luciano breathed, stroking a strand of golden hair back from her brow to tuck it below her ear, shifting closer, bending his dark head.

      ‘Are they?’ She was so insanely aware of how much taller and stronger he was, she was frozen with her hips welded against the solid wooden door. The lemony scent of his cologne assailed her nostrils. He smelled amazingly good and a ball of heat warmed in her pelvis.

      ‘I scare you, don’t I?’ Luciano laughed again, startling her. ‘I don’t want to scare you...not any more.’

      His breath fanned her cheek and she shivered, feeling the press of his long, powerful thighs and the hard, thrusting fullness at his groin against her stomach. Her whole body seemed to overheat at that point of contact. He was aroused and she had made him that way...she, Jemima Barber, without cosmetic witchery or fancy clothes. Who would ever have believed it? She felt like a real woman for the first time since Steven’s betrayal. She didn’t understand what possible appeal she could have for Luciano Vitale, but she didn’t much care during that instant of exhilaration. As he lowered his head a little more and his lips brushed whisper soft across hers, it felt like her moment and it felt crazily like something she had been waiting for all her life.

      Long fingers laced into her hair to hold her steady and the pressure deepened. She opened her mouth and he took immediate advantage with a dominance that thrilled rather than annoyed. His tongue darted into the moist interior and tangled with hers and she kissed him back with an eagerness she couldn’t suppress. Her body took flight on new sensation, excitement rising like a tide inside her, drowning out every objecting voice in the back of her head. Every inch of her was suddenly tender and supersensitive, so that firm brush of his hand across her covered breasts made her straining nipples prickle in reaction and the trail of his fingers up her thigh as he lifted her skirt set her on fire with tingling impatience and longing. That passionate kiss held her utterly spellbound, her senses excited beyond bearing, and the throb of awakening between her thighs was almost unbearable in its intensity.

      He stroked a fingertip across the tight triangle of fabric stretched between her legs and her knees turned to water. ‘You’re wet,’ he told her thickly.

      She couldn’t breathe for shock at the tiny tremors of response quivering through her while the heat at the heart of her stoked higher. She had never in her life before wanted to be touched so badly and she was ashamed of the desire until his hungry mouth found hers again with bruising force and all thought fled in the same instant. One kiss and he dragged her under again while his skilled fingers strummed beneath her panties and stoked the hunger higher, sliding into the moist cleft and caressing the slick tissue before returning to the tiny bud that controlled her entire being.

      She trembled and a strangled moan was wrenched from low in her throat as he rubbed her tormentingly sensitive flesh and suddenly her body was racing out of her control and she was jerking helplessly and gasping mindlessly beneath his mouth in a sudden explosive climax that blew her away. Her legs gave way and she would have fallen had he not lifted her and settled her down on the nearest seat.

      Limp and shaking, she wrenched her rucked skirt down in a desperate movement. Shock was blasting through her and her heart was still racing. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She couldn’t believe that she had let him do that to her...something