The Platinum Collection: Claiming His Innocent. Lynne Graham

for once had no gleam of mockery.

      ‘A…knife attack while I was at university. I almost bled to death,’ Jess responded jerkily, and then she folded her lips closed and stared at him and in the depths of her pale glittering eyes he saw her fear that he would persist in his questions.

      Cesario contrived to shrug a broad shoulder as though he saw knife wounds on his lovers every day and he half turned away to remove his shirt and kick off his shoes. His expressive gaze was veiled to conceal the true strength of his reaction from her because he was enraged by the image of her being slashed by a knife and helpless. She was so small, so feminine, but maybe those traits had made her a more appealing target, he reflected with grim cynicism.

      ‘Sorry, I just don’t like to talk about it,’ she said unevenly, one hand curling into a fist on the sheet as if even saying that much was a major challenge. ‘Maybe I should’ve warned you—I know my scars are ugly…’

      Having shed his trousers, Cesario came down on the bed beside her and bent his tousled dark head to the scar on her abdomen. Her heart hammered with tension, butterflies fluttering loose in her tummy as he pressed his mouth gently to the slightly puckered skin. ‘Not ugly, just part of you. I’m sorry you suffered an experience like that and I certainly didn’t need warning, piccola mia.’

      He was rarely at a loss for the right thing to say, she thought enviously, only half convinced by his words and gesture that he was not repelled, but the worst of her tension had evaporated. The ferocious tightness of her muscles eased and she rested her head back on the pillow and breathed again. ‘You see, I’m really not a perfect doll.’

      ‘You’re talking to a guy who wanted you even when you sported a dirty waxed jacket, muddy boots and a team of misfit dogs,’ Cesario reminded her lazily.

      ‘I’m surprised you didn’t have the dogs booked into the local beauty spa for some grooming,’ Jess teased, balancing on her elbows to stretch up and tilt her parted lips in invitation as though a piece of elastic were pulling her to him to rediscover that warm, sexy mouth of his for herself again.

      And that next kiss ravished and seduced and left her dizzy and breathless, wondering where he had been all her life, for no other man had ever made her feel that way. She was already finding out that Cesario was not the guy she had believed him to be. He had much greater depth than she had ever been willing to concede when she reflected on their often spiky exchanges in the stable yard. She had repeatedly failed to look beyond the rich sophisticated façade to the male beneath that glossy patina of worldly success.

      Her bra melted away during the kissing and, while he palmed the small pert mound of her breasts, he stroked her pointed nipples and captured them between his lips and sucked until the tingling buds were hard and swollen. Until then, she had not known that she might be so sensitive there. He caressed her until she was gasping for breath and a pool of liquid warmth had infiltrated her pelvis.

      ‘I want this to be really special for you,’ Cesario husked. ‘But it might hurt.’

      ‘So, get it over with,’ she urged apprehensively.

      Cesario gave her a wicked grin that squeezed her heart inside her chest. ‘Shame on you—that’s the wrong attitude to take. A good lover never rushes a woman.’

      He tugged up her legs and skimmed off the white and blue matching knickers, sliding a hand between her slender thighs to find the engorged bud below the black curls on her mound. He teased her with the ball of his thumb and her hips rose off the bed in sensual shock at the sweet erotic surge of arousal. It was almost too intense for her to bear and she was hugely conscious of the surge of moisture there.

      Cesario pulled back from her and she studied him with sensually lowered eyelids, taking in the hard sleek contours of his broad chest and the muscles flexing across his flat stomach as he leant back and removed his boxers. He was magnificent and more than a little daunting to inexperienced eyes. He pulled her back to him and studied her with a hint of amusement in his beautiful eyes. ‘I promise to be gentle,’ he intoned, carrying her hand down to his bold shaft and encouraging her to explore his dimensions.

      Her hand closed round him, for she was full of desire and curiosity, and she learned that he was strong and smooth, velvet over steel. Answering heat flowered between her legs so that when he took her mouth again with hungry urgency she more than reciprocated the feeling. He began to explore her most secret and responsive flesh, tracing the delicate folds, teasing the nub of her desire and then the damp little entrance. It wasn’t long before little whimpers of sound were escaping her throat, the strength of her wanting making her legs tremble while the unbearable craving and the ache at the heart of her grew stronger by the second. She had not known that anything could feel that powerful and least of all that it might be him who introduced her to the powerfully addictive force of desire.

      He taught her to want what she had never learned to want, only wondered about, what she had truly believed she might go to her grave without experiencing, and she had honestly thought that it wouldn’t matter because she wasn’t really missing anything important. So he taught her differently, stroking her with skilful fingers, licking at the wildly sensitive buds of her nipples while he surely, gently prepared her for the ultimate pleasure. But the yearning inside her for more steadily grew intolerable, sharp-edged, greedy and impatient so that she bit in impatient reproach at his lower lip and let her trembling fingers close tight into his luxuriant black hair.

      Fluid and strong, he came over her, sliding between her thighs when she was shaking and desperate with pent-up need. She was wildly eager for that first gentle thrust, feeling the stretch of her inner tissue struggling to contain him and then the surge of his hips against her as he drove deeper. It hurt a little more than she had expected and she could not suppress a cry of pain. Instantly he stopped, gazing down at her with those drowningly dark and golden eyes of his that were so beautiful they made her ache.

      ‘I’m sorry, moglie mia,’ he whispered, brushing her tumbled curls from her brow to press a benediction of a kiss there. ‘It will ease…I hope.’

      Her inner muscles tightened round him and he groaned with an uninhibited sensuality that thrilled her and he shifted lightly, slowly, sinking into her by erotic degrees until she didn’t know where he ended and she began. But it was an overpoweringly good feeling and she moved sinuously beneath him, angling up her hips to encourage him, all discomfort forgotten. As he withdrew and came back into her, her excitement began to build. Excitement laced with deep, deep pleasure at the motion of him in her and over her. His slow, steady rhythm ensured that the tight feeling low in her pelvis began to expand and spread outward, sucking her into a vortex of intense driving sensation. And then without even knowing where she was going and simply blindly allowing the force of her response to carry her with it, she reached a peak and the incredible waves of pleasure gathered her up and threw her down again on the other side. In a daze she floated back to earth again.

      Cesario was watching her with dark, dark eyes when she recovered her senses again and his hand was closed over one of hers, his body hot and damp and intimately masculine against her thigh. She looked back at him with light eyes that still reflected some of her wonderment at what had just transpired. His strong jaw line squared.

      ‘Don’t look at me like that. Don’t forget our agreement,’ he breathed suddenly, his keen gaze narrowed on her feverishly flushed face. ‘I didn’t ask for your love and I don’t want it. We will share a bed, nothing more, until a child is born, piccola mia.’

      It was like an unanticipated slap in the face for Jess and she went straight into shock, recognising that he, of all men, would recognise when a woman might be getting a little too attached, a little too serious. Her facial muscles tightened, her expression carefully schooled to blankness as a wave of anger and pain broke inside her like a tide crashing on the shore. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had hit pay-dirt with that cold-blooded warning. She would not respond with the angry resentment that would reveal that he had wounded her.

      ‘I don’t have love to give you,’ Jess fielded flatly as she deliberately shifted away from him, rejecting that deceptive togetherness for the pretence