Claimed by the Italian. Christina Hollis

fortnight would have kept a family of four for a year, she realised, appalled. Such a waste!’

      Her mouth set in mutiny, she stalked into the bedroom, where he was waiting in unconcealed impatience, and announced, ‘In future I choose what I wear. You might have paid for the stuff—and paid me to lie for you—but you don’t own me!’

      He shot her a look of exasperation. He was landed with an aggravating, argumentative pest with a body to set male pulses racing. Clueless, too. Left to her own devices she would smother those delectable curves in ugly swamping garments. She should be grateful at being given the sort of beautiful clothes that did credit to her hitherto hidden loveliness, not come at him shouting the odds.

      At the memory of her earlier nakedness—which he had done his level best to blank—he felt unwanted heat crawl over his skin, and his voice was a rough undertone as he commanded, ‘Come here.’

      He swept a silver-backed hairbrush from the dressing table, and as she stubbornly refused to budge he strode over to her and began to stroke the tangles out of her still damp hair, the lean fingers of one hand firmly beneath her chin to stop her wriggling away.

      ‘In future you may choose what to wear.’ Her jawbone was so tenderly delicate, her skin so soft beneath the pads of his fingers, her hair like caramel silk. ‘Today I hurried you—’ He broke off, aware that he was doing something totally unprecedented, trying to placate an argumentative employee. Oddly, his voice was emerging like soft velvet. Clearing his throat roughly, he continued, ‘My mother is so anxious to meet her future daughter-in-law. I can’t bear to keep her waiting. I know how long women take to dress and fuss over their appearance.’

      At the ‘future daughter-in-law’ falsehood Lily snapped out of the dizzy, intoxicating trance she’d fallen into the moment he’d touched her, stroked the brush through her hair, his magnificent body so close to hers. Stepping away from him, and drawing herself up to her full insignificant height, horrified by her weakness where he was concerned she reminded him, ‘I am nothing like your usual vanity-obsessed lady-friends! So don’t treat me as if I am!’

      ‘Stop arguing.’ Curbing impatience, Paolo slipped the fabulous ring back on her finger. There was a feisty glitter in those big grey eyes. Present her to his parent while she was in this mood and the whole thing would be over before it began. Trust him to pick a woman who couldn’t hide her feelings!

      He needed a purring kitten, not a spitting cat. There was only one thing to do. His hands going to her slim shoulders, he bent his dark head and kissed her.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      AS HIS beautiful mouth took hers Lily was utterly swamped by the shattering emotion which crashed through her with the force of a hurricane. She had never experienced anything remotely like this before. It blew her mind.

      Totally incapable of rational thought, she felt instinct take over, and her lips parted to give him better access to the sweetness within. Her entire body was shuddering helplessly as his arms slid from her shoulders to her tiny waist to hold her more closely, to meld her to his lean, powerful length.

      She had been kissed before, but never like this—like fire and honey, every cell in her body singing in uncontrolled response as his tongue slid deeper in sensual exploration. Her mindless caressing fingers revelled in the feel of taut muscles beneath the fine fabric of his shirt, and her hands suddenly gripped his wide shoulders in wild reaction as she felt his hot, hard arousal against the quivering softness of her tummy.

      Reduced to an unthinking mass of sensation, she raised her hips to press against him, moving with instinct-driven feverish urgency. She heard him groan as a long shudder raced through him, and when his hands slid down to her buttocks, pressing her even closer, the blood in her veins ignited and fierce desire pulsed insistently through her trembling body.

      Lily hadn’t known that such sensations could exist. Intoxicated, she slid her hands around his magnificent torso, fingers fumbling at the buttons of his shirt because she couldn’t get close enough to him. He felt the same. She knew he did. Because his hands were moving restively over her silk-clad body with hungry heat, and then they were sliding the hem of her dress up around her thighs, and the part of her mind that was still amazingly capable of halfway rational thought registered that he was consumed by the same high-voltage passion that was thrumming through every cell of her body. And it was glorious!

      Until with a driven groan Paolo lifted his head and held her away from him.

      Struggling to retrieve her breath, shocked into immobility, Lily was held by the unfathomable depths of those shimmering golden eyes, partly screened by thickly dark lashes. She could drown in those eyes, she thought shakily, dazed, her tingling, sensitised body still in recovery from the emotional onslaught of his raw passion.

      ‘We should go,’ Paolo reminded her in a low, thickened murmur. His hand, not quite steady, reached out for hers, his eyes drawn to her enticing, incredibly responsive body, to her gleaming eyes and flushed cheeks.

      He wasn’t at all sure what had happened. He felt heat crawl over his skin and his driven admission, ‘That was amazing,’ pole-axed him—because he hadn’t consciously meant to confide that opinion. He didn’t know where it had come from. It had simply happened—as if they shared a bond, a passion that went soul-deep.

      He pulled in a deep, ragged breath. Before this moment his comments had never, ever been unguarded, and he had always mildly despised those who spoke without thinking through the consequences of what they said.

      Fortunately he had the belated good sense to put the shutters up and not voice his further opinion that if his frail parent hadn’t been eagerly waiting for them their kiss would have ended up far, far differently. On that bed. And that would have been a disaster. He lived by his own set of rules, and one of them stated that female employees, no matter how attractive, were off-limits.

      As it was, though, he had achieved his initial objective, he tried to console himself. Lily Frome looked the image of the blushing bride-to-be. Soft and pink, about to melt into his arms at the first opportunity. But that didn’t give him the satisfaction he had thought it would, he recognised uneasily.

      Thankfully, the walk down to the small salon on the ground floor gave him time to get his libido back under strict control. What had happened, he rationalised, had been due to base lust. He hadn’t been with a woman for a long while, and seeing Lily Frome in all her delicate, promising nakedness had acted on his male libido like a flame on petrol.

      Given the circumstances, his initial decision to kiss her, nothing more, had been logical—a means to an end. The outcome, the loss of control on his part—and on hers?—was regrettable. But entirely normal given his months of celibacy.

      Thankfully his voice emerged sounding reassuringly normal, too, as he paused before an ornately carved fruitwood door and advised, ‘Just be yourself and you will delight her.’

      Lily at last came down to earth with a bump, her befuddled mind clearing at the speed of light. Was he being sarcastic? Of course he was—what else? ‘Being herself’ meant being a dead ordinary, nose-to-the-grind-stone, unsophisticated simple girl. In short, the type of woman he wouldn’t give a second glance. He knew that.

      And yet … Memories of that kiss slammed back to scorch her brain. Vividly recalling the greedy way she’d responded, she blushed furiously and knew she was about to sink into a morass of super-heated suffocating shame.

      But it hadn’t been all one-way traffic, she told herself defensively.

      He had kissed her as if he’d meant it. Passionately. She’d had little or no time for boyfriends in her busy life, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew when a man was aroused. And he had been. So that had to mean he had wanted more than kisses.

      Heat engulfed her entire body and her breathing shortened. She was horribly aware that he was now looking at her with shimmering, assessing eyes, and she hunched her shoulders, hoping the cringing posture would disguise the shameful way her breasts were peaking and tingling beneath the silk.

      ‘Hold