Claimed by the Italian. Christina Hollis

lifted her head. Watched the effortlessly graceful way he sank to the ground beside her and mentally cursed his raw sexual magnetism. But she drew on some reserve of courage and gave him the truth, her small features tight. ‘Yes. Hiding. I’m embarrassed about what happened before dinner yesterday, OK? And, if you’re wondering, I don’t normally make no attempt to cover up when a man walks in on me in my birthday suit. Right?’

      And, having said her piece, she quickly changed the subject. ‘And I’m mad as blazes at you because you didn’t put a stop to that engagement party nonsense when I’m sure you could have done!’ She saw him smile and turned her head away sharply, biting down on her soft lower lip, because that smile of his was enough to turn the sanest woman into a gibbering wreck.

      ‘And you have much experience of men surprising you in a state of nakedness?’ His voice was as rich and dark as chocolate.

      Lily’s skin quivered. ‘No, of course not!’ Why didn’t he just drop it? Was he cruel enough to be getting a kick out of embarrassing her?

      ‘I thought not. You are truly an innocent.’

      He was sitting so close she could feel his purr of amusement. Or was it more like satisfaction?

      Either way, it was one more strike against her! He wouldn’t rate lack of experience highly, much less fall in love with an ‘innocent’ as he had named her. That meant she just had to stop living in cloud-cuckoo land, moping and pining and wishing he would catch the same illness she had come down with! He didn’t even fall in love with the type of woman he bedded—cool, blonde, sexy and knowing. He just used them, grew bored, and tossed them aside! So what chance would she have?

      He might laugh at what he would have seen as an attempt to entice him, so it was up to her to show him she had a mind of her own and wasn’t to be sidetracked or poked fun at!

      ‘Don’t change the subject.’

      ‘And that is?’ he asked, with provocative smoothness, stretching out his long muscular legs, angling his body into hers so that she wanted to move away, right away, but couldn’t make herself.

      Hot colour scorched her cheekbones. What was the matter with her? She craved his nearness like an addict craved a fix. She knew how bad it was for her, but she couldn’t make herself get up and put distance between them. She was a hopeless case where he was concerned!

      Furious with herself, she grumped at him. ‘That awful engagement party your mother’s busy organising! You must stop her before even more people get drawn into our shameful lies!’

      ‘Ah, that.’ He touched the side of her face with the backs of his fingers, then withdrew his hand and reached into a pocket to produce a small velvet-covered box.

      Her skin still burning from his touch, Lily could only stare transfixed as he slid the dazzling ring onto her wedding finger. ‘A perfect fit now. I told you I’d get it altered.’

      The smugness in his voice fired her to blazing anger. ‘I could slap you!’ she hissed, scrambling round so that she was on her knees, facing him. ‘I told you not to mess with the family heirloom when it’s only going to be a stage prop—you stupid, arrogant—’

      ‘My refreshing Lily!’ Almost lazily he reached forward, hands on her shoulders, pulling her down to his level, one of his legs pinioning hers. ‘You are the first woman to remind me that I am not perfect! The only woman apart from Mamma who has the spirit to argue with me—I like that.’ He dropped the lightest of kisses onto the end of her nose. ‘I like it very much. It reminds me that I am human.’

      His nearness, the heat of his body against hers, the scent of his skin, were desperately tantalising, and made her tremble. She loved him so much, and she hated herself for loving him. She just knew that her resolve to keep him firmly at arm’s length was rapidly dwindling, like mist in the heat of the sun, even though she also knew that he was doing what he’d done before. Distracting her to take her mind off her objections to a fake engagement party that he wasn’t going to veto because this further descent into deceit didn’t bother him.

      Her body stiffening, where before it had been weakly melding with his, she fisted her hands against his chest and pushed. ‘I’m warning you—if that fake party goes ahead, I won’t be there!’

      ‘Neither will I, cara.’

      Her smooth brow furrowed at that, her hot words swallowed. Was he going to put a stop to it after all? It seemed like it. Gradually her fists unfurled, her palms lying against his chest where she could feel the steady beat of his heart, the heat of his skin beneath the soft fabric of his collarless shirt.

      Brilliant golden eyes searched hers. Her breasts felt heavy and her skin tingled as a shameful heat coiled deep inside her, intensifying as one of his hands slid down her body to rest against the curve of her hip.

      She tensed. Did he know what he was doing to her? Did he care? Probably not! She was just some fluttery female he could bend to his will with the effortless expenditure of just a little of that overwhelming sexual appeal of his! And yet—

      ‘What do you mean?’ With a determined effort to get out of the danger zone she wriggled away, but he simply placed a strong lean hand on the small of her back and hauled her back again. Her breath was expelled in a gasp at the close contact with his powerful body, and her words were little more than a ragged whisper when she pressed on, with difficulty, ‘You said you wouldn’t be at the party, either.’

      Hoisting himself up on one elbow, his eyes gleaming between their fringing of thick dark lashes, he smiled at her before lowering his proud head to take her lush pink mouth with his, stroking with a sensuality that made her whimper and quiver before he imparted, ‘We won’t attend a fake engagement party, my Lily. I want it to be a real one.’ And, as her eyes widened in bewilderment, he said. ‘I’m asking you to marry me.’

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      LILY stared at him in shock. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.

      Paolo simply smiled with sheer male complacency as he gently threaded his fingers through her silky-soft hair and positioned her to meet his exact requirements. He lowered his dark head and murmured against the moist softness of her lush pink mouth, ‘You will be my bride, Lily,’ with all the innate self-assurance of the alpha male who always got what he demanded, and for whom pleading or even merely asking nicely was foreign to his dynamic nature.

      That type of arrogant domination shouldn’t turn her bones to water and her skin to fire, make her ache to submit, but it did. And, much as she deplored it, there was nothing she could do about it.

      With helpless resignation she was excruciatingly aware of the coil of stinging heat deep in the pit of her stomach, the insistently urgent straining of her breasts beneath the thin cotton top she was wearing—aware, to her everlasting shame, that Paolo Venini only had to touch her and she was aroused to such a peak of sexual excitement, of loving and longing, that she forgot everything—who she was, who he was, her common sense and self-respect, everything she valued about herself.

      Desperate to get the word no beyond the tight constriction of her throat, all she managed was a quivering moan of instinctive response as he parted her lips with his and began a totally erotic assault on her senses. His tongue plunged into the inner yielding sweetness with raw masculine urgency and his hands slipped beneath the soft fabric of her top, his groan of satisfaction telling her befuddled brain that the discovery she was braless did more than merely please him.

      As deft hands pushed her top up, exposing her straining pink-crested breasts to his simmering gaze, Lily made a furious effort to pull herself together, fighting the need to surrender to this man she loved more than she’d thought possible.

      Squirming away from him, shaking, her face flushed and troubled, she managed, ‘This is madness!’

      At that a slow smile softened his sculpted features, and his golden eyes, hazed over with the smoke of desire, crinkled at the corners as he breathed, ‘If this is madness, then I like