Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: November 2017 Books 1 - 4 - Эбби Грин, Julia James - Страница 17

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE WALLS SEEMED to close in on her and Keira was suddenly achingly conscious of being alone in the kitchen with a half-naked Matteo, while outside she could hear the rain howl down against the shuttered windows.

With a shaking hand she put her mug down, her eyes still irresistibly drawn to the faded jeans which hugged his long and muscular thighs. He must have pulled them on in a hurry because the top button was undone, displaying a line of dark hair which arrowed tantalisingly downwards. Soft light bathed his bare and gleaming torso, emphasising washboard abs and broad shoulders.

She realised with a start that she’d never seen his naked torso before—or at least hadn’t really noticed it. She’d been so blown away when they’d been having sex that her eyes hadn’t seemed able to focus on anything at all. But now she could see him in all his beauty—a dark and forbidding beauty, but beauty all the same. And despite all the stuff between them, despite the fact that they’d been snapping at each other like crocodiles this afternoon, she could feel herself responding to him, and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it.

Beneath her nightshirt her nipples were growing even tighter and her breasts were heavy. She could feel a warm melting tug at her groin and the sensation was so intense that she found herself shifting her weight uncomfortably from one bare foot to the other. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came.

He stared at her, a strange and mocking half-smile at his lips, as if he knew exactly what was happening to her. ‘What’s the matter, Keira?’ he queried silkily. ‘Can’t sleep?’

She struggled to find the correct response. To behave as anyone else would in the circumstances.

Like a woman drinking herb tea and not wishing that he would put his hand between her legs to stop this terrible aching.

‘No. I can’t. This wretched storm is keeping me awake.’ She forced a smile. ‘And neither could you, obviously.’

‘I heard someone moving around in the kitchen, so I came to investigate.’ He stared down at her empty cup. ‘Is the tea working?’

She thought about pretending but what was the point? ‘Not really,’ she admitted as another crash of thunder echoed through the room. ‘I’m still wide awake and I’m probably going to stay that way until the storm dies down.’

There was a pause while Matteo’s gaze drifted over her and he thought how pale she looked standing there with her nightshirt brushing against her bare thighs and hair spilling like dark silk over her shoulders. Bare-footed, she looked tiny—a tantalising mixture of vulnerability and promise—and it felt more potent than anything he’d ever experienced. She was trying to resist him, he knew that, yet the look in her eyes told him that inside she was aching as much as he was. He knew what he was going to do because he couldn’t put it off any longer, and although the voice of his conscience was sounding loud in his ears, he took no notice of it. She needed to relax a little—for all their sakes.

‘Maybe you should try a little distraction technique,’ he said.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Doing what?’

‘Come and look at the view from my study,’ he suggested evenly. ‘It’s spectacular at the best of times, but during a storm it’s unbelievable.’

Keira hesitated because it felt as if he were inviting her into the lion’s lair, but surely anything would be better than standing there feeling totally out of her depth. What else was she going to do—go back to bed and lie there feeling sorry for herself? And they were leaving for Rome tomorrow. Perhaps she should drop her guard a little. Perhaps they should start trying to be friends.

‘Sure,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘Why not?’

His study was in a different wing of the house, which hadn’t featured in the guided tour he’d given her at the beginning of the week—an upstairs room sited at the far end of a vast, beamed sitting room. She followed him into the book-lined room, her introspection vanishing the instant she saw the light show taking place outside the window. Her lips fell open as she stood watching the sky blindingly illuminated by sheet lightning, which lit up the dark outlines of the surrounding mountains. Each bright flash was reflected in the surface of the distant lake, so that the dramatic effect of what she was seeing was doubled. ‘It’s...amazing,’ she breathed.

‘Isn’t it?’

He had come to stand beside her—so close that he was almost touching and Keira held her breath, wanting him to touch her, praying for him to touch her. Did he guess that? Was that why he slid his arm around her shoulders, his fingers beginning to massage the tense and knotted muscles?

She looked up into the hard gleam of his eyes, startled by the dark look of hunger on his face.

‘Shall we put a stop to all this right now, Keira?’ he murmured. ‘Because we both know that the damned storm has nothing to do with our inability to sleep. It’s desire, isn’t it? Two people lying in their lonely beds, just longing to reach out to one another.’

His hands had slipped to her upper arms, and as his hard-boned face swam in and out of focus Keira told herself to break away and escape to the sanctuary of her room. Yet her body was stubbornly refusing to obey. All she could seem to focus on were his lips and how good it felt to have him touching her like this. She’d never stood in a storm-lit room with a half-dressed man, completely naked beneath her frumpy nightshirt, and yet she knew exactly what was going to happen next. She could feel it. Smell it. She swayed. Could almost taste the desire which was bombarding her senses and making her pounding heart the only thing she could hear above the loud hammer of the rain.

‘Isn’t that so?’ he continued, brushing hair away from her face as the pad of his thumb stroked its way over her trembling lips. ‘You want me to kiss you, don’t you, Keira? You want it really quite badly.’

Keira resented the arrogance of that swaggering statement—but not enough to make her deny the truth behind it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do.’

Matteo tensed, her whispered assent sharpening his already keen hunger, and he pulled her against his body and crushed his mouth over hers. And, oh, she tasted good. Better than good. Better than he remembered—but maybe that was because her kiss had lingered in his memory far longer than it should have done. He tried to go slowly but his usual patience fled as his hands began to rediscover her small and compact body. Before she had been incredibly lean—he remembered narrow hips and the bony ladder of her ribcage. But now those bones had disappeared beneath a layer of new flesh, which was soft and tempting and just ripe for licking.

Her head tipped back as he rucked up her nightshirt, his hand burrowing beneath the bunched cotton until he had bared her breast. He bent his head to take one taut rosebud in between his lips and felt her fingers digging into his bare shoulders as he grazed the sensitive areola between his teeth. Already he felt as if he wanted to explode—as if he would die if he’d didn’t quickly impale her. Was the fact that she’d borne his child the reason why he was feeling a desire which felt almost primitive in its intensity? Was that why his hands were trembling like this?

‘Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to do this?’ he husked, his fingers sliding down between her breasts and caressing their silken weight. ‘Every second of every day.’

Her reply was a muffled gasp against his mouth. ‘Is that why you’ve stayed away from me?’

‘That’s exactly why.’ He let his fingertips trickle down over her belly and heard her catch her breath as they travelled further downwards. ‘You needed to rest and I was trying to be a...gentleman,’ he growled.

‘And how does this qualify as being...oh!’ Her words faded away as he slid his hand between her legs, brushing over the soft fuzz of hair to find the molten heat beneath.

‘You were saying?’ he breathed as he dampened his finger in the soft, wet folds before starting to stroke the little bud which was already so tight.

He heard her give a shaky swallow. ‘Matteo, this is...is...’

He knew exactly what it was. It was arousing her to a state where she was going to come any second, and while it was turning him on to discover how close to the edge she was—it was also making his own frustration threaten to implode. With a necessary care which defied his hungry impatience, he eased the zip of his jeans down over his straining hardness—breathing a sigh of relief as his massive erection sprang free. The denim concertinaed around his ankles but he didn’t care. He knew propriety dictated he should take them off, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t wait, not a second longer.

Impatiently he pushed her back against his desk, shoving aside his computer and paperwork with uncharacteristic haste. And the moment the moist tip of his penis touched her, she seemed to go wild, clawing eagerly at his back—and it took more concentration than he’d ever needed to force himself to pull back. Through the distracting fog of desire, he recalled the condom concealed in a drawer of his desk and by the time it was in place he felt as excited as a teenage boy as his hungry gaze skated over her.

Like a sacrifice she lay on the desk, her arms stretched indolently above her head as he leaned over to make that first thrust deep inside her. And this time there was no pain or hesitation. This time there was nothing but a gasped cry of pleasure as he filled her. Greedily, he sank even deeper and then he rode her—and even the crash of something falling from the desk wasn’t enough to put him off his stroke. Or maybe it was just another crash of thunder from the storm outside. Who cared? He rode her until she came, her frantic convulsions starting only fractionally before his own, so that they moved in perfect time before his ragged groan heralded the end and he slumped on top of her, her hands clasped around the sweat-sheened skin of his back.

He didn’t say anything at first, unwilling to shatter the unfamiliar peace he felt as he listened to the quietening of his heart. He felt spent. As if she had milked him dry. As if he could have fallen asleep right there, despite the hardness of the wooden surface. He forced himself to open his eyes and to take stock of their surroundings. Imagine if they were discovered here in the morning by one of the cleaners, or by Paola—already surprised that, not only had he brought a woman here, but he had a baby son.

A son he had barely seen.

Guilt formed itself into an icy-cold knot deep in his chest and was enough to dissolve his lethargy. Untwining himself from Keira’s arms, he moved away from the desk, bending to pull up his jeans and zip them. Only then did he stare down at her, where she lay with her eyes closed amid the debris of his wrecked desk. Her cotton nightshirt was rucked right up to expose her beautiful breasts and her legs were bent with careless abandon. The enticing gleam between her open thighs was making him grow hard again but he fought the feeling—telling himself he needed to start taking control. He would learn about his son in time—he would—but for now his primary purpose was to ensure that Santino remained a part of his life, and for that to happen he needed Keira onside.

So couldn’t their powerful sexual chemistry work in his favour—as effective a bargaining tool as his vast wealth? Couldn’t he tantalise her with a taste of what could be hers, if only she was prepared to be reasonable? Because Keira Ryan was unpredictable. She was proud and stubborn, despite the fact that she’d been depending on other people’s charity for most of her life, and he was by no means certain that she would accede to his wishes. So maybe it was time to remind her just who was calling the shots. He bent and lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his chest as her eyelashes fluttered open.

‘What are you doing?’ she questioned drowsily.

‘Taking you back to bed.’

She yawned. ‘Can’t we just stay here?’

He gave an emphatic shake of his head. ‘No.’

Keira closed her eyes again, wanting to capture this feeling for ever—a feeling which went much deeper than sexual satisfaction, incredible though that side of it had been. She had felt so close to Matteo when he’d been deep inside her. Scarily close—almost as if they were two parts of the same person. Had he felt that, too? Her heart gave a little leap of hope. Couldn’t they somehow make this work despite everything which had happened? Couldn’t they?

Resting her head against his warm chest, she let him carry her through the house to her own room, not pausing until he had pulled back the duvet and deposited her in the centre of the soft bed. Only then did her eyelids flutter open, her heart missing a beat as she took in his gleaming torso and powerful thighs. She stared up at him hopefully. Was he going to lose the jeans and climb in beside her, so she could snuggle up against him as she so desperately wanted to do and stroke her fingers through the ruffled beauty of his black hair?

She watched as his gaze swept over her, the hectic glitter of hunger in their ebony depths unmistakable. And she waited, because surely it should be him asking her permission to stay? She didn’t know very much about bedroom etiquette, but instinct told her that. She recognised that she’d been a bit of a pushover back there, and it was time to show the Italian tycoon that he might need to work a little harder this time.

‘So?’ She looked at him with what she hoped was a welcoming smile.

‘That’s better. You don’t smile nearly enough.’ His finger traced the edges of her lips as he leaned over her. ‘All the bad temper of this afternoon banished in the most pleasurable way possible.’ He stroked an exploratory finger over the tightening nipple beneath her nightshirt. ‘Was that what you needed all along, Keira?’

It took a few moments for his meaning to sink in and when it did, Keira could hardly believe her ears. A powerful wave of hurt crashed over her. Was that all it had been? Had he made love to her as a way of soothing her ruffled emotions and making her more amenable? As if he were some kind of human sedative? She wanted to bite down hard on her clenched fist. To demand how someone so cold-blooded could possibly live with himself. But she forced herself to remain silent because only that way could she cling onto what was left of her battered pride. Why give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her? If he was going to act so carelessly, then so would she. And why be so surprised by his callous behaviour when he hadn’t shown one fraction of concern for his baby son. Matteo Valenti was nothing but a manipulative and cold-blooded bastard, she reminded herself.

Hauling the duvet up to her chin, she closed her eyes. ‘I’m tired, Matteo,’ she said. ‘Would you mind turning off the light as you go?’

And then, deliberately manufacturing a loud yawn, she turned her back on him.