Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection - Мишель Смарт, Maisey Yates - Страница 60

CHAPTER THREE

IN RECEIPT OF that startling confession, Vito had the most atrocious desire to laugh, but he didn’t want to hurt Holly’s feelings. Her cheeks had gone all pink again and her eyes were evasive as if that confession had simply slipped accidentally from her lips. He breathed in deep. ‘Tough. What did you do?’

‘Told him what I thought of him in one sentence, walked out again.’ Holly tilted her chin, anger darkening her blue eyes as she remembered the scene she had interrupted. ‘I hate liars and cheats.’

‘I’m shockingly well behaved in that line. Too busy working,’ Vito countered, relieved that she had not a clue about the scandal that had persuaded him to leave Florence and even less idea of who he was. In recent days he had been forced to spend way too much time in the company of people too polite to say what they thought but not too polite to stare at him and whisper. Anonymity suddenly had huge appeal. He finally felt that he could relax.

‘So, why are you staying here all alone?’ Holly asked, sipping her wine, grateful he had glossed over her gaffe about Ritchie without further comment.

‘Burnout. I needed a break from work.’ Vito gave her the explanation he had already decided on in the shower. ‘Obviously I wasn’t expecting weather like this.’

He was unusually abstracted, however, ensnared by the manner in which the blue of his sweater lit up her luminous eyes. He was also wondering how she could possibly look almost irresistibly cute in an article of his clothing when the thick wool draped her tiny body like a blanket and only occasionally hinted at the treasures that lay beneath. What was the real secret of her appeal? he was asking himself in bewilderment, even though the secret was right in front of him. She had a wonderfully feminine shape, amazing eyes and a torrent of dark hair that tumbled round her shoulders in luxuriant loose curls. But what was most different about Holly was that she was genuine as so few people dared to be. She put on no show and said nothing for effect; indeed she followed a brand of candour that was blunt to the point of embarrassing.

‘Why are you staring at me?’ Holly asked baldly, straightening her spine and squaring her little shoulders for all the world as though she was bracing herself for him to say something critical.

‘Am I?’ Vito fielded, riveting dark eyes brimming with amusement as he straightened to leave the kitchen. ‘Sorry... I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.’

He was setting up a games console when Holly joined him with her plate of savoury snacks. ‘I thought I’d have a game,’ he told her, ‘but perhaps you would rather watch TV—’

‘No, what game is it?’

It was a war game Holly knew well. ‘I’ll play you,’ she told him.

Vito shot her a startled glance. ‘You play?’

‘Of course I do. Every foster family had a console and you learned to play with the other kids to fit in,’ she pointed out wryly.

‘Dio mio...how many different families did you live with?’

‘I never counted but there were a lot of them. I’d get settled somewhere and then someone somewhere would decide I should have another go at bonding with my mother, and I’d be shot back to her again for a few months.’

Vito was frowning as he set up the game. ‘Your mother was still alive?’

‘Just not a good parent. It never worked out with her,’ Holly completed wryly, keen to gloss over the facts with as little detail as possible while she watched Vito, lean hips flexing down into powerful thighs as he bent down.

From her position kneeling on the floor, she could admire the fluidity of his long-fingered brown hands as he leant over the console. His every movement was incredibly graceful, she acknowledged. And when she glanced up at him she noticed the black density of his eyelashes and the definition that dark luxuriance lent to his already stunning dark eyes. Her nipples were tight little buds inside her bra and she felt hot.

‘Your father?’ Vito queried.

‘I had no idea who my father was so he didn’t come into the picture. But my mother still being around was the reason why I moved around so much, because she refused to allow me to be put up for adoption. Every time I went back to my mother and then had to leave her again to go back into care, I ended up with a new foster family.’ Holly grimaced and shrugged. ‘It was a messy way to grow up.’

Vito had always thought he had it rough with a tyrannical grandfather, warring parents and being an only child on whom huge expectations rested. But his glimpse at what lay on Holly’s side of the fence sobered him and gave him an unsettling new perspective. He had always had security and he had always known he was loved. And although Holly had enjoyed neither advantage, she wasn’t moaning about it, he thought with grudging appreciation.

As Vito lounged back on the sofa his six-pack abs rippled below the soft cotton stretched over his broad chest and Holly’s mouth ran dry. He was amazingly beautifully built and the acknowledgement sent colour surging into her cheeks because she had never looked at a man’s body and thought that before. But she couldn’t take her eyes off him and it mortified her. It was as if she had been locked back into a teenager’s body again because there was nothing sensible or controlled about what she was experiencing.

‘We’ll set the timer for a ten-minute challenge,’ Vito told her lightly, doubting that she would last the game that long.

Fortunately, Holly didn’t even have to think while she played him. In dark times the engrossing, mindless games had been her escape from the reality of a life that hurt too much. With the weapon she had picked she made kill after kill on screen and then the challenge was over and she had won.

‘You’re very fast,’ Vito conceded with a slashing grin of appreciation, because once again he could not think of a single woman who, having chosen to play him, would not have then allowed him to win even though she was a better player. Of course that was a debatable point when he didn’t actually know any other woman who could play.

‘Lots of practice over the years,’ Holly conceded, still recovering from the raw charisma of that wolfish grin that cracked right through his essential reserve. Gaming had relaxed him, warmed him up, melted that cool façade he wore to show the real man underneath. And now he didn’t just strike her as heartbreakingly handsome, he was downright irresistible. She shifted uneasily in her seat, her body tense and so weirdly super sensitive that even her clothes seemed to chafe her tender skin.

‘And the prize is...’ Vito’s attention locked like a missile to the soft pink fullness of her mouth and her nipples pinched into tight little points. ‘You get to put your Christmas tree up.’

Holly sprang off the seat. ‘Seriously?’ she exclaimed in surprise.

‘Seriously.’ Vito focused on that sparkling smile and gritted his teeth in a conscious attempt to cool off and quell his hard-on. He didn’t know what it was about her but one look from those melting blue eyes and he was hotter than hell. ‘Go ahead...’ He pinched one of the snacks on her plate by his feet. ‘Any more of these?’

Holly laughed. ‘I’ll put more on before I get the tree sorted.’

Vito watched her rush about full of energy, and suppressed a rueful sigh. It didn’t take a lot to make her happy. ‘Why does Christmas mean so much to you?’

‘I didn’t have it when I was very small,’ she admitted.

‘How can you not have Christmas?’

‘Mum didn’t celebrate it. Well, not in the family sense. There was no tree, no present, nothing. She went out partying but I didn’t know what the day was supposed to be until I went into care for the first time.’

Vito frowned. ‘And how did that happen?’

Holly hesitated, eyes troubled as her oval face stiffened. ‘You know, this is all very personal...’

‘I’m curious... I’ve never met anyone who grew up in care before,’ Vito told her truthfully, revelling in every fleeting expression that crossed her expressive little face. She was full to the brim with emotional responses. She was his exact opposite because she felt so much and showed even more. It shook him that he could find that ingenuousness so very appealing in a woman that he was challenged to look away from her.

Holly compressed her lips, those full pink lips with that dainty little cupid’s bow that called to him on a far more primitive level. ‘When I was six years old, Mum left me alone for three days over Christmas. I went to a neighbour because I was hungry and she called the police.’

Taken aback by that admission, Vito sat up very straight, dark-as-night eyes locked to her as she finished that little speech in an emotive surge. ‘Your mother abandoned you?’

‘Yes, but eventually she probably would have come back, as she’d done it before. I was put into a short-term foster home and the family gave me Christmas even though it was already over,’ Holly told him with a fond smile of remembrance.

‘And you’ve been making up for that loss ever since,’ Vito said drily, shrugging off the pangs of sympathy assailing him, taking refuge in edgy cynicism instead. He didn’t do emotion, avoiding such displays and feelings whenever he could because the memories of his mother’s raw pain in the face of his father’s rejections still disturbed him. As far as he was concerned, if you put your feelings out on display you were asking to be kicked in the teeth and it was not a risk he was prepared to take for anyone. Yet just looking at Holly he could tell that she had taken that same risk time and time again.

‘Probably. As obsessions go, Christmas is a fairly harmless one,’ Holly fielded before she got up to hurry into the kitchen and retrieve the snacks from the oven. After handing him the plate, she returned to winding the fairy lights round the small tree.

He watched the firelight flicker over her, illuminating a rounded cheekbone, a tempting stretch of gleaming thigh as she bent down, and the provocative rise of her curvy behind. ‘How old are you, Holly?’

Holly attached an ornament to a branch and glanced over her shoulder at him. As soon as she collided with his spellbinding dark golden eyes, her heart raced, her mouth ran dry and her mind went blank. ‘I’m twenty-four...tomorrow.’

Vito’s gaze glittered in the firelight. ‘It’s both Christmas and your birthday.’

‘Now it’s your turn. Tell me about you,’ Holly urged with unconcealed eagerness because everything about Vito Sorrentino made her insanely curious.

It should not have been an unexpected question but it hit Vito like a brick and he froze on the reality that having questioned her so thoroughly he could hardly refuse to respond in kind. He breathed in deep, squaring his broad shoulders, fighting his tension. ‘I’m the only child of ill-matched parents. Holiday periods when my father was expected to play his part as a family man were always very stressful because he hated being forced to spend time with us. Christmas fell into that category.’

‘Why haven’t they separated?’ He was so on edge talking about his family situation that it touched her heart. Such a beautiful man, so sophisticated and cool in comparison to her, so seemingly together and yet he too bore the damage of a wounding childhood. Holly was fascinated.

‘My mother was raised to believe that divorce is wrong...and she loves my father. She’s incredibly loyal to the people she loves.’ Vito spoke very stiffly because he had never in his life before shared that much about his family dynamics. He had been taught to live by the same code of secretive silence and polite denial that his mother had always observed. Even if the roof was falling in, appearances still had to be conserved. Breaking that code of silence with an outsider filled him with discomfiture.

‘That must’ve put a lot of pressure on you,’ Holly remarked, soulful big blue eyes pinned to him with an amount of sympathy far beyond what he considered necessary.

And yet inexplicably there was something in Vito that was warmed by that show of support. He came up off the sofa as though she had yanked a chain attached to his body, and pulled her up into his arms, and in neither of those moves did he recognise conscious thought or decision. It was instinct, pure instinct to reach for Holly.

He tugged her close, long brown fingers flying up to tilt her chin, and gazed down into those inviting clear eyes of hers. A split second later, he kissed her.

In shock, Holly simply stood there, conflicting feelings pulling her in opposing directions. Push him away, back off now, one voice urged. He finds me attractive, find out what it’s like, the other voice pleaded while she brimmed with secret pride. He touched her mouth slow and soft, nipping her lips lightly and teasingly, and she could hardly breathe. Her heart was thumping like a jackhammer inside her ribcage. His tongue eased apart the seam of her lips and flickered and a spasm of raw excitement thrilled down into her pelvis. With a hungry groan he tightened his arms round her.

Nothing had ever tasted as good as Vito’s mouth on hers and she trembled in reaction, her whole body awakening. Her hands linked round his neck as the hard, demanding pressure of his mouth sent a delicious heat spiralling down through her. She felt wonderfully warm and safe for the first time ever. In that moment of security she rejoiced in the glorious feel of his mouth and the taste of the wine on his tongue. His fingers splayed to mould to her hips and trailed down the backs of her thighs. Tiny little shivers of response tugged at her as she felt a tightening sensation at her core and her breasts felt achingly full.

Vito lifted his dark head. Dark golden eyes sought hers. ‘I want you,’ he husked.

‘I want you,’ Holly framed shakily and it was the very first time she understood the need to say that to someone.

In all the years she had thought about having sex it had always been because sex was expected of her in a relationship, never because she herself was tempted. In the face of those expectations, her body had begun to seem like something to cede, and not fully her own. And that had been wrong, so wrong, she finally saw. It should be her choice and her choice alone. But she was learning that only now in Vito’s arms and recognising the difference because she was finally experiencing a genuine desire for something more. And it was a heady feeling that left her bemused and giddy.

Staring up into Vito’s dark, dangerous eyes, she stretched up on tiptoe to reach him, simply desperate to feel his beautiful mouth on hers again. And the sheer strength of that physical connection, the locking in of every simultaneous sensation that assailed her, only emphasised how right it felt to be with him that way.

This was what all the fuss was about, she thought joyously, the thrumming pulse of need that drove her, the tiny little tremors of desire making her tremble, the overwhelming yearning for the hard, muscular feel of his body against hers. And as one kiss led into another he drew her down onto the rug again and the heat of the fire on her skin burned no more fiercely than the raw hunger raging through her with spellbinding force.

With her willing collusion he extracted her from the sweater and released the catch on her bra. He studied the full globes he had bared with unhidden hunger. ‘You have a totally amazing body, gioia mia.’

A deep flush lit Holly’s cheeks and the colour spread because she was not relaxed about nudity. Yet there in the firelight with Vito looking at her as though he were unveiling a work of art, she was horribly self-conscious but she felt no shame or sense of inadequacy. Indeed, the more Vito looked, the more the pulse of heat humming between her thighs picked up tempo. Long fingers shaping the plump curves of her breasts, Vito flicked a tongue over a straining pink nipple and a hungry groan of appreciation was wrenched from him as he dallied there, toying with her sensitive flesh in a caress that made her hips squirm while a new sense of urgency gripped her.

‘Kiss me,’ she urged breathlessly as he tugged at the tender buds of her breasts and an arrow of burning heat pierced her feminine core, only increasing her agitation.

He crushed her ripe mouth beneath his again, his tongue plunging deep, and for a split second it satisfied the craving pulling at her, and then somehow even that wasn’t enough any more. She shifted position restively, her legs sliding apart to let his hips slide between as she silently, instinctively sought more. Her hips rocked. She wanted and she wanted...

And then at last, as if he knew exactly what she needed, he smoothed his passage up a silken inner thigh and tugged off her panties. He stroked her, found the most needy place of all, and a current of almost unbearable excitement shot through Holly’s veins. Suddenly in the hold of her own explosive response she was all heat and light and sensation. A long finger tested her slick, damp core and she whimpered, her teeth clenching, the ferocious need clawing cruelly at her as her spine arched, her body all too ready to take charge.

There was no room for thought in the passion that had swept her away in the way she had always dreamed. But it wasn’t the same as her dream because what she was feeling was much more basic, much more wild and out of control than she had ever allowed herself to be. He moved to one side, yanking off his top, revealing an abdomen grooved with lean, hard muscle, and her hand slid greedily up over his chest, rejoicing in his sleek bronzed skin and the manner in which every muscle jerked taut the instant she touched him.

‘I have no condoms,’ Vito bit out in sudden frustration. ‘But I had a health check a few weeks ago and I’m clean.’

‘I’m on the pill,’ Holly framed shakily, belatedly jolted into rational thought by the acknowledgement that she wasn’t about to call a halt to their activities. And why was that? She had never wanted anything or anyone the way she wanted him and surely that was the way it was supposed to be? It felt right. He felt right.

Vito hauled in a shuddering breath of relief and came back down to her again, tasting her reddened mouth again with devouring appetite. Her hands smoothed over him, caressing every part of him she could reach from his wide brown shoulders to the satin-smooth expanse of his back. Desire drove her like an addictive drug. Beneath his touch she writhed, her reactions pitching her desire higher and higher until the mushroom of liquid-honey heat inside her flared up in ecstasy before spreading to every part of her. She gasped, shaken by an almost out-of-body feeling, her entire being singing with the potent rush of pleasure.

And then she felt him pushing at the heart of her, tilting her back for his entrance and she was wildly impatient, needing more, ready to try anything that he could give her. He filled her completely, thrusting deep with a slick, sure forcefulness that took her by surprise. The bite of pain was an equal surprise and she blinked back tears and sank her teeth into her lower lip, grateful that her face was against his shoulder where he couldn’t see her reaction.

‘You’re incredibly wet and tight,’ Vito growled in a roughened undertone. ‘It’s a hell of a turn-on, gioia mia.’

The pinch of discomfort evaporated as he moved and she arched up to receive him. He vented a groan of all-male satisfaction as she joined in, no longer separate in thought and behaviour. That overpowering hunger kicked back in as his fluid, insistent thrusts filled her with renewed enthusiasm. In fact the wild, sweet rhythm of his sensual possession fired a blinding, pulsing excitement inside her. Locked with his, her body was snatched up into a passionate climax that flooded her with exquisite sensation.

Coiling back from her, Vito saw the blood on her thighs. ‘Maledizione...you’re bleeding? Did I hurt you? Why didn’t you stop me?’

Brutally summoned back to reality without warning, Holly snaked back from him and hugged her knees in sudden mortification. ‘It’s all right—’

‘No, you being hurt is not all right in any way,’ Vito shot back at her grimly.

Holly could feel a beetroot-red flush start at her toes and slowly burn up over her whole body. Lifting her head, she clashed reluctantly with glittering dark eyes of angry concern. ‘I wasn’t hurt...at least not the way you mean,’ she explained grudgingly. ‘I was a virgin...and obviously there was some physical evidence of it...which I wasn’t expecting...’

‘A virgin?’ Vito exclaimed in raw disbelief. ‘You were a virgin?’

Snatching up the sweater he had taken off her, Holly pulled it over her again, struggling to slide her arms back into the sleeves. ‘Don’t make such a big deal of it,’ she urged while she was still safely submerged in the wool.

‘It is a big deal!’ Vito grated, springing upright to zip his trousers again and reach for his shirt.

Flushed and uncomfortable, Holly glanced at him unwillingly. ‘Maybe to me but I don’t see why it should bother you!’

‘Don’t you indeed?’ Vito riposted.

‘No, I don’t,’ Holly countered on a rising note of anger because his reaction was the very last thing she had expected from him and the topic mortified her.

Dark eyes flashing gold, Vito studied her. ‘You should’ve warned me. Why didn’t you?’

Holly stood her ground, her vexation stifling her embarrassment. ‘Because it was a private matter and none of your business.’

‘Nothing of that nature stays private when you’re having sex with someone!’

In discomfited retreat, Holly headed towards the shower room she had used earlier. ‘Well, I’ll take your word for that since it was my first experience.’

Vito was inflamed by her refusal to understand and chose to be blunt. ‘I feel like I took advantage of you!’ he admitted harshly.

Holly whirled back at the door. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m not a kid. My body, my choice.’

Vito snatched in a ragged breath, still reeling from the shock of her innocence. He hadn’t told her who he was or indeed anything important about himself. She didn’t, couldn’t understand that in his position he was innately suspicious of anything as unexpected as their encounter and on top of it the very tardy revelation that she was a virgin. With his experience, that revelation had smacked of a possible sting of some kind and he had immediately wondered if she had some kind of hidden agenda. Now gazing into her troubled face, belatedly recognising the hurt and sadness there, he wanted to kick himself for treating her like some sort of scam artist.

‘I’m sorry...’ Vito breathed abruptly. ‘I let my surprise push me into an overreaction, Holly. Of course, it’s your choice...’

Some of her tension evaporated but her eyes remained guarded. ‘I didn’t even think of warning you. And if I had thought of it, I probably would’ve been too embarrassed to mention it.’

‘I wrecked the moment,’ Vito groaned in acknowledgement. He moved forward to close his arms round her and somehow, even after that uneasy exchange, it felt like the best thing in the world to Holly. Her stiffness slowly ebbing, she rested against him, drinking in the heat and the comfortingly hard, masculine contours of his lean, muscular body against hers. ‘I also neglected to tell you that what we shared...it was amazing.’

‘You’re just saying that,’ she mumbled.

‘No. It was amazing, cara mia. Now let’s go upstairs and shower,’ Vito urged, easing her in a different direction, inexplicably keen to keep her close even though something in his brain was urging him to step back.

Amazing? Was that a polite lie? Just something a man said for the sake of it? He had flipped the situation on its head again and she didn’t know how he had achieved that. She blinked in surprise as the lights illuminated a much bigger bedroom than she had expected, airily furnished in stylish tones of grey.

Vito pushed open the door of a very spacious en-suite. ‘You first...unless you’d like company in the shower?’

Holly gave him a startled look. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.’

Vito laughed in appreciation and bent down to claim her swollen pink mouth with his own in a searing kiss that made every skin cell in her body sit up and take notice. ‘I’ll ask you again in the morning,’ he warned her.

Holly’s attention skated to the giant bed. ‘We’re going to share the bed?’

‘There is only one bedroom here. I was planning to take the sofa.’

‘No, I won’t banish you to the sofa,’ Holly breathed with a sudden grin as she slid past him into the en-suite while barely recognising her own thoughts or feelings. She only knew she didn’t want him to sleep downstairs on the sofa and away from her. That felt wrong.

She stood in the shower feeling astonishingly light-hearted for a woman who had strayed from values that were as ingrained in her as her usual honesty. But making love with Vito had felt right and it was hard to credit that anything that had felt so natural and right could possibly be wrong. After all, they were both single and nobody was being hurt by their being together. What harm could it possibly do for her to go with the flow for a change in a relationship instead of trying to plan everything or wait for some extraordinary special sign? And why on earth was she feeling guilty about Ritchie when he had cheated on her?

It wasn’t as though she had ever imagined that she was in love with Ritchie. She had only been seeing him for a few weeks and, even though he had been full of himself, he had been good company. Was what she felt with Vito a rebound attraction?

But how could it be? Ritchie couldn’t be compared to Vito on any level. Vito utterly overshadowed his predecessor in every way. And just like her secret fantasy, Vito had swept Holly away in the tide of passion she had always dreamt of experiencing. Of course, it wasn’t going anywhere, she reminded herself staunchly, suppressing a pang of sorrow at that acknowledgement. There would be no ongoing relationship with Vito. She didn’t need Vito to spell that out. What they had now was time out of time, separate from their normal lives and associations. Attraction had sparked purely because they were stuck together in a snowbound cottage, and she wasn’t foolish enough to try and make more of it, was she?

She wrapped a towel round herself rather than put on his sweater again and crept out of the bathroom. Clad only in his jeans, which were unbuttoned at the waistband, Vito was towelling his hair dry. He tossed aside the towel, finger-combing his black hair carelessly off his brow. ‘I used the shower downstairs.’

Holly hovered, suddenly awkward. ‘I could have done that. This is your room, after all.’

Vito saw the wary uncertainty in her blue eyes and knew he had put it there. Holly was nothing at all like the women he was accustomed to meeting. Nevertheless he had initially judged her by the cynical standards formed by years of experience with such women. Yet he sensed that she would have been very shocked by the scandal that he had been forced to leave behind him. He had wounded her by questioning her innocence yet that same innocence of hers ironically drew him like a beacon. He crossed the room and closed both arms round her, responding to the inbuilt drive to bridge the gap between them. ‘Tonight it’s our room. Let’s go to bed...’ he urged.

And Holly thought about saying no and heading down to the sofa. After all, she had broken her own rules and just because she had done that once didn’t mean she had an automatic excuse to keep on doing it. Indeed, if having sex with Vito had been a mistake, she was honour-bound to choose the sofa over him.

But sleeping alone wasn’t what she wanted and needed right then. She wanted to be with Vito. She wanted to make the most of the time they had together. She was even feeling sensible enough to know that it was fortunate that she wouldn’t be with Vito for much longer, for she reckoned that given the opportunity she would fall for him like a ton of bricks. That, of course, would be totally, unforgivably stupid. And she might be a little sentimental, but stupid she was not.

She looked at Vito, even though she knew she really shouldn’t, but there he was, etched in her head in an image that would burn for all time, she thought dizzily. He was beautiful, drop-dead beautiful and tonight...tonight he was all hers...