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‘Um…since I was nineteen…eight years.’
‘It’s a long time.’
She shifted her gaze from the penetrating black ink of the housekeeper’s. ‘Yes…yes, it is…’
‘You’re not in love with him, sì?’
‘I love him.’ Had she answered too quickly? Had she sounded too defensive? ‘I’ve always loved him.’
‘That’s not the same thing as being in love,’ Marella said. ‘I see how you are with Signor Valente and him with you. He stirs something in you. Something you’ve tried for a long time to suppress, sì?’
Eliza felt a wave of colour wash over her cheeks. ‘I’m just the replacement nanny. I’ll be gone in four weeks.’
Marella gave the counter top a slow wipe as she mused, ‘I wonder if he will let you go.’
‘I’m absolutely certain Signor Valente will be enormously pleased to see the back of me,’ Eliza said with feeling.
Marella stopped wiping and gave her a level look. ‘I wasn’t talking about Signor Valente.’
A telling silence slipped past.
‘Excuse me…’ Eliza forced a polite smile that felt more like a grimace. ‘I have to check on Alessandra.’
When Eliza came downstairs an hour later Marella was just leaving to attend a family function.
‘There is a meal all set up on gas flamed warmers in the dining room,’ she said as she tied a nylon scarf around her neck. ‘I think Signor Valente is in the study. Will you be all right to handle dishing up? Don’t worry about clearing up afterwards. I can do that in the morning.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving a mess for you to face in the morning,’ Eliza said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of dishing up and clearing away. Have a good evening.’
‘Grazie.’
Eliza glanced towards the study once the housekeeper had left. Should she wait until Leo came out for dinner to thank him for finding her ring or should she seek him out now? She was still deciding when the door suddenly opened.
He saw her hovering there and arched a brow. ‘Did you want me?’
I want you. I want you. I want you. It was like a chant inside her head but it was reverberating throughout her body as well. She could feel that on-off pulse deep in her core intensifying the longer his dark, mesmerising gaze held hers.
‘Um…I wanted to thank you for finding my ring,’ she said, knowing her cheeks were burning fiery red. ‘It was very thoughtful of you to take the time to keep looking.’
‘It was behind the seat in the grotto. You must’ve lost it when you picked up your cardigan.’ His dark gaze glinted satirically. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice it missing earlier.’
Eliza set her mouth. ‘Yes, well, I’m going to get it tightened so it doesn’t happen again.’
He reached for her hand before she could step away. She sucked in a breath as those long, strong, tanned fingers imprisoned hers. Her heart started a madcap rhythm behind her breastbone and her skin tingled and tightened all over. ‘W…what are you doing?’ Was that her voice, that tiny mouse-like squeak of sound?
His gaze went to her mouth, lingering there. She felt her lips soften and part slightly, her response to him as automatic as breathing. His fingers were warm and dry around hers. She imagined them on other parts of her body, how it had felt to have them caress her intimately, her breasts, her inner thighs, the feminine heart of her that had swelled and flowered under his spine-tingling touch. Her insides clenched with longing as she thought of the stroke of his tongue against her—that most intimate of all kisses. How he had seemed to know from their first time together what she needed to reach fulfilment.
She could see the memory of it in his gaze as it came back to mesh with hers. It made her spine shiver to see that silent message pass between them…the universal language of making love.
Passionate, primal—primitive.
‘Ho voglia di te—ti voglio adesso.’ His words were like a verbal caress, all the more powerfully, intoxicatingly stimulating as they were delivered in his mother tongue.
Eliza swallowed as her heart raced with excitement. ‘I don’t understand what you just said…’ But I’ve got a pretty fair idea!
Those dark eyes glittered with carnal intent as he grasped her by the hips and, with a little jerk forwards, he locked her against his erection. She felt it against her belly, the thunder of his blood mimicking the sensual cyclone that was happening within her own body. Her breasts ached for his touch. She could feel them swelling against the lace constraints of her bra. Her mouth tingled in anticipation of his covering it, plundering it. She sent the tip of her tongue out to moisten the surface of her lips. Her need of him was consuming her common sense like galloping, greedy flames did to a little pile of tinder-dry toothpicks.
‘I want you—I want you now.’ He said it this time in English and it had exactly the same devastatingly sensual impact.
‘I want you too.’ It was part confession, part plea.
He splayed a hand through her hair, gripping her almost roughly as his mouth came down on hers. It was a kiss that spoke of desperate longing, of needs that had for too long gone unmet, of a man wanting a woman so badly he could barely control his primitive response to her. It thrilled Eliza to feel that level of desire in him because it so completely and so utterly matched her own.
The stroke and glide of his tongue against hers set her senses aflame. She undulated her hips against him, whimpering in delight as he in turn growled deep in his throat and responded by pressing even harder against her.
His hands moved over her body, skating over her breasts, leaving them tingling and twitching in their wake. She wanted more. When had she not wanted more from him? She wanted to feel his hands on her, flesh-to-flesh, to feel their skin in warm and sensual contact.
Her hands went to the front of his shirt, pulling at it as if it was nothing but a sheet of paper covering him. Buttons popped and a seam tore but she didn’t hold back. Her mouth went to every bit of hard muscled flesh she uncovered. From the dish at the base of his neck just below his Adam’s apple, down his sternum, taking a sideways detour to his flat dark male nipples, rolling the tip of her tongue over them in turn, before going lower in search of his belly button and beyond.
‘Wait.’ The one word command was rough and low. ‘Ladies first.’
A shiver ran over her. She knew what he was going to do. The anticipation of it, the memory of it made her legs tremble like leaves in a wind tunnel.
He picked her up in his arms, carrying her effortlessly to the sofa inside his study. She felt the soft press of the cushions as he laid her down, those dark eyes holding hers with the unmistakable message of their sensual purpose, thrilling her from her tingling scalp to her curling toes.
He came back over her, but only to shove her dress above her hips. One of his hands peeled off her knickers, the slow but deliberate trail of lace as he pulled them down over her thigh to her ankles, another masterstroke of seduction in his considerable arsenal. She kicked off the lace along with her shoes, snatching in a quick breath as he bent his head to the swollen heart of her.
The intimacy of it should have appalled her given the current context of their relationship, but somehow it didn’t. It felt completely natural for him to be touching her like this. To be touching and stroking her body as if it were the most fascinating and delicately fragrant flower he had ever seen.
‘You are so beautiful.’
Oh, those words were like a symphony written only for her! She didn’t feel beautiful with anyone else. No one else could make her body sing with such perfect harmony the way he did.
He took his time, ramping up her arousal to the point where she was sure she was going to scream if he didn’t give her that final stroke that would send her careening into oblivion.
‘Please…oh, please…’ The words came out part groan, part gasp.
‘Say you want me.’
‘I want you. I want you.’ She was panting as if she had just run up a steep incline. ‘I want you.’
‘Tell me you want me like no other man.’
She dug her fingers like claws into the cushioned sofa, her hips bucking as he continued his sensual torture. ‘I want you more than anyone else…Oh, God. Oh, God…’ Her orgasm splintered her senses into a starburst of feeling. It rattled and shook her body like a ragdoll in a madman’s hands. It went on and on until she finally came out the other side, limbless and spent and breathless.
Leo moved up her body and set to work on removing her dress and bra. Eliza lifted her arms up like a child as he uncovered her flesh. She sighed with bone-deep pleasure as he took her breasts in his hands.
How had she gone so long without this exquisite worship of her body? Her flesh was alive with intense feeling. Shivers were still cascading down her spine like a waterfall of champagne bubbles. The very hairs on her head were still dancing on tiptoe. Her inner core was still pulsating with the aftershocks of the cataclysmic eruption of ecstasy that had rippled through it.
His hands gripped her hips once more as his body reared over hers. Somehow he’d had the foresight to apply a condom. She vaguely recalled him retrieving one from his wallet in his back pocket before he had shucked his trousers off.
He kissed her again, his mouth hard and yet soft in turn. It was a devastatingly seductive technique, yet another one he had mastered to perfection. She felt his erection poised for entry against her. She opened her legs for him, welcoming him with one of her hands pressed to the taut and carved curve of his buttocks, the other behind his head, pulling his mouth back down to hers as her ankles hooked around his legs.
He surged into her with a groan that came from deep at the back of his throat. It bordered on a rougher than normal entry but she welcomed it with a groan of pleasure. He seemed to check himself and then started to move a little more slowly, but she pushed him to increase his pace with little encouraging gasps and whimpers and further pressure from her hands pressing down on his buttocks.
She felt the rocking motion of his body within hers. She heard the intervals of his breathing gradually increase. She felt the tension in his muscles as they bunched up under the caress of her hands. The friction of his body within hers sent off her senses into another tailspin of anticipatory delight.
But still he wasn’t intent on his own pleasure.
He was still focused on bringing about another delicious wave of hers and brought his fingers down to touch her. The way he seemed to know how much pressure and friction she needed to maximise her pleasure was the final undoing of her. The continued thrusting of his body and the delicate but magical ministration of his fingers were an earth-shattering combination. She was catapulted into another crazily spinning vortex of feeling that robbed her of all sense of time and place.
It was all feeling—feeling that was centred solely in her body.
But as she was coming down from the heights of human pleasure her mind resumed enough focus to register his powerful release. It sent another shockwave of pleasure through her body. She had felt every moment of that powerful pumping surge as he lost himself. There was something about that total loss of control that moved her deeply. It had always been this way between them. A mind-blowing combustion of lust and longing, and yet something else that was less easily definable…
As she moved her hands to the front of his body she noticed the pale circle on her bare left ring finger. It was a stark reminder of her commitment elsewhere.
Her stomach sank in despair.
She wasn’t free.
She wasn’t free.
She pushed against his chest without meeting his gaze. ‘I want to get up.’
He held her down with a gentle but firm press of his hand on her left shoulder. ‘Not so fast, cara. What’s wrong?’
Eliza couldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t look at him. She stared at the peppery stubble on the bulge of his Adam’s apple instead. ‘This should never have happened.’
He took her chin between his finger and thumb and forced her to meet his gaze. ‘Why is that?’
Her eyes smarted with the tears she resolved she would not shed in front of him. ‘How can you ask that?’
His gaze quietly assessed hers. ‘You still feel guilty about the natural impulses you have always felt around me?’
She lowered her lashes, chewing at her lip until she tasted the metallic sourness of blood. ‘They might be natural but they’re not appropriate.’
‘Because you’re still intent on tying yourself to a man who can’t give you what you want or need?’
She continued to valiantly squeeze back the tears, still not looking at him. ‘Please, let’s not go over this again. I’m here with you now. I’m doing what you asked and paid me to do. Please don’t ask me to do any more than that.’
He released a gusty sigh and got up, dressing again with an economy of movement Eliza privately envied. She felt exposed, not just physically—even though she had somehow managed to drag her discarded dress over her nakedness—but emotionally, and that was far more terrifying.
‘Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t pay you to sleep with me.’ His voice was deep and rough, the words sounding as if they had been dragged along a gravel pathway. ‘That is entirely separate from your position here as nanny to my daughter.’
She gave him a pointed look. ‘Both are temporary appointments, are they not?’
His eyes were deep and dark and unfathomable. ‘That depends.’
‘Is Kathleen coming back?’
‘She hasn’t yet decided.’
‘I thought you said my month-long contract was not up for negotiation,’ Eliza said with a little frown. ‘If she decides not to return, does that mean you’ll offer me the post?’
‘That also depends.’
She arched her brow. ‘On what?’
‘On whether you want to stay longer.’
Eliza chewed at her lip. If things had been different, of course she would stay. She would live with him as his lover, as his mistress, his daughter’s nanny—whatever he wanted, she would do it because she wanted him so much.
But things weren’t different.
They were exactly the same as they had been four years ago. It didn’t matter what she wanted. It was the shackles of her guilt that would always make her forfeit what she wanted. How could she stay here with Leo and leave her other life behind? It was a fanciful dream she had to erase from her mind, just as she’d had to do in the past.
Eliza thought of little Alessandra, of how attached the child had become to her in such a short time. It wasn’t just that the little girl was looking for a mother substitute. Eliza had latched onto her with equal measure. She looked forward to their time together. She felt excited about the ways in which Alessandra was growing and developing in confidence and independence. It wasn’t just the teacher in her that was being validated, either. It was the deep-seated maternal instinct in her that longed to be expressed. Alessandra was responding to that strong instinct in her to love and protect and nurture.
If things were different, she would have been Alessandra’s mother.
There was still a fiendish pain inside her chest at the thought of another woman sharing that deeply bonding experience with Leo. She so desperately wanted to be a mother. Each birthday that passed was a painful, gut-twisting reminder of her dream slipping even further out of her grasp.
Eliza brought her gaze back to his once she was sure she had her emotions hidden behind a mask of composure. ‘Staying longer isn’t an option…’
‘Driving up the price, are we, Eliza?’ A ripple of tension appeared along his jaw, his dark eyes flashing at her with disgust. ‘That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You want me to pay you a little extra to stay on as my mistress. How much do you want? Have you got a figure in mind?’
She took a steadying breath against the blast of his anger and turned away. ‘There’s no point talking to you in this mood.’
A hard hand came down on her forearm and turned her back to face him. His eyes blazed with heated purpose. She felt it ignite a fire in her blood where his fingers were wrapped around her wrist like a convict iron.
The tension in the air crackled like sheet lightning over a wide open plain.
‘Don’t turn away from me when I’m speaking to you,’ he rasped.
Her chin went up and her eyes shot him their own fiery glare. ‘Don’t order me about like a child.’
His dark eyes glinted menacingly as they warred with hers. ‘I’m paying you to obey my orders, damn it.’
Eliza felt a trail of molten heat roll down her spine but still her chin went even higher. ‘You’re not paying me enough to bow and scrape to you like a simpering servant.’
Those fingers burned her flesh like a brand. That hard-muscled body tempted her like an irresistible lure. Those dark eyes wrestled with hers until every nerve in her body was jangling and tingling with sensual hunger.
Heat exploded between her legs.
She could almost feel him there, that pounding surge of his body that triggered something raw and earthy and deeply primitive inside her.
‘How much?’ His eyes smouldered darkly. ‘How much to have you in my bed for the rest of the month? How much to have you bowing and scraping and simpering to my every need?’
