Page 8

‘Yes, please.’
Feeling exposed in the lamplight, she escaped to the bathroom herself while he was busy with glasses, pleased to wash and refresh herself and repair her appearance, though slightly shocked by the image reflected back at her in the mirror. With her flushed face, bright eyes and smudged lipstick, she thought how different she looked.
Because shewasdifferent. She was no longer naïve Grace Foster who’d never been to bed with a man. She’d just had unbelievable sex in a luxury hotel room with a complete stranger and the weird thing was that she didn’t feel in the least bit guilty about it.
Combing her fingers through her hair, she returned to the bedroom to find Odysseus lying amid the rumpled sheets, having placed two glasses of water on either side of the bed. So, no celebratory champagne, then, she thought, with a slight beat of disappointment. But he patted the empty half of the bed beside him and she headed towards it, trying not to be self-conscious about her nakedness. His eyes were watchful as she climbed in beside him and she had to resist the temptation to cover herself up with the duvet, or at least conceal the nipples which were hardening beneath his narrowed gaze. Because it was a little late in the day for modesty, wasn’t it?
‘You enjoyed that,’ he observed.
‘I…’ Sinking back against the pillows, Grace turned towards him, feeling his hard thigh brushing warmly against hers. ‘Well, yes, I did. Very much.’
His smile was easy but there was the glint of something cold in the depths of his eyes. ‘It isn’t always like that for women the first time.’
She shrugged, a little self-consciously. ‘You could…tell?’
‘Yes, I could tell.’ There was a pause and she wondered if she was imagining the tinge of ice in his voice. ‘Which makes my question of earlier redundant. This obviously isn’t an annual event.’
‘Obviously,’ Grace responded as lightly as she could, even though she found his reaction more than a little…disheartening. Had she been hoping he would be secretly flattered that she’d given him her virginity, or maybe furious she hadn’t given him a heads-up beforehand? Or at least that it would have producedsomekind of emotion, rather than those clipped and cool observations he’d just made. As if he didn’t care, one way or another.
Until she forced herself to remember the things he’d told her. That he was flying out of here tomorrow. Alone. He hadn’t spun her any lies, or led her on with false promises. He’d been pragmatic from the outset and she had been the same. She’d helped undress him and urged him to touch her with throaty entreaties which had seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her and hadn’t he seemed tolikethat? So what was the point of stoking up indignation and ruining the memory of what had just happened by behaving as if he’d done something wrong? Shouldn’t she be just as matter-of-fact as him?
‘How about you?’ she questioned. ‘Do you do this kind of thing often?’
‘Having sex with masked strangers, you mean?’
She blushed. ‘That’s one way of describing it, I suppose.’
Odysseus brushed a strand of hair away from her flushed face. Would she be shocked to discover he hadn’t had sex with a woman in over a year? Probably. The trouble was that might make her triumphant and start reading too much into it. And it wasn’t fair to encourage make-believe, especially given how innocent she was. ‘The answer to your question is no, but I’m still leaving the city tomorrow afternoon.’ He reached out, his thumb tilting her chin upwards, searching her face with his eyes. ‘Unless you thought that what just happened might change my mind?’
‘That’s a very arrogant supposition,’ she said quietly.
‘Maybe. But I happen to be a very arrogant man,agape mou,’ he announced unapologetically before his voice dipped. ‘Who wants very much to kiss you again.’
Some of the tension left her body, to be replaced with a different kind of tension, and he could see her amber eyes growing smoky.
‘I’m not stopping you,’ she whispered.
‘No.’ He tiptoed his fingers over her belly and the sheets rustled as she opened her thighs for him, his throat thickening as he encountered her honeyed heat. ‘You’re not, are you?’
This time he did make her wait. Kissing her from her eyelids to her thighs, he trailed his lips slowly over every inch of shivering flesh until she was begging for release. But he didn’t heed her breathless pleas, telling himself that delayed gratification would only intensify her pleasure, knowing all the while that this was solely for his own benefit. He was testing his own resolve and denying the urgent hunger in his blood, as if determined to demonstrate to them both the icy control for which he was renowned.
Yet by the time he reached for another condom, his hands were trembling so much that he could barely get the damned thing on. And by the time he had slipped inside her again—rock-hard amid all that honey and silk—he had to fight the urge to come. She felt like no other woman had ever felt, though he’d never slept with a virgin before. Was it all that taut newness as she took him into her body which was making him feel so powerful and so primitive? Or was it her naïve enthusiasm? The way she was sucking eagerly at his nipples—which immediately made him think about where else he would like her to suck him. Next time, he promised himself dazedly as she began to orgasm again and, with a helpless moan, he followed her over the edge. Definitely next time.
He hadn’t planned to sleep. He had intended to make the most of the few remaining hours by exploring every inch of her body and satiating his lust for her until he had eradicated it completely. But a strange contentment was whispering over his skin and there didn’t seem to be a thing he could do to stop it. Irresistibly, he found himself being dragged into a deep sleep, and it wasn’t until he felt a movement beside him that he forced his eyes open and saw that Grace was no longer in bed, but in the process of picking up her discarded lingerie. Strange, came his first inconsequential thought once he’d managed to drag his gaze away from the silky globes of her bare bottom. He hadn’t noticed that her knickers were so plain when he’d been in the process of removing them.
‘What’s going on?’ he murmured, rolling onto his back and feeling the instant stir of an erection.
The sensible navy fabric of her panties hugging her hips, she glanced up at him, startled. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Well, you have.’ Pillowing his head on crossed arms, he yawned, watching as she walked over to where the rest of her discarded clothes lay in a billowing heap of scarlet silk, right next to his tricorn hat. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Ignoring the voluminous petticoats, she was shrugging on the red dress, fumbling to do up the hooks he had so painstakingly freed. ‘Home.’
‘Why?’ He slanted her a speculative look and patted the vacant space beside him again. ‘At least stay until morning.’
Grace hesitated under the influence of that sexy smile, torn between doing what she knew was sensible and what she reallywantedto do, which was to climb straight back into bed with him. But she carried on doing up the fiddly red dress, because she had no alternative, not really. What could she tell him? That she’d glanced at her watch and been horrified to see it was four a.m. and she needed to get back before she was discovered?
That if she waited until morning, the hotel would be buzzing with life as people made their way towards one of the dining rooms for their breakfast. That right now the place was quiet and shrouded in welcoming darkness and nobody would be around to notice her drifting down the shadowed stairways in her bright silk gown. That her everyday clothes were in the staff cloakroom and she needed to get changed before first light and then to slip quietly over the dusky bridges, through the narrow Venetian streets she knew so well, until she arrived at the place which was officially her home but didn’t really feel like home. That if she left it much longer she wouldn’t be on hand to serve Signor Contarini his morning coffee and there would be all hell to pay. Why ruin the gloriousness of what had happened with the dull reality of the everyday, especially as it was only ever intended to be one night?