Page 10 of Marriage Made In Hate
And now his voice had changed too. There was no scathing fury in it. There was a different note…one that suddenly, out of nowhere, changed her own coruscating fury into something quite different.
Her eyes were wide, filled with horror. Her whole body was filled with horror. With a drumming in her veins Bianca realised his fingers were no longer pressing on her wrist at all. They were softly, lethally, caressing it. Helplessness drowned her. The world seemed to fade away…
And then the instinctive, atavistic alarm lacing through her became overlaid with something different again. Something she needed to fight against. Something she needed to deny…suppress…escape…
She heard him speak…heard it through the drumming that was in her ears now, like a rush of blood.
Her heart was suddenly thudding like a hammer in her chest. He had stepped closer to her as he spoke, filling her vision, looming over her.
She was staring up at him now—knew she was staring, fixed on him, magnetised, unable to drag her helpless, hopeless gaze away.
Just as she was unable to drag her wrist free of the soft, lethal stroking of his fingertips across the delicate skin of her inner wrist, beneath the lustrous pearls of the bracelet.
It was making her feel as if her entire being were concentrated there, in the nerve-endings under his circling touch, and was melting… melting…
Faintness weakened her…
‘Assault, Bianca?’ His voice was as soft as his touch. His breath as soft. ‘Is this assault?’
His eyes were pouring into hers, possessing hers. She wanted to pull away, to use every muscle in her body to do so, to get free…
But she did not. Could not.
She saw his other hand lift, felt the tips of his fingers drift across her cheek like a drift of snow…snow that wasn’t cold, not cold at all, but melting…dissolving… Slowly…infinitely slowly.
She felt her eyelids dip with the sensation of it…so light was his touch, so leisurely.
‘Assault, Bianca?’
She heard his voice again, as caressing as his touch at her wrist, her face. But the gaze pouring into hers was mocking…
‘And this?’ he said.
His breath was warm on her, infused with the subtle potency of the almond liqueur he had taken with his coffee.
‘Is this assault too?’
And then his lips were grazing hers…
* * *
Her mouth was silk…softest, softest silk…
Memory filled him as his senses were filled with her, infusing him, fusing the past—so long past—to now…this moment now …
The night cocooned him, the oft light from the wall lamps cast its glow around him, and the murmur of the cicadas was all about as his fingers moved to curve around the nape of her neck, holding her to him as his mouth moved softly…lightly…possessively…on hers.
She did not fight him. He felt…heard…the soft sigh that came from her. She was yielding her mouth to his…quiescent…pliant…
All that he wanted.
How long the kiss lasted he did not know. Time had stopped. Collapsed upon itself. How long had it been since he had last tasted her mouth with his? That final morning, after making love to her? The day he’d left London, his posting finished, his return to Rome required?
More than required—desired.
Because if he hadn’t gone back to Rome—if he hadn’t thrown at her what he’d had to throw at her… If he hadn’t ended it the way he had…
Their kiss now…sensual, arousing, sating…was dragging him back. Back into the past he’d walked away from. And it was telling him exactly… exactly …why he’d had to walk away from her.
Instinctively, he felt himself draw her pliant, yielding body against his, and all the while his mouth was deepening the kiss, seductively, languorously, tasting and taking, taking and tasting.
He could feel the soft swell of her breasts against his chest, feel them engorge, feel their hips meet… feel himself engorge…
Arousal deepened as his fingers speared into her hair. He could feel his hunger build. Desire mount…
It was madness. In some small, remote part of his brain he knew it was madness.
But it was impossible to draw back…impossible to let her go. All he wanted was to feel her breasts peaking against his, feel the arousing frottage of her arousal, the low moan in her throat as their mouths met and mated…
Her hips were straining against his, fuelling his own arousal, feeding this madness…
He wanted more…so much more…
The years between them vanished, as if they had never been, and he yielded to the madness possessing him.
Until—
The violence of her wrenching herself away from him made his hand fall from her nape, loosened by force his hold on her wrist. And then she took a razored breath, her hand flashing up, descending again with force to catch his cheek.
The blow was sharp, stinging. Her words a vehement hiss as she reared away from him.
‘That is assault!’
Her voice was breathless, panting. She surged past him, gaining the French windows, yanking them open. She turned. Her eyes were pinpricks of black fury.
‘Don’t ever touch me again! Ever! ’
Then she was gone.
Luca’s hand lifted absently to his stinging cheek, feeling the impact of her slap. She had not held back. But his mind was not on that.
It was on the madness that had just possessed him. The insane, impossible madness…
After six long years…to have Bianca in his arms again…
He should never have allowed it. Never indulged—