Page 8 of Seduced by Her Fake Husband (The Martinelli Wedding #2)

He was looking at her. She could feel it. He was waiting for her to acquiesce like she always did to his commands, and she drew in a ragged breath and jerked a nod.

Turning away from him, she put her eReader in her bag, pulled her sundress on and slipped her feet into her flat sandals.

Still not ready to face him, she groped in her bag for her butterfly clip, then gathered her hair together and pinned it back.

There was something so graceful and yet so sensual in the way Luisa gathered that long, glossy hair into her hands that Gennaro found himself mesmerised, the annoying, chattering women surrounding them nothing but a distant buzzing noise in his ears.

When she lifted the hair and exposed the slender neck he must have seen multiple times, the buzzing chatter disappeared completely, the pumping of his blood the only sound.

He’d been wrong, he realised. He might have looked at that neck multiple times, but he’d never truly seen it before.

He’d never allowed himself to. He’d blurred his eyes and refused to see it, just as he’d metaphorically blurred his eyes to stop himself from truly seeing any of her because to see Luisa was to want her; want her with a need that was close to primitive in its strength.

She rose to her feet and slung her bag over her shoulder. The sun beaming down on them cast her in a shimmering golden light.

He blinked to clear the effect. She still shimmered. And then she turned her face to him. The moment their eyes met, he knew with a hard punch to his guts that he would never be able to blur his eyes to her again.

Something had changed. Luisa didn’t know what that something was but she could feel it in the very fibre of her being, an effect magnified every time Gennaro looked at her.

She sensed him studying her in a way he’d never done before, a sensation that vibrated through her skin even when they joined some of his cousins and their families in the yacht’s games room.

It was unsettling. Frightening. Thrilling …

The quailing sickness intensified, and when they returned to their suite she had to exert all her self-control not to run straight into the bathroom so she could gather herself together in private.

“Do you mind if I shower first again?” she asked as she put her bag, which she’d hugged to her chest the entire walk back from the harbour, on the table.

“Go ahead. Can I get you anything for when you’re finished? A glass of champagne? Wine? Coffee?”

She was so stunned at an offer Gennaro had never once made before unless in relation to getting something for himself that she couldn’t stop her shocked gaze from darting to him.

He’d propped himself against the wall, arms folded loosely across his chest, that unsettling frightening and thrilling expression in his eyes.

“I’m good, thanks,” she murmured, edging herself to the bathroom.

Hastily locking the bathroom door, Luisa closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her racing heart with a long, slow exhalation.

She swore she could still feel Gennaro’s black stare penetrating her flesh.

It felt like she had electricity running through her veins, and when she stripped her clothes off, she stood in front of the full-length mirror half-expecting to see glimmers bouncing off her skin.

Her breasts felt heavy. Taut. Without thinking, she cupped one and imagined Gennaro taking it into his mouth…

What was she doing?

Horrified at the direction her imagination was trying to take her, she dived into the shower.

Bad enough being so intensely aware of him never mind feeding her sick attraction with her imagination.

It wasn’t until she’d finished drying herself that she realised she’d forgotten to bring her evening wear into the bathroom. She’d been too intent on escaping Gennaro to even think about it.

Thick bath towel wrapped tightly around her body and a smaller one wrapped around her head, she spent an age with her hand on the door handle, only able to galvanise herself into leaving the room by remembering his terse reply to her message that morning.

She was reading too much into things. She only thought things had changed because her attraction to him had virtually slapped her around the face. She only felt his stare more deeply because her awareness of him had skyrocketed. Everything she was sensing was her imagination going into overdrive.

Her heart managed to sink and jump simultaneously to find him on the sofa that acted as a divider between the sleeping and dressing areas.

It sank and jumped simultaneously a second time when he lifted his gaze from his phone to her, and then it began to pump furiously, driving hot blood to her cheeks… driving hot blood everywhere .

A long moment passed in heavy silence before, eyes still locked on hers, he stood up. “If you have finished in there, I’ll take my shower.”

Vocal cords all tied up, she nodded and stepped aside on weakening legs to let him pass.

As soon as she heard the shower running she hurriedly threw her clothes on.

Gennaro scrubbed his body with more vigour than usual, as if rubbing the loofah hard enough into his skin could erase the sight of Luisa in a towel.

There was nothing sexy about a towel. Not in itself.

It’s what lay beneath it that made it sexy, especially when that something was Luisa’s naked body.

God help him, he was already struggling to erase the image of her breasts in that black bikini.

Breasts that were higher and fuller than he’d imagined in those few moments of weakness when he’d been unable to stop himself from imagining them.

Breasts that were the perfect fit for his mouth…

He closed his eyes and let the hot water pour over him and rinse him clean.

He couldn’t rinse his thoughts. This, what was happening to him, was all the proof he needed to confirm he’d taken the correct course of action throughout his marriage. Separate rooms. Everything separate unless conducted in public.

Being with Luisa in public had been hard enough to deal with.

In public his awareness of her, always so developed, became intolerable.

He would spend evenings at functions with Luisa at his side forced to breathe in her scent, forced to hear her voice when she made conversation, forced to endure other men casting her with desirous eyes.

Despite his earlier denial, he had shut her down when she’d tried to make private conversation with him.

Like everything else he’d done in their marriage, it had been for her sake.

If he hadn’t found her so attractive it might have been different, might have been possible for a form of platonic…

not friendship; he didn’t do friendship, but a sense of camaraderie…

to develop between them. He could have shared his admiration for her artwork, maybe even shared how touching he found her exquisite illustrations that were childish and almost comic at first glance but on second look revealed a depth and tenderness that tugged at something in his chest.

Any form of bond with a woman like Luisa was impossible for a man like him.

Luisa wasn’t just beautiful and talented but had an unshowy intelligence and wit about her too that pulled at him.

Bonds, no matter how tentative, could strengthen.

Bonds with a woman whose brain fascinated with the same ferocity as her beauty could strengthen into something dangerous for a man like him.

Gennaro had too much of his father in him to risk them.

Luisa’s preparation for the evening was a Groundhog Day experience spent applying her makeup at the dressing table and watching Gennaro dressing for the evening in the mirror’s reflection.

The difference was he didn’t make any effort to hide that he knew she was watching him.

Those black eyes kept locking onto her reflection, holding her stare as he pulled his snug boxers up his muscular thighs and over a manhood surrounded by a thatch of black pubic hair that was even more impressive than the glimpse she’d caught the evening before and which made the pulse deep between her legs relight into a flame.

No matter how hard she tried to tear her gaze away, her eyes refused to obey, and she watched with barely concealed fascination as his stomach and the line of black hair covering it stretched when he lifted his arms to pull a black t-shirt over his head.

Not a word was spoken. Not verbally. What was being left unsaid…

He was playing with her, she told herself with more than a hint of desperation. Asserting his dominance. Reminding her of who held all the cards between them.

He was shrugging his arms into a black velvet suit jacket when he said, “What you said earlier, about me shutting you down. You were right. I did shut you down. Deliberately.”

Luckily she’d finished doing her eyes otherwise she really would have taken one of them out. Unsure how to respond, she simply held his stare .

“You’re a beautiful woman, Luisa. That makes you dangerous.”

She blinked in shock.

The faintest smile curved the corners of his mouth.

“People are drawn to beauty. It’s coveted, and those in possession of it rarely want to share.

” He lifted a hefty shoulder and added, “When it’s a beauty unique to someone’s personal tastes, then people become selfish and possessive.

” The faint smile disappeared. “I don’t do possessive, Luisa.

I don’t do relationships. My life is lived how I need to live it.

We married because I needed a wife for a business deal and your family needed my money, and our end date is carved in stone.

If I’ve treated you in a way that’s made you unhappy then understand it was never personal – it’s how it had to be between us. ”

“Why are you telling me this?” she whispered.

The black eyes glittered. “I think you know why.”

Her breath caught in her throat. The meaning in his stare was unambiguous. Hot blood filled her head, dizzying her, the roar so loud she barely heard the sound of Gennaro’s phone ringing.

He held her stare a moment longer before picking up the phone from the bed and taking it out onto the balcony to answer it.