Later,’ he muttered, climbing on the bed and catching hold of her to lift her up, then bringing her down again so she straddled his thighs in a warm blending of soft womanliness and strong, hard masculinity.Her arms went around his shoulders again, her mouth already searching out his, and she moved her hips against him until she caught the thrust of his erection just where she wanted it, her quiver of pleasure making him gasp, the firm clasp of his hands on her slender ribcage there to support her so she could set her own sensual pace.And she rode the road of pleasure without a single care that she groaned, gasped, and even laughed; it was so glorious. She strung out the sweet agony for so long that it almost hurt when she finally fell over the edge."If you ever drink rum in the company of others, I will shoot you," Dami muttered into her hair as he held her limp body against him.But all Charley could do was whimper because "I want you again already."Passion was everything in par
Ten minutes to get ready to leave was nothing compared to the nine long hours it took to fly back to Milan. Dami wasn’t talking. He’d withdrawn behind a wall of icy courtesy, and Charley couldn’t blame him. His pride had been hit, as had his integrity. Charley didn’t think he was ever going to forgive any of them for it.And the only slither of comfort she could glean from it all was that Charles’s arrest had not leaked out into the public arena. Dami spent most of the flight on the telephone, working to ensure that it remained that way.They arrived at Linate Airport early in the morning to dark clouds and heavy rain. A limousine with blackened windows picked them up and transported them to Milan.Dami remained on the phone throughout that journey too, the monotone flow of his voice never tiring, though Charley had switched it off hours ago.Half an hour later, they were in his Milan apartment. Dami was checking his mail. Charley moved off, looking around her, aware that he was watch
He smiled for the first time in hours and hours, one of those sensually amused, very intimate smiles that softened the harshness out of his face, and it swam through her blood as potent as Martha’s home-made rum."Amore, having you by my side will be too much of a distraction—as will coming over there and kissing you for suggesting it."Charley moved; she just had to do it. "Then I’m coming to you," she said, and she covered the space between them, lifting her slender arms around his neck so she could give him the distracting kiss whether he wanted it or not.He tasted warm like the man of the Caribbean and smelled expensive like the man of Milan. When he didn’t pull away and even slid his hands beneath her jacket to mold her against him, the silly uncertainties she’d brought with her into this apartment melted away."Don’t let them bully you," she murmured as their lips reluctantly separated."You see this happening, with me?"No, she was just delaying the moment when he walked away
Why else, indeed? Charley thought bleakly. Desire? Anger? Wounded pride? a determination not to look the fool Adelina had turned him into, no matter what it cost him?She could have made the list grow and grow if he’d let her, but "Now all I want is you, so badly I ache," he roughed out, and the warm crush of his hungry mouth took away her ability to think.For the first time since their wedding night, they made love with a grim, silent intensity that pounded her wounded emotions and left her satiated but with tears on her cheeks.He gently licked them away and said nothing. He continued to hold her close and said nothing. And when she woke up the next morning, he had gone from their bed, leaving her with an ache that dragged on her insides.It was an ache that was not going to go away any time soon, and indeed, it was about to become a whole lot worse.though Charley didn’t know that when she crawled out of bed that morning. In truth, she would have preferred to remain in it, with he
"I needed Charles to come and take you away before you ruined my life!" Swinging around to face her, Adelina let Charley see the pained tears in her eyes. ‘He was going to do it too,’ she said thickly, ‘the very next morning after that—fiasco—when I caught you and Dami together on the terrace. I saw your face, Charley! I knew what you’d been doing!With the cringing guilt of that incident coming back to haunt her, Charley opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.Adelina gave her a scathing look. "I got you away from there as quickly as I could," she went on. "Your brother wanted to go to your room then and there and drag you home by the scruff of your traitorous neck, but it was already too late." Her voice broke down into a choke. Dami arrived only minutes after we got back to the hotel. She cried. "He told me it was over—right there in front of my cousin Estelio and your brother, Charley!" "He finished it between us, and I have never been so humiliated in all of my l
All was quiet in the hallway as she walked along it. Even Elenora was nowhere to be seen. And the door to Dami’s study was shut tight into its housing, telling her that he must have taken Adelina in there.Outside, it was still raining, raining, raining. She waved down a cab and climbed inside. Linate Airport was busy. It was always busy, but she managed to get a seat on a flight about to leave for London. Three short hours later, she was walking through the arrivals gate at Gatwick.And the first face she focused on was her father’s. Tears once again started to threaten. "H-how did you—?""Dami called me," he explained, then nodded his head at someone standing behind her.Charley glanced around, then withered out a smile as she turned back to her father’s sombre face. She had been followed from the moment she’d stepped out of the apartment, tracked every foot of the way here by one of Dami’s security team.She didn’t know why her tears picked that moment to break, but she threw herse
The light was soft in here, the ceilings lower than those in his homes, so he suddenly looked taller and bigger, his face not quite as pale as it had looked on the doorstep a moment ago, with the autumnal cool helping to blanch the color out of it. And—tired, Charley noticed for the first time—the grim lines of tension he’d worn on his face throughout the week before Adelina had turned up well and truly back in place."You’ve lost weight," he said, making her aware that while she had been studying him, he had been doing the same thing to her."No, I’ve not," she denied, but she wrapped her arms around her body all the same as if they were going to disguise the pounds she knew she had dropped."And you look tired." He ignored her denial. "Missing sleep over me, cara?""Oh, isn’t that just typically arrogant of you to say that?" she snapped back.To her surprise, he grimaced and said, "Probably not." Then, with a sigh, he lifted his hand. "May I remove my coat?" It is warm in here.Char
Charley stood still in the doorway. "Won’t what?" she demanded."Be home soon," Dami extended. "He knows I am here," he explained huskily. "He thinks I am taking you out to dinner."‘Dinner?’ Her shoulders wrenched back. "I don’t want to have dinner with you.""It is the only way you will get rid of me, Cara," he said.It was the cool way he relayed that that made her twist back to look at him. The moment she saw the way he was standing there, looking as contained as hell, she knew he had turned back into the cool-headed Dami De Santis who did not play fair in a fight.Tall, though, lean, and sexily handsome. Charley found herself nervously moistening her lips. "Explain that," she instructed."Dinner," he repeated. That is all. I have already reserved a table. All you have to do is sit down with me and eat.Never in a million years was that all he expected her to do."Or I will call in your family debt."Ah, now he was talking, Charley thought. She understood this Dami so well! The un