grunted but let me go so abruptly I stumbled.
My survival instinct finally kicked in—several minutes too late—and I scrambled back, scared that I would throw myself back into that maelstrom of needs and desires if he made any attempt to kiss me again.
But he made no move towards me, his ragged breathing as tortured as my own. He swore, a guttural murmur of Italian street slang that I didn’t understand, then swung away and stalked towards the window. The horizon was dark again, the dance of iridescent colours gone.
He thrust his fingers through his hair, then shoved his hands into his pockets. His broad shoulders rose and fell as he heaved out a breath, his big body silhouetted by the sprinkle of lights from the bay.
At last he turned back to me but, with his hair mussed and his movements far from smooth, he was nothing like the man who had faced me across the poker table and then the dinner table. No longer confident and controlled, and indomitable—instead he seemed wild, or barely tame, like a trapped tiger prowling the bars of its cage.
I touched trembling fingers to my lips, the soreness both devastating and invigorating. This new side to him should have scared me more but as he walked back towards me, still struggling to get a grip on the desire which continued to reverberate through my own body, I felt a giddy sense of kinship.
Was he as disturbed by the ferocity of that kiss, and how quickly it had raged out of control, as I was?
‘Forgive me,’ he growled when he reached me. ‘That got out of hand a lot faster than I intended.’
The apology sounded gruff but sincere. And gave me an answer I didn’t know how to handle. Dante Allegri, the ruthless unprincipled womaniser, was a lot easier to hate than the man before me, who seemed almost as troubled by that kiss as I was.
‘Can we... Can we get back to the game?’ I managed at last, surprised by my ability to string a coherent sentence together.
One eyebrow rose a fraction, but then he nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Lifting one hand out of his pocket, he directed me to precede him into the poker salon. He made a point of not touching me again but, once we were seated at the table and he began to deal the cards, I could see he had regained his composure, and that cast-iron control.
I lifted my hole cards and examined them, but the probabilities I should be calculating as he dealt the first of the community cards and the blind betting began refused to come. My mind and every one of my senses had turned to mush.
My heart shrank in my chest as the play continued and he won the hand.
I tried to get my mind into gear during the next hand, but my judgement was off and my concentration shot. My mind and body were still reeling from the driving needs and inexplicable emotions he had ignited with a simple kiss. A kiss I had encouraged. No, a kiss I had initiated.
I wanted to weep, my panic increasing as he won the next hand. The unrequited need smouldered in the pit of my belly—the memory of his lips on mine, his hands kneading my buttocks, his tongue exploring in deep strokes—a distraction I couldn’t seem to conquer...
Long before the final hand was dealt, I knew I had lost and that I had only myself to blame. Because in those giddy moments when I had yearned for Dante Allegri’s kiss, then revelled in the stunning way it made me feel and then kidded myself it had devastated him too, I had become the one thing I’d always sworn I would never be... As weak and needy and gullible as my mother.
‘TWO FIVES...’ I threw my hole cards on the table next to Edie Spencer’s pair of eights. Unfortunately for her, the community cards included another five. ‘You lose, bella,’ I said, grateful that the poker game was finally over.
It had taken an epic force of will and all of my expertise to keep my mind on the cards in the last hour. Ever since that damn kiss. It was a miracle I’d managed to win. After she’d broken off the embrace, I had considered throwing the game to get this part of the evening over with so I could get my hands on her again.
It had been torture, sitting in the chair and struggling to keep my head straight while my blood rushed straight back to my groin every time she worried her bottom lip with her teeth, or the soft mounds of her breasts rose and fell against the lace of her gown.
But I had forced myself to stay focused, or focused enough, to get the job done. Yes, we clearly had phenomenal chemistry, the sort of explosive sexual connection I’d never had with any other woman. And we were both going to have fun exploring it to its fullest potential. But I wasn’t going to throw a game to have her—especially as I was pretty sure that’s exactly why she had initiated the kiss in the first place.
But her little plan had backfired, because if I had been struggling to keep my head straight and out of my pants after that kiss, she’d been even more distracted.
If she’d ever had a system—something I’d begun to doubt after our conversation over dinner had revealed her to be as spoilt and capricious as every other bored little rich girl who played the casinos on their daddy’s dime—it had fallen apart when we’d got back to the game.
She obviously hadn’t expected that kiss to go off like a rocket the way it had—which had to be why she’d called a halt to her attempted seduction so abruptly.
But as I raked in the last of her chips, I relished the surge of heat that shot straight to my groin at the thought of what the rest of the night would hold.
She hadn’t said anything, and it was hard to tell how she was taking the defeat because she had her head down. But then I detected the tiny tremor running through her body. Impatience and irritation warred with my desire.
Even though I still hadn’t figured out why this woman had such a turbulent effect on my usually smart libido, I wanted to take that incredible kiss to its logical conclusion. But if she was going to start crying and try to wheedle a concession out of me because I had beaten her, she could forget it. I’d won the game fair and square and I didn’t trade sexual favours—however hot they promised to be—for money.
Sure, I’d had girlfriends in the past whom I’d supported. I liked to treat women I was sleeping with well. And if I was seeing someone on a regular basis I always offered them a generous allowance so they could devote their time to me and had everything they needed. I could be demanding—my lifestyle was expensive and I needed them to revolve their schedule around mine—so it seemed only fair to offer them compensation. I also always gave them a generous parting gift when the relationship reached its natural conclusion. I was a wealthy man, I considered these women friends and I didn’t want anyone calling me a cheapskate, so why wouldn’t I?
But I wasn’t about to be emotionally manipulated by some spoilt young woman because she’d taken a chance with her daddy’s money and lost. And I resented the implication that I should.
Despite all that, as Edie continued to sit there, her head bent and her shoulders starting to tremble alarmingly, a weird thing happened. I found myself wanting to take the tremor away. And not just because I had plans for the rest of the night that would become a lot less palatable if she started freaking out about the million euros of her daddy’s money she’d lost.
‘Bella, don’t get too upset. I’ll sub you a million so we can have a rematch some time.’ It was the best I could offer without feeling like a chump. And once I said it I warmed to the idea.
Up until we’d both got distracted by that kiss, I’d enjoyed the challenge of playing with her. Our sexual attraction had added an exciting level of eroticism to the game—like high-stakes foreplay. I would enjoy playing her again, and figuring out if she actually had a system and, if so, what it was, or whether her success in the earlier part of the evening had been down to plain old dumb luck.
Instead of taking me up on the offer