eyelids felt unnaturally heavy and swollen so that it was an effort to lift them and meet his gaze. But in the second that she managed it and looked straight into the dark unblinking force of his stare, she was caught and held transfixed, like a rabbit in the oncoming glare of a car’s headlights.
And she didn’t want to move. Instead she waited, outwardly patient, but inwardly fizzing with anticipation and excitement. Waited, knowing that this was a moment she had been moving towards all her life. One that she had dreamed would come, then feared she had missed out on altogether, but which now she knew was as inevitable as her next breath, the beat of her heart.
‘Megan…’ Cesare began again in a voice that was thick and raw and sounded quite unlike the controlled, sophisticated man she had always known. ‘I think I’m going to have to kiss you.’
‘I know…’
‘I am sorry if you—you know?’
‘Mmm.’
Megan nodded slightly, feeling the brush of the soft cotton of his shirt against her cheek, the warmth of his skin burning through it.
‘I know. And do you know something?’
Her mouth quirked up at the corners into a mischievous pixie-like smile.
‘I’m going to have to let you—’
The words were smothered, crushed back down her throat, as his mouth covered hers. With a rough, jerky movement, he swung her round in front of him, his hands coming up to the back of her head, shaping themselves round the fine bones of her skull, holding her close, crushing her face up against his. It was the wildest, most passionate kiss of her life, one that drove her breath away, made her head spin, set her heart pounding.
Her own arms went up around his neck, fingers twisting and tangling in the black silk of his hair, keeping him still when he would have moved away. Her whole body was suffused with a heat that was more primitive, more basic, more pagan, than the simple effect of feeling the hard, hot length of him against her. She was on fire with delight, with hunger, with need, her hands moving lower, clutching, clinging, stroking. She was unable to get enough of him, unable to touch enough of him all at once.
‘Madre di Dio!’ Cesare muttered against her lips, snatching in a quick, raw breath as best he could without actually moving away. ‘Oh, Megan, Megan…’
‘Did you know, I love the way you say my name?’
Megan’s response was breathless too, shaking on an edge of near-laughter.
‘Maygan…Maygan,’ she echoed his pronunciation deliberately. ‘It sounds something special, something much more exotic and sensual than plain, ordinary Megan Ellis could ever be.’
‘No! Never say that.’
Cesare shook his dark head in reproof, laying one long finger across her lips to silence her.
‘Never say the words plain and ordinary in the same sentence as your name. The two things should never be linked together. You are not plain—and you are most definitely not ordinary!’
‘No?’
Megan looked up at him in stunned bewilderment, hunting for the teasing, the amusement she felt sure must be gleaming in his eyes. She didn’t find it. Instead she saw a very different sort of light burning in the brown depths. The sort of glow that made her think of fires and heat and the scorching, searing heat of the sun. Her heart gave a sudden, jolting shudder of excitement inside her chest, so that she gasped aloud in shock.
‘You’re beautiful—squisita—a stunning, wonderful woman.’
‘Squi—squisita—exquisite!’
Megan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She felt like a child who had been caught with her nose pressed up against the window of a sweetshop, only to have the owner come to the door and invite her in to help herself to anything and everything she wanted.
‘You’re—you have to be joking! No?’ she questioned, silenced once more by the rough, shake of his head.
‘No joke,’ he insisted in a tone that made it plain she shouldn’t allow herself even to begin to doubt that he was deadly serious. ‘Would I joke about something like this?’
One hand trailed softly down her hair, smoothing and caressing the bright auburn strands, lifting them and letting them coil softly around his fingers.
‘About hair that burns like the glow of lava from a volcano in the dead of night…’
To her astonishment he bent his head and pressed his lips to the strand of hair in his hand, kissing it softly.
‘Eyes that have the cool, shadowy appeal of the olive groves…’
He repeated the caress, this time on her eyes, pressing her lids shut with the soft pressure of his mouth and lingering there for a moment that held her entranced, her heart seeming to stop, her breathing become so shallow it was almost non-existent.
‘Skin so soft and so delicate I’m almost afraid to touch it for fear it would bruise like a ripe peach…’
For a second the blunt tips of his fingers hovered over her face before gliding softly downwards, tracing the line of her cheek, her jaw, with a delicacy that made her shiver in uncontrolled response. But when his lips followed the same path then she froze in sensual delight, keeping her eyes tight shut in order to better enjoy the exquisite sensations he was creating.
Cesare’s mouth moved over her skin, kissing, caressing, occasionally nipping very softly, until it reached her lips and covered them again.
‘And a mouth,’ he murmured against them, ‘that is just made for kissing.’
This time his kiss was pure sensual enticement, the sort of kiss that seemed to draw her soul out of her body, making her head swim and her blood heat in her veins.
She melted against him, her body arcing as it pressed up against his, her breath catching in her throat as she felt the heated, swollen evidence of the reality of his desire for her. He might be able to choose his words, disguise his tone in order to be able to carry out whatever tormenting plan had been in his mind, if he had meant to tease her as he had done in the past. But this was no tease. This was hard, solid, physical reality. The uncontrollable response of a man to a woman for whom he felt a desire that he was incapable of concealing.
And the same response was flooding through her own body, melting her already vulnerable heart, twisting along her nerves. Every sense throbbed in hungry reaction, sending a stinging sensation straight to the most intimate, most feminine point between her legs. Sighing her need into his mouth, Megan moved restlessly, her hands clutching at the broad strength of his shoulders as the unwary movement brought her once more up against the heat and force of his erection.
‘I think we would be a little more comfortable if we…’
The rest of Cesare’s words were lost in another long, burning kiss, but Megan didn’t need words. Half-blind, totally absorbed, she would have followed him anywhere, and so she went with him, step by sightless step as he led her towards the big, squashy settee that stood before the huge open fireplace in the centre of the library.
‘Sit down…’ he dragged his mouth from hers long enough to say.
Obediently she sank down onto the soft cushions, her clinging hands pulling him down with her. As soon as he was beside her she moved closer, taking his mouth for herself, letting her tongue play intimately with his and slide along his lips.
‘Meggie…’
This time she found nothing to object to in his use of her childhood name. It was soft and tender, a seductive and a verbal caress in one. But what excited her most was the thread of total surrender in the sound, the wordless declaration of the way that he had abandoned himself totally to her lead.
The thought gave her a thrilling sense of power, one that had her reaching for his tie