He was standing too close to her. Far too close to her.
‘You’re arrogant and … and selfish. You think that all that matters is what you want, and that just because you want—’
‘Just because I want what? You? Is that what you think?’
Julie was horrified. How on earth had the situation got so out of control so quickly?
‘No, of course not,’ she denied. The way he was looking at her and the silence he was maintaining unnerved her, and so fatally she rushed into it, adding frantically, ‘Why should you want me? I—’
‘You what? You want me to want you? You want me to tell you that every centimetre of you is now committed to my memory and engraved on my sexual responses? That in future I shall never be able to look at or touch any woman without comparing her to you? That from now on the pattern of woman carved on my desire is your image? Is that what you want?’
Without waiting for her response—which was just as well, Julie acknowledged inwardly, because she was in no state to think or say anything after hearing what he had just said—he continued dryly, ‘Of course such things come at a price, don’t they? And for that price I am sure that you would be very willing to assuage my longings and help me expunge those images. We are not, after all, talking of anything here other than a very basic form of lust.’
His voice was soft and mocking, and yet underscored with something age-old, man to woman, that was recognised deep within her. Recognised and responded to, Julie admitted apprehensively. She wanted to run from him, from the unwanted senses deep within her that he had aroused. But—dangerously—even more she wanted to stay. She abhorred what he was saying, and yet a wild, wilful something deep inside her wanted, if only for once, to be the kind of woman who would respond easily to such a challenge and enjoy arousing and sharing his lust—who would feel triumph in having aroused it and who would satisfy it and then walk away from it and from him without a single second of guilt or regret.
Very few women walked away from a man like this one, Julie suspected. It would be very empowering to be a woman who could do so. Judy could have done so, of course—but would she have? Would any woman if she thought—If she thought what? That she could tame Rocco and keep him?
What kind of foolish thoughts were those? In Rocco’s eyes wasn’t she already that woman she had just been describing mentally to herself, since he believed that she was her sister? What would it be like for once in her life to live that role? To know the power of being a woman who gloried in her sexuality and who used it to get whatever she wanted. What would it be like to walk that other road, live that other life, and know her sexuality?
Was she mad? She had other far more important things to think about than finding her own sad, repressed sensuality. She had Josh to think about and to protect.
Rocco gave her a heavy-lidded look of slanting sensuality that heated her blood, spreading arousal through her body unstoppably, like a swift floodtide flowing swiftly under the drag of a full moon. Inescapable and undeniable, it took her and possessed her, running wild and free within her.
‘Nothing to say?’ he challenged her.
It would be his fault if she took up his challenge. And he owed her something, didn’t he, after the way he had behaved towards her? Why didn’t she just take what she wanted? Her heart thumped unsteadily with the enormity of her own unfamiliar thoughts. What she wanted? She didn’t want him, did she? No, of course not. But there was a temptation there—a fierce, yearning surge as volcanic as Etna itself, demanding expression. Maybe so. But it could not be allowed that expression, Julie warned herself sternly.
What she was thinking was far too dangerous, and a form of madness. Perhaps it was a symptom of her anaemia, she thought shakily, like the weakness in her legs and the pounding in her heart.
‘No, I have nothing to say,’ she answered him. ‘You are not Antonio, after all.’
What on earth had she said that for?
‘No, I damned well am not.’
The quietly savage words told her all she needed to know about the extent of her folly—and her danger.
She tried to sidestep it—and him—but it was too late. He caught her as easily as he had lifted and carried her the previous night, his hands curling round her upper arms, making it impossible for her to escape.
‘You might think you are being very clever, taunting me, but I promise you that I shall extract full payment.’ His voice was harsh against her skin, grazing its sensitivity with needle-sharp darts of warning.
‘Fine—but you’ll have to extract it via your insults, because you won’t be getting it any other way,’ Julie responded promptly, trying to make her voice sound far more determined and self-confident than she felt.
‘No?’ The heavy golden leopard’s eyes focused on their prey—her.
This had gone too far. What had started out simply as an intention to underline his contempt for Julie had somehow or other twisted and then turned itself around, so that his own weapon was now hurtling back towards him, Rocco admitted grimly. The words he had intended to use to distance himself from her had actually rebounded on him, conjuring up images of her inside his head that were now making him ache with an extremely inconvenient and an even more unacceptable desire.
How could he want a woman like this one? It should have been impossible, based on her sexual morals alone, and doubly so given the fact that he knew she had been one of Antonio’s playthings. It should have been impossible, but it wasn’t. The sight of her crouched on the floor, her face alight with love as she kissed her baby, had pierced the defences he had thought impenetrable, forcing him into direct contact with his own feelings about the loss of his mother. That in turn had filled him with anger—against himself for being vulnerable, and against her for causing that vulnerability—and now that anger had burned itself into a fierce male desire that was raging out of control inside him.
For his own emotional safety he needed to separate her inside his head from that unwanted image he now had of her as a devoted mother. And the best way to do that was to let his body fill his head with some very different images of her. That was the only reason he wanted her. Out of selfprotection. Nothing more.
When he kissed her and she responded to him as he knew she would his brain would register exactly what she was. He looked at her mouth and felt her tremble in sensual awareness of his intent. Beneath the silk blouse she was wearing—the blouse he had paid for, like all the other expensive clothes now hanging up in the room’s wardrobes—he could see quite clearly not just the tight thrust of her nipples but also the faint raised edge that marked the place where the areolae of her breasts rose from the surrounding flesh. Almost absently he removed his right hand from her arm and slowly traced the raised line.
Julie shuddered violently, and closed her eyes in shocked awareness of how deep the abyss of her own sexuality actually was—and how dangerous. If a simple touch like this one could have such an effect on her, then what would his kiss do to her? How far would it take her down into the hot velvet darkness of that place she had never been? She felt dizzy and light-headed—with longing? With lust? Because she was anaemic? Did it matter why? Wasn’t it only important that somehow she didn’t want to resist what she was feeling, that she wanted to bring it and the man who was the cause of it closer instead of pushing them away?
His touch on her nipple, stroking it between his thumb and forefinger, shot pangs of erotic sensation deep into her. She looked up at his mouth, so beautifully carved that it could have been painted by a Renaissance artist, indenting at the corners, his bottom lip sensually full. Once against her own mouth it was both a possession and a caress, drawing her deeper under the spell of her own sexuality. She could feel his breath—warm, scented with maleness—as he urged her closer, and the hand that had been holding her arm pressed flat into the arch of her spine, so that her body fitted itself to his. Weakly she leaned into him, savouring the sensation of his hand on her breast, her own weight against his thighs, soft flesh against hard muscle,