jeans and peeled them down with fluid ease, revealing black boxers that clung to narrow hips and a lean waist. She noticed, could not have avoided noticing, the bulge of his straining erection in the boxers and something clenched low inside her and she hurriedly glanced away, a more primal dart of apprehension infiltrating her. She was wondering if the first time would hurt and was realistic enough to assume that there would at least be some discomfort, but there was nothing she could do to avoid that rite of passage. Of course she could tell him she was a virgin but was afraid he would think she was some kind of freak to have stayed untouched until her age and the prospect of that made her cringe.
‘Come here,’ he husked, all warm tanned flesh and assurance, finding her mouth again, toying with her lips, stroking them apart, thrusting, in truth unleashing a repertoire of moves that disconcerted her because just kissing had never been so good before. Pulsing energy consumed her and she pushed against him, falling into those kisses and the delving of his tongue with shivering enthusiasm, marvelling that the feverish heat in her pelvis could be awakened by even that small intimacy.
‘You have the most glorious breasts,’ Dante murmured hungrily, moulding the high round globes with appreciative hands, tracing the tightly beaded tips and suckling the pointed peaks into the hot velvet of his mouth, parting her lips on a gasp and sending tiny arrows of need spearing continuously to her core. Almost as if she had spoken, when the hot, tight feeling between her thighs became unbearable, he tugged off her knickers and touched her where she most needed to be touched.
Her awareness of what was happening took a severe hit at that point as her hips squirmed and sensation overwhelmed every other response. His thumb circled her clitoris and a fingertip traced the sweet swollen tightness of her most private place. Her hips shifted and lifted, a whimper of sound torn from her as he explored. She could feel the wet readiness of her own body and the straining eagerness to reach a climax.
Dante shimmied down the length of her and used his mouth to tease her. Shock at the incredible intimacy of it rippled through her but the tide of pleasure he evoked was too great to withstand. The flick of his tongue across that tiny bundle of nerve endings made her cry out, excitement gathering that was out of her control. He drove her into a frenzy of need, her back arching, her body screaming for satisfaction by tightening and tightening until the wicked pleasure triumphed and an explosion of sensation overwhelmed her body as she reached the highest peak. In the aftermath her body crested down the slope of arousal on tiny aftershocks of earth-shattering delight.
She heard the crackle of foil, knew he was donning a condom and breathed in deep and slow, too shaken by what she had already experienced to feel her earlier apprehension. He rose high over her, pushing her legs over his shoulders and her eyes widened at the sensation of pressure as he pushed the broad thick head of his shaft into her tender flesh.
‘You’re very tight, cara mia,’ he groaned. ‘I’ll stay in control, go slow.’
Topsy could feel herself being stretched, her inner muscles protesting his invasion and she shut her eyes and struggled to relax.
‘You feel miraculous,’ he breathed as he eased into her.
In the same moment as he pushed a little deeper she felt a burning sensation and then a sharp pain and she cried out, eyes flying wide, surprise and dismay etched there.
Dante froze. ‘I hurt you?’ She could see his shrewd green eyes deducing certain things she would have preferred him not to know.
‘It’s all right now...it’s been a while,’ she muttered dismissively, her face red and hot as fire.
Dante shifted his lean hips, sank slowly deeper and then withdrew and repeated the manoeuvre. A ripple of excitement gathered in her pelvis as her body clenched around him and he thrust deep with an appreciative groan. The delirious dark pleasure was engulfing her again by degrees, tightening her muscles, making her heart race, filling her with a flood of hunger. He slammed into her harder and faster, the all-consuming urgency of their entwined bodies enthralling her as another climax slowly, steadily began to build. The extremity of that orgasm when it came made her thrash and buck and cry out.
Afterwards, Topsy thought she would never move again because her body was in a blissful state of exhaustion. Dante dropped a kiss on the bridge of her nose and levered off her, releasing her from his weight.
‘Che diavolo! You’re bleeding!’ he exclaimed.
And there and then she almost died of mortification, startled eyes flying wide on his shocked expression as she sat up and saw the smudge of blood on her thigh. She burned red from head to toe and folded her arms round her knees. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘You were a virgin,’ Dante breathed in audible disbelief, reprogramming his every former assumption about her.
‘We don’t need to do a post-mortem on it,’ Topsy fielded.
‘You should have told me!’ Dante censured. ‘I could have made more of an occasion out of it. If I’d known I wouldn’t have taken you on a picnic rug in the woods.’
Embarrassed though she was, that had Topsy turning wondering eyes on him. ‘You don’t find it a turn-off?’
‘I think it’s the biggest turn-on I’ve ever had,’ Dante told her, his keen gaze studying her with fascination. ‘To know that at its most basic no other man has done what I’ve just done with you is extraordinarily exciting, gioia mia.’
In relief she leant forward and kissed him. He nibbled at her lower lip and then kissed her long and hard and before very long all talk ceased and they were making love again.
* * *
Topsy surfaced from a long much-needed nap to find that the sun was going down and she glanced at her watch in consternation. Dante was already dressed and the picnic packed away. ‘You should have wakened me,’ she complained.
‘You must’ve needed the rest.’
Shy of him now, she flipped off the edge of the rug he must have tossed over her while she slept and concentrated on retrieving her clothing and getting into it fast. She felt downright astonished by what had transpired between them and the raw passion that had engulfed them had rewritten all that she thought she knew about herself. She hadn’t known she had such a capacity for passion, indeed had often assumed she was more than a little cold in that department, for never before had she found it impossible to resist temptation. And Dante was the very essence of temptation on her terms. With him she was weak, she acknowledged. But was that necessarily a bad thing?
It was a fling, a little holiday fling, nothing more serious. Neither of them was looking for or expecting anything more and on that basis they were a good match. As he had pointed out, he wasn’t auditioning as potential husband material. And yet as she glanced at him when they reached the car again and he smiled, a feeling like trapped sunshine expanded inside her chest, making it feel tight. It was an infatuation, she told herself, responses heightened by the heat of the Italian sun and the taste of freedom she was enjoying. She was young and full of hormones, finally exploring a side of herself that had been on a leash for too long. What she was experiencing was normal, she reasoned frantically, not something she needed to worry about.
‘You’ve gone so quiet. I’m used to you chattering,’ Dante confided, shooting the car to a halt by the garages.
‘I’m making a mental list of all the things I have to check before the ball next week.’ Topsy hesitated and then forced herself to continue, ‘Don’t say anything about—’
‘Of course I won’t.’
Topsy’s tension level dropped a little. ‘If your mother or Vittore knew or guessed, it could make for an uncomfortable atmosphere,’ she warned him.
She scrambled out of the car in haste, desperate to have a shower and relocate her poise. At that moment she was as awkward as a clumsy teenager around him and it galled her.
‘Topsy...’ His voice halted her as she sped across the courtyard towards the servants’ entrance at the back of the castle.
Reluctantly,