A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [12]
What would it feel like to have those long, strong fingers caress her skin? How would his touch move over her sensitive flesh? Would it be soft and tantalising or hard and demanding? Every female instinct told her that he was a man who would know how to love a woman. How to arouse her, to stir her senses until she was barely conscious with longing, to set her whole body quivering…
Oh, lord, what was she doing? Just to think like this was turning her on, making heated passion uncoil in yearning demand in the pit of her stomach. Clumsily she reached for her glass, swallowing down some of the wine in an attempt to ease the sudden dryness of her throat.
‘Of course, I suppose to you this is quite commonplace,’ she blurted out, desperate to move the conversation along and so distract herself from her wanton thoughts. ‘You must always be in places like this.’
‘My legal work takes me all over the world.’
‘That must be exciting—working in so many different countries.’
‘Not really.’
Gio shrugged off her comment.
‘When you’ve seen one hotel room, you’ve seen them all. And usually I’m working so hard that I don’t get to see anything of the places where I’m staying.’
And that was how he liked it. The truth was that he didn’t need to work; not financially at least. Thanks to the huge corporation owned by their joint families, both he and his half-brother Cesare were independently wealthy enough never to have to work again if they didn’t feel like it.
But working filled the long, empty hours of the day. It tired him so that at least he had some hope of sleeping at night and it stopped him from thinking—from remembering.
‘That’s a terrible pity! Such a waste. I’d love to see all those—’
‘I’m there to work,’ Gio interrupted crushingly. ‘And at the end of a long day in court I’m hardly in the mood for sightseeing.’
Perhaps now she’d get the message that he wasn’t prepared to listen to her unsubtle hints.
Leaning back in his chair, he too reached for his wine glass and sipped at his drink slowly, all the while watching the woman before him. Did he care that she was so obviously attracted by his wealth? he asked himself. And that she was trying to insinuate that maybe they could spend some time together?
No. Quite frankly, he didn’t give a damn. He was in the mood for some female company tonight—and for tonight only. And because of that he couldn’t care less what she found attractive about him. Only that she did find him attractive. Because with those huge, soft eyes, the tumble of pale hair, the moist, inviting mouth, she was the sexiest thing he’d seen in a long time.
Did she know the way the candlelight caught on her hair, raising sparks of brilliant gold in the ash-blonde strands? Was she aware of the way that it gave her skin a softly luminous sheen, like the glow on a string of the finest freshwater pearls? And had she sensed that when she leaned forward to talk to him the low V-neck of the white cotton top she wore gaped slightly, giving him a tantalisingly erotic glimpse of the shadowed, perfumed valley of her cleavage?
Of course she had! In fact, he suspected her of making that movement quite deliberately, knowing it had to intrigue him, set his pulses racing.
She was doing it again now, coming partway across the table, her arms resting on the cloth as she leaned on them. He just wished she’d take the jacket off to give him a better view.
‘I wasn’t hinting!’ she protested, actually managing to sound sincere.
‘Of course not.’
His response didn’t seem genuine, even in his own ears, but he didn’t care. If she thought he didn’t believe her, well, tough!
He reached for the