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By Root 464 0

whose bed he had shared all night long. The woman whose body had opened to him, welcomed him in. And in whose arms he had lost himself, forgotten, for a few hours at least, the loneliness and emptiness of his life. With her he had shared a blazing passion that had somehow made him hungry in the very same moment that it had satisfied him. He hadn’t been able to sleep, had known no rest, until he had taken her again and again and again, in an exhausting outpouring of need that he hadn’t believed he would ever experience again. In her bed he had found the oblivion he had been looking for. And in this woman he had found some of the deepest, most sensual satisfaction he had ever experienced.

The woman with whom he had betrayed the memory of his beloved wife.

‘Oh, Lucia!’

With an effort he swallowed down the groan of pain and guilt that almost escaped his lips, clamping his mouth tight shut against it. Beside him Terrie sighed again and nestled deeper into the pillows, the long, tangled mane of her hair obscuring her face from his sight.

Levering himself up onto his side, Gio rested his weight on one elbow as he turned to study her sleeping form. His fingers itched to sweep the blonde locks away from her face and expose the delicate cheekbones, the full softness of her mouth, but caution and common sense warned him sharply to hold back. To touch her was to risk waking her. And waking her would have the sort of consequences he wasn’t prepared to risk.

If she woke then he would be tempted all over again. If she stirred, turned to him, still warm and relaxed from sleep, then he would want her with the hunger that was still lingering just below the surface of his mind, the raw passion that had had him in its grip all through the night.

‘If she wakes…!’ he muttered, low and rough. ‘If… Oh, Madre de Dio!’ Who was he trying to fool?

He wasn’t even convincing himself. Even as the thoughts crossed his mind, his body was waking, hardening in savagely demanding response simply to her closeness, to the warmth of her skin reaching his, the scent of her flesh coiling round his senses like a drug.

Face facts, he told himself with furious reproach. He wanted her again. Even the passion-soaked night that they had shared had done nothing to appease his clamouring senses. If anything he was hungrier than before. He wanted her, and he wanted her now, with a yearning that all the guilt and the regret could do nothing to suppress.

‘Inferno!’ he swore savagely under his breath, throwing back the bedclothes and pushing himself from the bed, careless of whether he disturbed the sleeping woman or not.

But it seemed that she was even more exhausted than he had been. For an instant she stirred slightly, seeming to sense his movement away from her side. But the next moment she had cuddled down again, once more giving that gentle sigh that tugged at something in his heart.

No! He wouldn’t let her reach him, touch him again, either physically or mentally. One night he had told himself. One night and that was all. There was no room in his life for anything more.

His clothes were scattered all around the room—the shirt hanging half on and half off a chair, his trousers in an appallingly crumpled heap on the blue patterned carpet. Brown eyes clouding in disbelief and distaste, he forced himself to collect them up, shake them out into some sort of order at least.

What he really longed for was a shower. A long, hot, ruthlessly scouring shower.

Or did he mean a long, cold, ruthlessly icy one? The sort of shower that might just suppress the wanton longings that his weakened flesh was still subjected to. That would freeze his molten blood so effectively it would leave him shuddering and gasping in total shock.

Because it seemed that only that would drive away the lingering memories of the pleasures of this woman’s body, erase the knowledge of how it had felt to possess her soft femininity, destroy the longing to experience it all over again.

But a shower was a risk he couldn’t take. The sound of the rushing water would wake the sleeping Terrie.