A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [43]
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to speak with a degree of control that she was far from feeling.
‘I think we’d both be more comfortable if we went through into the living room and sat down.’
Her voice was cool and tight, obviously intended to be quelling. But Gio knew that it would take more than a few words to crush down the heavy throb of desire that his whole body was a prey to.
Comfortable! he reflected on a twist of cynicism. Feeling comfortable was the last thing possible when he was so close to this woman. In fact, he doubted whether even moving into the other room and sitting further away from her would help. Every cell in his body was on red alert to the sight, the sound, the scent of her.
And touching her had been a mistake.
A bad mistake!
As soon as his thumb had brushed across her mouth, her lips had softened under his touch, reminding him of how it had felt to take them in the heat of a passionate kiss. His skin had touched the warm, moist interior, reminding him of the heated slickness of the feminine warmth that had closed around him countless times during their night together, and the urge to grab her, haul her hard up against him and kiss her senseless had almost got the better of him.
Almost. But at the last moment what little sanity he had left had prevailed—thankfully!
Grabbing Teresa Hayden was quite the wrong way to go about things, at least this time. Last time he had grabbed—and so had she—and they had both ended up in a situation that was quite out of their control. They had been caught up in a maelstrom of passion that had obliterated any hope of sensible thought, whirling them up out of the rational world and into a fierce, blazing inferno of need that would allow for no resistance.
And tonight he had promised himself that he would think—or at least try to think—with what was inside his head, not what was below his belt, and he was damned well going to stick to that resolve if it killed him. Which was what it looked likely to do if he didn’t pull back and put some distance between the two of them—fast!
‘After you…’
Even as he spoke the words he felt the sense of shock at his own stupid mistake. To allow her to go first meant that he would have to let her squeeze past him in the confined space of the doorway, coming closer than ever before.
The soft brush of her pert buttocks against his already hardened groin was a source of delicious agony that had him biting down hard on his lower lip so as not to groan aloud in uncontrollable response. Her silky blonde hair wafted against his face, the scent of it combining with the intimate, deeply personal aroma of her skin tormenting his hotly aroused body with its sensual caress. And he had to clench his fingers hard on the handle of his coffee mug so that the tremor in his grip didn’t betray him by spilling some of the liquid onto the floor.
Dio—sucurro! he thought on a wave of despair, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back against the hard wood of the doorjamb. How had he ever let this woman reduce him to such a state of sexual slavery so fast? How had she brought him to this point where every movement she made, every glance from those lavender-coloured eyes, every sound of her voice was pure intoxication, total seduction?
‘Gio?’
Terrie was clearly puzzled by the fact that he hadn’t moved.
‘Are you coming?’
Oh, yes…
Hastily he caught himself up, shaking his dark head hard, blinking as he forced away the last clinging strands of the erotic daydream that had had him in its grip.
‘Sì,’ he said in a very different tone, the crisp, cool note totally erasing the husky fervency of his thoughts of just moments before. ‘Yes, of course I am.’
He might move into the room, but he couldn’t sit down. He felt restless, edgy, a cat on hot bricks. And unknowingly Terrie only made matters worse by the way she curled up in her chair, depositing her coffee mug on the tiled hearth to her left before turning