Chapter Five #3
‘I only wanted to warn you,’ Orazio said coldly.
Zia gazed up at him unimpressed, violet-blue eyes sharp with withering cynicism and inner knowledge with the hurt inside her crushed down hard. ‘No, you’re jealous,’ she contradicted. ‘You don’t want me but you don’t want anyone else to want me either.’
And that unlovely and very blunt truth engulfed Orazio like a bucket of cold water flung over his head.
He was jealous, he, who had never been jealous over a woman in his life!
He was appalled. He didn’t get attached, didn’t attach strings to any woman, held no expectations, practised a simple easy-come-easy-go outlook.
Only not with Zia. The very idea of another guy putting his hands on Zia’s tiny curvy body filled him with a fury that he could not adequately explain.
It was more than lust, more than possessiveness, more than anything he had felt for a woman before.
And equally honestly, those innate feelings for her made his blood run cold because he didn’t want to feel like that.
He wanted the coolness he was accustomed to feeling with a woman, desire but nothing out of control, nothing excessive.
And then Zia appeared and everything he experienced in relation to her was excessive, obsessive…
inexcusable in his circumstances, where staying in control was an absolute rule he had never strayed from before.
His cold, empty childhood had taught him to stay in control to protect himself.
He had never known what it was to be loved during those crucial years of development.
Yet now, for the first time ever, he was acting on urges that verged far from his usual rigid self-discipline and he found it unnerving.
Even worse was the reality that she was calling him to account!
‘Let me tell you the difference between you and Giancarlo,’ Zia framed shakily, increasingly angry with him for his hypocritical behaviour.
‘You’re both… I assume…manwhores. Giancarlo only wants me because his father practically purrs when I appear and he would like his son to bring a princess home, so, no, I’m not going to fall for anything that obvious.
You, though, want me for me, for my body and nothing else, but at least it’s authentic—’
‘Stop talking like that about yourself!’ Orazio cut in, furious with her for her outspokenness, for saying what he would not have dared to say and looking him levelly in the eye as she did it, truly fearless. ‘It’s vulgar—’
‘No, it’s not. It’s honest and I always prefer to be honest. I want you and you want me but it’s never going anywhere because of who you are.
I understand. I even respect that but this, this dragging me into a blasted crockery cupboard, which could cause a dreadful scandal, is offensive,’ she condemned.
‘Either step away or step up to the plate!’
Orazio swore vehemently in Italian and she didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed.
Her starlit eyes glimmered below the light and then the light went out, plunging the tiny space into darkness, and that was the only invitation he needed.
He reached for her and lifted her up against him and crushed her ripe peach-tinted lips under his and nothing had ever felt so right or so necessary to him.
He meshed his seeking fingers into her glorious hair, hating that the glossy strands were up and out of his reach because he loved her hair hanging loose and silky.
‘Raz!’ she gasped.
‘I can’t think of anyone but you!’ he growled.
‘Only cos I said no!’
‘I’m not that basic.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ she mumbled, locking her arms round his shoulders to stay vertical, wincing at the crashing rattle of crockery knocking together as he braced her up against the shelves behind her.
His velvety soft mouth pried her lips open and his tongue plunged and an ache and an agony of need shot through her like a river of hot lava.
He settled her down on the edge of what felt like a table…
was a table, she registered dimly, blinking as the motion sensor light flickered on again, illuminating his intent lean, hard-boned face.
He was skimming up the hem of her dress, long supple fingers caressing the skin of her inner thighs and she was trembling and on the merest knife edge, craving what she knew she shouldn’t have, feeling that it would be different with him.
The whole fantasy scenario, Zia, she sniped at herself with an inner snort of disbelief.
But then he traced the heated centre of her, so sensitive beneath the thin strip of material now stretched taut between her spread thighs.
All of a sudden she couldn’t think at all and was wholly at the mercy of teasing sensation as he brushed aside the barrier and traced his fingers along her cleft, delicately dipping into her wet depths while his thumb circled the bud of her desire.
What followed was like nothing that she had ever felt before.
Rocketing, shooting spears of pleasure and excitement gripped her and then, before she could even begin to collect herself, she was blinded by an intense climax that scorched through her and left her limp.
She couldn’t credit that her body had reacted so quickly, so easily, taking all that unresolved tension and yearning and then simply blowing it out of the sky and away. It had been amazing and she was in awe.
But when he dipped his head and kissed her again, a strangled sound escaped her, a sound of lingering want and need and everything she knew she despised, a weak sound.
She tore her mouth free, wanting him so intensely but refusing to give way to that seething heat in her blood and the reawakened burn at her feminine core.
‘Let me down,’ she told him. ‘I’m not doing this with you! ’
‘Are you a virgin?’ he growled.
‘For goodness’ sake, no!’ she snapped with mortified impatience as she questioned everything that had happened between them and cringed for her own total vulnerability.
‘I was a normal teenager with the usual experiences. But you’re absolutely wrong for me and you know it.
At this stage of my life, I want a relationship, not some hole-in-the-corner fling.
And if you can’t offer me the real thing, then have the decency to let me go and don’t interfere in the choices I may make. ’
Slowly, carefully, Orazio lifted her to lower her back to the floor, his teeth gritting as she brushed against his rigid erection.
‘Have the decency’, yes, those words had hit him squarely where they hurt because he knew he was just chasing sex.
Wasn’t that all he had ever done? Only this time, the urge was different, he acknowledged.
It was more like being driven by an irresistible, insane force that he couldn’t stop and it both bemused and intimidated him.
The light went off again and then back on as he stepped back from her.
At that point, the door opened without any warning whatsoever, making both of them flinch. Fiero peered in, sheer astonishment etched on his expressive face as he took in their messy appearance. ‘Are you both crazy? The castle is crawling with VIPs and journalists tonight.’
‘I’ll go and freshen up,’ Zia announced frigidly, knowing that Orazio had untidied her hair and smeared her make-up.
She was still furious with him but also still furiously hot for the continuation of that kiss and his touch.
The dichotomy of those opposing feelings made her feel shaky, uneasy and wildly confused, as if she no longer knew herself.
‘So, when’s the wedding?’ Fiero asked the instant she was out of hearing.
‘Are you serious?’
‘No, I’m trying to work out what’s going on here when I’ve never once seen you behave recklessly before. I’m starting to wonder if you’re falling for her.’
Orazio smoothed down his tailored dinner jacket with a ridiculously unsteady hand because he was still reliving the instant she had melted into bliss and his own powerful satisfaction, even though his own needs had not been met in even the smallest way.
Strangely, for the first time ever, that loaded word, ‘marriage’, didn’t strike cold horror into his bones.
He imagined having the right to touch Zia, being able to speak to her whenever he wanted.
He imagined being the only man in her life.
Slowly, the unyielding rigidity of tension in his shoulders and spine eased.