Chapter 7
SHE COULDN’T SAY EXACTLY when she’d decided on this course of action. Perhaps overnight, as her dreams tormented her with memories of his kiss and touch? Or perhaps upon waking and realising he’d chosen the chair over the bed, because he’d been fighting temptation with every part of himself.
In any event, at some stage, Ally had realised that if she wanted Luca to give in and become her first lover, to let her revel in this newfound sensuality, she would have to lead the horse—him being the horse—to water. Or her.
Or make it impossible for him to say ‘no’.
She already knew he was tempted. But how to get him to stop fighting that?
Given that it was a warm day, lounging around by the pool in a bikini felt like a good place to start. She’d pulled it on and then draped one of Luca’s crisp business shirts over the top, leaving it unbuttoned as she padded through the house in search of him.
After a few rooms, she found him in a large, state-of-the-art office with sweeping views of the sea. His back was to the view, casting him in golden light and he was so beautiful that she could have just stood there and stared.
But the point was to make him drool, not vice versa. She forced an innocent smile to her face. “Good morning.”
He glanced up, then did a double take and a slow inspection of her body that made her pulse explode.
“Allegra.”
Her heart stammered.
“I’m going for a swim. “
“So I see.”
She held out the plastic tube of lotion. “Would you mind?”
His brows knit together.
“I don’t want to get burned,” she added, batting her eyelashes.
She could feel the war within him.
“I can ask one of the housekeepers, if you’re too busy,” she offered, but he was standing and moving slowly across the room towards her, eyes hooded.
Sparks exploded beneath her skin. “Where’s your grandfather?”
“He’s left.”
“Already?”
Luca’s response was garbled. He took the lotion, a frown tugging at his lips. “Turn around.”
She did as he suggested, shrugging out of his shirt at the same time and letting it drop suggestively to the floor.
She heard his breath hiss from beneath his teeth and would have smiled if her own desire wasn’t suddenly burning her alive, making it almost impossible to inhale and exhale normally.
This was her plan, but she was still totally unprepared for how it would feel when he touched her. The contrast of the cool lotion with his warm hands, and the flames that seemed to leap through her body, setting her alight piece by piece until she was almost melting.
His touch was light at first, almost hesitant, which she hadn’t expected, and didn’t want. She pressed back a little, and he expelled another sharp breath.
“Allegra.”
His tone was a warning and a plea. She bit down on her lip, stayed silent.
His hands were still but then, they started to move again, rubbing over her back, towards her sides, then higher, over the strap of her bikini to her shoulders.
She turned slowly to face him, holding her hands out, silently encouraging him to spread lotion there, too.
Even though she could easily have done so for herself.
He hesitated, staring at her for a beat before pouring more lotion into his palm then tossing the bottle down, onto the shirt she’d discarded.
His eyes were on her skin as he worked, first one arm, then the other.
When he was finished, he dropped his hands to his side but stayed where he was, right in front of her.
She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him. But she was scared he would reject her again, as he had the night before. She had to make him admit that he wanted her and then act on it; she had to get past his defences. Or maybe she just had to reassure him.
“I don’t want to be a virgin, Luca.” Her voice was a soft purr. “Not anymore. I promise you, we could sleep together and it wouldn’t change anything between us.”
His eyes lifted to hers; his expression was a forbidding mask. “With respect, you don’t know that.”
“Because of my inexperience?”
He dipped his head once.
“But you don’t really know me,” she pointed out. “What if I’m not like other women?”
“You’re not. At least, you’re not like the women I usually fuck.”
A soft moan escaped her at that visceral language—and the visual it sparked in her mind, of him doing exactly that to her. Animalistic, coarse, just two bodies driven together by mutual need.
“Enjoy your swim, Allegra.” He still didn’t move.
She took a step closer, pressing a hand to his chest, emboldened by the fact he was holding his ground, despite his words. His head and body were at war. “You don’t want to join me?”
“I think we both know that what I want, and what I’m doing, are two separate things.”
Uh huh. Just as she’d suspected. “It’s up to you,” she said, with a lift of one shoulder. “I’m going to go work on my tan.” She leaned closer, so her voice, even when whisper quiet, would still reach him. “And I do intend for that to be all over. Can’t have bikini lines at our wedding party.”
She felt his rush of breath and smiled to herself as she stepped backwards, eyeing him thoughtfully. Crouching down, she picked up both the lotion and the shirt, aware that she was at eye height with his cock. A cock that was visually hard, showing her what he’d already admitted.
He wanted her; he was doing what he thought was right, not what they both needed.
“I’ll be at your beautiful pool.” She eased herself to standing, put her hand back on his chest, felt the hard throbbing of his heart. “Feel free to come say hi.”
All she wanted to do was lift up onto the tips of her toes and kiss him. She no longer feared rejection. But she didn’t want to push him too hard; she was coming to understand that if this happened, it had to be because he let it. Because he admitted he wanted it more than he thought he shouldn’t.
And so she dropped her hand and turned, slowly, moving through the door with an exaggerated wiggle of her hips and smiling to herself at his low, husked out curse. Hook, line, and sinker.
He lasted three hours. Three hours of dealing with a raging hard on and remembering the imagery she’d easily planted in his mind of her sunbathing topless, before he’d finally gone in search of her. Turns out, the imagery was nothing compared to the reality.
Luca had two pools. One was a large rectangle for swimming laps; he used it for exercise when he was at this property.
The other was a more freeform shape, built to harmonise with the landscape at the clifftop, to complement the Tuscan garden beyond.
He found her there, on a lounger, a hat resting over her face, so she wasn’t aware of his arrival.
So he could have turned and left, run away, like he’d been metaphorically doing this whole time.
But running away was not his stock in trade, and Luca knew enough about challenges that the only way to fight fire was with fire.
Allegra talked a good game, but he could handle her.
At least, that’s what he told himself as he crossed the pool terrace, the midday sun warm on his body, until his long shadow fell over her.
She was not topless, and he couldn’t say if she ever had been, but her bikini straps had been unfastened and tucked into the cups, to avoid the straps she’d mentioned. He stared at her with a voice in his mind telling him it wasn’t too late to turn and run; yet he stood his ground.
He watched as she lifted a hand and pulled the hat off her face, blinking up at him, her full lips parting as her eyes landed on his face.
“You came,” she said, and he fought an urge to make some double entendre.
“Need some more lotion?”
This time, he’d caught her unawares. She stared up at him, her throat shifting visibly as she swallowed, then gradually, nodded.
“Roll over,” he commanded, moving to the back of the sun bed and pressing the lever to lower the backrest, so it was completely flat.
She wriggled onto her stomach and even that made his gut twist with need.
He reached for the tube and squeezed some into his hands but hesitated before touching her.
“Move over,” he said, and when she did, he sat on the edge of the bed, his hip touching her bare flesh, so he wished he was wearing a hell of a lot less.
She turned her face so that he could see her in profile, the way her teeth were pressing into her lips and her eyes were blinking too fast, and then, he started to apply lotion to her sun warmed skin, starting with her bare shoulders, rubbing across them far longer than was necessary, before dipping lower, to her back, massaging her there, inch by sweet inch, lower, to the skin just above her bikini bottoms. She wriggled her bottom and he bit back another curse.
“You must have dated,” he said, moving his hands back to her shoulders, rubbing there.
She shook her head slightly.
“How is that possible?”
“I just never met anyone that interested me.”
A surge of masculine pride was unmistakable.
Raw, unadulterated ego. Yeah, he liked the thought of that—of being the one man who made her feel sexy and sensual.
He liked the thought of giving her everything she wanted.
He liked it so much it was hard to imagine why he was holding back from this, why he wasn’t just agreeing to one night of pleasure. What harm could come from that?
He wasn’t his father, he’d take precautions. With her emotions, and with the likelihood of any unwanted consequences. As the unwanted child of an affair, Luca knew better than to risk any chance of history repeating itself.
He began to rub suntan lotion down her arms, as he had in his office, but this felt so different. Each touch and stroke was like a promise he couldn’t wait to fulfil, even as his brain was berating him to leave again.
“Have you eaten?”
She shook her head.
“Are you hungry?”
She moved to glance up at him, then shifted completely, turning onto her back, but wriggling even closer to him—whether by accident or design—so he couldn’t ignore the way it felt to have her hip pressed right to his.
Against his better judgement, but as though his body had taken over completely, his hand moved out to curve over her other hip, his fingers splayed wide, as if to hold her right where she was.
Her beautiful breasts moved quickly with each sharp intake of breath.
“I was offering lunch,” he said, trying to remember his intention.
Her hand pressed out and into his thigh. He stared down at her fingers, imagined he wore nothing.
“Are you usually such a good host?”
“I rarely host.”
“Not even the women you fuck?”
Cristo. Hearing her talk like that pulled at every single piece of his self control. He nodded once. “Even them.”
“Just as well I’m your wife,” she pointed out.
His wife. A surge of possession and pride made his whole body taut. “For one year.”
“And not a day longer,” she agreed.
“Then we’ll never see each other again.”
“As we’ve agreed.”
“And nothing will change that.”
She sat up, the bikini top perilously close to slipping down. How he wished it would. He found himself cursing the very existence of elastane as she brought her body closer to his, their faces level.
“Take me to bed, Luca. Please.”
Please. The word was torment. It was a whispered plea. He wanted, so badly, to agree.
“Why are you fighting me on this?” she asked, moving even closer, so their lips were almost touching. “I know we both want to give into this. Maybe that’s why we ended up married?”
He frowned.
“Maybe we’ve already done it,” she added, eyes raking his face thoughtfully. “We don’t know for sure we didn’t have sex that first night.”
“Believe me, we’d remember.”
Her lips tugged to the side. “I do believe you.”
He cupped her face then, with one of his hands, tilting her towards him. “You have to understand, Allegra, I break things. I am not the kind of man you want to get involved with.”
He felt her swallow. “Isn’t that up to me to decide?”
“You think I’m exaggerating.”
“No, I don’t.” She breathed out. “I just don’t care. I’m giving you one year of my life, I’m asking for this in exchange.”
“I’m paying you a lot of money in exchange.”
She flinched slightly, and he realised the quick rejoinder might have sounded like this was more of a commercial agreement than it was. Though at its heart, that was their deal. It was why she’d agreed to be his wife for a year.
“So you’re saying I should go out and find someone else to sleep with?” she said, after a beat, the question asked carefully without emotion. But that didn’t matter. His own emotions more than made up for that.
Jealousy speared him with the heat and force of a thousand suns. “What are you talking about? You are my wife.”
“But you said as long as we are discreet, we could have affairs.”
He had said that. God, he’d said it as a warning to himself, not to get too involved with her.
But now? It was anathema to think of touching another woman, and to even imagine her getting mixed up with some other guy.
But what did that mean? That he was going to be celibate for the next twelve months?
As painful as that would be, it would be better than imagining her finding some random guy to take her virginity.
“That was before I knew you were a virgin.”
“So? What difference does it make?”
“It’s…different.”
“Then you’re saying our old deal isn’t valid.”
“Precisely.”
“So we need a new deal,” she remarked innocently. Trapping him with her perfect logic.
“One that involves no sex, for either of us,” he grunted.
The hand on his thigh shifted ever so slightly higher, closer to his arousal. Heat spiked in his bloodstream.
“I’m not interested in that deal.” Her words were a gentle murmur, provocative and tempting.
“Tough. It’s the only one I’m offering.”
She brushed her hand ever so lightly over his arousal, eyes mocking him.
“We’ll see,” she said, laying back on the lounger, watching him with a knowing smile on those beautiful lips.
He stared at her in consternation, completely unable to move.
The lightest touch had all but paralysed him.
But when she reached for her bikini top and went to remove it, he stood up as though a bolt of lightning had landed at his feet.
“Lunch will be on the terrace when you’re ready, Allegra. Please arrive fully dressed.” He left before he could see her no doubt glorious breasts, his body berating him the entire way back to the house.