Claimed For The Italian's Revenge. Natalie Rivers
Читать онлайн книгу.
he said.
‘You mean Rosie?’ Claudia looked up at him in surprise. ‘She shouldn’t have done that. And you had no right to go behind my back, asking questions about where I was.’
‘Why not—I wanted to see you,’ he responded. ‘To talk to you.’
She stared at him, knowing it couldn’t really be that simple. No one followed another person that far just to talk to them. There must be something else. He must want more.
He was standing with his back to the sea and she could hear the waves crashing dramatically on to the rocky beach behind him. It was an unfamiliar, wild and stormy setting for them to be together. Their brief, intense affair had taken place during the summer, mostly in the elegant and stylish northern Italian city of Turin—and that was where she’d usually thought of him.
But somehow Marco’s raw masculine presence seemed to fit the untamed beach in the wilds of Pembrokeshire perfectly. His clothes were soaked through, his black hair was spiky with salt water, and the edgy, slightly dangerous quality that usually characterised his expression seemed to echo their elemental surroundings exactly.
‘If you knew where I worked, why didn’t you just leave me a message?’ she asked, suddenly feeling unnerved by the brooding sexual energy that glinted in his dark eyes.
She wrapped her arms across her body and hugged herself tightly. It was an instinctive gesture, as much about defending herself from Marco’s penetrating gaze as about keeping warm. But he had seen her reaction to him, and his eyes glittered all the more.
‘Oh, but I forgot—you don’t do messages,’ she added quickly, determined to stand up for herself and not let the sheer force of his personality overwhelm her.
‘I couldn’t wait that long.’ He was unfazed by her barbed comment and deliberately let his eyes drift down across her body, leaving a sudden flare of heat where they passed. ‘I needed to see you—now.’
‘Why?’
But Claudia already knew the answer. And if the potent message in his dark and meaningful gaze wasn’t enough, his voice had dropped to a sensual purr that shimmied across her body like a lover’s caress.
‘After you’d gone, I couldn’t get you out of my mind,’ he said.
His eyes burned into hers and Claudia knew exactly what he was thinking about. And that was enough to fill her own mind with powerful images of Marco making love to her.
But it was not what she wanted. Although her pulse was racing and the deep, dark longing to lie in Marco’s arms again was making it hard to think straight—the thought that he had followed her all the way to Wales simply to bed her was utterly crushing.
Was that really all she’d ever been to him—someone to warm his bed? Didn’t he care enough about her to ask how she’d been since he’d left her? Of course not. If he cared at all, he would never have left her so heartlessly.
Terrible tremors ripped through her body, making the shivering that had gripped her even more intense. But it wasn’t just the cold and wet of her physical condition that was affecting her—it was the brutal reminder of just how little she’d meant to Marco.
‘We have to get you out of those wet clothes,’ he said, suddenly closing the distance between them. Then, before she could react, he lifted her up again and started striding across the meadow to the cottage.
‘Put me down!’ Claudia gasped, struggling against him. The idea of him undressing her flashed through her mind in a series of erotic images which aroused and scared her at the same time. ‘I said, put me down!’
‘We need to warm you up right away,’ he said, his voice showing no sign of effort as he hurried towards the cottage. ‘You’re soaked through—we stood in the cold wind too long.’
As Marco held her tight against his chest, he was shocked by just how hard she was shaking. He could even hear her teeth chattering.
He didn’t know much about hypothermia. A dip in the December sea obviously wasn’t ideal, but he wouldn’t have thought she’d be at serious risk that quickly. However, she was shivering so intensely that an unpleasant jolt ran through him and settled like a wedge of ice in his chest. He could not let anything happen to her!
‘Stop struggling!’ he barked. ‘If you catch your death of cold, you’ll be no good to anybody.’
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.