The Italian Boss's Mistress. LYNNE GRAHAM
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but she could only think of how foolish she must have sounded to him. Like a nervous virgin who had never been alone with a man in a hotel suite before? All the heat drained from below her fair skin to leave her pale.
Unfortunately, Hilary had only managed to make her over on the outside with a smooth sophisticated façade and inside she was still the same old Pippa Stevenson, she acknowledged. Pippa, who had attended an all girls’ school and whose evenings and weekends had been filled with extra classes and academic study, rather than social events and flirting. Boys had always seemed as remote and strange to her as alien entities and she had never learned what to say or how to behave around them. At the age of seventeen she had been humiliated by the young man she’d been infatuated with and, from that day on, hurt pride had become her strongest source of protection.
Time might have moved on but once bitten twice shy had proved to be her motto. Since then she might as well have been living on a single sex planet, she conceded ruefully, for she had never again risked pain or rejection. For almost six years she had been her father’s carer and while it was true that the older man had demanded that she devote all her free time to his needs and his interests, it was equally true that she had not offered much of a protest. It had been easier to be a dutiful daughter and accept without question that she was the ‘big strapping lass’ her parent had often called her and highly unlikely to appeal to any man. From the age of twelve, when she had first shot up in height to tower over all her classmates like a lanky beanpole, Pippa had loathed her extra inches and had pointlessly longed to be small and dainty like her pretty mother.
But now, for the first time, she shook free of that memory without regret and reminded herself that Andreo appeared to admire her just as she was. She stole a covert glance at him and collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and her mouth ran dry. He was breathtakingly handsome.
Andreo watched her, for she was so still that she might have been a living breathing statue. Her feathery lashes lowered above the pale perfect line of her cheekbones and she looked incredibly vulnerable. It was obvious that she was having second thoughts. Was there another guy in her life? Someone to whom she felt she owed loyalty? Whatever, he chose patience over the risk of losing her altogether. ‘Perhaps I should just take you home,’ he murmured evenly.
Pippa went rigid, for that unexpected offer only heightened her tension. Go home? It would be the sensible thing to do. Yet her whole being rebelled against the concept. Sensible Pippa. When had she ever been anything else? And where had it got her? She had become a workaholic with no social life and no man had looked twice at her either. When had she ever felt for any male what she was feeling now?
‘Is there anyone else?’ Andreo breathed, his tension palpable.
‘No…’ She drew in a slow steadying breath. ‘You?’
‘No.’ The blonde who had last shared Andreo’s bed was modelling in Mexico and he saw no reason to confess that the lady had become yesterday’s news at the exact same instant that he’d seen her successor before him.
The atmosphere buzzed.
‘I don’t believe that I’ve ever wanted any woman as much as I want you, bella mia,’ Andreo confided with raw honesty.
‘I want to stay…’ Pippa whispered in a rush and, shaken though she was by the force of her own craving for him, she was equally entrapped by the simple acknowledgement that she still had a whole new dimension of life to explore. Her body seemed to be developing responses all of its own. The fabric of her dress felt abrasive against the taut peaks of her breasts and there was a swollen heaviness low in her pelvis that made it a challenge for her to remain still.
‘You won’t regret it.’ His slashing smile of satisfaction was sufficient reward for her agreement. Her heart hammered so hard inside her ribcage that she felt dizzy. He was so beautiful and when he looked at her she felt beautiful too. She crossed the room on lower limbs that felt as unreliable in the support stakes as bendy twigs. She was trembling but she reached for his silk tie like a woman who meant business, a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.
Averse to her clumsy approach, his wretched tie refused to cooperate and went into a tight, immoveable knot. Just when she was on the brink of screaming for a pair of scissors, lean brown fingers intervened and jerked loose the knot with apparent ease. He cast the tie aside and drew her raised hands into his own to fold her back into his arms. She was as boneless as a rag doll until he crushed her into the hard, muscular wall of his chest, one masculine hand knotting into her bright hair to angle her head back. Then she shivered, stretched up to him, helpless in the thrall of her own wild anticipation.
His expert mouth swooped down to taste hers again and a soft moan of encouragement broke low in her throat. He traced her lips, penetrated them and a series of little gasps were torn from her as she clung to him to stay upright. He bent down and swept her up into his arms.
‘Aren’t I too heavy?’ she mumbled through swollen, stinging lips and a sense of wonderment as dangerous as a hypnotic spell. He was, she was convinced, ‘the one’, the one special guy who she had always hoped and prayed might be waiting out there for her. The guy she was going to fall madly in love with. The guy who was hopefully going to fall madly in love with her. Well, maybe not madly, she adjusted hurriedly, fearful of hoping for too much and ending up with precisely nothing as a punishment for daring to be so ambitious. Even if he fell just a little bit in love with her, she would be content, she swore to herself.
‘Light as a doll, cara mia…I’m just an unrepentant show-off,’ Andreo teased as he strode into the elegant contemporary bedroom next door and set her down again onto her own feet.
One of her shoes had fallen off and she kicked off the other, but he had already stepped back from her to un-button his shirt. Eyes wide, she became his audience. Her toes curled in the luxury carpet while she watched as the shirt fell open to display a sleek bronze wedge of masculine torso, his powerful pectoral muscles delineated by a triangle of rough dark curls. Her tummy flipped and she felt alarmingly short of breath and very hot. Knees wobbling, she backed up until her legs hit the edge of the bed and she sank down on the luxurious mattress.
‘What…?’ A wicked smile slanted over his wide, sensual mouth and golden eyes gleamed from below dense black lashes. ‘Did you want to take off the shirt for me?’
‘No…er…I’m not into shirts,’ Pippa framed, dry-mouthed and serious, for she had decided there was nothing less cool than struggling with male apparel.
‘You can always practise on my tie, cara,’ Andreo teased with intense amusement for he had found her lack of dexterity and the inexperience implied by that trait endearing.
‘Is that a fact?’ Pippa strove to match his mood with a quip while acknowledging that his sheer masculine presence both thrilled and intimidated her.
‘Any time…’ Andreo husked, strolling forward with all the formidable and yet daunting grace of a prowling tiger to lean down and close his large hands over her smaller ones and raise her upright.
That close to him her nostrils flared on the clean, husky male scent of his lithe, lean physique. She quivered, a curl of heat igniting low in her stomach. Shorn of her shoes as she now was, he struck her as awesomely tall and broad.
‘Santo Cielo…you’ve shrunk a little,’ Andreo mocked. ‘But promise me that you will always wear those heels around me. Seeing you top all the guys around me gives me a high—’
‘It…does?’
‘Sì. You looked as disdainful as a queen too.’ He shed his shirt and reached behind her with complete calm to unzip her dress for her.
‘Couldn’t we put the lights out?’ Pippa mumbled in as humorous a tone as she could manage, the cooler air brushing her spine merely reminding her that when the dress went she had only one more layer left to hide behind.
Andreo actually laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, bella mia!’
Perspiration beaded her short upper lip. ‘I guess I was…’
He