Michelle Reid Collection. Michelle Reid
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no other place she would rather be.
Weak, she repeated. It was her biggest problem. She needed to be with him though she didn’t want to need. He was arrogant, self-motivated, insensitive and…
Her sigh warmed his throat. Dipping his dark head, he caught the sigh with the kind of kiss that squeezed the heart dry. When it was over she reached up to touch his lips with her fingertips, unable to believe that a mouth could be so tender and not feel something deeper than desire for her.
‘I wish I’d never met you sometimes,’ she quietly confided.
‘Only sometimes?’ he threw back.
Tipping her head, she expected to find him smiling. But he looked quite sombre as he gazed down at her through swirling smoke-blue eyes set between kohl-black lashes in a polished bronze framework no gifted sculptor could improve upon.
‘Do you want me to apologise for my earlier behaviour?’ he asked her. Huskily spoken, sincerely meant. No, she thought sadly. I want you to love me. Then had to swallow the lump of tears in her throat as she gave a shake of her head. ‘I just want you to promise never to do that to me again,’ she replied.
Smoke-blue eyes darkened with repentance. ‘On my life,’ he vowed, and sealed it with a kiss, then repeated it again and again until both the vow and the kiss became yet another seduction.
It was his way, a willingly humble side to his proud character, which had the power to demolish her resistance far more easily than the ruthlessness he had meted out before.
Her fingers began trailing tender caresses across hairpeppered, muscle-hard, satin-tight flesh. He was built to worship, she thought mistily. Built to make any woman melt with desire. It was she who deepened those soft penitent kisses into one long sensual banquet. She who slid onto her back and drew him over her, then slowly relaxed her thighs so he would settle between. In a wonderful intimacy that had her long legs tangling with his and her body arching to a sensual rhythm, they indulged in a different kind of kiss.
His mouth left hers to taste other parts of her, and she sighed in pleasure as it closed on her breast. Fingers trailed into his hair, stretched out to glide down the satin smoothness of his back. He shuddered in response and drew on her nipple until she felt the needle-sharp pleasure reach deep down into her very core.
As quickly as that, it all began again. No tormenting this time, no battle of wills. In only seconds he was feeding his powerful arms beneath her so he could lift her into closer contact with the pulsing length of his sex.
Dragging his mouth from her breast, he requested, ‘May I?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she invited, aware that they were both more than ready for this.
This time he came into her with the gentle force of a man who was very mindful of his own power. She willingly accepted him, and wasn’t surprised to hear them both utter those exquisite sighs of pleasure because, quick though this was, they were perfectly in tune.
Can I walk away from him? Antonia found herself questioning as not just her senses but her whole world began to quicken. Can he really want this to end?
As if he could sense that her mind had strayed, Marco was suddenly rearing up and over her. His eyes were like two dark circles of passion, his mouth warm and moist and hungry for hers. ‘This is special,’ he said roughly. ‘And it is ours.’
‘Sometimes it feels as if you hate me,’ she whispered.
‘No, never,’ he denied, and crushed her mouth beneath his and crushed all thoughts from her head by other means.
The next morning, the light brush of his lips on her cheek awoke her. Opening her eyes, she smiled sleepily at him.
Clean-shaven and smelling deliciously vital, he was already dressed for his busy day in a dark grey suit and pale blue shirt that did sensational things to his golden features.
‘Get up, get dressed and come and join me for breakfast,’ he invited. ‘I have a surprise for you.’
‘A surprise?’ she repeated, yawning while stretching.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured, and it was the sexiest murmur Antonia had ever heard in her entire life.
It brought an invitation to her eyes and a hand reaching up for him. ‘Show me now,’ she commanded in a tone which was demanding something else entirely.
He caught the hand, kissed it, then firmly replaced it back on the bed. ‘Not on your life.’ He grinned. ‘You have to come downstairs looking prim for this surprise.’
And with that thoroughly intriguing statement he turned and strode out of the room. Antonia watched him go with a smile in her eyes, quietly amazed at how a night of loving could turn their relationship around. The man was an enigma of complicated mood codes: one minute looking as if he wished to see the back of her, the next almost dying with pleasure in her arms. Now he wanted to please her with surprises—though how he’d found the time to come up with anything to surprise her with at—she checked the bedside clock—seven o’clock in the morning was completely beyond her.
Innovative, that was what Marco was, she thought indulgently as she climbed out of the bed and went off to shower and dress, as instructed, in something prim. Her choice was a white tailored linen suit teamed with amber accessories that almost matched the colour of her eyes.
On her way to the breakfast room, she popped her head into the kitchen and was surprised to find no housekeeper there to exchange the usual morning greetings. Still frowning slightly at Carlotta’s absence, she entered the sunny breakfast room to find her favourite breakfast bowl of fresh fruit and a steaming pot of hot coffee waiting for her on the table—and her favourite man reclining in his chair reading his morning newspaper.
But he paused to watch her walk towards him with his eyes narrowed in male appreciation. ‘Perfezione,’ he murmured, as she leant down to press a morning kiss to his ready lips.
‘Grazie,’ she returned in mocking relief. ‘For this is about as prim as I get.’
The sun caught the strawberry highlights threading through her neatly pleated hair, and played sultry games with the amber colour of her conservatively styled silk blouse. On her feet she wore classically plain court shoes and a simple string of pearls she had owned for ever and didn’t warrant locking away in Marco’s safe circled her slender throat. Her make-up was so natural there was barely any sign of it and her smile said everything was right in her world.
‘Where’s Carlotta?’ she asked as she sat down next to him.
‘Called in sick,’ Marco explained. ‘I found her message waiting with our answering service, along with a hundred and one others…’
Antonia’s hand froze momentarily on its way to pick up the coffee pot. Stefan, she remembered. Stefan had said he’d been leaving messages for her all last week. A small silence began to vibrate with the hum of expectancy while she waited for what Marco was going to say next.
But he said absolutely nothing, and when she dared a glance at him, he was behind his newspaper again. He wasn’t going to mention Stefan’s calls, she realised. And she was damned if she was going to mention them and put at risk all this wonderful harmony they had managed to recapture.
So, ‘Did Carlotta say what was wrong?’ she enquired instead.
The newspaper twitched, long brown fingers flexed slightly, as if he was aware that she was aware of Stefan’s calls and those fingers were reacting to the fact that she too was going to pretend they had never happened.
‘Summer flu,’ he replied. ‘She does not wish to pass it on, so she expects to be away for the rest of the week.’
‘Poor Carlotta. I must send her a get-well card,’ she murmured, and finished pouring her coffee before transferring her attention to her bowl of fruit. ‘Did you prepare this?’ she asked.
‘Mmm.’ It was not quite the sexy Mmm of before. Was