JACQUELINE BAIRD - The Italian's Runaway Bride

‘Oh, so it’s empty,’ she murmured weakly, and swallowed hard, knowing once she entered the house she was tacitly agreeing to furthering their intimate relationship.

‘I’m not going to lie to you, Kelly. I want you; you know that,’ he said softly. ‘But I promise I will not do anything you don’t want me to,’ Gianni assured her with a smile. ‘Now, come on, dinner is waiting. I was up here earlier and prepared it.’

‘You can cook?’ she asked as he pushed open the door and with a hand at her back urged her forward into the house.

‘I can do anything,’ Gianni said arrogantly, and before she knew his intention he had spun her around into his arms and kissed her long and hard. When he finally lifted his head her eyes, wide and worshipping, clung to his.

‘We had better eat,’ he said roughly, ‘while we still can.’

Kelly knew exactly what he meant. Her hunger for him was growing by the second. She did not know this sensual, needy woman she had become with Gianni. But her mind was made up—she was going to take the chance and find out…

They ate out on the terrace by candle-light. Gianni was a marvellous host, but Kelly had to laugh at the food.

‘You call that cooking?’ she jibed as she forked the last mouthful of potato salad into her mouth. He had served melon with Parma ham, followed by prawns with salad, then cold cuts of meat with more salad. ‘There was not a single dish that needed cooking, you fraud. I bet you simply bought the lot in the delicatessen in town.’

‘Maybe so, but it worked—I needed to get you alone,’ he drawled with a lascivious grin, and filled her glass with white wine yet again.

She lifted laughing blue eyes to his. ‘You are incorrigible.’

‘I know.’ His brown eyes danced with devilment as they met hers, and for a moment the shared humour united them, but subtly the mood changed and their eyes meshed. ‘Kelly,’ Gianni murmured her name, ‘we don’t have much time left; your employer is back tomorrow and I have to go to Genoa; I will be away for a few days.’

Her heart sank. ‘You’re going away.’ Their holiday idyll was at an end, but it did not mean their relationship had to end, she told herself staunchly.

‘It will be at least a week before we can see each other again.’ He reached out to her, his hands palm up on the table. ‘Shall we go inside?’

Her heart lifted: he did intend seeing her again. She glanced up into his deep brown eyes, and what she saw there made her pulse race. She knew all evening had been leading to this moment. They had laughed and joked, but the underlining sexual tension had been growing stronger and stronger. She knew what he was offering, and she knew if she took his hands there would be no going back.

She placed her glass on the table, and put her hands in his.

Gianni lifted them both to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to the centre of each palm before rising to his feet.

Feeling Kelly tremble, Gianni pulled her up and into his arms. She was so soft, so warm, so his! he thought triumphantly as he claimed her lush, pouting lips with his own.

‘Gianni,’ she moaned his name, her slender body quivering with a need, a want she could not control. She looked up into his night-dark eyes and knew it was the same for him.

‘Yes, my sweet Kelly,’ he husked as he lifted her off her feet and carried her up the stairs to the bedroom, all the time pressing brief kisses to her lips, her cheek, her eyes, nuzzling the curve of her neck.

‘Dio! Kelly, you have no idea how much I ache for you,’ he groaned, lowering her down the long length of his body and holding her slightly away from him. ‘I don’t think I can wait any longer.’ He caught her shoulders and eased the straps of her dress down over her arms. His brilliant brown eyes holding hers, she felt the gentle stroke of his fingers on her bare flesh right through to her bones.

‘I want to see you naked.’ He slid the dress down her body to pool at her feet.

Standing before him in tiny lacy briefs, Kelly shuddered as his hands slid back up her hips and shaped the indentation of her waist, and watched as his dark eyes dropped to savour the glory of her near-naked body. His hands tightened around her waist. The bones of his face were taut with passion and for the briefest second she was afraid.

He sensed her fear, and loosened his hold. His hands skimmed over the silk slide of her skin to her breasts. ‘You are incredible, so responsive, so beautiful.’ Her skin was as pale as ivory, her body toned to perfection, with high full breasts tipped with delicate rosebuds. His body hardened to steel, and want raced through him like a tidal wave. ‘No woman has ever affected me the way you do, Kelly.’ He bent his head towards her, his breath brushing her lips. ‘But if you want me to stop, say so now,’ he murmured, and kissed her lightly. He did not trust himself to do more.

Kelly swayed into him, her lips parting on a trembling sigh, her fingers reaching for his shirt buttons. ‘I don’t want you to stop,’ she whispered against his mouth. ‘Not ever.’

Their mouths met in a hungry, ravishing kiss that blanked every doubt from her mind—all she could think, feel and taste was Gianni. His head lifted and he eased her away from him. She followed his movements with longing in her brilliant sapphire eyes, and in seconds Gianni was naked.

Fascination kept her still, her eyes roaming over his body in wonder. He was magnificent, like a sculptured god to her innocent gaze. She dragged a breath into her air-starved lungs and caught that musky fragrance of masculine arousal. She saw his sex surging from the curling black nest of his groin, and wild colour flooded over every inch of her skin.

Gianni, reaching out for her, hesitated for a second and stepped back, his dark eyes narrowing. ‘You’re blushing as though you had never seen a naked man before.’

‘The curse of the McKenzies, my father always said. He was ginger-haired and always blushed.’ She was babbling, she knew, but without Gianni’s touch to reassure her she suddenly felt exposed. ‘My mother suffered from the same affliction, and I take after both my parents.’

‘Hush.’ Gianni silenced her ramblings by drawing her into his arms. ‘I like it,’ he said, and quite unexpectedly he felt rotten. Kelly knew next to nothing about him, not even his real name. He must tell her.

‘And I like you,’ Kelly murmured as he held her close to his naked body. She was drowning in a million sensations. She did not care that the light was still on; in fact, she knew the picture of him in all his nudity would live with her to her dying day. She stroked her slender hands up his spine, down over his buttocks. He felt like satin and steel, hot and hard, and she ached to know every inch of him.

Gianni’s great body shuddered as her small hot hand slid like silk up his spine. He swung her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, dropped her down on it.

Breathless, she smiled up at him, a slow, soft curve of her incredibly sexy mouth. Her sapphire-blue eyes, shining like stars, met his, and she reached two slender arms out to him.

‘My full…’ Name, he was going to say, but her lithe naked body spread on the bed was too much. ‘Dio, sì, Kelly,’ he said in a strangled voice. It could wait, but he couldn’t, and he joined her on the bed.

Her heart racing, Kelly curved her hands around his shoulders, letting her fingers curl into the soft black hair at the nape of his neck, urging him down to her. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. A tremulous little gasp caught in her throat, and anticipation made her moan out loud as he covered her face with tiny kisses before finally claiming her mouth. She felt his kiss, the stroke of his hand down to cup the fullness of her breast in every cell in her body. Excitement surged through her, making her arch against him with a soft whimper of need. Her fingers dug into his skin as he lowered his head, trailing a fiery line of kisses down her throat to her breast, his mouth closing over one hard tip, suckling and tasting, until she cried out with pleasure.

With a wantonness that amazed her, her body responded to his every touch. He was a magnificent male animal, power and virility in every line of his huge body. He nudged her legs apart with one of his own, and she gasped as his long fingers delved between her thighs, but her legs moved wider, welcoming the intimate caress.

Her hands slipped down to clutch his hips, one small hand stroking across his thigh, revelling in the different textures of skin and soft curling body hair, and tentatively to the core of his manhood.

Gianni instantly reared back. ‘Kelly,’ he grated, his massive chest heaving. He wanted to take it slowly. He wanted it to be good for her, the best ever. He did not ask himself why.

‘Don’t stop,’ Kelly begged, her blue eyes, dark with need, fixed on his hard face. ‘Please, please,’ she moaned.

Gianni slid his hands beneath her hips and lifted her to him. His need for her sang in his blood, raced through his veins. There was a roaring in his ears and any notion of taking it slowly was obliterated.

With one swift thrust he entered her, sheathing himself inside her. Kelly cried out as a fierce pain ripped through her. For a second Gianni froze, but before she could react to the pain with a low groan he surged into the hot, sleek centre of her again and again, and slowly the pain subsided. Euphoria took over as he drove her higher and higher to some destination she had only ever dreamed about.

Afterwards Kelly wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging his great body, relishing his weight on her as the sounds of their frantic breathing became regulated. She could not find the words to describe how he made her feel. He had captured her heart and soul. ‘I love you,’ she sighed, and with a murmur of pleasure kissed his sweat-slicked shoulder, still wanting more.

Gianni said something harsh and guttural in Italian and tore himself from her arms and leapt off the bed. ‘You were a virgin,’ he grated incredulously, his dark eyes narrowing down to where she lay naked on the bed. ‘Why the hell did you not tell me?’ he demanded with barely contained rage. He could not believe he had lost control so totally and maybe fallen for the oldest trick in the book…

‘I NEVER thought,’ she murmured, her new-found euphoria dwindling at the repressed fury in his tone. Towering over her, the lover of a moment ago was gone, and in his place was a furious naked man; his hard eyes clashed with hers and the dark menace of his expression made her inwardly wince. Kelly did not understand what she had done wrong. Her mouth dried, and she dampened her top lip with her tongue, tearing her gaze away from the violence in his.

‘You never thought!’ snorted Gianni, shaking his dark head in disgust.

Kelly had no defence. She could not help having been a virgin, and it had never entered her head to mention the fact. How naïve could one get? she thought, feeling sick with a mixture of embarrassment and humiliation. ‘Obviously I made a mistake,’ she said in a flat little voice, forcing the words past trembling lips; suddenly she quite desperately wanted to cry.

‘I certainly did,’ he muttered between clenched teeth as he began to pull on his clothes. ‘A virgin.’ His black brows drew together in a frown as he surveyed her slender body spread-eagled on the bed where he had left her, the blush of passion tinting her pale skin. ‘Cover yourself, for God’s sake!’

The electric light that she had not objected to before now seemed to be fixed like a spotlight on her naked body. Jerking up into a sitting position, she grabbed the sheet and tugged it up under her chin. ‘I’m sorry.’ But she was not apologising to him, she was sorry for herself—his reaction had turned what she had thought was a wonderful experience into something shoddy and shameful.