Sharon Kendrick - The Sicilian's Passion

He shrugged. ‘You drink alone?’

For one quietly hysterical moment she felt like saying that yes, yes, she did drink alone. That a bottle of vodka would leave her untouched and unsatisfied. Because she could tell from the unmarred perfection of his face and body that here was a man to whom excess would be anathema. Except perhaps for excess in one thing…

What could she say? That she never drank alone, but that he had unnerved her so much that she felt that wine might bring some warmth and some life back into her cold and bewildered veins?

‘Rarely,’ she conceded with an answering shrug, not caring whether he believed her or not.

Every instinct in his body was clamouring at him to get the hell out. Telling him that here lay danger, a hot and inexplicable danger far beyond any he had ever encountered. Giovanni had never known a moment’s fear in all his thirty-four years, but in that instant his flesh shivered with trepidation at something quite outside his experience.

And yet he was known for his worldliness—his refusal to be cowed by anybody or anything. So what spell was this witch casting on him? Which honeyed chains were denying him an exit from this enchanted place of hers? His head was ordering him to leave and leave now, even as his body bluntly refused to listen to such requests.

Kate saw the fevered glittering in his blue eyes. Take control, she thought. Take control. She drew a deep breath. ‘What would you like to drink, Giovanni?’ His name felt delicious on her lips—so wickedly bewitching that just to say it flooded her with the unturnable tide of desire.

He had asked for a drink and now that it was offered knew that he must refuse it. And yet, like some disbelieving watcher of his own self, he heard himself murmuring that yes, yes—he would like a glass of wine very much indeed.

And then he lowered himself onto one of the sofas, and watched her while she poured, his eyes following her closely, intensely aware of every movement she made, bewitched by her as he was rarely bewitched by a woman. The little skirt she wore skimmed her thighs as she bent over, drawing attention to the heart-stopping length of her legs.

Knowing that he watched her, Kate willed her hands not to tremble as she slopped red wine into a simple-stemmed glass of crystal and handed it to him.

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely and his pupils grew as dark and as wide as a jungle cat’s as she stood in front of him as though she didn’t quite know what to do next. ‘Aren’t you going to sit down and join me, Kate?’ he murmured.

How could such a mundane request sound like the most erotic invitation she had ever heard? She perched on the edge of the chair opposite him, and wrapped her fingers around the crystal glass.

He noticed the prim way that she had glued her knees together, and a pulse beat deep in his throat. He ran the tip of his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass. ‘So what shall we drink to?’

For one mad moment, she thought that she saw humour lurking in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes, but the image dissolved almost before it had appeared and a cold hunger had taken its place once more.

‘Hmm, Kate?’ he prompted silkily. ‘A toast to what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said tonelessly, thinking that her name could sometimes sound like a hard, shotgun sound, but the way that he curved his lips around it made it sound as soft and as beguiling as a caress. ‘What do you usually drink to in Sicily?’

He smiled, but it was a smile without heart and now, at least, totally without humour. ‘Why, we drink to the same things that people drink to all the world over, cara mia . To health. And to happiness,’ he murmured, and raised his glass to her in a mocking gesture.

Leaving Kate wondering why the toast sounded such an empty one.

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