LUCY MONROE - Pregnancy Of Passion

For a short while, it had been the most glorious time of her life. She had belonged to someone, had a place in his life. Not a grudging place as she had with her mother. Not an inconvenient place as she had with her father.

Salvatore had accepted and desired her for herself.

Or so she had believed.

If it were possible to go back in time she would go back, not to the point where she had met Salvatore in an effort to make a different choice with him. But she would go back to those four short weeks when she had believed herself loved as she loved, and if she could she would stay there forever.

She would never know the misery of his defection, the humiliation of his hurtful beliefs about her, the desolation of his lack of commitment to her. All of that would be in a future she would not have to live…if it could be so. Nor would she know the pain of losing the one being she had been certain to belong to forever, who she would have spent a lifetime giving a mother’s love she had only ever dreamed of. 39

Her mind took her back to the moment when she had realized Salvatore was interested in her.

She’d been in Milan, attending an estate sale for a woman who was known for her jewelry collection. She remembered that her hotel room had felt stuffy because the air-conditioning unit was broken. The phone had rung just as she stepped out of a cooling shower. She’d considered letting the front desk just take a message, but in the end had traipsed across the room to pick it up, dripping and naked but for a thin towel wrapped around her.

“Hello?”

“Elisa. Salvatore here.”

Salvatore? “My father’s friend?” she squeaked, unable to believe he was calling her in her hotel room in Milan.

“I hope your friend as well, cara.”

Oh, he was smooth. “Yes, of course. Is something the matter with him?”

“Him?”

“My f-father.” She stumbled over the words, tongue-tied in a way she hadn’t been since adolescence.

“Why should you think that?” his voice purred down the line at her.

“You’re calling me.”

“And a man cannot call a beautiful single woman with any other reason than to discuss her father?”

The gentle mockery had her knees going weak and she plopped down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Of course, I just…”

“Come, cara. Surely you realized I was interested in you.”

Funnily enough, she hadn’t. “You mean because you flirted with me?” she asked, feeling gauche for saying it. But still, “I thought you flirted with every woman.”

“Do I?”

“I don’t know.” He was practically a stranger to her. She had grown up with her mother in America and, as close as her father and Salvatore’s father were, she and Salvatore had met only infrequently over the years when she visited her father in Sicily.

“It seemed like it to me.” He’d certainly flirted with her from the moment he found her on the sunlounger by her father’s pool her second day in Sicily the summer before.

She could still remember the smooth joke about mermaids and the sexy glint in his eyes. Italian men took female appreciation to whole new levels, but she’d found Sicilians in a class all by themselves. And Salvatore was the most impressive of the lot.

He had proceeded to flirt with her on and off over the next two weeks whenever he and his family were guests in her father’s home or vice versa. Which, considering how close the two families were, was quite frequent.

She’d fallen for him like a ton of bricks.

It had never once occurred to her the feeling might be mutual.

“You will have to get to know me better,” he was speaking again, “to see that I am not a flirt, cara, far from it.”

“I will?” She liked the sound of that.

“Sì.”

“All right.”

“I’ll pick you up in forty minutes.”

“What?” Now? He wanted her to get to know him now?

“For dinner.”

“You want to have dinner with me?”

He made an impatient, but amused sound. “What do you think I am saying here?”

“That you want to have dinner with me?”

She might have been born to one of the most notorious and glamorous stars in Hollywood, but she lived a very quiet life and did not play man-woman games. She’d seen too much from a very early age and vowed never to be like her mother or the sycophants who populated Shawna’s life. She would never cheapen intimacy as she’d seen it cheapened around her.

Only her lack of experience was making her sound like she was stupid. It would serve her right if he withdrew his dinner invitation, she thought in frustration.

“Sì. I want to have dinner with you and now you have thirty-five minutes in which to ready yourself.”

He arrived thirty minutes later.

She was ready.

He took her to an elegant restaurant, where the food and the wine were delicious. They danced after dinner.

He pulled her into his arms, his hold intimate, and she did not complain.

It felt too good.

Sensations she had never experienced overwhelmed her as he swayed with her to the music.

It was sexual desire as she’d never believed it could be. Instantaneous. Hot. Unstoppable.

Pressing her even closer, he said, “You feel good, dolcezza.”

“So do you.” Her voice was husky and low.

She’d never spoken that way in her life. It sounded sexy though.

“I am glad.”

She tipped her head back to look at him and encountered eyes so intense, they burned right through her to the very core of her feminine sexuality.

“Sweet.” His head lowered toward hers. “You are going to taste so sweet.”

The kiss shattered every sense of who she believed herself to be.

She went up like a roman candle, burning with a heat she’d never even dreamed existed.

Unconscious of her surroundings, she twisted her hips against him, seeking some unnamable thing, some sort of relief from the conflagration of her senses. The caress only made it worse and he groaned, his lips taking on a hard sensuality that gave no quarter.

She desired none and responded with all the latent sensuality in her being.

Tearing his mouth from hers, he said, “We’ve got to get out of here, or I’m going to make love to you and get us both arrested for indecent exposure.”

Shockingly she heard herself teasing him. “I’ve heard the police are quite understanding about that sort of thing.”

He shook his head. “Do not joke. I am in agony. I want a bed with you on it. Now.”

Suddenly she realized where all this passionate intensity was heading and she froze. Literally. Stopping his rapid progress to the table.

He turned to her, his eyes black with desire, his mouth set in a grim line that she found slightly frightening. “What is it?”

“You expect to go to bed? Right now?”

His glare singed the edges of her heart. “What kind of game are you playing? If that kiss wasn’t a prelude to bed, what the hell was it?”

She didn’t play games, but he didn’t know that. His accusation made her take quick stock, however. She couldn’t very well tell him she’d never kissed like that in her life so had no experience of what it was a prelude to. Instinct told her that admitting her lack of experience to Salvatore would turn him right off. He was used to dating the most sophisticated sort of women.

“This is our first date.”

“We did the mating dance for two solid weeks in Sicily. I would have taken you to bed then, but to do so while you were under your father’s roof would have been disrespectful to your family.”

“And you’re so sure I would have gone?” Passion was fading, to be replaced by anger.

How dare he assume she would just fall into his bed like some—?

“Wishing would make it so,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I wanted you, cara. I still do. Desperately. But if you are not ready, say it now. We will take it at your pace.”