LYNNE GRAHAM - Married For Revenge - Roccanti's Marriage Revenge / A Deal at the Altar / A Vow of Obligation

Her hands curved to his strong, muscular shoulders and, as though she had given him a green light to accelerate the pace, the kiss took off like a rocket. His hot tongue pierced between her lips and she shivered violently, erotic signals racing through her slight length. A flood of heat travelled from the pinched taut tips of her breasts to the liquid tension pooling at the heart of her. Her heart thumping out a tempestuous beat, she dug her fingers into his silky black hair and kissed him back with a hunger she couldn’t repress.

Within seconds she was on her back, Vitale lying half over her with one lean thigh settling between hers. On one level she tensed, ready to object the way she usually would have done if a man got too close, but on another unfamiliar level his weight, proximity and the fiery hunger of his kiss somehow combined in a soaring crescendo of sensuality to unleash a powerful craving she had never felt before.

‘You taste so good,’ Vitale growled huskily, ‘ so unbelievably good, angelina mia. ’

He was talking too much and she didn’t want him talking, she wanted him kissing, and she pulled him back down to her with impatient hands. He reacted to that shameless invitation with a driving passion that thrilled her. His mouth ravished hers, his tongue darting and sliding in the tender interior and the thunderous wave of desire screaming through her was almost unbearable. Long fingers slid below her top, travelling over her narrow ribcage to close round a small rounded breast. He found the beaded tip, squeezed it and she arched off the ground, shattered by the arrow of hot liquid need shooting down into her pelvis. And that jolt of soul stealing desire was sufficient to spring her out of the sensual spell he had cast.

Eyes bright with dismay, Zara had only a split second to focus over his shoulder on the trees around her and recall where she was and what she was doing. Shot back to awareness with a vengeance, she gasped, ‘No!’ as she pushed at his shoulders and rolled away from him the instant he drew back.

Still on another plane, Vitale blinked, dazed at what had just happened. Almost happened, he corrected mentally. Dio mio, they were lying in an orchard and there wasn’t even the remotest chance that he would have let matters proceed any further. She was like a stick of dynamite, he thought next, dark colour scoring his high cheekbones as he struggled to catch his breath and withstand the literal pain of his fully aroused body. A woman capable of making him behave like that in a public place ought to carry a government health warning. Overconfident, he had underestimated the extent of her pulling power, a mistake he would not repeat, he swore vehemently.

‘I’m sorry …’ Zara’s teeth almost chattered in the aftershock of having called a crushing halt to that runaway passion. ‘But someone might have come along,’ she completed lamely, wondering if she seemed dreadfully old-fashioned and a bit hysterical to a guy of his experience. After all he had only kissed her and touched her breast and she had thrown him off as if he had assaulted her.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ Vitale fielded, reaching for her hand, the nails of which were digging into the surface of the rug in a revealing show of discomfiture, and straightening her fingers in a calming gesture. ‘I didn’t think.’

It was an admission that very nearly choked Vitale Roccanti, who, with the patience and power of a Machiavelli, had planned and plotted his every move from the age of thirteen and never once failed to deliver on any count. Zara, however, was soothed by his apology and his grip on her hand. In her experience not all men were so generous in the aftermath of thwarted desire.

In seemingly silent mutual agreement they put away the picnic and folded the rug to start back to the car. She had barely seen the garden but it no longer had the power to dominate her thoughts. Her entire focus was now centred on Vitale. Was this what an infatuation felt like? Or was it something more? Was he a man she could fall in love with? How did she know? Was she crazy to wonder such a thing? Julian had been her first love but he had never had the power to make her feel the way Vitale did. Sadly she had been too young at eighteen to understand that there should be more said and more felt in a relationship with a future.

Just before she climbed back into the car, a gardener working at a border across the front lawn raised a hand to acknowledge Vitale. Of course, his uncle’s employees would know him. She watched him incline his head in acknowledgement. Her fingers had messed up his black hair and as he turned his handsome dark head, stunning golden eyes locking to her as if there were no other person in the world, she felt a fierce pride in his acknowledgement and refused to think beyond that.

As he drove her back to his house she was in a pensive mood and slightly dreamy from the heat, the wine and the passion.

‘You’re very quiet,’ he murmured.

‘I thought you would like that.’

In a graceful gesture he linked his fingers briefly with hers. ‘No. I miss the chatter, angelina mia. ’

Zara thought crazily then that engagements could be broken and weddings could be cancelled. That possibility momentarily put paid to the guilt and assuaged her conscience. It had never been her intention to deceive either man but now it was too late to tell Vitale the truth, that she was supposed to be getting married. She shifted uncomfortably at the knowledge that an honest and decent woman would have spoken up much sooner and certainly before the first kiss. Now she could not bear the idea that Vitale might think badly of her and she hugged her secret to herself in silence.

Not surprisingly, with her unusually optimistic mood interspersed by anxious spasms of fear about the future controlling her, the journey back to the farmhouse seemed very short because she was so lost in her thoughts.

She wandered into the sunny hallway. ‘I didn’t even explore Edith’s garden properly,’ she remarked with regret.

‘Someday I’ll take you back to see it,’ Vitale promised and then he frowned.

‘I’m leaving in the morning,’ she reminded him helplessly.

His beautiful dark deep-set eyes lingered on her anxious face and he lifted a hand, brushing her delicate jawbone with his knuckle in an unexpected caress. ‘Let your hair down,’ he whispered.

The look of anticipation gleaming in his eyes made her heart race and the blood surge hotly through her body. ‘Why?’ she asked baldly.

‘I love your hair … the colour of it, the feel of it,’ he confessed huskily.

And like a woman in a dream, Zara lifted her hand and undid the clip. Vitale need no further invitation, angling his proud dark head down as he studied her and used his hands to deftly fluff her rumpled hair round her shoulders. ‘I even like the smell of it,’ he admitted, a bemused frown tugging at his ebony brows even as his nostrils flared in recognition at the vanilla scent of her.

He was gorgeous, Zara thought dizzily, the most gorgeous guy she had ever met and he seemed equally drawn to her. It was a heady thought, and not her style, but she was basking in the hot golden glow of his appreciative appraisal. It was the work of a moment to mentally douse the sparks of caution at the back of her mind and instead stretch up on tiptoe as if she were free as a bird to do whatever she liked and taste that remarkably beautiful mouth of his again. He lifted her up in his arms and began to carry her upstairs.

ZARA surfaced from that kiss to discover that she was on a bed in an unfamiliar room.

It was a larger, more masculine version of her room with bedding the colour of parchment. Unfortunately the last time that Zara had been alone in a bedroom with a man she had been handcuffed half naked to a metal headboard and it was thanks to that terrifying experience that she remained a virgin at the age of twenty-two. Momentarily transfixed by that chilling recollection she turned pale as milk and studied Vitale, reminding herself that she had kissed him, and encouraged him entirely of her own free will. She was not under the influence of alcohol this time around either.