LYNNE GRAHAM - The Heat Of Passion

‘Really? I find that hard to believe,’ Carlo murmured softly as his fingers hit on the next button.

‘Why?’ she gasped half an octave higher.

‘You weren’t faithful before the wedding ... why afterwards?’ he prompted. ‘If you had been my bride, I would have killed you. I certainly wouldn’t have gone ahead and still married you.’

I would have killed you. Said softly, conversationally but with incredible certainty. A buzzing sound filled her eardrums as a hand brushed across the swell of her breast. All of a sudden she felt light-headed and dizzy but her breasts felt full and heavy.

‘Did you tell him about what happened between us?’ Carlo asked.

‘Yes!’

‘So you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I bet you didn’t,’ Carlo guessed with cruel and merciless amusement. ‘I doubt if you gave him a blow-by-blow account... he’d never have recovered from it.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this!’ Jessica slung at him tremulously and then, belatedly registering that her blouse was now hanging open, she backed away from him so fast, the side table behind her dug painfully into her hipbone. ‘Carlo... I met you again less than five hours ago—’

‘Who’s counting? I’m not. I would have been at this stage four and a half hours ago if you hadn’t been so stubborn—’

‘That’s disgusting!’ she threw back in raw outrage.

‘But truthful...don’t you know yet how the male mind works?’

She was starting to find out. Carlo was surveying her with smouldering golden eyes, hot with unhidden desire. And the sexual charge her mother had once mentioned was like fireworks in the heavy atmosphere. She edged round the table beneath that tracking, utterly ruthless gaze. ‘Carlo...please...not tonight... I mean—’ the tip of her pink tongue snaked out to moisten her lower lip ‘—I mean, you can’t really want to do this—’

‘I do.’ He bent down and shattered what remained of her fast-fleeing composure by letting his own tongue follow the path her own had taken along the full curve of her sultry lower lip, and heat surged between her thighs in a sensation long buried but never forgotten. She leapt back as though he had struck her and sent a lamp flying, her heart thumping like a jack-hammer against her breastbone.

He ignored the crash and caught her arm before she could busy herself reaching down for the broken pieces.

‘I want a bath!’ she exclaimed in desperation.

‘And maybe you’d like me to go downstairs and smoke even though I don’t smoke while you prepare yourself for bed like some blushing bride!’ Carlo whipped back with lancing satire.

‘Yes...what a good idea,’ Jessica slung back at him bitterly. ‘And maybe if you’re very lucky you can find a whore in the bar, because clearly that’s the only kind of woman you’re accustomed to!’ she completed with the shrill edge of hysteria in her shaking voice.

An electrifying silence fell. Carlo dropped her arm as though she had burnt him. Beneath her distraught gaze, he had tautened. Dark colour had highlighted his blunt cheekbones. ‘Is that how you think I am treating you?’ he gritted back at her.

‘What do you think?’ After that one explosion, Jessica was drained.

‘That was not my intention.’ He released his breath in a hiss.

Dully, she looked back at him, her lack of conviction in that assurance clearly visible.

‘I’ll go downstairs,’ Carlo intoned flatly. ‘I suppose I may hope that when I return, you will not have broken out into a rash or got blind drunk in my absence.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Cary Grant and Doris Day... That Touch of Mink,’ Carlo supplied sardonically. ‘Haven’t you ever seen that movie?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she admitted tightly.

‘I don’t think I’ll buy a video. You’re doing just great on your own.’

And he was gone. And she couldn’t quite work out how she had managed the feat. Smothering a yawn, she wandered into the bedroom, wondered if he realised that his biggest challenge would be keeping her awake. She rooted through her bag, dug out what she required and went into the bathroom without once looking at the bed. Maybe he would meet some loose woman down in the bar.

Carlo was very, very good-looking. Funny, how she had sort of blocked that out over the years. Along with so much else. The cliff edge excitement he generated. The swift, volatile changes of mood. She didn’t want to think about that afternoon six years ago. The turmoil, the passion, the sobbing utterly soul-shattering pleasure of his mouth and his hands on her body. Briefly she closed her eyes, her skin flaming. She really hadn’t realised that the episode could have been anything that special on Carlo’s scale of experience.

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