LITMIR.BIZ

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now, she admitted to herself, she had been holding on to a tiny, faint hope that this had all been a terrible mistake—a cruel, bitter game. She knew she had left Guido savagely angry, furious at the way she had walked out on him, and she frankly wasn’t surprised that he wanted revenge for the insults she had tossed at him both verbally and in the letter she’d left behind.

      Insults that had been her only hope of getting out of there and actually leaving. Making sure he never came after her; never called her back.

      But this…

      ‘The marriage is legal, then?’

      ‘Do you doubt it?’

      His tone spoke of arrogant disbelief of the fact that anyone should not believe him absolutely. And the way his broad shoulders stiffened, the long spine straightening and his proud head coming up, only reinforced the message of controlled fury in his voice.

      ‘Do you think I would go to this trouble for a marriage that wasn’t real?’

      ‘But you said…’

      It sure as hell isn’t a real marriage! he’d said. There’s been nothing real about it from the start.

      ‘I know what I said, Amber, but…porca miseria!’ Guido swore in exasperation so violent that his explosive words echoed around the now empty church. ‘I cannot speak to you like this!’

      Coming close again, but soft-footed this time, he hooked his hands under the fall of the veil, taking it between his finger and thumb at either side.

      ‘Allow me…’

      Amber wished she could stop him but she seemed to have lost all strength to act. Her feet were rooted to the ground and she couldn’t force them to move. It was as if the gentleness in his voice had drained all the power from her so that she could only stand there in silence and wait.

      ‘At least if we can see each other, Amber, mia bella,’ Guido murmured, ‘then maybe we can talk…’

      She wasn’t his beautiful one, Amber thought frantically; she didn’t want to be anything to him! And why, now, when she was little prepared for it, when it was the last thing she wanted, did he have to say her name in that very special way that he had, with the last R rolled out on his tongue, sounding almost like a deep, deep purr? A tiger’s purr.

      Just for a second hysteria threatened again. Her lips trembled, her mind shaking…

      And then Guido lifted the veil and their eyes met and suddenly every last thought of laughter, or fight—or anything—went right out of her like air out of a pricked balloon, leaving her limp and lost and unable to think.

      Unable to think beyond…

      ‘Guido…’

      Beyond the fact that she remembered those eyes looking down into hers. She remembered the scent of his skin, the touch of his hands. She remembered how it had felt to have that devastatingly sensual mouth on hers, to taste his lips, feel the caressing sweep of his tongue. She remembered it—and she wanted it all over again.

      She wanted it so much that she could almost taste it. That when she let her own tongue slide across her parched mouth, she could almost believe that there would be the taste of him lingering there. Even after all this time.

      ‘Amber…’

      And she knew that tone too. Knew the thickness in his voice that meant he had been caught on the raw by the sudden rush of sensuality. The one that had her in its grip too—drying her mouth and changing her eyes as it darkened his, turning them from burning bronze to the blackness of passion. She watched the heavy lids slide half-closed in a way that gave him a slumberous, barely awake look in a way that she knew from experience was deeply deceptive.

      When he looked like that, then he was far from sleep. In fact he was at his most vividly awake, most fiercely aroused. His blood was heating with passion, his body waking to need, and if she stood any closer then she would feel the hard, proud force of that hunger pressed against her in evidence of the way he was feeling.

      Guido made a rough, raw sound in the back of his throat, and snatched in a breath as if he could hardly make his lungs work to keep himself alive.

      ‘I have to…’he said huskily and she could hear the fight he was having with himself in the jagged edge to the words, the way his voice sounded hoarse as if it hadn’t been used for days.

      She knew the moment too that he lost the fight. It was there in the momentary way that he closed his eyes, the breath that hissed through his teeth, before, in a moment that was part conquest, part defeat, he lowered his dark head and took her mouth with his.

      CHAPTER THREE

      IDIOTA!Idiota!

      The reproach to himself was a refrain over and over inside Guido’s head.

      Corsentino, you are a fool!

      He shouldn’t be doing this—it was the last thing on earth that he should be doing! But he couldn’t stop himself.

      From the moment that he had lifted the veil and seen Amber’s face, green eyes looking up into his, breathed in the scent of her skin, warm and soft, and vanilla and spice, he had known what was going to happen. His gaze had fixed on her mouth, softly sensual, partly open, and he could remember so vividly how it had tasted, how it had felt under his.

      And he wanted to experience that again.

      So he gave up the fight to stop himself. Gave in to the impulse that pushed him. Gave himself up to the need that was nagging at him.

      ‘Amber…’

      The sound of her name was a breath between their lips, a moment before they met, before he felt…

      A year was a long time. Too long without the taste, the feel, the scent of the woman whose body had once driven him out of his mind with lust.

      Once?

      Guido’s breath caught in his throat as he almost let the disbelieving laughter escape.

      Once, be damned. He had known from the minute he had set eyes on her again—set eyes only on her back, for God’s sake!—that he was lost. Lost again. Caught up in the coils of the hunger that had bound him to her the first time. Burned in the heat of the need she could create just by existing. Drawn by the silent, instinctive signals that her body somehow sent out to his.

      That was why he had stayed when everyone else had walked out.

      Even her mother had walked out—sweeping past him with her nose in the air and an expression that said he was less than the dirt beneath her feet.

      But at least she had looked at him. She hadn’t even spared her daughter a second glance.

      She hadn’t looked at Amber, sitting there in a crumpled heap on the altar steps. She hadn’t shown a hint of care or compassion or—anything! She had just walked straight out of the church, following the groom’s mother and father as if they were all that mattered. As if they and not her daughter were her real family.

      It had only taken a few moments and then they were alone together, with Amber still curled into a miserable little ball on the marble steps to the altar.

      Guido had tried to turn. He had wanted to go—he’d done what he came for, stopped the bigamous and illegal wedding, had the revenge he needed for the way she had treated him, the callous way she had walked out on him when she’d decided that he wasn’t good enough for her. He’d even avenged the way that Rafe St Clair had treated one of his own family not too long before. It was what he’d planned—walk in—blow the proceedings and her hope of an aristocratic marriage to hell—and walk out again.

      But his conscience wouldn’t let him.

      His conscience and something deeper, harder, more primitive. Something that kicked him hard in the gut—and lower—when he tried to turn round and leave.

      Something that had nothing

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