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boutique send over a selection of dresses and I chose the ones I thought would suit you best.’

      Valentina’s hand dropped and the note fell from numb fingers to the floor. Dio. He had picked it all out. He had looked at it. Had he imagined—? Her mind seized at the thought.

      Heat suffused Valentina to have it confirmed that he had chosen it. Himself. Increasingly panicked now she crossed her arms and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I just want you to go.’

      ‘But it does matter,’ he insisted softly, coming closer. ‘You see, I don’t like you thinking that I could be insensitive enough to order you something as intimate as underwear via my secretary. After all, how would she even know your size?’

      Gio continued. ‘I have severe dyslexia. It’s a condition I’ve had to learn to live with all my life and thankfully there is now a plethora of software out there to help people with my condition. That note was dictated by me, into a very handy machine which then printed it off, whereupon I signed it with my customary signature of G because it’s simply easier. And distinctive to anyone who knows me.’

      Valentina’s arms were crossed so tightly across her chest now she feared she might cut off the blood supply to her brain. Gio’s mention of his dyslexia was throwing up memories of Mario sitting patiently beside him, laboriously working through homework assignments from Gio’s expensive prep school. She’d forgotten. And didn’t like the reminder, or the tender urges that came with it.

      On jelly legs Valentina went to the door and opened it wide and stood back. ‘Thank you for that explanation. I appreciate it. I’ll return the dresses tomorrow and buy something suitable. I’d just like it if you left now. Please.’

      But Gio didn’t appear to be listening. He was pacing back and forth and then he stopped suddenly and turned to face her, something so carnal and stark on his face that her whole body went slowly on fire.

      ‘The fact is that I did buy those dresses for a reason...and it wasn’t because you weren’t dressed appropriately. It was because I wanted to see you in them. I bought the underwear too, and I imagined how it would fit....’

      Valentina felt faint; her sweaty hand nearly slipped off the door handle. All she could feel was searing heat and all she could see was Gio.

      He came towards her before she had time to react and pushed the door closed again behind her and locked it. Valentina was trapped against the door but had a curious inability or wish to move. She could only look up at him and ask redundantly, ‘Why?’

      Gio’s arms were braced either side of her head. His whole body was caging her in. His scent, his proximity... Valentina couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight.

      ‘Because of this.’ And then Gio bent towards her and, without touching another part of her body, pressed his mouth to hers, and the world went on fire.

      It felt like aeons later when Valentina surfaced from the kiss to look up into Gio’s dark green-flecked eyes. Her lips felt swollen. His hand was on her waist and she was clinging to his shirt; it was bunched in her hands. She hadn’t even been aware of doing that. She could see herself reflected in his pupils, a tiny figure, and suddenly she remembered the excoriating rejection of the other night, how she’d vowed to him and herself that she wouldn’t let him touch her again. She’d just broken that promise with little or no persuasion.

      Disgusted with herself she let go of Gio’s shirt and pushed away from him, and tried to ignore the way the beat of her blood was calling her back to him like a magnet. When she felt able, she turned around and wrapped her arms around her body in an unconsciously protective gesture.

      She looked at Gio with huge eyes. ‘I can’t do this with you. I won’t do this with you. With anyone else but you.

      ‘After all,’ she reminded him bitterly, ‘I’m still a virgin, Gio. I haven’t managed to offload that burden yet.’

      Fire and rage rushed through Gio with frightening force, at the very thought.... He ground out with an almost savage intensity, ‘And you won’t...with anyone else, except me.’

      He came towards her and Valentina stepped back holding out an arm, as if that could stop him. Fires were racing all over her skin at the way he’d just sounded and the look of intent on his face. The magnitude of what could happen here if she let it. And how much she wanted it. Valentina had to fight it. She called up how it had felt when he’d handed her that robe and avoided her eyes. I don’t sleep with virgins.

      ‘Wait.’ Her voice shook. ‘How dare you suddenly decide that you’ve got any kind of right to make such a statement. You were very clear in your rejection the other evening.’

      ‘I didn’t want to reject you.’ Gio’s voice was rough and husky, weakening Valentina’s resolve. ‘Walking away was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I did it because I knew if I’d taken you, you would have woken afterwards and despised me even more than you already do.’

      Those words lanced her deep inside. She thought he’d rejected her because he just didn’t want to sleep with her enough. She felt like an abject fraud because, if anything, she might have despised herself for being so weak, not him, but this was her only defence against Gio now. She tipped up her chin. ‘And what makes now any different?’

      ‘What makes it different is that I’m willing to risk your hatred because I want you too much. I’m not strong enough to stand back and watch some other man become your first lover.’

      Valentina saw Gio’s hands curled to fists and felt his very tangible passion. The thought of some other man touching her, kissing her, almost made bile rise from her gullet.

      Without Valentina realising it, Gio had come closer. He reached out a hand now and cupped her jaw, his fingers trailing against her neck where she could feel her pulse beating almost out of control.

      He just said, ‘You want me...you can’t deny it, not here and now.’

      ‘I...’ she croaked and stopped, feeling seriously out of her depth. She couldn’t deny it. To deny it would be to utter the worst of falsehoods. Gio knew it. She knew it.

      And in that moment she also knew that she was tacitly acquiescing because she had no choice. This had been building and building between them from the moment she’d seen him at the wedding just weeks before. And a long time before that, a small rogue voice insisted.

      Gio smiled and it was unbearably bleak. ‘I’m giving you full permission to despise me all you want in the aftermath, Valentina, because I know you will. At least this way there can be total honesty between us. It’s physical, that’s all.’

      His acceptance of her antipathy made something ache inside Valentina, but the promise of no emotions also freed something. She knew she could never love someone and risk losing them again, the way she’d lost Mario. Something pure and innocent inside her had been lost for ever that night. The grief was too deep, too raw. Gio was too inextricably bound up with pain for her, and guilt. The guilt of the shameful secret she was still too cowardly to acknowledge.

      The shadow of Mario’s death was too long. But she wanted him. She’d never connected with another man on such a visceral, physical level. This would burn out, it had to. Intensity like this couldn’t last....

      As if reading her thoughts, Gio said, ‘This will burn out, and when it does...we’ll move on.’

      We’ll move on. Valentina wondered if they really could move on, find some kind of closure. For a long moment nothing was said. Valentina looked into Gio’s eyes until she felt as if she were drowning. And then she felt some great resistance she’d been clinging on to dissolve within her. She couldn’t fight this.

      She put her hand over his on her jaw and turned her face so that she could press a kiss to his palm. She closed her eyes but she could feel the tremor that went through his body, or was it hers? She couldn’t tell.

      Gio moved closer to her, putting a hand to the small of her back, and tugged her closer. Valentina sent up a fervent prayer that

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