LITMIR.BIZ

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to remain. Except as she read unthinkingly she slipped off her high heels.

      Nico would have told her to make herself at home, she told herself as she lifted her legs onto the bed and lay back on plump pillows. Of course he would. Well, if he’d behaved as he should then he would. How many times had he rested his head in her pink bedroom, after all?

      It was the most peaceful hour she had found in Rome. There, in his bed.

      Now and then she would glance up and look out to the lush green park, and then back to her book she’d go, letting out a contented sigh at the end.

      It would be Nico who would read it next!

      After she’d leant over and placed the book on his shelf, between his boring other ones, she lay back with a smile, imagining Nico’s expression when he found it.

      Imagining him.

      Imagining them.

      It was something she knew all too well in her head…

      ‘Aurora!’

      It was clearly her day for being caught daydreaming.

      His voice startled her and her eyes snapped open. She realised she had dozed off. ‘You’re back!’

      ‘Clearly.’

      In fact Nico wasn’t surprised to find her here. Marianna had mentioned that Aurora was at the house, sorting out the maintenance guys.

      For the first time in living memory Nico had ‘popped home’ in the middle of a working day.

      And there, in a blood-red dress, with her snaky black curls and bare feet, lay Aurora, asleep on his bed.

      He was turned on even before he called her name.

      ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she said.

      ‘Then what are you doing?’ he asked.

      ‘Daydreaming,’ Aurora said, for to her it was the most normal thing in the world to do.

      She wasn’t flustered. She didn’t rush to sit up, and nor did she apologise; instead she looked him right in the eyes.

      ‘About…?’ Nico asked, when he knew full well he should be telling her off, or just getting the hell out. For there was seduction in the look she gave him, and he had sustained it with his low reply.

      ‘My husband,’ Aurora said. ‘My future one.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And what is he like?’

      ‘He has a beard,’ Aurora said.

      ‘A beard?’

      ‘Sì.’ She nodded. ‘And when he comes home to surprise me at lunchtime, he laughs when he finds me reading in bed and the house unkempt.’

      ‘Where has he been?’ Nico asked, arrogantly assuming she was speaking of him, and of the life they might have lived had he stayed in the village. ‘Out working on the vines?’

      ‘No.’ Aurora shook her shiny new curls. ‘He’s a firefighter.’

      ‘I seem to remember you left a firefighter to come home to me,’ Nico pointed out, and he could not keep the slight snap of possession from his voice.

      ‘That was for sex, Nico. I’m talking about my husband.’

      ‘The one who laughs when he finds you in bed?’

      ‘Not at first,’ she said. ‘I think he pretends to be cross.’

      He stood so still, fighting not to be provoked.

      Except a vital part of him was extremely provoked, and he felt her eyes drift there.

      ‘He spanks me,’ Aurora said, and with a smirk moved her eyes back up to his.

      ‘That’s your fantasy, is it, Aurora?’ Nico drawled, trying to sound bored. ‘Some bearded man lumbers home and gives you a spanking?’

      ‘Perhaps…’ She shrugged. ‘What is your future wife like?’

      ‘I told you once, but I will tell you again—I will never marry.’

      ‘But if you did, what would she be like?’ Aurora persisted. ‘Come on, Nico, it’s just a game.’

      Nico did not and would not play games—not that it perturbed Aurora, for with only her eyes she dragged in the most unwilling participant.

      ‘Tell me about your future wife.’

      ‘She’s quiet,’ Nico said. ‘Undemanding.’

      ‘How nice.’

      ‘I never come home in the middle of the day to find her asleep.’

      ‘She sounds rather boring.’

      ‘I think demure would be a better word.’

      ‘No,’ Aurora said, and shook her head. ‘She bores you so much that I bet you don’t even bother coming home in the middle of the day just for sex.’

      ‘Exactly!’ Nico said. And it was a most dangerous admission, because it exposed him. With one word he had revealed to Aurora his craving for her. ‘I don’t come off the phone hard after speaking to her. She gives me no drama, leaves no chaos in my brain. And when I’m working she respects that fact and leaves me alone.’

      ‘Good for her,’ Aurora sneered.

      She pulled her knees up—not in a deliberately provocative move, more to relieve the ache low in her belly and thighs.

      His quick gaze caught a damp patch on her coral silk panties. He didn’t know if he had imagined it, but once the idea was in his head he could not rid himself of it.

      He should not be playing this game—glimpsing how they might have been. Or rather, he had already played it out in his mind. He should certainly not be sharing that vision with Aurora.

      Yet Nico did.

      He dragged his eyes from her silk-lined sex and back to her face as he told her some more about his perfect wife.

      ‘There aren’t fifty missed calls, demanding to know where I am; there’s no, “Nico, we didn’t make love this morning…”’

      He did a lower version of her raspy voice, but it was certainly Aurora that he impersonated, and now they were heading into dangerous territory indeed.

      ‘In fact, when I come home late she doesn’t even ask where I’ve been. She accepts that I’ve been working.’

      ‘She’s so understanding!’ Aurora cooed.

      ‘Yes,’ Nico said. ‘She is.’

      ‘And do you make slow, boring love to her?’

      ‘There is nothing boring about me in bed, Aurora. But, yes, I make very slow love to her.’

      She had to remind herself to breathe. ‘Does she fake it and let out a little whimper to signal that she’s done?’

      ‘No, she screams my name.’

      Those shaky curls shook as she refuted him. ‘I don’t think so.’

      He crossed the room and decided to lose the stunning view of Rome. He had something infinitely better to look at.

      ‘Not only that,’ Nico said. ‘She even closes the drapes.’

      He did so, and it was unthinkable that he was closing out the busy day he’d had planned.

      Not quite unthinkable—because with Aurora he knew this was how life would be. Chaos and tangled limbs. Making up and kisses and heaving tears. Drama from which he had run as a young man as though there was a wolf on his heels.

      The

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