LITMIR.BIZ

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and looked down at her.

      ‘Get into bed.’

      ‘But you forgot to switch off your phone, darling,’ Aurora said, in the voice of his fabled wife.

      Nico wagged a finger to chastise her for the poor imitation. ‘She would not ask me to.’

      ‘That is true,’ Aurora conceded, for Nico’s perfect demure wife would not ask him to do any such thing. And yet she fixed him with a glare. ‘But every game has its rules.’

      And for the first time—and only for Aurora—he turned off his phone, while silently vowing his perfect revenge: she would scream out his name.

      His eyes roamed her body and made her flood with warmth and shiver at the same time.

      ‘Get undressed and into bed before I turn off the light.’

      ‘Don’t turn off the light,’ Aurora said, for she wanted to see him.

      ‘But I come home in the dark, dear wife.’

      She swallowed, and reminded herself of the game they were playing.

      It was a little hard to get undressed, sitting on the bed, and Nico did not help with the zip at the back of her dress. He watched her struggle.

      She got the zipper undone and wriggled the dress down instead of up. Took it off by lifting up her bottom and sliding it down her legs.

      Aurora could feel that her face was flushed, but not for a second was she embarrassed. Instead she was turned on by his scrutiny, turned on by his silent observation. And wondering how she could even have cared that her underwear might clash when it mattered not.

      Again, her hands went behind her back and she unhooked her bra. She heard his ragged breath as, without support, her breasts fell heavy.

      Her nipples hurt because they were so erect, and she glanced over and saw his hands that had been clenched by his sides were now undoing his belt.

      ‘Wait,’ she choked. ‘I want to see you undress too.’

      Oh, what was this game they were playing? For they had not so much as kissed, and she was not even in bed—they had not even started—but her thighs wanted to squeeze together and her throat was closing with the tension.

      She slid down her panties and went to move back the sheets, impatient to get into bed, impatient for his touch. But he growled a word.

       ‘Fermare.’

      Stop.

      Halt.

      Do not cover your body just yet, Nico said with that one word. Do not remove it from my gaze.

      For on that torrid night, so many years ago, he had not gazed and he had not lingered.

      Now he took in the gleaming olive skin and the delicious softness of her stomach, the dark brown nipples that were like searchlights for him and the dark shadow where her shapely thighs met.

      He fought not to take her this very second.

      He fought not to unzip himself as he parted her legs and take her there and then.

      He admired his own control as he removed his jacket.

      But it was not quite perfect control, because he could not seem to stop the thrill of anticipation that made his breath shorten.

      For it might be daylight on the other side of the curtains, but this was their one night as husband and wife.

      And so he dropped his jacket to the floor, and with the same carelessness and impatience discarded his socks and shoes. And then he took off his shirt and felt her eyes reclaim his skin.

       Oh, Nico.

      She had missed that chest so. It was broad and had a smattering of hair. His long arms were so toned that he could have been out working the vines.

      Her breath hitched as she watched him remove the last of his clothes.

      ‘You could have had me on Monday night,’ Nico said.

      ‘I know.’ Her voice was so low and thick that she almost turned around to see who stood behind her, but of course it came from her.

      ‘Why didn’t you?’ he asked. For that was a side of Aurora that he wanted to know.

      ‘Things were different then,’ Aurora said.

      Then she had been trying to get over him—then she had been denying the throbbing of her body and the beckoning of his soul to hers and telling herself she did not have to succumb.

      But she did not have to tell Nico all that. She did not have to tell him that this very morning she had thrown a coin in the Trevi Fountain and asked to be made love to by Nico in Rome.

      She hastily amended that wish.

      For now she did not want to be made love to by Nico, she told herself. She wanted powerful sex with him, the way she had known it before.

      Aurora was too afraid to know his love and then attempt life without it.

      ‘Please…’ she said.

       Please come to bed. Please let me know again that flat stomach and those muscular thighs. Let me be taken by you again.

      He got into bed.

      ‘Hello, husband,’ she said.

      And this time when she said it Nico did not roll his eyes.

      He turned off the light and lay beside her. ‘Are you awake?’ he said to the dark.

      ‘I’m awake,’ she said, and rolled to face him.

      Have me now. Take me now, her eyes told him as they lay facing each other on their sides. Give me your untamed passion again.

      Instead he spoke. ‘Life is peaceful with my wife—calm and without demands.’

      Except his heart battered his chest as if he had run home from the hotel and his body was primed.

      They faced each other and embraced the war that raged between them.

      Her silent screams were for all of him, for Nico’s refusal to give anything other than the inches that now nudged her thigh. Aurora wanted his fire and his untamed passion, and she provoked and pushed for the same.

      But instead he gave her a taste of slow love.

      Just this one time, Nico said to himself. He would give in once and kiss her as he should have on her first time. Not hot, raw sex on a sofa, but deep, slow kisses in his bed.

      And while Nico told himself he was giving Aurora the experience she had deserved back then, he was aware enough to know that he wanted it for himself too.

      ‘I should have been more tender then…’

      Four years on from that night he answered the question she had asked the following morning, and told Aurora his regrets.

      ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It was perfect just as it was.’

      She was actually scared to know him as tender, but that was the kiss he now gave her. A slow kiss that sent her mind dizzy with little arrows of affection delivered by his velvet lips.

      His clean, male sent made her ache for more—more of his body, more of his mouth—but she lingered a while in this bliss.

      He kissed her slowly. His hand was warm on the back of her head and she almost fought him with her mouth, fought for him to kiss her harder.

      Because a taste of his slow love was now a terrifying prospect. The game they had been playing was just a little too much for her heart to recover from.

      He removed his mouth from hers.

      She did not want him to stop. His mouth, tender like this, made her tremble, and his tongue,

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