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on her head.

      Too astounded by his action to do anything, including breathe, she stood there, her shocked gaze trained on his face, while her hair tumbled around her shoulders. He reached out and lifted a hank of shiny coppery hair, winding the tendril around his finger before he released it. ‘You should always wear your hair loose. Why would I ask for permission to kiss you when it is obvious that you want me to?’

      ‘You’re insane!’ And he’s not the only one, she thought as she grabbed her hair in both hands before pushing it ruthlessly behind her ears. ‘If you go around doing this sort of thing I’m amazed you’ve not been arrested yet.’

      He looked amused by the accusation. ‘It’s the signals you’re sending out. Though you’re probably not even aware of doing so,’ he conceded. ‘Your pupils are dilated and your skin is flushed.’

      ‘So is yours.’ There was a faint sheen to his glorious olive-toned skin, and bands of colour accentuated the sculpted elegance of his prominent cheekbones.

      ‘You look like you’ll taste…sweet,’ he observed, his breathing quickening perceptibly as he stared at her lips in a way that made Sam’s sensitive stomach flip and quiver.

      ‘That would be the strawberry cheescake…’ she responded, faint, but holding it together in a pulse-racing, kneeshaking sort of way—until she made the mistake of allowing her darting gaze to linger on the sensually moulded curve of his mouth. ‘Cheesecake,’ she echoed, getting hot inside as she carried on staring at his mouth and thought about how it would feel on her skin. ‘Do I have some on my mouth…?’ She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, very aware of and mortified by the heat spreading through her body.

      Alessandro sucked in his breath through flared nostrils, and the reckless, predatory gleam in his hooded dark eyes made Sam’s already stressed pulse kick up another notch. She brought her eyelashes down in a protective shield and plucked fretfully at the neck of her shirt, to loosen the fabric that was clinging to her damp, hot skin.

      ‘The only thing you need on your mouth is mine…’ he claimed, with the sort of macho arrogance that should in theory have brought a scornful laugh to her lips.

      But this wasn’t theory, and it was no theoretical tongue that slowly traced the outline of her quivering lips and tilted her face up to his. Paralysed with lust, she literally ached for the taste of him. The man didn’t have many things right, but in this particular instance, as she felt the first movement of his lips against her own, Sam could find no fault with his conclusion. She did need his mouth on hers.

      Oh, God, did she need it!

      Her lashes lifted from her flushed cheeks when his head lifted. ‘Oh, God!’ she moaned, meeting his hot, glittering eyes. ‘I suppose you think that proves something? Other than the fact you can kiss quite well.’ Which had always been pretty much a given. Nobody with a mouth like his could be a bad kisser.

      One corner of his fascinating mouth lifted. ‘Let’s see if I can improve on quite well…’ he rasped, placing one hand on the back of her head and the other on her bottom. He put his lips to hers and jerked her towards him in one smooth motion.

      Sam felt something inside her explode as the erotic pressure increased until she could bear it no more, and with a groan she opened her mouth and moaned into his mouth. As they kissed with a wild, frenzied hunger that Sam had never experienced or dreamt existed she pressed her body into his, drawing herself up onto her toes to slide her fingers into his hair.

      When his head lifted it was small comfort that he looked almost as dazed as she felt. She stared at him, her eyes big and shocked, and rubbed the back of her hand across her swollen lips. On legs that felt like cotton wool she took a shaky step backwards.

      ‘Why did you do that…?’

      Good question. ‘If you kiss Trelevan—no,’ he corrected. ‘If you go near him, I will wring his pathetic neck,’ Alessandro promised grimly, knowing that she cared for the other man’s safety and comfort a lot more than she did her own.

      Well, now she knew why he had done it. Her own motivation was much less clear-cut. ‘You are a manipulative bastard.’ And I am a total push-over. ‘And if you lay one finger on me ever again—’

      ‘You’ll say, Don’t stop,’ he inserted smoothly.

      A wave of mortified colour washed over her milk-pale skin as she stared up at him with loathing. ‘I’ll sell my story to the tabloids.’ As empty threats went, this one was pathetic. He obviously thought so, because she could hear the sound of his laughter as she walked away.

      Sam kept her back rigid and her head disdainfully high until she shut herself in a booth in the powder room. She was in there half an hour all told, what with crying and then fixing the damage to her face.

      When she emerged she had concluded that it would be a mistake to get hung up over a kiss…It was nothing major—just a wrinkle.

      She almost believed it.

      Chapter Six

      ‘LISTEN, Em, I should be making a move.’

      ‘Now! But it’s still early,’ Emma protested, raising her voice above the gentle buzz of conversation and the music supplied by a string quartet from the local music college. ‘What have you done to your hair?’ she added, looking at the skewed knot on the top of her friend’s head.

      Sam, whose efforts to repair the damage had been severely hampered by shaking hands and a need to mouth You idiot at her reflection in the powder room mirror every two seconds, ignored the question.

      ‘I want to get back before it gets dark.’ Sam felt guilty when her friend’s face dropped, but stuck to her guns. She was pretty sure that if called upon to make polite small talk with Alessandro she might make a total fool of herself. Whether this would involve slapping him or begging him to kiss her was a matter she didn’t want to think too hard about!

      ‘I thought you were staying with your mum and dad tonight?’

      That was before one of your guests kissed me and I kissed him back. ‘Change of plan.’ She flashed a smile. Her guilt injected a couple of extra million volts into it.

      Emma took in the brilliance and grinned back. ‘What’s his name? Do I know him? Are we talking husband material?’

      An image of Alessandro’s dark, devastating features flashed into Sam’s head. Anything less like husband material would be hard to find. Some women would just look, but there would always be those ready and willing to lead him astray.

      She wasn’t saying being totally gorgeous to look at automatically made a man incapable of fidelity, but it would take a woman who was supremely confident in herself to be able to take the covetous stares of other women in her stride.

      The woman who married Alessandro would have to be a supremely confident creature or totally gorgeous—probably both. In short the female equivalent of him.

      ‘I had a phone call…publisher…’ She shrugged.

      Emma looked dissatisfied by her response, but beyond subjecting her friend to an uncomfortably searching look made no further protests beyond, ‘Well, you definitely can’t go without saying goodbye to Paul. When last seen,’ she revealed with a smile, ‘he had retreated with half the other men to the Orangerie. I think they’re talking cricket.’ She rolled her eyes.

      ‘Lead on,’ Sam said, picking up her handbag and following her friend down the plush carpeted corridor that led to the Orangerie. Emma’s husband, Paul, and half a dozen of the other male guests were indeed there, but they weren’t talking cricket. They were huddled in one corner displaying varying degrees of horror and discomfort as they watched the object responsible for the ear-splitting din that Sam had heard halfway down the corridor.

      When Sam had last seen the blond-haired three-year-old he had been enchanting the adults with his sunny smile

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