LITMIR.BIZ

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even darker than usual.

      ‘I’m not!’

      ‘No?’

      Releasing one arm, he touched the back of his free hand to her neck and then slightly above that, to her chin, taking it away and looking hard at it before turning it so that she could see his bent knuckles.

      They were wet, glistening with moisture that they had picked up from her skin. From the tears that she hadn’t been aware of shedding and that were now, she realised, streaming silently down her cheeks and flowing onto her neck. That was why her veil felt as if it was crammed against her cheeks, almost glued to her skin.

      Unnerved, she brushed at it with a trembling hand but only succeeded in pressing it even closer to her eyelashes.

      ‘Let me…’ Guido said but she was unable to stop herself from flinching back as he made to lift the fine lace.

      ‘No…’

      ‘Dannazione, Amber!’ Guido swore. ‘How can we talk when I can’t even see your face with this thing in the way?’

      ‘I don’t want to talk—we have nothing to talk about! Today was the day I was supposed to be married to the man I wanted to wed—and you turn up and tell me I’m still married to you. To the man I most don’t want to be married to in the world. To the man I never thought I was married to in the first place!’

      ‘The man you are married to!’

      It was only when she heard him confirm her fears that she finally realised she had to accept it. Even 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

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