LITMIR.BIZ

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pawns he’d knocked over, her head bent, her hair swinging down to hide her face.

      ‘Fancy a game?’

      She looked up in surprise. ‘What?’

      He nodded towards the chessboard. ‘Do you play?’

      ‘I know the rules.’

      ‘Well, then. It appears neither of us can sleep. Shall we play?’

      ‘All right,’ she said after a pause, and she sat down in one of the chairs as Larenzo sat in the other.

      ‘White goes first,’ he told her and she bit her lip, studying the board with a concentration so intense he found it endearing. Again he felt the powerful thrust of attraction. These few hours of enjoyment would be the last pleasure he had for a long while.

      Finally she moved her piece, her slender fingers curling around the figure. She glanced up at him, a smile lurking in her eyes, playing with her lips. ‘Why do I have a feeling you’re going to crush me?’

      ‘You can always live in hope,’ he answered lightly, and moved his pawn.

      She laughed, shaking her head. ‘That would be foolish in the extreme.’

      ‘Perhaps.’ He liked watching her, seeing the way the firelight played over her golden skin, how humour lit her golden-green eyes. He stretched out his legs and his foot brushed her ankle, sending another throb of desire through him.

      He thought she felt something too, for her eyes widened and her body tensed briefly before she moved another piece on the board.

      They played in silence for a few minutes, the tension spooling out between them. Larenzo brushed her foot again with his own, enjoying the silky slide of her skin. She sucked in a quick breath, her fingers trembling as she moved her rook.

      ‘I’m four moves away from checkmate,’ he told her, and she let out a shaky laugh.

      ‘I knew this was going to happen.’ She glanced up at him wryly and he held her gaze, felt the force of the attraction between them. He’d never considered his housekeeper as an object of desire before; employees had always been off limits, and he’d seen her so rarely. But tonight he craved that human connection, the last one that might ever be offered to him. To touch a woman, to give and receive pleasure...

      Setting his jaw, Larenzo turned back towards the board. Making love with Emma tonight would be an entirely selfish act. He couldn’t drag her down with him. It was bad enough that he was here at all.

      He moved his bishop, and then stilled as he felt Emma’s hand on his own, her skin cool and soft.

      ‘Larenzo, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.’ He didn’t answer, simply stared at her fingers on his. He stroked her palm with his thumb and she shivered in response but did not remove her hand.

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said in a low voice, and stroked her palm again. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it, and it’s my own fault anyway.’ For trusting someone he’d loved. For believing someone could have pure motives. For being so bloody naive. So damn stupid.

      ‘Are you sure I can’t help?’ Emma asked softly. She squeezed his fingers and Larenzo closed his eyes. Her touch was the sweetest torture he’d ever known. He thought of telling her the one way she could help, the one way she could make him forget what dawn would bring. He resisted. He could not be that selfish, not even on the threshold of his own destruction.

      ‘No, I’m afraid not. No one can.’

      Her gaze searched his face and then she rose from her chair. ‘Perhaps I should leave you alone, then.’

      ‘Wait.’ The single word was wrenched from him. ‘Don’t go.’

      He felt her surprise as the silence stretched on. She didn’t move, either backwards or forwards. He bowed his head.

      ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight,’ he confessed, his voice low, and then she took a step forward, laid her hand on his shoulder once more.

      ‘You aren’t,’ she said simply.

      * * *

      Emma didn’t know whether it was Larenzo’s obvious pain or the attraction that had snapped through the air that had compelled her to stay. Perhaps both. She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t deny the yearning she had felt uncoil through her body when Larenzo had looked at her with such blatant desire in his eyes. No man had ever looked at her like that before, and it had thrilled her to her core.

      The moment stretched on between them as she stood there with her hand still on his shoulder, his head bowed. His skin was warm and smooth underneath her palm, and slowly Larenzo reached up and covered her hand with his own, his fingers twining with hers. The intimacy of the gesture rocked her, sent heat and need and something even deeper and more important spiralling through her. They were simply holding hands, and yet it felt like a pure form of communication, the most intimate thing she’d ever done.

      Finally Larenzo broke the moment. He took his hand from hers and turned. Emma could feel the heat rolling off him, inhaled the tangy scent of his aftershave, and desire crashed through her once more. This man was more than a work of art. He was a living, breathing, virile male, and he was close enough for her to touch him. To kiss him. Which she wanted to do, very much.

      ‘Do you have family, Emma?’ he asked, startling her out of her haze of desire.

      ‘Y-y-y-yes.’

      ‘Are you close to them?’ He gazed at her, his silvery eyes searching her, looking for answers. ‘You must not see them very often, living here.’

      ‘I...’ How to answer that seemingly innocent question? ‘I see my father sometimes. He’s currently posted in Budapest, and we’ve met up occasionally.’

      ‘And your mother?’

      Why was he asking her all these questions? She didn’t want to talk about her family, and certainly not her mother, yet in the darkened intimacy of the room, of the moment, she knew she would answer. ‘No, I’m not close to my mother. My parents divorced when I was twelve, and I didn’t see her much after that.’

      ‘That must have been hard.’

      A small shrug was all she’d allow on that subject, but Larenzo nodded as if she’d said something important and revealing. ‘And siblings? Do you have any sisters or brothers?’

      ‘One sister, Meghan. She lives in New Jersey, does the whole stay-at-home-mom thing.’ The kind of life she’d deliberately chosen not to pursue or want. ‘We’re close. We Skype.’ She shook her head in confusion. ‘Why are you asking me all this, Larenzo?’

      ‘Because I never had a real family of my own, and I wondered.’ He turned, his back to her as he gazed at the fire. ‘I wondered how families are. How they’re meant to be.’

      ‘What happened to your family?’

      ‘I don’t know. My mother left me to fend for myself when I was young, maybe two or three. An orphanage took me in, run by a convent. Not the nicest place. I ran away when I was eleven. Spent the next few years on the street.’

      He recited these facts dispassionately, without any self-pity at all, and somehow that made it all the more terrible. ‘That’s awful. I’m sorry.’ Emma would never have guessed such a past for this man, with his wealth and power and magnetism. ‘Was this in Palermo?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Those are hard memories.’

      ‘Yes.’ He let out a long, low sigh. ‘But let’s not talk about that tonight.’

      ‘What do you want to talk about?’

      ‘Anything.’ He sat down on the sheepskin rug in front of the fire, and patted the floor next to him. Emma came to sit across from him, folding her legs underneath her, conscious of the strangeness of this situation: both of

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