LITMIR.BIZ

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out, he wasn’t auditioning as potential husband material. And yet as she glanced at him when they reached the car again and he smiled, a feeling like trapped sunshine expanded inside her chest, making it feel tight. It was an infatuation, she told herself, responses heightened by the heat of the Italian sun and the taste of freedom she was enjoying. She was young and full of hormones, finally exploring a side of herself that had been on a leash for too long. What she was experiencing was normal, she reasoned frantically, not something she needed to worry about.

      ‘You’ve gone so quiet. I’m used to you chattering,’ Dante confided, shooting the car to a halt by the garages.

      ‘I’m making a mental list of all the things I have to check before the ball next week.’ Topsy hesitated and then forced herself to continue, ‘Don’t say anything about—’

      ‘Of course I won’t.’

      Topsy’s tension level dropped a little. ‘If your mother or Vittore knew or guessed, it could make for an uncomfortable atmosphere,’ she warned him.

      She scrambled out of the car in haste, desperate to have a shower and relocate her poise. At that moment she was as awkward as a clumsy teenager around him and it galled her.

      ‘Topsy...’ His voice halted her as she sped across the courtyard towards the servants’ entrance at the back of the castle.

      Reluctantly, she turned, amber eyes welding to his lean, darkly handsome face and the sardonic expression he wore. ‘Yes?’

      ‘I have work to do as well. I’ll see you later,’ he told her smoothly.

      Topsy fled, heart beating as fast as if she were sprinting. He could set her alight with one look, one word, even the rich accented timbre of his beautiful voice. It was as if she had succumbed to the worst possible addiction and the strength of it frightened her.

      * * *

      Dante walked into his study, a dark frown pleating his ebony brows. Topsy was always surprising him. Once he had realised just how inexperienced she was, he had feared she might be a little clingy—and he hated clingy women like poison—but she had taken off like a bat out of hell without even trying to instigate the expected fact-finding dialogue about where they were going and what they were doing. Her restraint had disconcerted him.

      It was an affair, no big deal, he reflected impatiently, but the circumstances were not what he would’ve chosen. She was his mother’s employee and, just as he had always ensured that his relationship with his staff at the bank remained strictly above board, he would not have chosen to become intimately involved with anyone working for his family. But then that was before he met Topsy and before he enjoyed a session of amazingly vibrant and satisfying sex that had only left him craving more. There was always an exception to the rule and he could not remember when he had last craved more of a woman so soon after having her.

      In retrospect he could barely believe that he had cherished such sordid suspicions of her relationship with his stepfather and with Mikhail Kusnirovich. He was more taken aback by the acknowledgement that he had become so cynical about women that he had automatically distrusted the evidence of his own eyes and had decided, on no very strong evidence, that Topsy was a promiscuous little schemer up to no good. Well, she certainly wasn’t promiscuous.

      * * *

      Topsy stood in the shower reliving his every touch and, with a frustrated groan, leant back against the cold tiled wall, angry with herself for being so susceptible. Where was her brain when she needed it? It was a physical infatuation, nothing more threatening and it would run its course soon enough.

      Dante didn’t join them for dinner and she was guiltily relieved when she heard that he was dining with his old friend, Marco, one of the local doctors, but she was also a tad irritated that he hadn’t thought to tell her that he was going out. So, now was she trying to attach strings to him? He didn’t belong to her; she didn’t belong to him. Their lovemaking in the woods might never be repeated, she conceded, because it was perfectly possible that he might have decided that their intimacy was a bad idea.

      On that thought her heart sank as if a giant stone had been attached to it and to give her thoughts a new direction she rang Kat and listened to her beloved sister burbling happily about what a wonderful surprise her latest pregnancy had proved. Kat rang off when Mikhail walked through the door of their London home. That was true love, Topsy reflected wryly, that desperate longing to reconnect after a parting, no matter how brief.

      She was lying in bed around midnight reading an absorbing research paper on non-equilibrium dynamics and random matrices when her door opened, breaking her concentration. Closing the door, Dante strode towards her, his tall well-built physique bare but for a towel rather negligently looped round his lean hips. The very sight of him shook her up, her tummy flipping at the explosive effect of him in the flesh. He looked absolutely gorgeous. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

      ‘I warned you that I didn’t do one-night stands,’ he quipped, dropping the towel without an ounce of self-consciousness and sliding into bed beside her. He glanced at the article and raised a brow. ‘Light reading?’

      ‘One of my favourite fields,’ she admitted.

      ‘A doctorate in advanced maths,’ Dante recounted. ‘You could have an incredible career in a bank.’

      ‘I’m not particularly interested in quantitative finance or statistics,’ Topsy told him, settling back against the pillows and striving to seem relaxed even though every nerve ending was jumping at his arrival. ‘I think I’d like to go into theoretical research. I want to take my time about choosing where I work.’

      Dante pressed his sensual mouth against the remarkably sensitive slope between her neck and shoulder and she shivered violently. ‘You can’t,’ she told him baldly.

      Luxuriant black lashes lifted enquiringly on emerald-green eyes and her heart lurched.

      Topsy turned to face him, her cheeks hot as fire. ‘I can’t...I’m...um...sore,’ she confessed grudgingly. ‘Seems there is a drawback to being a virgin. I’m off the menu for now.’

      ‘I shouldn’t have been so very greedy this afternoon, gioia mia.’ Dante sighed.

      Topsy rubbed her cheek over a broad bare shoulder smooth as golden satin, a small hand travelling across his pectoral muscles and wandering south, feeling whipcord muscles flex and tense every step of the way. ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t do other things,’ she told him with a hunger she couldn’t hide, couldn’t suppress, and simply couldn’t deny.

      He expelled his breath when she found him hot, hard and ready for her attentions. She loved touching him, literally could not bear to take her hands from him while she watched him respond to her every tentative caress, his inky lashes dropping lower over smouldering, wildly appreciative eyes.

      ‘I might be a bit clumsy at this,’ she warned him in advance.

      ‘I’m all yours,’ Dante breathed hoarsely, fingers gliding slowly through the silken fall of her hair where it lay across his thigh. ‘Experiment all you like...’

      And she did, revelling in the reactions he couldn’t hide, triumphant only when he finally let go of his iron-clad self-control and shuddered and groaned his pleasure. Yet inexplicably it felt even better when afterwards he wrapped his arms round her and, even though he put out too much heat for comfort and took up too much room in her bed, she resisted the idea of waking him and sending him back to his own bedroom and could not understand why she wasn’t being more sensible.

      * * *

      Over the breakfast table the next morning she studied his bold bronzed profile, remembering how she had made him feel, how he had made her feel, wondering when the infatuation would start to burn out and let her return to normal. She didn’t like the out-of-control sensation he gave her. She liked to know exactly where she was going and what she was doing at all times.

      After breakfast, Dante drove Topsy to a coffee morning for his mother’s favourite charity, which was being held in a local town.

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