LITMIR.BIZ

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‘I’ve asked my mother to move here as I know she’d love it, but she won’t.’

      ‘It is beautiful,’ Keelin offered, and he looked at her, surprised. She responded to his look with a dry, ‘You know, if you’re into that isolated bucolic crumbling idyll.’

      He grimaced slightly as he pushed his empty plate away. ‘It is isolated. Which is why I love it, but I never thought about what it might be like for someone else.’

      Keelin felt a bit light-headed and knew she couldn’t put it down to the wine, as she’d only had a drop. There was tension crackling between them but it was different to the tension she’d come to recognise. After all, things were different—they were married, so Gianni had won this round. But in that moment, Keelin couldn’t seem to rouse herself to care all that much.

      All she could see was the powerful man lounging just feet away from her, full of latent danger. And suddenly all she could think about was how he’d ordered her to take off her dress last night and how easily he’d ripped off the lace. And how badly she’d wanted him to rip off the dress.

      She needed to explain. ‘Look, about last night—’

      He put up a hand, cutting her off. ‘It’s just us now, Keelin. No more lies, or acting, okay?’

      She sat up straight, protesting hotly, ‘But I wasn’t lying about—’

      Cutting her off again he said, ‘It doesn’t matter, okay? Let’s have a cessation in hostilities. For now.’

      Keelin’s heart thumped hard. A truce. She was irritated he wouldn’t give her a chance to explain but at the same time she was feeling incredibly vulnerable and didn’t exactly want to go into it. But she had to.

      ‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘I need to tell you this.’

      Gianni looked at her, exasperation clear on his face. Keelin couldn’t be so close to him and think straight. She got up and moved away, standing with her back to the sink, arms folded. She bit her lip and then said quickly, ‘I wasn’t lying last night. I am a virgin. I’ve never slept with anyone.’

      He straightened up, his mouth thinned. ‘Have you forgotten what you told me? Are you getting your stories so tangled up now that—’

      Keelin cut him off. ‘I told you that to wind you up. Why would I lie about this? It’s not as if it wouldn’t become pretty apparent.’

      The blood seemed to leach from Gianni’s face. He stood up and shook his head, clearly not understanding. ‘You’re twenty-three, how is it possible?’

      Humiliation coiled in her belly. ‘I know.’ She steeled herself. ‘The truth is that something happened to me—it kind of put me off wanting to have sex with anyone.’ Except you. The knowledge beat like a drum in her blood.

      Gianni folded his arms. ‘What happened?’

      Keelin couldn’t stay still under that black gaze. She started to pace back and forth. She stopped and looked at him and took a breath. ‘When I was seventeen, I was in a boarding school in Switzerland—it was my last school.’

      He frowned. ‘The one you ran away from?’

      Keelin exhaled. ‘Yes, that’s the one.’

      She went on. ‘It was a weekend and I’d snuck out of school with some friends to go to the local town. We were drinking at a bar and a group of guys came over. We all paired off, but then the guy I was with brought me outside to a secluded spot.’

      Keelin felt embarrassed now to remember how she’d hungered for the male attention. ‘We were fooling around, just kissing, nothing heavy, and then some of his friends came out.’

      Something in Gianni’s face hardened. ‘Go on.’

      Keelin’s hands were curled to fists by her sides. ‘I thought he’d tell them to leave, but they were laughing and joking. I tried to go back into the bar to find my friends but one of the guys blocked my way.’

      She spoke quickly now. ‘To be honest I don’t remember much of what happened next...they overpowered me pretty quickly. Tripped me up and held me down on the ground. Two held my arms and someone else had my legs. They pulled my top off, tried to undo my trousers.’

      ‘Dio, Keelin.’ He looked shocked.

      ‘Nothing happened,’ she said quickly. ‘I screamed and kicked out. I got one of them on the jaw. A staff member heard me and found us. The guys ran.’

      Gianni was disgusted. ‘Animals.’

      Something very vulnerable moved inside Keelin to have blurted all that out. ‘In a way it made me grow up. After that I focused on getting into college and studying. I did self-defence classes while I was in college, so I’d never feel helpless again. But that’s why I shut down for so long.’

      Gianni crossed the space between them and Keelin’s heart thumped heavily. Gruffly he said, ‘Do you feel threatened by me?’

      Stripped bare of her defences, intoxicated by his proximity and infused with a headiness to have unburdened herself like that, she just shook her head. ‘No.’

      Gianni reached out and his hand cupped her jaw, thumb moving lightly over her cheek. His touch was amazingly gentle and it further defused something inside Keelin. Everything fell away except here and now, and them. And the heat suffusing the air between them.

      ‘Will you let me make love to you, Keelin?’

      A giddy rush of desire almost knocked her over with its force. She’d never wanted anything so badly. If he’d called her his wife, or made some allusion to their situation, it might have jarred her out of the moment, but he didn’t. And in truth, she didn’t care about any of that now. She just wanted him.

      Jerkily, she nodded her head. ‘Yes.’

      He took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, up through the house and to the bedroom. With every step it only felt more right to Keelin. She wasn’t someone who believed in any kind of mysticism but she had the sensation that there was literally nowhere else on earth she was meant to be, except here, right now, with this man.

      When they were in the dimly lit bedroom with the door shut firmly behind them, Gianni led her over to the bed and turned around. He looked impossibly tall and broad. Strong and powerful, and something very feminine within Keelin reacted to that.

      He lifted his hands and started to undo the buttons of her shirt, the backs of his fingers glancing off her hot skin. When they were all undone, he pushed open the shirt and drew it off her shoulders and down her arms so that it fell to the floor.

      She felt intensely self-conscious in just her lace bra and almost jumped out of her skin when Gianni cupped the weight of one full breast and said softly, ‘You’re beautiful.’

      She looked up, but words died in her mouth at the look in his eyes. He was so intent. Focused. Desirous. Her nipples drew tight, aching for his touch.

      ‘Gianni,’ she said weakly, not even sure how to articulate her desire.

      ‘Shh, I know. We’ll take this slow.’

      An absurd lurch of emotion made Keelin’s throat tighten. She’d never have expected this of Gianni.

      His fingers were on the buttons of his shirt now, but in a bid to drive down the emotion, Keelin said impulsively, ‘Let me.’

      His hands dropped and his eyes were hooded as she stepped closer and started to undo his buttons, revealing his broad chest bit by gorgeous bit. When she’d undone them all she pushed his shirt apart, over his shoulders and down his arms, just like he’d done to her.

      Her eyes widened. He was truly magnificent. Not an ounce of spare flesh. A male animal in his muscular prime. Dark skin, lightly covered with hair, blunt nipples. And the enticing ridges of muscles leading down to his pants.

      Galvanised by something

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