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Enzo tipped back her head, baring her neck to his mouth again. Cara’s breath came fast and jerkily, her hips moving instinctively against his body. He pulled back, breathing harshly, a fierce glitter in his eyes.
‘You’re a witch.’
Cara shook her head, feeling dazed. ‘No, I’m just Cara…’
His eyes flashed with something she couldn’t decipher and his jaw tightened. He shifted slightly, making her feel the full extent and power of his erection. Her legs nearly buckled. In the next instant she was lifted into Enzo’s arms and he took her into the adjoining bedroom, equally sumptuous, with a king-size four-poster bed, its covers turned down invitingly.
He put her down and very shakily she slipped off her shoes, her toes curling into the thick carpet. She watched as he impatiently threw aside the decorative cushions artfully adorning the bed, and then he turned back, the glitter even fiercer in his eyes now. The only thing that kept Cara standing there so calmly was the fact that she knew his desire was mirrored in her eyes too, and all the way through her body. She knew she couldn’t turn back. This was fate. She was meant to be with this man. She felt it so surely that she didn’t hesitate for a second.
She walked up to him and lifted her hands, starting to undo the buttons on his shirt. As her hands descended and his chest was revealed, bit by bit, the tremor in her fingers got worse and worse. At the last button Enzo took her hands away and impatiently ripped it open, the button popping free and falling somewhere on the carpet unnoticed. The shirt fell to the ground and Cara looked at the bare expanse of chest in front of her. Heat suffused her face. She reached out a reverent hand and touched him tentatively, trailing fingers over his hard flat nipples. His chest surged as he sucked in a breath, and when Cara looked up his eyes were momentarily closed.
In the next breath he’d opened them, and the dynamic changed. He turned her around, lifting up the hair resting on the nape of her neck, clearly looking for a zip or some opening on her dress.
It almost hurt to breathe when she said, ‘It’s a jersey dress.’
He turned her back, his features almost comically impatient. ‘A what?’
Cara couldn’t answer. She just brought her hands to the bottom of her dress and pulled it up, over her thighs and hips, over her waist and chest, until everything was obscured and she knew he was looking at her body. She couldn’t see his reaction. But she felt it in the air. Everything went still.
Finally the dress was free of her head, and as she pulled it away she felt her hair fall down her back. She couldn’t look at Enzo, feeling unnacountably shy. She was also very aware of the functional nature of her underwear, how boring it must seem compared to how she would imagine other women might dress for him, in concoctions of lace and silk. She wore plain white cotton underwear, and if she remembered correctly these particular pants were so old they had a hole in the seam. Mortification twisted Cara’s insides as she suddenly had a reality check and an implosion of panic. Her breasts were too small, her hips too narrow. Her brother had always told her derisively she had the figure of a boy.
With her head downbent she brought her arms up to cover her chest, and immediately felt heat as Enzo came towards her and tugged them down again. Cara fought rising emotion, feeling ridiculously inadequate. She didn’t want to see pity in his eyes, disgust at her less than womanly body.
A finger came under her chin, forcing her head up. She kept her eyes closed. Enzo still held her arms away from her body, and her chest heaved with the effort to control her emotions.
‘Cara…’
It was that inflection again, making her insides melt. Reluctantly Cara opened her eyes. She steeled herself, tilting her chin in an unconscious show of dignity, and met his gaze. It was dark, unfathomable and hot. Very hot. Cara frowned. ‘But I’m…not…’
‘Not what?’ he asked gruffly, even as his eyes travelled down over her body, taking in every dip and curve, and the high, firm breasts, tips hard and thrusting against the cotton of her bra.
Cara felt wanton and aching all over. He wasn’t looking at her with disgust at all. ‘I thought…I thought you wouldn’t find me—’ She swallowed miserably.
He looked at her again. ‘Attractive?’
He shook his head and took his arms from hers, let his body do the talking. With lethal grace he opened and dropped his trousers, stepping out of them. His shoes and socks were gone, bare feet tanned and big. Cara gulped. She’d heard the waitresses at the club talking lewdly over the years about men and their anatomies and proportions. His legs were long and tautly muscled—the legs of an athlete, not someone who worked out in the gym. Her gaze finally landed on that part of him that was still hidden under snug briefs. Very snug briefs, straining with the erection they encased. With a dry mouth she watched helplessly at the mercy of her rapidly heating libido, as he pulled them down and off, wincing slightly, freeing the full extent of what looked to Cara like a massive erection.
Her eyes flew to his. Surely there was no way—?
He reached for her and pulled her towards him, all the way, until they stood thigh to thigh, chest to chest. And where Cara could feel him pressing against her, the power of his sexuality a pulsing enticement to touch, all trepidation melted away in an instant, the beat of her blood drowning it out.
He caught his hands in her hair again, seemingly luxuriating in the long, heavy strands, twisting them around and through his fingers. She reached up and pressed her mouth and lips against his neck, tongue darting out, teeth nipping gently. He tasted salty and it made her skin prickle. His chest against hers was like a huge steel wall, the muscles rippling, causing her breasts to ache for his touch.
His penis now slid tantalisingly between her legs. The fabric of her panties was a delicious torture, and Cara found her hips impatiently moving against Enzo, seeking a deeper connection, wanting to feel him skin to skin. Wanting to feel him inside her. She was aware of this even though she’d never experienced it before.
Somehow they moved, and Enzo sat down on the side of the bed in front of Cara. He snaked a hand around her waist and drew her to him. She looked down with slumberous eyes. Her awakening, here in this room, was something she was already storing away in pieces for a future time when she would resavour every bit. He reached his hands behind her back and she felt him undo the clasp of her bra. It fell down her arms and away with a whisper, and her breasts tightened, the tips puckering even more in the air under his gaze.
He cupped one breast, his hand huge and dark against her pale skin, her freckles standing out starkly. She didn’t have time to be self-conscious because he drew her even closer, and she had to put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. But she wasn’t ready for the sensation when she felt his breath as he closed his hot wet mouth around one nipple, tugging and pulling, suckling and rolling the tip. Cara gasped inwards, her belly contracting, sucking in short, shocked breaths, her hands tightening convulsively on his shoulders.
The sensation of his mouth on her breast caused a tight wire of almost excruciating pain right down to her groin. Between her thighs she could feel his erection, and instinctively she closed them slightly, trapping it. His mouth jerked from her breast.
‘Witch,’ he said again.
He moved subtly, the hard length of his penis now rigid between her legs, and drew the other nipple into his mouth. This time Cara cried out. She felt so moist at the apex of her thighs that she was embarrassed. Was it normal?
As if reading her thoughts, Enzo brought his hands to the top of her panties and pulled the edges down. Sudden self-consciousness made Cara stop his hands. Her face flamed. What if what she was feeling wasn’t normal? But with surprising gentleness he pushed her hands away and pulled her pants down all the way, moving her back so that she could step out of them.
She felt his eyes on her. She was completely naked, exposed. And then she felt one hand cup the right cheek of her bottom. She looked down, drowning in the dark dilated pupils of his eyes. They were both breathing harshly, skin already glistening with a light sheen of sweat.
His other hand cupped her between her legs, sending heat right to where she ached most. Her breath stopped altogether. The redness of her curls down there made her cringe inwardly, the stigma of her colouring bringing back childhood taunts, still pathetically cutting. But Enzo didn’t seem to notice. And it was soon gone from her mind when she felt his fingers thread through the curls, exploring her innermost secret folds.
Cara had thought she couldn’t take any more sensation, but the throbbing pleasure of feeling his hand and fingers there nearly made everything go black.
‘Dio. You’re unbelievably responsive…’
His words were lost on Cara as her head fell back. She could feel her hair brush against her bare waist. With a wantoness she couldn’t stop, she felt herself opening her legs wider, allowing him access. His fingers slid all the way into the moist heat of her core, moving in and out in a rhythm that had an achy feeling starting to coil through her. Her hips jerked and moved against his hand, all thoughts and feelings centered on those nerve-endings. She felt him move his thumb against her down there and yelped.
Her head came up and she looked down at him, genuinely mystified at this amazing tightening and coiling, this gathering of feelings that all seemed to centre around her belly and between her legs. She could feel her breathing quicken so much she thought she might be in danger of hyperventilating. Her movements became more instinctive, more desperate. She wasn’t in control of her own body any more. She was quite literally in this man’s hands, at the mercy of something so all-consuming she just had to ride it.
Her hands desperately searched for and tightened on his shoulders. She had to anchor herself to something. And then, after a climb that seemed to be endless, suddenly she was held suspended at a height she’d never known existed. With a simple flick of Enzo’s thumb against her she fell down into a mass of spasming sensations, her whole body tightening and releasing. The pleasure was so exquisite she couldn’t believe she’d waited so long to experience it.
All those inane conversations she’d overheard for years finally made sense, she thought dreamily as she felt Enzo lift her onto the bed, her inner muscles still clenching. She sensed an urgency in his movements even though she wanted to curl up and go to sleep, with a delicious satedness thrumming through her blood.
Slumberously, Cara watched as Enzo reached somewhere and pulled out a foil packet, watched as he tore it open and smoothed the condom onto his erection—which looked even bigger. She was thankful he had thought of protection, because it was the most remote thing from her own mind and the lack of it wouldn’t have held her back in the slightest. Not when she could barely remember who she was any more.
He came alongside her and her belly quivered. Unbelievably Cara felt a deeper yearning surge through her, waking her body anew. Moments ago she’d been ready for sleep, but now desire was building again, deep in her core. More urgently. Somehow she knew instinctively that whatever she’d just experienced was nothing compared to what she was about to experience. The anticipation almost made her feel fearful. Could she withstand a more intense pleasure?
Her eyes grew huge as he smoothed a hand down her body, over the curves and tips of her breasts, making them tingle, crave his touch and mouth again. He was a mind-reader. He bent his head and his mouth unerringly found one pouting pink peak and closed over it. Cara gasped and held his head to her breasts with a desperate clasp. He moved his body until he was between her legs.
He lifted his head from her possessive hands. ‘Patience…’
He lifted her hips, angling her slightly, and nudged her legs farther apart with powerful hair-roughened thighs. Cara could feel his penis against the still slick and sensitive folds of her sex. Her body spasmed in response. Her belly tingled.
‘Tell me how much you want this,’ he demanded roughly, his voice sending Cara’s arousal into orbit. There was something so guttural about it…
‘Like I’ve never wanted anything else,’ she answered truthfully, a well of emotion rising within her. She knew now that she was here because she felt much more than just a physical connection with this man.
‘Tell me you need this,’ he said then, and with a subtle, tiny movement Cara felt him slide the head of his shaft into her. The intrusion was new and alien, yet at the same time somehow familiar. She had that weird feeling again of having lain with him before.
‘Oh…’
He slid in a little deeper. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded hoarsely.
Obeying some primal urge, Cara instinctively tilted her hips up, causing him to slide in a little more. She lifted her head. ‘I need this…I need you. Please Enzo…please.’
With a deep moan of intensely male satisfaction Enzo held Cara’s hips tilted, bent his head, and drew a nipple roughly into his mouth. As he did so he thrust into her, all the way, right to the hilt. Cara cried out, unable to help herself. She’d heard stories of pain, but all she felt was a pleasure so intense and pure that she could have wept.
Enzo drew back, a questioning frown on his face. ‘Did I hurt you?’
She shook her head fiercely and drew her hips back in a move that was completely instinctive, causing Enzo to withdraw slightly so he’d have to thrust in again.
‘No…I’ve just never felt like this before.’
As if he’d thought something, or been about to say something, his face cleared. He took control of her wanton hips and held them fast. Cara bit her lip as he thrust back in again, harder this time. And with each thrust, each movement against the tight, sensitive walls of her passage, she climbed higher and higher, leaving the previous peak she’d reached in the dust.
Enzo had called her a witch, but he was a wizard. Their skin was slick with sweat, and Cara begged brokenly as their movements became faster, more urgently desperate.
‘Please, Enzo…please.’
And then suddenly she was there. Her body tensed and tightened all over and she held her breath, eyes open wide as she looked up into his face. His cheekbones were slashed with red, his eyes glittering so darkly that she couldn’t read them. And then she fell, her muscles contracting and pulsating around his shaft as he drove in and out, his breath harsh and fast. Just as she was falling, seemingly never-endingly, Cara felt the shock of another peak approaching. And as Enzo’s movements stopped, and he tensed too, she found herself falling all over again, this time with him, as she felt the power of him burst free within her, his release awe-inspiring.
His weight was deliciously heavy on her. Cara’s legs were wrapped around him, her arms tight around his neck. She never wanted to let him go. The feeling of connection was so intense it was overwhelming. Their hearts hammered in tandem against their chests.
After long moments Enzo finally pulled free. He scooped them onto their sides, Cara against his front, and with an arm heavy around her middle Cara felt herself drift into a deep boneless and bottomless slumber, her arm tight around Enzo’s, holding him to her. For the first time in a long time she felt at peace. As if she’d come home from a long, arduous journey.
Vicenzo came to his senses slowly, and the world righted itself. His frantic heartbeat slowed back to a near normal pace. Reality came harshly, and with swift, painful clarity. He felt the seductive body clasped against him, felt the way his arm was wrapped around her so possessively, and tensed.
Blood roared to his brain at what had just happened—how far off base he’d come. How far off base he’d let her take him, as if he’d had no control over the situation. From the moment he’d met her in the bar and looked into those huge, duplicitous green eyes, flecked with darker tones making her seem mysterious, everything had shifted. One thing he hadn’t bargained on was this: that he’d want her on sight with a hunger that precluded anything else he’d ever felt in his life. It was shaming, shocking and all-consuming.
Acting on pure impulse, guided by something he couldn’t entirely fathom even now, he’d told her he was simply Enzo—had kept hidden his real identity. Her face had entranced him, despite his best intentions to remain unmoved by her: exquisitely pale, with its explosion of freckles making her look so young and innocent.
Vicenzo slammed down on his thoughts as he carefully extricated himself from Cara’s sleeping form. He remembered just moments ago, pulling himself free from her body’s tight clasp. Even that movement had caused a fresh ripple of arousal which he had had to ignore with all his might—especially when she’d moaned softly, as if in protest. Now, though, she didn’t wake.
He forced his thoughts away from the memory of what had just happened with cold ruthlessness. He’d wanted to see what she would do—to see the woman who had spent time with his sister, pretending to be her friend. Would she try to seduce him? His instincts had been proved right, and also the instinct to hold back, not to reveal himself. His justifications comforted him, even as he registered the unwelcome revelation that he hadn’t planned on going this far.
He reminded himself that he’d seen her in action before he’d even met her—draped over that barman when he’d entered the club, only to swiftly turn her attention to him as soon as he’d arrived. She’d just proved herself to be the consummate seducer. Full of innocent little tricks and ploys. For a moment there he’d had the fleetingly ridiculous thought that she might have been a virgin, but she’d quickly quashed that suspicion with her knowing response, taking him with a confidence that could only have been born of experience. He only had to look at how quickly she’d tumbled into his bed, with the merest artful hint of hesitation designed to rouse a man to the point of erotic anticipation.
The bile grew stronger as he sat on the side of the bed before standing up, muscles protesting. Their coming together had been so urgent, so passionate, that he couldn’t remember the last time it had been like that for him—or if ever. And with her, of all people. He stalked to the bathroom, self-disgust mounting along with his anger. He dealt with the protection and turned to look at himself in the mirror, his face rigid with tension.
Cold fury barrelled through him. This would be the sweetest form of revenge after all—because she’d slept with him tonight not knowing who he was, no doubt expecting him to bankroll her exorbitant lifestyle now that her brother was gone.
He told himself that he’d asked her to come to his hotel as a test—not because he’d wanted her with an urgency that bordered on desperation. But he knew that in that moment when she’d stood before him in the cool night air all thoughts of Allegra and what this woman had done had been shamingly forgotten for a precious moment, in the heat of his arousal. His motivations had become blurred. He had to hand it to her. She was good. A less cynical man than himself would have been foolishly duped in a heartbeat by the way she’d come back and breathily offered herself up to him with all the feigned innocence of a novice. As if she didn’t do this all the time.
But he knew better than that. He’d been dealt a harsh lesson at an early age in the selfish, manipulative ways of women. His own mother had dealt him that lesson. And he’d learnt well. Ultimately they looked after themselves, and this was exactly what Cara Brosnan was doing—already feathering her nest, looking for her next meal ticket…
Her brother had coldly seduced his sister with every intention of plundering her wealth and dumping her by the wayside. There was a compelling symmetry to what had just happened; Vicenzo was doing to Cara, something similar to what she and her brother had planned to do to his sister.
The set and cold features of Allegra came back to him. He felt no compunction now, no guilt. He buried all emotion deep inside. He had taken advantage of an intense physical desire. There was no harm in admitting that. Cara was a beautiful woman, after all. And she was well versed in the ways of the world; she was old beyond her years and certainly possessed a knowingness that his sheltered sister had never had. Allegra had been easy pickings for someone as predatory and corrupt as Cormac Brosnan.
Cara might have surprised and bewitched Vicenzo more than he’d expected, but ultimately this was where he wanted her: at his mercy and feeling all the pain it was possible for someone like her to feel. Which he guessed wasn’t much. This was far better than confronting her and trying to make her admit to her guilt. She’d have laughed in his face. A woman who could sleep with a complete stranger the night after burying her own brother was someone Vicenzo could easily despise
He stepped into the shower. After which he went back outside to dress and wait for Cara to wake up.
CHAPTER THREE
CARA felt consciousness return as if from far away. Sensations came back into her body, which felt deliciously heavy and languorous. Strange new aches and pains were present in her muscles, but she amended her first impression: not painful, pleasant. She was relishing waking slowly, and the blissful haze that clouded her brain was like a drug, keeping all painful concerns out. She knew they were there, clamouring for attention, but she wanted to hold them off on the periphery just a bit longer.
She became aware of the fact that she was no longer tucked into Enzo’s body, with his legs and arms wrapped protectively around her. She smiled. She’d had no idea it could be like that. She put out a hand, expecting to feel a big hard body, but the bed was empty beside her. Immediately her eyes flew open and she blinked in the early dawn light coming through the windows. How long had she been asleep?
She sat up and looked to the other side of the room. Enzo was sitting in a chair, watching her in the bed. Cara felt her heart stop and start again in heavy slow thuds. She felt momentarily light headed. She smiled hesitantly, feeling extremely shy.
‘Morning…’
Enzo said nothing, just continued to watch her. Cara frowned and felt a trickle of foreboding slither down her spine. The air in the room felt frosty and she had no idea why.
Her smile faded.
‘Enzo…?’ Her voice was more hesitant, unsure.
With lithe animal grace he pushed himself up from the chair and strolled to the window, where he looked out for a long moment with his back to her, hands in his pockets. Cara saw that he was fully dressed, in a suit and tie. It made her pull the sheet higher up around her breasts. She felt at a disadvantage, not knowing why this mattered.
He turned then, and she felt speared by his eyes. Any trace of tenderness and passion was gone. His visage was as stern and forbidding as if she’d just insulted him in some way. And then he said, with quiet devastation, ‘My full name isn’t actually Enzo—although close family and friends have been known to use the abbreviation. It’s Vicenzo. Vicenzo Valentini.’
For a blissful moment Cara had no reaction. As if something was protecting her. And then the import of his words started to sink in. That name. It couldn’t be. The air left her lungs. Her belly fell.
She heard herself asking shakily, ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me.’ He was curt. Abrupt.
She shook her head as if to try and clear it, could feel her hands clenching tight around the sheet. She felt confused and bewildered. ‘You’re Allegra’s brother?’
‘Well done.’