The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge

CHAPTER TWO

THE world tilted, swung round her. Her vision blurred, her thoughts fled. Somewhere high in the sky above her, the cry of a lone gull was the only sound she was aware of, but it seemed to belong to another world, not the hot and hungry one that had suddenly reached out to enclose her, sweeping away all other sense of reality. And very soon even that faded, drowned out by the pounding of her own blood in her head.

She had let her arms drop from around Vito’s neck but now she flung them back up again. Not for support but to draw his head down, press those seeking, demanding lips even closer to her own.

His arms no longer held her, or, rather, they still held her but in a very, very different way. The strength of his support had gone from under her legs, letting her slide down the hard, muscled length of him, until the tips of her toes brushed the sand, dangling just above the actual expanse of the shore. And this time one arm was clamped tight around her waist, crushing her to him, while with the other he laced hard fingers through the partly dried tangle of her hair, twisting slightly to hold her head just where he needed it, her mouth under his so that he could take what he wanted.

She was burning, softening, melting against him. She scarcely knew where her body ended and his began. And as he loosened his hold slightly so that she slid downward, over the long length of his powerful body until her feet were finally back on the sand, although not yet actually supporting her, that feeling intensified to almost agonising proportions. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hips cradled his pelvis, feeling the heat and pressure of his arousal hard against her. Her mouth was opening under his, allowing the intimate invasion of his tongue, tangling with her own, tasting the personal essence of him that had been on his skin and now was on her lips, on her tongue.

She had forgotten what this felt like. This instant, explosive, dramatic response to a man. The way that her heartbeat kicked hard, the way her breath came raw and uneven. She’d forgotten how it felt to know the honeyed burn of need, the heat pooling between her legs, making her writhe against his hard strength in hungry longing.

‘Emilia…’

His version of her name was a raw breath against her mouth, his voice deepening and roughening until, she barely recognised it.

Recognised it!

The words echoed inside her head in a rush of shock and bewilderment. She had heard—what?—less than one hundred words from this man’s mouth and yet she felt as if she knew his voice, would recognise it anywhere. It was as if that deep, husky sound, with the melodic accent she now knew to be Italian—Sicilian—was burned onto her mind like music etched onto a CD, so that she would always know it, always recognise it, no matter what happened.

It was as if it was part of her now, bound by links that could never be broken.

‘Vito…’

She tried his own name, feeling it strange and exotic on her tongue. Just the sound of it sent a shiver down her spine, making her tremble in his hold.

How could this be happening to her? Just a few minutes ago she had arrived on this beach, not even knowing that this man existed, and yet now here she was, in his arms and…

The slam of a car door up on the promenade broke into the wild delirium that had invaded her brain, making her stiffen, pull her mouth away from Vito’s. And in the same moment his handsome dark head came up, those deep black eyes suddenly blinking hard, losing the wild, unfocused look and staring down into her own wide blue ones with an expression that she knew must mirror her own.

What the hell am I doing?

He didn’t have to say it, there was no need to speak the words out loud, they were written so clearly on his face, etched onto those stunning features.

And as soon as she saw that look, the same thought raced into her mind, slashing through the wild delirium that had clouded it, blurring her thinking and pushing her into actions that were so untypical of her usual behaviour.

What the hell had she been doing?

She didn’t know this man. Knew nothing about him except his first name and the fact that he had just pulled her from what she had feared was going to be a watery grave—but she didn’t know him! And yet she had been kissing him as if he was the love of her life. She’d been clamped so tight against him that they might have been one person, so close that there was no way she could have denied the sexual hunger he felt—or refuse to acknowledge the fact that it pounded through her own body too.

Anyone who might have seen them would have thought that they were already lovers, so intimate had been his hold on her, her response to him.

And this was a man that she knew precisely two facts about.

His name was Vito.

And he was a Sicilian.

It was mad. It was ridiculous. It was dangerous.

And it was as that last word exploded inside her head that she knew what had happened. She’d heard about it, read about it. She’d been in danger and this Vito had come to her rescue. The fear and the panic, the knowledge of danger and then the sheer, blinding exhilaration of having been saved. That had all created a wild, impossibly intense atmosphere. A hothouse atmosphere in which a very basic attraction had grown, been blown up out of all proportion and so created a volatile situation as a result.

Just the thought of it caught her body in a shiver of response that made her tremble where she stood. Immediately those black eyes narrowed, sharpening perceptibly.

‘You are cold! Forgive me—I should have thought.’

Already he was looking round, moving, heading in the direction of what she now saw was his jacket, discarded on the sand a short distance away, obviously in the haste of his mad dash to rescue her.

That thought should ease her mental discomfort, but instead it had the exact opposite effect, making her shudder even harder as reaction set in and the memory of just what had happened—what might have happened and how close she had come to it—attacked her nerves and made her quake inside, bitter tears of memory stinging at her eyes, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her.

This man—this darkly devastating, sexy, handsome man—had rushed into the turbulent water without hesitation when he had thought she was going to drown, throwing his jacket one way and the shoes she could now see further up the beach another. He’d come to her rescue when he had seen her going under for the third time, and no one had done anything like that, anything kind for her in a long, long time.

‘Here…’

Vito was back at her side, swinging the jacket up and around her shoulders, pulling it closed at the front.

‘This should help.’

‘Th-thank you,’ Emily managed, her tongue trembling as much as her limbs.

The jacket was comforting, so that she wanted to pull it closer, huddle into it to hide away from the world. But at the same time it started up a set of memories and emotions that in her present shocked state she was having terrible trouble controlling, so much so that the temptation to fling the garment from her and run was almost stronger than her need for comfort.

Almost.

Instead, she found that her fingers had clamped tight over the elegant lapels, crushing the expensive fabric ruinously as she clutched it to her like some sort of shield. Shock was setting in with a vengeance and she didn’t know how to cope with anything.

‘Are you OK?’

Idiota! Vito reproved himself furiously. Of course she was not OK! She had just almost drowned and now she was cold and probably in shock. What sun there had been earlier in the day was already fading rapidly, clouds gathering in the sky. Already some of those clouds were turning heavy grey and, if he was not mistaken, the storm that had been threatening all afternoon was now building up rapidly to breaking point.

And with the darkening of the skies had come a definite drop in temperature, a chill to the wind that had blown up. Instinctively he rubbed his own arms where the gooseflesh had already appeared. The damp jeans and T-shirt were cooling rapidly—and he wasn’t half as badly soaked as Emily.

‘Idiota!’ he muttered again and saw those big blue eyes widen in shock and apprehension as she took a stumbling step backwards, away from him. Immediately his conscience reproached him savagely. With her blonde hair darkened by the water and tangled around her face, her skin pale and her lips almost colourless, she looked like nothing so much as a half-drowned kitten, one he had just kicked out at, hard.

‘Not, not you—me’, he assured her hastily. ‘I should not be keeping you here talking when you’re soaked through to the skin. You need to get inside—get warm—change your clothes. We have to get you home—where are your car keys?’

‘Here…’ She pulled them from her pocket, where, luckily, she had obviously put them before her wild dance in the water. ‘But—but there’s a problem…’

‘There is?’

Vito had been turning away, heading for the promenade, but the comment and the shaky voice in which it was uttered brought him to an abrupt halt, swinging round to frown down at her again.

‘What sort of problem?’

For a second he thought she was going to keep silent. The way she huddled closer into his jacket, avoiding his eyes, seemed to indicate that. But then she bit down hard on her lower lip and lifted her gaze to look him straight in the face.

‘I—I don’t live locally.’

‘You don’t?’

Emily shook her head, sending cold drops of sea water flying from her pale hair. ‘I only meant to be here for the day—I was just passing through.’

No. His mind rebelled at the thought, rejecting it out of hand. That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to ‘pass through’, moving on and out of his life without a backward glance. He hadn’t met a woman who had stirred his senses so ferociously in a long time—if ever. He wasn’t going to just let her go without knowing what it would be like to take this instant, blazing attraction further. An attraction that she had felt too. He had sensed it in every inch of her body; felt it when she had trembled against him.

That hadn’t been from cold, but from the exact opposite. The burning heat of desire that he’d experienced had made him shake too, but with need, with a hunger that he had been barely able to control. Its force had been primitive enough to bring him almost to the point of flinging her down onto the sand and indulging in the raw, primal need that they were both enduring. Only the knowledge that they were in such a public place had forced him to rein in the fierce desire that had him in its grip.

He still felt that way. But seeing the way she huddled into his coat imposed a control over his actions that warred cruelly with the still burning desire.

‘But you have clothes in your car—something to change into…’

The words died on his tongue as she shook her head again.

‘I didn’t bring any with me. I—wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘Just passing through.’ Vito repeated her words automatically, his mind busy.

‘Just passing through,’ she echoed and shivered again as a drip of water tumbled from her fringe and landed on her nose.

The small response made up his mind for him.

‘Then you’ll have to come back with me,’ he declared, making it a statement of fact, not a suggestion. To him it was the only answer. There was no other way.

But Emily’s blonde head tilted to one side, blue eyes studying him warily. And there was a new expression in them now. One that had suddenly reminded him that she might be just a kitten—but even the smallest cat had very sharp claws.

‘Back where?’

‘To my flat—’

He waved a hand in the direction of the far side of the seafront, vaguely indicating the general area of the small apartment he was renting for this year.

‘You can have a shower, dry your clothes…’ He saw her reaction in the way her face changed, even before she spoke. ‘No?’

‘No…’ Her voice was low but firm.

‘And why the hell not?’

He couldn’t believe she was actually backing out of this. He had been so sure that it was what she wanted too—almost as much as he did. This wasn’t the same woman that he had held in his arms. The woman he had kissed.

Silently Vito cursed the fact that he had ever stopped kissing her—ever let her go. If he had just kept her in his arms, if he had clamped his lips to hers, sealed her mouth with his and carried her off the beach and down the road to his flat, then she would have gone without a word, he knew. The woman he had kissed had melted under his touch, yielding mindlessly and immediately, and he could have kept her that way—should have kept her that way. That woman would never have hesitated, never given him that wary, assessing stare. That woman would never have said no. He knew that without a doubt.

But he had let her go. He had given her a chance to pause and think and as a result she had drawn back. Something had changed her mind, stopped her from going with what she felt and making her act instead on careful, rational thought. And the heady, burning passion that had flared between them couldn’t survive in the same atmosphere as careful, rational thought.

‘I don’t think that would be wise.’

‘Wise!’ He flung his hands in the air in a gesture of total exasperation. ‘Wise! And you think being wise matters right now?’

He’d said the wrong thing. He could see it in the way her eyes sparked, the mulish, mutinous set to that neat chin.

‘Common sense certainly does,’ she said stiffly, all trace of that warm, responsive woman disappearing under a layer of ice. ‘I know nothing about you! Not even your full name or—’

‘Corsentino,’ he inserted sharply as she drew a breath to go on. ‘Vittorio Corsentino, usually known as Vito.’

‘And is that supposed to mean something to me?’

‘No.’

He was glad to see that it didn’t. That there was no change in the expression in those soft blue eyes. There was no flicker of recognition and definitely not, grazie a Dio, any surfacing of the sort of acquisitive glint that had burned in Loretta’s eyes when she had tried to press home her claim for support for herself and her unborn child.

‘But you wanted my name.’

‘And you think that’s enough for me to let you entice me into your flat? You could be planning anything…’

‘Madre de Dio!’ Vito exploded. ‘And why should I want to do you any harm? I rescued you…’

‘You rescued me,’ Emily flung at him. ‘That doesn’t mean you own me.’

‘It does in some cultures,’ Vito shot back. ‘Save a life and it’s yours to do with as you please.’

But that was just too much, Emily admitted to herself. It sounded too ruthless, too possessive, too much like Mark’s gloatingly domineering, ‘You can’t leave me—you know you can’t. Where would you go? How would you live?’

‘Well, this isn’t one of those cultures. And I am definitely not yours in any way.’

She wouldn’t let herself think of the disappointment his reaction had created. Wouldn’t let any hint of the pain that slashed at her register as she admitted that she had brought this on herself. She had been so stupid in reacting the way she had. In kissing him the way she had. Shock did weird things to the mind—and the body—and as a result she’d given this Vito quite the wrong impression. An impression it seemed he was determined to act on, while she was equally determined not to let him.

That all sounded fine and rational inside her head, so why didn’t it quite ring true? Why couldn’t she convince herself that this was truly what she meant?

Why was there still a tiny bit of her, a weak, emotional bit of her, that fought against the sensible, rational approach? That yearned for this to be more than that—to mean more than that? A yearning that made her fight to control her voice as she continued.

‘I’m grateful to you for your help, obviously, but that’s it. There’s nothing else that need concern you.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Would the wretched man never listen? Why didn’t he just give in and walk away? She was really beginning to feel the after-effects of the fright and the icy soaking she’d endured and it was a struggle to stay on her feet, never mind argue. All she wanted was to run to her car, get in and lock the door against the world. There, she could rest her aching head on the back of the seat, close her eyes and let the world go away. That was what she had wanted when she had first arrived. To switch off and let the world go away.

It was a cruel irony that she had only come here today to be on her own—get away from the problems at home—to escape from all the fights and the arguments that had been her life for as long as she could remember. She had wanted some peace and quiet which was why she had headed towards the sea. And she had thought she’d found it.

Until Vito Corsentino had appeared on the scene.

Until he had taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless.

Exactly—senseless! He had kissed her until she had lost what little remained of her mind. Until she had reacted in the most stupid, irresponsible way possible. So Vito Corsentino had affected her as no man had done for years. So he’d woken the secret, sensual part of her that had been buried, hidden away for so long. So his kisses and his touch had left her wanting more—she wasn’t going to give in to that need. The results would be far too complicated—dangerous—destructive. She didn’t want to get tangled up with anyone—least of all a man like Vito Corsentino.

‘I want you to think so!’

She aimed to make her tone emphatic but the effort she was putting into stopping it from shaking at the same time only succeeded in making it sound harsh and brittle, colder than the waves that still broke against the shore near their feet.

‘I appreciate what you did for me, and I thank you for that, but I don’t need anything more. And I definitely don’t want to go to your flat—or anywhere with you! What I need—what I want—is for you to leave me right now. Just turn—walk away…’

For an uncomfortable, worrying second or two she thought he was going to argue further. She saw the flash of rejection in his eyes, watched that beautiful mouth harden and thin, his face losing all warmth, becoming as hard and fierce as the face of some wild hunter just as it scented its prey. But then, just as her heart quailed inside her and she struggled to find the strength to face another argument, to fight him further—to fight herself further and deny the weak, disappointed clamour of her own senses that were trying to tell her it didn’t have to be this way—he suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, gave in.

‘Fine.’

He threw up his hands in a gesture that in another man might have been meant to express defeat but even on such short acquaintance she knew that defeat was something this man would never acknowledge. Instead, he was revealing total exasperation, and dismissing the argument as not worth bothering to take any further. He’d had enough of this, his body language and the dark, glowering scowl he turned in her direction said. Enough of this and enough of her.

So he did as she’d asked, or, rather, demanded. He turned on his heel in the sand, sending the fine grains spraying up around his legs with the determination of the movement. And he walked away.

So now she’d got what she wanted. She’d got what she’d said she needed. So why didn’t she feel as if that was what had happened? Why weren’t her shoulders relaxing, her heartbeat easing as she watched him move away from her? Why didn’t she feel glad—or at least a sense of release—at the way that every line in that tall, powerful body, the way that the long, straight back was held, the set of the broad shoulders, spoke of rejection and dismissal so that it was obvious that he wasn’t going to reconsider or even hesitate? It couldn’t be clearer that he had no intention of changing his mind, of turning back. And that was what she’d wanted; wasn’t it?

So why did she feel a thickness in her throat, a knot around her heart, as if she was in danger of losing something valuable? Something she would regret discarding so carelessly in the future?

She watched him stride further up the beach to where his shoes had been kicked off in that wild, frantic run towards the sea. To rescue her. As he stooped to snatch them up, still not giving the slightest glance backwards in her direction, her conscience twisted sharply inside her, giving a nasty little stab of reproach that made her wince inwardly. She shifted awkwardly from one foot to another on the soft sand, huddling closer into the jacket as a cold wind coiled round her, the black clouds now scudding across the sky, darkening the atmosphere threateningly.