Kathryn Jensen – Mail-Order Prince In Her Bed (страница 7)

“Say what?” he asked, smiling indulgently at her confusion.

Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. But the concept…the theory of being coached, so to speak… Well, it appeals to me.”

He laughed softly but felt a nearly forgotten masculine tug down low in his body. “Does it now? But you said you’d have to know me better to trust me.”

“Yes, I did.” She seemed to be having trouble remembering her earlier statements through the wine. “I definitely said that. And it’s true, you need to trust a person to be intimate with them. Don’t you?”

“It’s wise,” he agreed, walking closer to her and dropping her keys on the coffee table in front of her. “Especially for a woman.”

“Yes, and espe—” She had trouble getting that word untangled from her tongue. “—es-pe-cially when that other person has had a lot more experience than you. Experience in activities that might cause him to be exposed to dangerous viral things and such.”

“You needn’t worry about that with me,” he assured her.

“Why not?”

He loved the way she scowled at him, her lips pouting, her brow wrinkling, a shadow of the little girl…inside the body of a woman. He ached to kiss her, but wouldn’t take advantage of her. The wine’s effect hadn’t yet begun to wane.

“Because I have been very careful,” he stated. Because, he could have added, there has been no one to share my bed in two full years. And for the five years before Anna died, he’d been only with her. “Let’s just say, I’m safe. But if the situation arose, I’d still use protection to ease your concern.”

“Of course you would.” She pulled a tasseled pillow toward her and hugged it so hard he wondered if the seams might pop. She squinted up at him speculatively. “If the situation arose,” she echoed him. “But your teaching…well, it wouldn’t include that arising stuff, right?”

He laughed delightedly and shook his finger at her. “Signorina, something definitely would rise, but we wouldn’t go all the way, as you say in this country.”

Her brow smoothed. “That’s right. We wouldn’t. So there would be no need at all to worry. Would there?”

“None.”

“All right,” she said, looking suddenly wide-awake and sober as she pushed the pillow away. “Let’s go for it.” She smiled up at him.

He was shocked. “Aspetta un momento! I thought you didn’t want to…that you were saving yourself for—”

“I am. Of course I am. I just want you to show me what I need to know. Everything except the end part.” She looked up at him solemnly.

He roared with laughter. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve had too much wine, Maria. Tomorrow you’ll regret asking this of me.”

“I will?” She pouted again, and he nearly dragged her into his arms then and there.

“Yes,” he said softly. He took her hand, sat on the couch beside her and drew her close. “We will sit quietly together, let the wine wear off. If you feel the same way after another hour, we’ll do whatever you decide.”

She looked up at him with wide, trusting eyes. “All right.”

Maria wasn’t aware of the moment when her eyelids floated shut, or when she first awoke. The subtle lingering scent of a man’s aftershave came to her, then the sense that the surface beneath her was shifting.

Her eyes flashed open. “Antonio!”

“Yes?” a deep voice answered from above her.

She rolled over to discover that she’d been lying with her cheek pressed into his lap. She sat up abruptly, causing him to lift his arm, which had been draped protectively over her.

“You’re still here. What time is it?”

“Nearly five-thirty,” he said.

“I slept for over two hours?”

“Si. I took a little nap too. Sitting up.”

She had slept with a stranger in the room…with a stranger under her. Unexpectedly, the intimacy warmed rather than frightened her.

“Thank you for staying,” she whispered.

“I wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye,” he assured her.

“Then you are leaving?”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He tenderly touched the tip of her nose, just once, with his long finger. “Do you remember what you asked of me before you fell asleep?”

She did. Vividly.

And, strangely enough, the only thing that had changed was her confidence that she could handle the lessons she’d requested of him.

“I remember,” she said, watching his expression. “I’d still like you to show me. I’m just not sure how.”

He observed her for a long time before answering. “It’s up to the man to know how. It’s up to you, the woman, only to say yes or no.”

A rush of heat swept through her body. When she tried to speak, the words dried up before crossing her lips. At last she managed the only ones that seemed important. “Then I say…yes.”

He nodded solemnly, no longer questioning her. Gently, he lifted her out of his lap. He stood up. “Then we must do this right.”

She watched from the couch as he put on his coat and moved toward the door. A wave of panic and disappointment swept over her. “Where are you going?”

“Shopping,” he said, scooping up her keys. “I’ll be back in an hour. While I am gone—” He returned to drop a kiss on her upturned forehead. “—you will take one of your long, hot baths. But you will not read a book.”

“I won’t?”

“No. You will think of me.” Looking deeply into her eyes, he kissed her again quickly on the lips. “Imagine my body and your body. Think about kisses that last so long you become faint with lack of oxygen.”

Then he was gone.

Maria stared at the door—her throat parched, hands trembling, heart racing.

Good grief. What had she done?

Three

The bath was still steaming around her when Maria heard her apartment door open and close, then the latch turn. Sitting up in the tub she listened.

Keys clinked on the coffee table. Bags rustled. Footsteps—a man’s by the weight of them—crossed her living room to her kitchen. She swallowed nervously, once, then again when the lump in her throat didn’t go away.

There was a gentle knock on the bathroom door. Hastily, Maria slid with a slosh beneath the thick blanket of bubbles. “Yes?”

“I have something for you to put on when you’re ready.” A hand slipped through the crack between the door and the wall, slid a parcel onto the towel shelf. Masculine fingers retracted then appeared again—this time with a champagne flute, filled with liquid gold. “Take your time.”

Positively dizzy with apprehension, she managed to haul herself out of the tub. However, as she dried off then, wrapped in her towel, opened the package and sipped her champagne, she began to feel a little braver. Her persistent curiosity was returning.

She had done as Antonio had asked. She had closed her eyes while soaking in the warm water and imagined a man’s body. She also had thought about the places on her own body where no one’s hand but her own had touched.

She tingled with anticipation.

From the rose-colored box she lifted a layer of pink tissue. Beneath it lay lingerie so delicate, so ethereal it barely whispered through her fingers. She looked at the label, knowing what it would say before she read it—silk. Pure shimmering, eggshell silk, with elegant borders of ecru lace.

She powdered herself and slipped on the delectable creation. It covered her in one long flow of fabric from breasts to ankles, but the contours of her body and her raised nipples showed through. She’d never owned anything so luxurious. So sensual.

When her hair was dry she applied lip gloss and a featherlight coat of mascara. Finally, she took a deep breath and, bringing with her the last of her champagne, stepped out of the bathroom.

She didn’t know what she expected. Antonio in skin-tight briefs? Antonio in the nude? But she found him sitting on her couch, in nearly the same position as before. When he heard her, he stood and gazed approvingly at her, then raised his glass.

“Sei bellissima. You are a beautiful woman, Maria.”

She blinked at him, not believing but pleased none the less. “You’ve changed your clothes too,” she observed. He was wearing slate-hued slacks with a soft caramel-colored sweater that she was sure must be cashmere. The shirt collar was dazzling white, crisp and open, no confining tie.

“I returned to my room to shower and change. I wanted to be fresh for you.”

“That was a nice gesture,” she said, “as are the gown and the champagne. Antonio, I want to help you pay for all of this, it’s really generous of you but it would be wrong of me to expect you—”

He waved off her offer. “The cost is of no concern. Come.”

Standing, he walked toward the kitchenette bar that separated her living room from the food prep area and motioned to her to join him. He’d laid out a bowl of huge strawberries and a dish of whipped cream. Dipping the tip of a strawberry into the frothy mixture, he fed her one.