MELANIE MILBURNE – Marrying the Italian: The Marcolini Blackmail Marriage / The Valtieri Marriage Deal / The Italian Doctor's Bride (страница 20)
He also wanted revenge, she reminded herself. He wanted to have things on his terms this time. He would be the one to walk away, not her.
‘I can’t do this,’ she said, springing off the bed to snatch up a bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. She thrust her arms through the sleeves and tied the waistband securely before she faced him again. ‘I can’t do casual, Antonio. I’m not built that way.’
‘This is not casual, Claire,’ he said, locking gazes with her. ‘We are still married.’
She frowned at him, her heart fluttering in panic. ‘What do you want from me?’ she asked in a broken whisper.
‘I want you, Claire,’ he said with an intransigent look as he stepped towards her. ‘This is not over. You know that. What happened in that bed just minutes ago proved it beyond any shadow of a doubt.’
Claire tried to back away from him but came up against the wall. ‘What happened in that bed was a stupid mistake on my part,’ she said, flattening her spine against the cold hard surface behind her. ‘I got carried away with the dancing and the wine. I wasn’t in my right mind. You should have known that.’
He lifted one brow in a perfect arc of derision. ‘It seems to me it is only my fault when you do something you later regret,’ he said.
‘You’re trying to make me fall in love with you, aren’t you?’ she asked.
He came closer, his eyes meshing with hers. ‘Is that your biggest worry,
Claire’s biggest worry was how she was going to prevent a repeat of what had just occurred between them. The sex had been mind-blowing and blissfully satisfying. Even now she could feel her body responding again to his nearness. It didn’t help that she was totally naked beneath the bathrobe she was wearing. She could feel the way her breasts were pushing against the soft fabric, her nipples still swollen and sensitive from his mouth. She could feel the moistness of his essence between her thighs. She could even smell the fragrance of their coupling—an intoxicating reminder of how she had fallen apart in his arms and how easily it could happen again. She was hard-wired to respond to him. No one else could affect her the way he did. The intimacy they had shared had only intensified her longing. She could feel it building in her; it was like an on-off pulse deep inside.
She was acutely aware of how he was watching her, with that dark, intelligent gaze of his, noting every nuance of her expression, every movement of her body as it stood so close to his.
He placed his hands either side of her head, on the wall behind her, not just trapping her with the brackets of his arms but with his eyes as well. ‘Would falling in love with me be a problem?’ he asked.
Claire ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, her chest rising and falling on an uneven breath as she looked into his deep dark gaze. ‘It…it would only be a problem if it wasn’t reciprocated.’
His eyes went to her mouth. ‘If we fall in love then we will not need to go through a divorce,’ he said, bringing his gaze back to hers. ‘A good solution,
She tightened her mouth. ‘For you, maybe, but not for me,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to move back to Italy with you.’
He measured her with a cool, appraising look. ‘You might not have a choice if you have conceived my child,’ he said. ‘I am not prepared to be separated by thousands of kilometres from my own flesh and blood.’
Claire felt her heart lurch, panic fluttering like startled wings inside her chest. ‘If I have fallen pregnant there is no guarantee it will end in a live birth,’ she said, trying to ignore the blade of pain that sliced through her at admitting it out loud. ‘If you want to become a father you would be well advised to pick someone who is capable of doing the job properly.’
His eyes held hers for a tense moment before he dropped his hands from the wall. ‘I am aware of the statistics, Claire,’ he said. ‘But with careful monitoring it may not happen again.’
‘I am not prepared to risk it,’ Claire said. ‘If we are going to continue this farcical arrangement I want you to use protection. I will see my doctor tomorrow about arranging my own.’
Antonio watched as she pushed herself away from the wall, her arms around her middle like a shield, her eyes flashing resentment and pent-up anger against him.
He could still feel the tight clutch of her body around him, the way she had convulsed to receive every drop of his seed. He wanted her so badly it was a bone-deep ache inside him; it had never gone away, no matter how hard he had tried to ignore it. And she wanted him, even though she resented it and did her best to hide it. Her body betrayed her just as his had. And it would betray her again. Of that he was sure.
CHAPTER NINE
CLAIRE slipped past Antonio to the plush bathroom and closed the door firmly behind her. She considered locking it, but upon inspecting the device recognised it was one of those two-way models which could be unlocked from either side of the door—no doubt installed as a safety feature, in case a guest in the hotel slipped and fell in the bathroom. She realised the only lock she really needed was a lock on her heart, but as far as she knew no such item existed. She was as vulnerable to Antonio as she had ever been—maybe even more so now she had experienced such rapture again in his arms.
She stepped into the shower stall, hoping to wash away the tingling sensations Antonio’s touch had activated, but if anything the fine needle spray of the shower only made it worse. Her whole body felt as if every nerve beneath her skin had risen to the surface. Every pore was swollen and excited at the anticipation of the stroke and glide of his hands, the commandeering of his mouth. She touched her breasts. They felt full and heavier than normal, and her nipples were still tightly budded, the brownish discs of her areolae aching all over again for the sweep and suck of his mouth.
Her hands went lower, over the flat plane of her belly and down to the cleft of her body where he had so recently been. She felt tender and swollen, still acutely sensitive, the intricate network of nerves still humming with the sensations Antonio had evoked.
She turned the water off and reached for a fluffy white towel. But even after she was dried off and smothered all over with the delicately fragrant body lotion provided, she felt the tumultuous need for fulfilment racing through her body.
The hotel suite was large, but it only contained one bed—and Claire knew she would be expected to share it with Antonio. Because of their history, she also knew there would be no demarcation line drawn down the middle of the mattress.
Antonio was a sprawler. She knew there would be no hope of avoiding a brush with a hair-roughened limb or two. It would be a form of torture, trying to ignore his presence. If it was anything like in the past he would reach for her, drawing her close to him, like two spoons in a drawer, his erection swelling against her until she opened her thighs to receive him as she had done so many times before.
Her mind began to race with erotic images of how he had taken her that way: the breathing of him against her ear as he plunged into her wetness, the pace of their love-making sped up by its primal nature, the explosion of feeling that would make her cry out and make him grunt and groan as each wave of ecstasy washed over them, leaving them spent, tossed up like flotsam on the shore.
Claire exchanged the towel for the bathrobe and, tying the belt securely around her waist, took a steadying breath and opened the door back into the suite.
Antonio was sitting with his ankles crossed, a glass of something amber-coloured in his hand. ‘Can I get you a drink, Claire? You look as if you need something to help you relax.’
She gave him a brittle glance. ‘The last thing I need is something that will skew my judgement,’ she said. ‘What I need is a good night’s sleep—preferably alone.’
His mouth tilted at a dangerously sexy angle. ‘There is only one bed,
Claire knew too. That was why she wasn’t even going to enter into the debate. She eyed the sofa. It looked long enough to accommodate her, and certainly comfortable enough. She would make do. She would
Antonio got to his feet in a single fluid movement. ‘Do not even think about it, Claire,’ he said, placing his drink down with a clink of glass against the marbled surface. ‘Our reconciliation will not be taken seriously if the hotel cleaning staff come in each day and see we have not been sleeping in the same bed.’
Claire fisted her hands by her sides and glared at him. ‘I don’t want to sleep with you.’
He gave her an indolent smile. ‘Sleeping is not the problem, though—is it,