Loving Venus (Sally-Ann Jones Sexy Romance) (15 page)

     There was the purring noise again! It was not his imagination, surely. Or perhaps he was going mad. The sound brought his beloved relation back to him so powerfully that he could almost see him in the passenger seat and hear the imperial horn as it warned the chickens in the yard to scatter.

     “Jump in, my boy!” he heard, as if the old man really were there.

     Then the horn really did blare. He was sure he had actually heard it. Alessandro tossed down the brush, fury making his movements hasty and explosive. Who dared to touch the Bentley? How had she even managed to get it out of the garage?

     These questions crowding his brain, he flung himself out of the cottage and was shocked to the core to see the Bentley as it had been long ago, when he was a
child. It gleamed in the sunlight and his expert eye immediately saw it was in perfect condition. It must, he thought with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment, be another car. Exactly the same year and model but one that had been lovingly restored with a collector’s eye for detail. Perhaps it belonged to wealthy tourists who were … Then his eye fell on its driver. Annabella.

     “Al!” she called before he could open his mouth to either protest or praise – he did not know which. “Will you come for a ride? I’ll even let you drive.”

     He knew immediately it was their great-grandfather’s car and, without having to ask, he also realized that his second cousin had been the one who had made her roadworthy again. More than roadworthy in fact. Stunning.

     Their great-grandfather would have been proud of her, he knew. What a woman!

     Shaking his head in amazement and grinning delightedly, he climbed into the driver’s seat she vacated for him before she dashed around the car and got in beside him.

     “You’ve done a great job,” he whispered admiringly as he cast his eye over the sparkling walnut, the smooth leather, the glass and chrome that shone like newly-cut diamond. All his animosity was briefly forgotten.

     “Thanks,” she said, basking in his pleasure. “It was Tonia’s idea.”

     “Good old Tonia.”

     They smiled at each other shyly.

     “Let’s show her off,” Alessandro said, releasing the handbrake reverently. “We’ll take her up into the foothills. She hasn’t been there for more than a decade. She’ll enjoy the views as much as we will, I’ll bet.”

      He released the handbrake, put the engine into gear and they were off, gliding over the bumpy surface of the road as if it had been manufactured of the smoothest silk, the engine so quiet they could hear the birds singing as they tumbled in the cloudless blue of the sky. But Annabella was aware of nothing but the fact that Alessandro was beside her, his strong hands resting casually on the wheel, his tousled hair blowing in the warm breeze wafting through the open windows, his full mouth curved into a half smile, the musky scent of him tantalizing every one of her senses.

     She couldn
’t have spoken a word if he’d decided to make conversation. Her heart thudded in her chest as if she’d spent a whole day tossing hay bales and she was embarrassingly aware of an unfamiliar heavy ache between her legs as well a disconcerting dampness there. She’d always scorned the weak heroines in old-fashioned novels who fainted when their lovers appeared on the scene but now she knew exactly how they felt. She was limp with desire and knew she would be incapable of doing anything while she was sitting so close to this outrageously handsome relative of hers.

     Alessandro was glad he had something to partially distract him from his second cousin whose shallow, quick breathing seemed miraculously to match his own. Not that he could entirely concentrate on the winding, climbing road. His eyes kept straying to his passenger. She was wearing, perhaps in honour of the Bentley, a pretty dress from the same era as the enchanting frock in which she had bewitched him at the village dance. It hugged her curves, exposing her rounded, alabaster arms and just a glimpse of perfectly-formed knee. From its simple curved neckline rose her own lovely white throat, then her proud chin and her wide-eyed face in its halo of wild curls and tendrils.

     “Where did you find your outfit?” he asked, attempting to be chatty. Yet he hardly recognized the husky voice as his own.

     She coughed, attempting to clear her throat that seemed choked with an unknown emotion. Even her lips didn
’t seem able to function properly, they were so dry. She licked them before answering, “Tonia and I discovered a trunk in the attic. This was in it, as well as the…”

    “The beautiful green silk,” he finished. He could see her in it! How often had he pictured himself helping her gently out of it and…

     She nodded, so amazed he remembered it that she couldn’t speak.

     He drove on, relieved they weren
’t on the main road to Rome, where the traffic was always heavy and very fast. He was too conscious of her presence to be able to drive in his usual efficient, speedy way and found himself letting the car meander from one side of the narrow, quiet little roads to the other.

     Neither knew how long they had been driving. Each was too enthralled in the spell of being with the other to notice that the sunny day had long given way to a perfect, amethyst twilight and that now the ebony sky was filling with stars, a full moon climbing slowly above the tops of the lines of cypress trees.

     It was only when the Bentley began to judder along the road that they were aware of the time and the fact that they had run out of petrol.

     “We’ll have to walk to the nearest village and buy some,” Annabella whispered. It had been so many hours since either had spoken that it would have seemed almost sacrilegious to have spoken aloud.

     “But I have no idea where we are,” Alessandro confessed. “I’m completely lost. And there is an oak forest over there, perhaps full of wild boar. It would be foolhardy to go wandering around now.”

     “What shall we do?” Annabella asked, surprised she was not more concerned about their predicament. She would have been enjoying herself thoroughly if she hadn
’t been worried about Tonia’s concern for their not returning to Casa dei Fiori. The housekeeper might think they’d had an accident.

     Alessandro shrugged in his Italian way and, in the moonlight, she saw that he didn
’t seem particularly concerned either. In fact, he was half smiling in that way she found so dangerously attractive.

    “Won’t Tonia be frantic?” she wondered aloud.

     “No. Without wanting to boast, I think she’s driven with me too often to know how unlikely it is that I would have an accident in a country lane. She’d put two and two together and realize the Bentley had either broken down or run out of fuel. Don’t worry about Tonia, Bella.”

     Bella.

     His lips made the name sound like a caress. His mouth lingered on the syllables so sensuously it was as if he had reached across and brushed her mouth with his.

     Her body juddered as violently as the now stationary car had minutes before and she was sure he must have noticed the hot rush of colour to her face and neck.

     But he was wrestling his own emotions, his own disobedient body that he was struggling to control.

                       CHAPTER ELEVEN

Neither spoke and the silence was punctuated only by their hot, quick breath.

     An owl hooted eerily and Alessandro suddenly wondered if his second cousin might be afraid to be stranded in a strange country in the dark. He was a man, he was older than she. He must start acting responsibly.

     “Are you all right?” he inquired into the darkness. He could only just see her face now and the ivory gleam of her bare arms and legs.

    “Yes,” she murmured, suddenly aware that she
’d dragged him away from whatever he had been doing in the cottage and hadn’t given a thought to the fact that he might have had something planned for tonight. Perhaps he’d been hoping to see Claudia. But, because of her, Annabella, he hadn’t eaten for goodness knows how long. She wondered if he were hungry, although food was the last thing on her mind, and remembered that in another existence, or so it seemed now, she’d had the foresight to pack a picnic lunch.

     “Do you want something to eat?” she asked, her voice trembling under those hungry eyes of his. They seemed about to devour her.

     “What?” he questioned absent-mindedly. How could she think of food at a time like this?

     Doing her best to ignore her clattering heart and the urgent clamour deep and low inside her, she replied as nonchalantly as possible, “Tonia helped me pack a basket of cold chicken and home-made bread. I think there’s wine, too, and mineral water.” 

     Alessandro sighed. It was obvious she wasn’t feeling any of the terrifying, cliff-hanging excitement he was experiencing or she wouldn’t be thinking about her stomach. He dredged a normal response from the rational part of his brain and said flatly, “I wouldn’t mind some wine.”

     With shaking hands, Annabella turned and reached on the back seat of their great-grandfather’s car for the basket and managed to extricate the wine without having to move her body too close to Alessandro’s. She instinctively knew that to touch him would make her blood leap inside her as if a lightning bolt had struck her. There was a corkscrew too but she was as unable to use it as if she had been a tiny baby.

     Mutely, she held out the bottle and the corkscrew for her relative and noticed, with surprise, that his hands were trembling too. Or perhaps it was just the soft moonlight playing tricks.

     Knowing she
’d become lightheaded and even less able to control what she said if she didn’t eat something with the wine, she twisted again in her seat and stretched for the food she and Tonia had prepared, breaking pieces of chicken in her hands and tearing the bread into chunks which she piled into her lap. She was sure there were cutlery and napkins in the hamper but she didn’t trust herself to find them successfully.

     “Are there any glasses?” Alessandro demanded, having opened the
vin santo
.

     “Er … I’ll look,” she promised.

     But before she could look into the basket again, he merely offered her the bottle with a gesture of impatience. She took a swig from it and felt the clean, earthy taste flood all her senses, loosening her composure almost immediately. She passed it back to him and watched with a kind of rapt fascination as his lips rounded on the glass, exactly where hers had been. He took a long, desperate draught of the liquid and returned the bottle to her. Its neck was still warm where his mouth had been and she drank greedily, relishing the heat on the glass.  

     She gave him a piece of chicken and another of bread and they ate together, the bottle on the floor at his feet. Neither had realized how hungry they were until they tasted the succulent flesh and the yeasty, crusty dough.

     When the impromptu meal was over, Alessandro resumed his position of being in charge and suggested they try to sleep, then be ready to wake at first light so they’d be able to walk for petrol.

     “I think we should move into the back because there’s more room in there and we’ll be more comfortable,” he suggested. “I know I don’t want to sleep with the steering wheel in front of me all night.”

     With that, he opened his door and climbed into the rear where he discovered a blanket at the bottom of the hamper.

     “Come on,” he prompted Annabella, who had stayed where she was. “It’s much roomier back here.”                   

     Tremblingly conscious of every cell in her second cousin and gnawingly aware that she was excruciatingly in love with him, she reluctantly did as he beckoned, accepting the other half of the blanket he held out to her. She pressed herself against the side of the Bentley, too afraid to leave the hard coldness of the door lest she weaken and allow herself to lean closer to him and his warm, spicy scent.

     Alessandro couldn
’t have slept if his life depended on it, he knew. Never had he yearned for a woman the way he yearned for this usurper. She’d closed her eyes and was, he thought, dozing, so he could feast his eyes on her. Disappointingly, she’d drawn the blanket right up under her chin but he could still delight in the dusting of freckles on her slightly up-turned nose, be enchanted by the imperious curve of her tawny eyebrows and the even more determined jut of her little chin. In the moonlight, her pale skin was like purest satin.

     Annabella, her eyes closed although she
’d never felt less like sleeping, felt his gaze on her face and, despite herself, her eyes flew open and met his. They were arresting, his eyes. Never before had she seen them burning with such intensity, such passion. It must, she thought again, be the moonlight making him look like that. Fringed with jet lashes, they seemed to speak to hers, suggesting words his mouth dared not utter. His silent mouth, however, also seemed to have a language of its own tonight. His full, red lips were slightly parted and she blushed to imagine them on hers.

     Alessandro’s heart leapt when she turned those emerald eyes to him and looked straight into his soul. She could be in no doubt about how much he wanted her, he thought. It was impossible for him to hide a desire of such an unbearable intensity.