Sicilian Nights Omnibus (29 page)

It was only the briefest of kisses—just the mere brush of his lips against hers—but it was enough to tell her just how eagerly her body would respond to him later.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
NNIE
HAD
HAD
a full tour of Falcon’s apartment, and was genuinely impressed, and filled with admiration for everything about it—especially the double-height floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the living room and the master bedroom.

‘There are no curtains,’ she had commented in surprise. She had noticed this lack as she and Falcon had stood side by side, looking out across the clifftop to the sea beyond. Falcon had insisted on holding Ollie, who had been grizzling a little bit—preparatory, Annie thought, to cutting a new tooth. He had smiled widely with delight the minute Falcon had taken him in his arms.

‘No, this corner of the
castello
, is very private,’ Falcon had agreed. ‘I like the freedom of lying in bed and watching the night sky—just as I like the freedom of being able to walk naked around my own personal space, and swim naked in my pool. They are simple pleasures, but very meaningful to those who cherish them. There is nothing to compare with the cloak of the night sky on one’s naked body, like the touch of velvet, or the silken brush of water against bare skin.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Annie had told him, uncomfortably aware of just what the images his words were drawing inside her head were doing to her body.

‘Well, tonight you can know, if you wish,’ he had said softly. Which had had her running for the safety of banal conversation rather than the bold acceptance of his offer which her body had demanded.

To her astonishment Falcon had cooked their dinner himself—a delicious fresh fish dish, served with stuffed vegetables and pasta in a delicately textured sauce, although he had freely admitted the chef had prepared it for him earlier.

‘What will the staff think about me having dinner alone here with you?’ she had asked, a little apprehensively.

His answer had been a dismissive, confident shrug.

‘They will think that I have invited you to have dinner with me in my private quarters. Nothing more—nothing less.’

Did that mean that he regularly entertained women here? she had wondered. And had then had to question just why she had felt such a savage surge of emotion at that thought.

Now she had put Ollie to bed in his travel cot in the dressing room off Falcon’s bedroom, so that she would hear him if he woke up. She knew that Falcon would be waiting for her to continue what they had started earlier, but inexplicably—or perhaps sensibly she didn’t know—she felt self-consciously reluctant to go to him. But, having come this far, she must do so—there could be no going back. Not if she wanted to be the mother Ollie deserved to have.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the dressing room door and stepped into the bedroom—which was empty.

Confused, she looked uncertainly around the room—and then tensed as Falcon emerged from the bathroom, wearing a robe.

‘I’m going to have a swim. Why don’t you join me?’

Did he mean a naked swim? Was he wearing anything under that robe?

Her heart was thudding, and that fluttering, pulsing wanton aching that she had felt earlier had started up again.

‘I’d better stay here in case Ollie wakes up,’ she answered feebly.

A staircase led down from the bedroom to the patio and pool area below, and Annie vowed that she would
not
watch Falcon to see whether or not he was planning to swim in the nude. Instead she determinedly went back down the stairs to retrieve the white wine spritzer she had abandoned earlier, when she had come to put Ollie to bed.

Music was playing softly in the background of the living room, but it was impossible for her to relax. She went back upstairs, to be nearer to Ollie, and moved anxiously round the room, drinking her spritzer and determinedly not looking in the direction of the pool. Which was no doubt why she was taken completely off guard when Falcon came up behind her, relieved her of her almost empty glass and turned her into his arms.

‘Now, where were we?’ he said firmly, before he silenced her surprised gasp with the hard warmth of his mouth on hers.

He had kissed her before—more than once—so she should have known what to expect. And of course she did. But this time the effect of his kiss on her was magnified a hundred times—no, a thousand, she thought headily as his teeth tugged sensually at her bottom lip so that his tongue could run inside its softness. Then, when she was aching for it to plunge deeper, he withdrew to place tiny, nibbling kisses at the corners of her mouth and tease the pleading parted longing of her lips with the slow, deliberate caress of his tongue.

Annie had no idea just when she had stood up on her tiptoes and pressed herself fiercely against him, her fingers digging into his arms, and then wrapped her arms around his neck to hold him as close to her as she could, whilst her frustrated senses tried to show him what she wanted in place of his teasing caress that was leaving her so hungry and so unsatisfied.

Somewhere at some deep level she knew she must have recorded his encouraging words.

‘Yes, that’s it—show me that you want me.’ He had murmured them in her ear after disengaging his mouth from hers for a thankfully brief few seconds, before returning to reward her for her willingness as a pupil with the slow, soft pressure of his mouth on hers, speedily upgrading the intense and intimate meeting of lips and tongues she had longed for, leaving her to hunger for even greater intimacy.

Miraculously, as though somehow he knew of her desire, he stroked his tongue deep into her mouth, its thrusts long and slow, making her go soft and boneless, as though she was already accommodating him within her, her muscles closing eagerly around him.

Beyond the window the patio and the pool, which had been floodlit whilst Falcon had swum, were now almost in darkness. The only light was that supplied by the stars and the fattening curve of the moon as they sent trails of silver glinting and dancing on both the sea and the pool. That same light was coming through the vast expanse of glass window, turning their surroundings into monochrome mystery highlighted with silver, so that the shadows of the bedroom seemed alluring and enticing, something that belonged to another world—a world of fiction and fantasy into which she could safely step, leaving the harshness of reality unwanted and outside the special empowering sensuality of the here and now.

Or at least that was as close as she was going to allow herself to get to rationalising or analysing her sudden sense of freedom to do and be what she most wanted, stroked into her senses with each passionate thrust of Falcon’s tongue against her own. It certainly had to be the reason she was as happy to shed her dress as though it were an unwanted skin she was sloughing off, leaving her wantonly free to be caressed by the night and the look that Falcon was giving her.

His soft words, ‘Perfect—you are as perfect as I knew you would be,’ Made her eye him boldly, longing to replicate his easy removal of her clothes so that she could repay the compliment. Her stomach muscles tensed with fierce excitement. She didn’t need Falcon to remove his bathrobe for her to know that he would be total male perfection. After all, she had already seen most of him that afternoon. Most of him, but not all of him....

Wasn’t that exactly the kind of thought Colin had warned her against? For a second Annie hovered between past and present, her old teenage fear chilling through her veins. But again, as though he knew what she was thinking, Falcon drew her towards him and wrapped her in his arms, murmuring against her ear.

‘This is where what we started this afternoon ends and where what we both really wanted then begins.’

He was kissing the hollow behind her ear, trailing his fingertips down the side of her neck and then along her shoulder to her arm, kissing his way towards her mouth.

She was aware of him and of her own physical arousal with every single cell in her body. There wasn’t a particle of her that wasn’t affected by his touch and responsive to it. She wasn’t wearing a bra—it hadn’t been necessary as her dress had its own built in support—and now the only support her breasts wanted was his hands cupping them whilst he kissed her and brought her tight nipples to even harder aching longing with the pads of his thumbs and the erotic pluck of his finger and thumb. That aroused such a firestorm of sensation within her that she was forced to cry out against it, feeling scarcely able to bear its intensity.

In response Falcon moved back towards the bed, drawing her with him as he sat down on the mattress, pulling her between his open legs and holding her there whilst he circled first one of her nipples and then the other with his tongue-tip, gently at first, so that the torment of her pleasure had her straining towards him, and then more fiercely, lapping at the stiff, swollen, moon-silvered flesh.

Her head thrown back, her spine arched, Annie was lost—a helpless prisoner to her own desire. She felt Falcon’s arm supporting her, a sure, strong iron band against her lower back, holding her safe whilst he drew spirals of hot liquid longing on her taut belly with the fingers of his free hand, dipping lower to the barrier of her brief silky knickers, wet now with the excretions of her fierce desire, an unwanted restriction.

Falcon stroked the swollen mound of her sex through the fragile fabric—a light touch that sent Annie wild and made her long for something more intense, more intimate.

His lips opened over one of her nipples, his tongue probing and stroking, and then his teeth gently grating against her hot flesh. At the same time he slid his hand into the leg of her briefs and probed the fullness of the lips covering her sex.

Annie never even heard herself cry out—the sharp, high and wild woman’s cry of aching unbearable need—but Falcon did.

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of his conscious he knew that his own arousal—his own need for this woman—was out of control. But for once he wasn’t willing to listen to his own inner voice of warning. Annie’s arousal, her complete and total offering of herself and her desire to him, in mute acceptance of her trust that he could and would satisfy it and her, overwhelmed him.

He wanted to know her completely—to take her and fill her with the result of his own desire for her. He wanted to hear her cries of orgasm. He wanted to touch and pleasure all of her, with his hands, with his lips, with words and in silence, until she was completely, totally and only his.

He slid down her briefs, breathing in the sweet, musky woman scent of her and feeling his whole body surge on a tsunami of arousal. He slid to the floor, still holding her, his hands spread wide against her rounded cheeks, kneading them erotically as he kissed the inside of her thigh.

Annie was lost, totally and completely, inhabiting a world she had never thought she would know—a world in which just the sensation of another’s breath against her skin was enough to have the ache inside her threatening to burst out of control. The slow caress of Falcon’s lips and tongue on the inside of her thigh was making her protest volubly against the growing pressure of her own need as she tried to hold it inside her.

It was too late though. It was the final unbearable pressure, Falcon’s throaty words—‘This is what I wanted to do this afternoon.’ He sprang the dam of her desire, resulting in the convulsive contraction of her body into a flood of sensation she was totally unable to withstand.

So this was an orgasm—this was what she had been denying herself during all these years when she had woken from her sleep, aching, somehow knowing what was waiting for her but feeling too afraid to do anything about it because of Colin. Now Falcon had shown her what her own pleasure was.

He was scooping her up in his arms, her body limp with release and satisfaction, and her lips curved into a smile as she put them to his ear and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

His skin tasted warm, tempting her to nuzzle deeper into it and then wrap her arms around his neck whilst she burrowed closer to him, driven by an instinct she was too relaxed to question to be close to him, to prolong their intimacy.

He should send her back to her own room. Things had progressed far enough for now. He might be aching with unsatisfied arousal, but the purpose of the exercise was not to satisfy
his
desire.

But she’d never make it back to her room under her own steam. She was practically falling asleep in his arms now, and he was damned if he was going to carry her naked all the way there when there was a perfectly good bed here, Falcon told himself. He pulled back the bedclothes and placed Annie on the bed, covering her up before going to check on Oliver.

The baby was contentedly asleep, twin fans of dark lashes lying on his cheeks concealing eyes that were a direct copy of his own. Falcon stood looking down at him for several seconds, mentally deriding himself for the fierce tug this small human being had on his emotions. Oliver wasn’t even his child, and yet he felt as protective of him as though he had created him himself.

This child must not be damaged and spoiled by his father as Antonio had been. And the best way to ensure that that did not happen was for Annie to find a partner who would protect and rear Oliver as though he were his own. Something deep within Falcon felt as though it was being wrenched apart, causing a fierce stab of angry, denying pain to thrust through him.

What was the matter with him? That was, after all, in part the purpose of this evening’s intimacy, wasn’t it? That Annie should have the confidence to find herself a man?

It was because Oliver was a Leopardi that he was feeling the way he was. Because it was bred into his bones that Leopardi children—especially Leopardi children without their natural fathers—should be brought up here in Sicily, knowing their heritage.

He was getting as bad as his father, Falcon derided himself.

His body still ached fiercely with unsatisfied desire. He should go for another swim to rid himself of it. But instead for some reason, when he walked back into the bedroom, what he did was shrug off his bathrobe and slide into the bed next to Annie, drawing her sleeping body into his arms.