The Italian's Secret Baby (11 page)

She looked away from his relentless hard stare and gulped. It had been pretty foolish of her to assume that a man who possessed his vast experience of women would not know how she had felt.

‘Like you said, it was stupid.' It was clearly pointless to keep up the illusion that she hadn't kissed him back.

A speculative expression slid across his dark features.
‘Possibly…'

She shot him a startled look. ‘What do you mean, “possibly”?' she demanded suspiciously. ‘There is no way we can go around kissing without it…' Roman raised a quizzical brow as she stopped, flushing to the roots of her hair with mortification.

‘Not without it leading to other things,' he finished for her smoothly. ‘I realise that.'

Her chin lifted. ‘It's not that I couldn't have stopped.' The question was
when
?

‘You just didn't want to.' A faint, strangled sound was the only thing that could get past the emotional thickness in Scarlet's throat. ‘Neither did I,' he added.

Her eyes widened at his earthy admission.

Their eyes locked. His were filled with a raw hunger that snatched the breath from her lungs. She felt dizzy, and her stomach dipped as though she'd just stepped into a bottomless black hole. The whooshing sound in her ears intensified the sensation of light-headedness.

‘You didn't…?' She flushed with mortification to hear the amazed delight in her voice.

It doesn't take much to please you, does it, Scarlet? A man saying he didn't want to stop. As if that is such a life-changing occurrence?
Of course he hadn't wanted to stop. Men never did; it was in their nature. They took what was on offer.

Well, I'm not on offer! Once more with a little more conviction, Scarlet.

While she was still thinking he took action and a step that brought him closer, close enough for her to smell the warm male scent that rose from his body. The smile, the dangerous confident smile on his face kick-started her pulse. Now was the time to tell him she wasn't interested, spell it out once and for all.

She instinctively knew that with Roman saying no would be enough.

She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out to break the silence. His movements were unhurried, deliberate even, but for Scarlet he seemed to move in slow motion. She wasn't aware that she had been holding her breath until he took her face between his big hands.

Her breath escaped in a series of uneven gasps as his brown fingers moved along the curve of her jaw.

‘You have lovely hair,' he rasped, releasing the clip that confined her curls on top of her head. Quite deliberately he fanned it out around her face, running his fingers through the silky damp strands.

‘No.' She shook her head. ‘It's brown.'

Roman paused in the act of sliding his hands down her back. A baffled expression crossed his handsome face. ‘This is something you need to apologise for?'

‘And it's too fine. I can't do anything with it.'

She felt his laughter. ‘Brown and fine suits your face.'

He tilted her head back to inspect the face he referred to. Scarlet was very conscious of his other hand, which was resting very firmly on the curve of her bottom.

‘A nice face,' he decided just before he kissed her.

Scarlet gave a sigh as all the strength left her limbs. She had no choice or, for that matter, desire to do anything but let her body mould itself to his lithe, lean male frame.

‘Please…Roman,' she moaned when his head lifted. She buried her own in his shoulder with a muffled sob.

He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to him. ‘Please what?'

‘This is stupid. You know this is stupid. Things are complicated enough without putting…' the colour deepened in her cheeks ‘…
this
,' she added with an agonised grimace, ‘into the equation.'

‘
This
is not going to complicate things,' he contradicted, running a finger over the downy soft curve of her cheek. A distracted expression drifted over his hard, strong-boned features. ‘God, but your skin is so soft,' he marvelled, his voice a deep, throaty purr. ‘So incredibly soft.'

Scarlet dragged his hand from her face. It was so large compared to hers, his brown fingers long and tapering, she could feel the definite suggestion of calluses on his palm. These were not the hands of a man who was desk-bound.

As if reading her mind he offered an explanation. ‘The gym bores me. I prefer to climb; it helps me concentrate.'

Once he'd said it she had no problem seeing him clinging to a rock face, using a combination of skill, strength and recklessness, pitting himself against a rock face and the elements, solo because he was not a natural team player.

‘There's not much climbing to be had in London.'

‘There are some very good climbing walls, though, and I don't live in the city all the time.'

Responding to a sudden crazy impulse, she raised his hand to her mouth and pressed an open-mouthed kiss into his open palm.

She felt his sharp inhalation and with a self-condemnatory groan dropped his fingers as though burnt, which in a way she was. The expression ‘playing with fire' could have been created specially to cover this situation.

‘Sorry!' she said in an agonised whisper. ‘I shouldn't have. This is not sensible.'

A reckless-sounding laugh was wrenched from his throat. ‘Who needs sensible?'

Scarlet lifted her head. ‘Me.'

His dark, glittering eyes scanned her face. ‘Fine, then look at it this way. Let's
use
what we're feeling.'

Scarlet managed to drag her eyes from his mouth. Her brain felt slow and stupid as she parroted, “‘Use” it? Use what?'

‘The fact there is a strong sexual attraction.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘What do you normally do when you feel this way?'

A difficult question to answer honestly when she had never felt this way before. She had never longed to plaster herself against a man she barely knew; she had not fantasised about feeling his weight on top of her or wanted to explore every inch of his body with her hands and lips. Honesty was clearly not an option here.

‘I don't
do
anything. I'm too busy for relationships and I don't do one-night stands.' She could understand it if he found her last claim difficult to believe after the way she'd behaved.

‘I doubt if one night would be sufficient.' Roman slanted her a heavy-eyed look of such sensuous promise that her knees trembled. ‘You would date the guy…right?'

“‘Date…?'” she echoed as though he were talking a foreign language. ‘You're not suggesting me going to dinner or the movies with you is going to help anything?'

‘When you are attracted to a man and the feeling is reciprocated that is what most people do…though
dinner
is not essential and personally I'm adaptable and could skip this preliminary stage of the mating ritual.'

‘Too much detail!' she interrupted, holding up her hand to halt the flow of information and shaking her head vigorously from side to side.

‘Think about it. Sam needs to get to know me, but not in a forced, fake way. If we were dating—'

‘Which we're not.'

‘If I was the new boyfriend we'd be bound to spend time together.'

He sounded so damned pleased with himself Scarlet was torn between laughter and hysterical tears. ‘You're serious, aren't you? You want me to pretend we're going out together so you can get to know Sam.'

Me the girlfriend of Roman O'Hagan
—sure, and the world really is going to believe that. Heavens, even a three-year-old would see through that one!

‘Not pretend, no.'

The colour seeped out of her face and then flooded back. ‘You can't be serious.'

‘Sam must be used to seeing your boyfriends around the place?'

She shook her head, still stunned by his suggestion. ‘No, he isn't.'

‘Don't you have a social life, then?' he asked, clearly not taking her statement at face value.

‘Of course I have a social life. I go to a yoga class and I belong to a quilting—'

His dark brows twitched. ‘
Quilting?
I frequently can't tell if you're on the level or you're trying to wind me up.'

‘I don't see why me talking about quilting can possibly be considered trying to wind you up.'

‘I'm not talking about
quilting
!' he exploded.

‘Quilting is very relaxing,' she informed him with dignity. ‘And you have something pretty and practical to show for your efforts at the end of the day. I've not got very far yet, but just because you've no aptitude for something doesn't mean you shouldn't stick with it.'

‘I am sticking with it but I can't guarantee for how long. Will you quit talking about quilting?' he revealed in a low, driven tone. ‘I'm talking about sex, unless you've taken some vow of celibacy. Please tell me you've not,' he begged.

An expression of shock spread across his face when, instead of sharing the joke, she looked away. ‘You don't date…not at all?'

‘Of course I date.'

‘I don't see what the problem is, then. Why not date me?'

When he said
‘date me'
she was pretty sure it was a euphemism for
sleep with me
. ‘You don't see the problem because you're a sandwich short of a picnic and unused to dealing with rejection.'

‘Rejection I can deal with, but not from a woman who starts trembling with desire and undressing me with her eyes every time she's in the same room as me.'

The mortified heat rushed to her cheeks. ‘My God, you are so colossally arrogant,' she breathed.

A wolfish grin split his dark lean features as he looked down into her outraged face. ‘Maybe I am, but also I'm right. Aren't I, Scarlet?'

Scarlet wasn't going down that road.

‘You want reasons? Let me see—where shall I start? How do you know I don't already have a boyfriend?'

‘You said you don't have time for boyfriends.'

‘Well, I don't.'

‘That probably explains your short temper.' His fuse was certainly getting extremely short.

He could trace the source with great precision to the moment he had walked into her office and found her struggling into that too-tight top. When you lived in a society where you were constantly bombarded with images of provocatively undressed women it was kind of ironic that he had got so totally hung up over a one-blink-and-you'll-miss-it glimpse of bare flesh.

‘Everything is about sex with you, isn't it?' she accused. ‘You're obsessed,' she condemned crossly.

It took something as simple as a throw-away comment sometimes. His dark eyes trailed across her face, the soft contours of which he knew were already fixed in his memory. So was the sound of her laugh and her glare and the way…in fact he could access all her facial expressions any time he liked and also sometimes when he didn't like.

‘You might not be wrong there,' he agreed.

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘I think you do. I think you also know how good sex could be for us,' he rasped in a throaty voice that turned the heavy feeling low in her belly into an actual ache. ‘But for some reason you're denying it.'

She closed her eyes and counted to a hundred slowly; all it did was panic her into impetuous speech.

‘Actually I don't know a damned thing about sex,' she heard herself announce loudly. ‘And before you offer I don't want any lessons from you.'

‘Lessons…now that conjures up some very interesting—' He stopped dead, the teasing expression fading dramatically from his face. Eyes narrowed, he subjected her to a hard, searching scrutiny. ‘Good God!' he ejaculated hoarsely. ‘You're a virgin.'

‘W
HETHER
I am or not is totally irrelevant and none of your business,' Scarlet was driven by sheer embarrassment to retort.

‘It won't be irrelevant to the guy who sleeps with you,' Rowan promised grimly.

Scarlet heard the shaken note in his voice. Well, she'd wanted to turn him off and it would seem she'd succeeded.

‘Obviously that changes things,' he added soberly.

Scarlet glared at him indignantly. ‘I don't see why. I may not be
vastly
experienced, but I think I'd manage to keep up with you. How hard can it be?'

Something moved at the back of his eyes in response to her challenge. ‘There's only one way to find out.' He heard the words come out of his mouth but still he couldn't believe he'd been responsible for them.
A virgin? I'm mad out of my head, insane.

He watched the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, her lips slightly parted and rosily moist and her eyes—eyes that were frequently a mirror image of her mood—sparkling with reckless challenge.

‘What have you been doing—waiting for the right man?' he blasted, suddenly mad as hell with her.

Scarlet blinked, bewildered by his anger. ‘Well, that rules you out!'

A nerve jumped along his hard jaw as he leant closer, his voice soft in her ear. ‘I may not be the right man, Scarlet, but maybe I'm the wrong man? Sometimes the
wrong
man, like the forbidden fruit, can be more exciting.'

Mesmerised by the erotic rasp of his low voice and spectacular pitch-black smouldering eyes, she stared up at him so painfully excited and aroused she had to fight for each individual breath. Her body, every inch of her skin was burning, trickles of moisture formed in the hollow between her breasts and tiny trickles ran down the smooth skin of her back.

‘I…I…' she stuttered, staring at him in undisguised longing. He was so beautiful she wanted to cry; he was so beautiful she wanted to beg him to touch her. Her mind was so consumed by desire that she had no other thought in her head but assuaging the hunger inside her.

He touched the side of her face, and looked into eyes wide and startled. Scarlet returned his stare before sucking in a deep breath and closing her eyes tight to shut out his probing stare.

She felt as if her feelings were written in neon a mile high across her face. She loved him. She who had always scoffed at the idea of love at first sight had fallen madly, deeply and irrevocably in love with Roman O'Hagan.

His fingers barely brushed her skin yet a moan was drawn from deep in her throat. She felt him take her hands within his and she lifted her head. He was standing over her. She trembled as he unfurled her tightly clenched fingers before placing both her hands palm down against his chest. She felt the ripple of taut muscles beneath her fingers and the last vestiges of restraint melted away in the heat of arousal.

Drawing a deep breath, she splayed her fingers and deepened the exploration of the hard male contours. She could feel the heat of his skin through the fine fabric of his shirt.

‘You're totally incredible,' she breathed.

‘I want your hands on me.'

Scarlet, her tongue caught between her teeth as she concentrated all her senses on the tactile sensation, slid her fingers through the inviting gap between the buttons.

‘You're warm,' she whispered, trailing one finger slowly along the hard but incredibly smooth muscled ridges of his perfectly developed chest down to his flat belly.

With a mumbled hoarse imprecation Roman took hold of the expensive fabric of his shirt and pulled. There was a harsh ripping sound and buttons flew across the room.

‘Your shirt!' she protested.

‘I've got other shirts.' With a shrug he dismissed the damaged article that hung loosely open to his waist. ‘However I've only one mind and if you don't touch me it could be permanently damaged,' he claimed, taking her wrist.

Scarlet only spent a moment wondering what he was going to do before he placed her hand palm-flat against the broad expanse of softly gleaming golden flesh his violent action had exposed. She felt the sharp contraction of taut muscles beneath her hand and her own stomach muscles spasmed as if in sympathy.

His warm, fragrant breath brushed her sensitive earlobe as he inclined his dark, glossy head. ‘No, not
warm
,' he contradicted.
‘Hot.
You,' he confided huskily, ‘make me hot. From the moment I saw those delicious little breasts of yours I wanted to taste them. I wanted…'

Scarlet, who felt light-headed and strangely removed from what was happening, smiled; it was a smile of anticipation. Perhaps it was that distance, that sense of unreality that enabled her to respond with such devastating honesty? Or maybe something in her instinctively recognised that the situation warranted some plain speaking. Either way she knew this wasn't the time to be sensible or cautious.

Hell! Hadn't she had a lifetime of being both? Didn't she deserve just a little madness?

‘No, don't say it,' she begged, directing her passion-glazed slumberous stare to his face.
‘Do it!'
she commanded, reaching up to greedily sink her fingers in his hair. The dark waves were ebony and slippery like silk, but she clung hard, yanking his face down to her level.

‘It hurts,' she told him, pressing her mouth hard against his. Her eyes were glittering with a feverish brilliance when her head lifted.

‘What hurts?' he asked raggedly.

‘Wanting to touch you hurts. I've never wanted anything or anyone as much as I want you,' she revealed starkly.

For a long sizzling moment their glances froze, the mutual message of hunger between them a palpable entity. His gasp, the one that moulded his belly into a tight, concave curve, was part of the same fluid movement that scooped her up into his arms.

Scarlet's arms looped about his neck, her legs locked tight around his middle, she kissed him with all the fervour of a mouse totally determined the cat
would
catch her as Roman bore his burden in the general direction of the bedroom.

They collided with several large items of furniture, knocked over a lamp, a framed picture and sundry items, but neither registered the destruction they left in their wake.

Roman didn't bother to detach her from him; instead he fell onto the bed with her on top of him.

He looked up at the woman who sat wantonly astride him…Given what he knew,
could she legitimately be called a woman
? He pushed aside the distracting question and indulged his senses fully in the delicious image—delicious curves, lush mouth and shiny take-me-now eyes.

Scarlet looked around her, her perplexed expression suggesting she didn't have the faintest idea how she'd come to be there.

The sultry, scared smile that she gave him made the ache in his groin almost unbearable. Still holding his eyes, she positioned a hand either side of his shoulders and leaned over him, her hair tumbling over her shoulders.

‘What happened to your glasses?'

‘Dark drawer time.' She kissed him, a long, deep, languid kiss.

‘Pity, I liked them.'

‘Liar,' she taunted huskily as she kissed her way up his neck.

‘I had this fantasy about taking them off.'

‘Really?'
She blinked. ‘You had fantasies about me?'

He laughed against her mouth. ‘Oh, yes, Scarlet.' He gave a grunt of frustration as her luscious lips lifted from his. ‘I've had several fantasies about you.'

‘You could take something else off instead of the glasses,' she suggested huskily.

‘I'd prefer to watch you do it.'

It was as she was unbuttoning the final button on her pyjama top that the wanton reality of what she was doing hit her. Roman, lying beneath her, his dark, intense gaze focused on her every move, saw the feelings of indecision reflected on her face.

‘Let me,' he said, taking the white-knuckled fingers that were clutching the edges of the garment tightly together. Her lips parted to protest but their eyes touched and the resistance slid out of her. Still holding her eyes, he gently removed her stiff fingers.

The fabric parted.

Scarlet, overcome by self-consciousness, would have covered herself with her hands but he held them at her sides. The silence pulsated while his eyes feasted on the ivory perfection of her small pink-tipped breasts. He couldn't tear his eyes from the erotic sight; her body was bathed in a rosy flush of arousal that gave her skin a translucent quality.

‘
Dio, cara,
you're so incredibly beautiful.' His voice, raw and needy, ached with sincerity.

Head inclined to one side, Scarlet searched his face, not quite confident enough to use the power she sensed she had over him. ‘Truly?' she panted wonderingly.

Still holding her wrists, he turned over, pulling her beneath him. ‘I never say things I don't mean,' he asserted imperiously.

Though she was only anchored beneath him for a moment before he slid off her and arranged his lean length beside her, it was long enough for her to know that that was where she wanted him. She wanted to feel the hot, heavy weight of his body on top of her. She wanted him to press her body into the softness of the mattress until it could sink no farther; she wanted him to sink into her.

Roman released her wrists but she made no attempt to move them from above her head. She turned her head towards him, and the sultry invitation glowing in her eyes wrenched a primitive groan from his throat before his mouth came crashing down hard and hungry on her lips.

Scarlet gave a soft moan of pleasure as he licked his way into her mouth, skilfully probing the sweet recesses. She welcomed the sensual demand of his lips and kissed him back enthusiastically, drowning in the pleasure as she felt his big hands on her body.

When his fingertips traced a delicate pathway along her straight, supple spine she shivered and stirred restively in his arms. The ripples of hot sensation went all the way to her curling toes. As his exploration shifted to her aching breasts the ripple became an avalanche.

He stroked and teased until her already painfully sensitised flesh felt as if it were on fire,
she
were on fire! She had never in her wildest fantasies come close to imagining the sort of blind, relentless hunger that gripped her at that moment.

When his fingers slid under the waistband of her pyjama bottoms she shivered hard and lifted her hips to help him slide them down her legs.

The air against her bare skin made her shiver. Scarlet opened her eyes and discovered he was propped up on one elbow looking down at her. He shifted his weight while he fought his way out of his damaged-beyond-repair shirt, not taking his dark liquid eyes from her as he casually flung the garment across the room.

Transfixed by the spectacle of perfectly toned muscle and deliciously smooth golden flesh, Scarlet gulped as her greedy eyes ate him up. She was weak with lust just looking at him. He was magnificent, perfect in every way, and the idea of touching that sleek, smooth body made her ache inside.

‘You have a beautiful body.' There was a tremor of something close to reverence in his deep voice. ‘So pale and perfect in every way.'

Scarlet, who had always compared herself with a beautiful sister, was extremely glad that beauty really did turn out to be in the eye of the beholder after all. But who would have guessed the beholder in question would turn out to be a man like Roman?

She rolled half onto her stomach and Roman's hot eyes zeroed in on the curve of her smooth peachy bottom. He inhaled slowly through flared nostrils when her small hand curved determinedly over him, he released the breath in a slow sibilant hiss as her fingers then tightened over him. Rhythmically she repeated the process again and again.

He was so much harder than she had imagined, feeling him pulse against her hand made the heavy, dragging sensation in the pit of her belly a hundred times more intense. Her skin had acquired a sheen of moisture by the time he drew her tormenting hand from his body.

His eyes, dark and insolent, touched her face. ‘Don't forget your place,' he instructed as he levered himself lightly from the bed.

Scarlet opened her mouth to protest and then saw he was unfastening his belt. The hot rush of desire that zapped through her left her literally panting for breath.

There was an electrified silence as he kicked aside his boxer shorts. Transfixed, she couldn't take her eyes off the hard contours of his taut, toned frame. There were no excess pounds to blur or disguise the perfect muscle definition of his upper body, flat belly and powerful thighs.

He was simply beautiful, a perfect bronzed statue come to life. She felt the prickle of emotional tears behind her eyelids as she feasted her eyes on him.

She was not conscious of moaning his name out loud, but she was conscious of the raw out-of-control light burning in his incredible eyes as he rejoined her. The skin-to-skin contact blasted the last shred of reason, of caution, from her head.