More fool her.
‘Haven’t you?’
Izzy slowly turned round and pressed herself against the door in a desperate effort at distancing him, although he was so close... Her throat tightened in an instant, horrifying response to his proximity.
With devastating clarity, she realised that she had spent the past few evenings not just relaxing in his company, not just dropping the antagonism that she had originally felt for him, but somehowenjoyingthe illicit thrill of being with him.
She had told herself that, whatever her physical attraction, he just wasn’t her type. Yet her disobedient eyes had strayed, and so had her mind. He wasexcitingand she had enjoyed the excitement. She had never felt anything like it in her life before, and that frightened her.
How could she feel like this for someone who was such an adversary? Where had her sense of judgement gone? Her brief, unhappy fling with Jefferson now felt indifferent and irrelevant. How on earth had she been upset enough to flee? And where had gone all those valuable lessons she had thought she’d learnt?
Panicked at thoughts piling up inside her, she feverishly concluded that her lack of experience had left her at the mercy of a man like Gabriel Ricci. She was also vulnerable after Jefferson, her bruised heart seeking affirmation that life carried on, whatever.
The power of his personality and the wild sexiness of his overpowering masculinity had wiped out all the caution she knew should have been in place.
Her heart was hammering and she was conscious of her nipples pushing against her T-shirt, unconstrained by a bra. Between her thighs, she could feel her arousal spreading.
‘You...you don’t know the first thing about me.’ She breathed shakily, her blue eyes enormous. ‘You think you do because I happen to come from a privileged background.’ Her nostrils flared as she breathed him in. Was it her imagination, or had he closed the gap between them by a couple of inches?
‘Why don’t you tell me where I’ve gone wrong?’ Gabriel murmured roughly, leaning down, his dark eyes scanning her face. ‘I know that you’re sexy as hell,’ he growled. ‘Rich, young and temptation on legs. All adds up to someone assuming that she can get exactly what she wants.’
Sexy as hell? Temptation on legs?He hadn’t exactly given any indication that he might be thinking anything along those lines since she had entered his house.
Izzy felt giddy. She thought of him looking at her and thinking those things, and it was such an incredible turn-on that she had to bite down on a whimper rising up her throat.
‘You think I’msexy?’ she heard herself ask, even as she realised that that was the very last thing she wanted to leave her lips. She was driven to look at him, and the hot flare in his eyes answered her question.
She licked her lips. They felt so dry. The breath stuck in her throat and she could hear her own shallow breathing. Her hands were pressed tightly behind her back.
And, in that moment, everything stood still as he lowered his head and kissed her.
Long, slow and easy—it was a kiss that was as heady as a drug, and the feel of his tongue against hers sent a wave of red-hot lust through her.
She freed her hands and linked her fingers behind his neck. She wanted him so badly...just for a minute. It was all wrong, of course it was, but...
Izzy closed her eyes and lost herself in that kiss.
CHAPTER FIVE
HEWASTHEfirst to pull away.
What thehell?
Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair, angry with himself, not so much for kissing her but for his lack of self-control. He hadn’t meant to touch but he’d looked at her—looked at those sulky, full lips, the unruly chaos of her blonde hair and the narrowed brilliant cornflower blue of her eyes—and his body had just decided to do its own thing.
Never before had that happened to him. His supersonic rags-to-riches climb had driven out every single urge that could not be contained. In his life, there had been room only for ambition and he had willingly accepted that. Women were a pleasant distraction but never the main event. The main event had always been to reach such heady heights of power that he became untouchable.
It was what had brought Bianca to him. They had met at a wildly extravagant party held on a private island in the Caribbean. She had been there as a friend of the family. He had been there because the man who owned the island wanted to schmooze him into doing a deal with one of his subsidiary companies, a loss-making cargo airline business. Gabriel had been there for exactly two days, just long enough to get the information he wanted, but not so long that he would actually have to circulate with a bunch of people he was programmed to dislike. Rich, idle, beautiful.
Surrounded by barely clad young women, Bianca had stood out because of her raven-haired, voluptuous beauty, and the fact that he could communicate with her in Italian had relieved some of his boredom at being stuck on the island. It had amused him to realise that he recognised her name, which was synonymous with Italian royalty. It amused him even further to think that the woman with the impeccable lineage hung onto his every word, pleased as punch that she had managed to capture the interest of the one man there all the footloose and fancy-free singletons wanted.
Obscenely rich, good-looking, ridiculously powerful. Worked wonders!
Had he been just another poor Italian guy trying to eke out a living in the back streets of New York, the story would have been quite different. He had played with her on that island and then he had allowed himself to be coaxed into a relationship. She had followed him back to Manhattan and, when she had announced her pregnancy a handful of weeks later, there had been no option but marriage.
It had not been a cause for celebration but neither had it been a reason for despair. He hadn’t figured on marriage yet, nor had he had any cravings to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet, but with afait accomplion his hands he had acknowledged that the security of his parents’ relationship was something to aspire to rather than shun. They had always been there for one another and for him. Rather than succumb to the voice of doubt in his head, he had determined to make the best of the situation.
His parents had had massive reservations about Bianca and the wedding had been nothing short of a disaster, with her distinguished family members and rich, braying friends more or less side-lining his side of the family and his friends, all of whom he had invited in great numbers. Hell, he wasn’t ashamed of his past, and people could take it or leave it as far as he was concerned.
