Slipping her shirtdress off for the second time in less than an hour, she forced her legs towards him.
She would be forcing her legs towards him for the rest of her life.
He pressed a button on the wall. Water of the perfect temperature and pressure poured over them, and for a moment, she closed her eyes and imagined her shame and humiliation being washed away.
Without looking at her, he washed his hair and face. Once he’d rinsed, he plucked a bottle of shower gel off the inbuilt ledge running the length of the shower wall and passed it to her.
“Clean me,” he commanded. “All of me.”
Jaw clenched, she took it from him, willing him to read her mind and know that she hated him with all her heart.
If he read it, the lusty expression ringing back at her proved he didn’t care. But then, he’d never cared that she hated him. If anything, he’d fed on it.
She reached for the loofah only for him to loosely capture her wrist. “No,” he said huskily. “Use your hands.”
He turned his back to her and reduced the flow of water.
His glorious body glistened, the bathroom’s clever golden lighting reflecting off the water droplets saturating him, and it came to her that the last time she’d voluntarily touched his flesh had been during their dance at his thirtieth birthday party. The compulsion to feel the texture of his skin had been irresistible, and she’d unthinkingly dipped her finger beneath the collar of his shirt to touch the nape of his neck. It was a gesture she’d castigated herself over for four years. It was the gesture that had put beyond doubt in his mind that she wanted him. A minute later, he’d asked her to spend the night with him.
When they’d danced at the masquerade ball last week in Accardiano, she’d made damned sure not to touch any part of his flesh.
He’d touched hers, though. Her dress had been low-backed, and he’d swept his huge hand over her skin. It had made her skin…all of her…burn into a flame.
She hadn’t wanted to dance with him. He’d engineered it, cutting in on her dance with another of the guests, giving her no chance to refuse without making a scene.
He’d smelt sogood. He always smelled good, something else she hated him for, but that dance at the masquerade ball, she’d breathed him into her lungs an instant before his hands had swept up her naked back, and the sensation had been strong enough for her to sway into him. His hold had tightened around her, and for the briefest of moments, she’d pressed her cheek tohis chest while he’d pressed his cheek to the top of her head, and she’d closed her eyes and tightened her hold around him too, her heart thumping so hard it was like it had been trying to jump out of her chest and into his. Her ear had been pressed against his heart. The strong, rapid beat had mirrored her own.
How, she wondered helplessly, as she squeezed the gel onto her hands, could shestillfeel such intense attraction to someone so monstrous? And why, late on the night of the day his father had died, had she let him put his head on her lap and then let her compassion for his pain get the better of her and stroke his hair? It destroyed her to know that if his mother and sister hadn’t been there, she would have given in to the compulsion to kiss the lines of grief on his forehead, and now here she was, his prisoner for life, rubbing shower gel between her hands with anticipation coiling through her veins and her heart beating the same rapid tattoo it had when she’d danced with him.
Hardly able to draw breath, working frantically to detach her mind, Gabriella put her palms on Tommaso’s shoulders.
He didn’t move. While she worked the gel over his skin, lathering his neck, the wide planes of his shoulders, the muscular arms and then down his broad back, he kept himself like a statue. Even when she put another dollop of gel on her hands and placed them on the small of his back, he didn’t show any animation, nor when she lathered the tight buttocks…God, his backside wasincredible…and not when she lowered herself to wash his thighs.
No longer able to discern the individual beats of her heart, Gabriella slowed her pace as she worked the inner thighs, intensely aware that one wrong move would find her fingers brushing against his balls. Only when she made her way down to his calves was she able to expel a breath, but then all the breath flew out of her again when she righted herself and had to grab his hip to stop herself losing balance.
The shock of heat that zinged through her to feel her breasts crushed against his back was as terrifying as everything else she’d been through that day. Frozen from it, it took a few beats for her to come back to her senses and step back, only as she did so, he finally came to life, turning around to face her.
The tip of his erection stabbed into her belly… If she had any breath left, the blaze of heat from that would have stolen it. The heat crawled everywhere, into her every crevice, and, a whooshing roar in her ears, she was helpless to stop herself from lifting her gaze to meet his stare.
God, he was so sexy. So sinfully sexy…
Her lips tingling, sanity suddenly broke through.
She was anticipating Tommaso’s kiss. For the tiniest beat in time, she’d wanted him to kiss her.
Furious with herself on so many levels, she wrenched her stare away and poured more gel onto her hands.
Cleaning his chest felt like a whole new level of intimacy to lathering his back, more so even than lathering his backside.
She didn’t want to feel any form of intimacy.
But, God, there was just so much of him, and all of it was perfection, even the flat, brown nipples and neat smattering of hair that covered his chest. As much as she tried to re-find her detachment, her hands luxuriated in the sensation of Tommaso’s warm, smooth flesh, and she was completely unable to detach her mind from the erection jutting out so proudly. As valiantly as she tried to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t there, she was intensely,intenselyaware that creeping a toe’s length forward would have it pressing again into her stomach.
Pulses raging, the flame in her pelvis burning, her hands worked lower, over the rock-hard, beautifully defined six-pack, and down to his navel, where the line of hair leading from his chest began to thicken.
Her brain now burning along with the rest of her enflamed body, Gabriella swallowed and rubbed more shower gel between her hands, unable to look anywhere but straight ahead at his chest; too frightened to meet his stare and even more frightened to let her gaze finally rest on the length jutting out from between his legs…
His long, thick fingers covered her hand and guided it to his erection. She was barely aware of it happening until her hand was wrapped around its base; the girth so big her fingers didn’t meet her thumb.
