Italian Bachelors: Steamy Seductions

Not even having noticed that the car had parked, Topsy stiffened even more defensively, reminding herself that she owed no one any explanations that she did not wish to make. ‘Er...no, an old flame,’ she fibbed, determined to retain her anonymity and persuade her fabulously wealthy relations to stay on the sidelines for once.

But a sensation like ice was already trickling down her spine because if Mikhail Kusnirovich knew where she was, she was convinced he would also have demanded an investigative report on her current living arrangements. Would he guess about Vittore? Would he realise exactly what his sister-in-law was doing at the Castello Leonetti? Could nothing in her life be considered private? Lunch had been arranged and Mikhail never entered any meeting unprepared. Suddenly ferocious resentment was bubbling up through her tiny body. She had believed she had temporarily escaped her family’s suffocating hold but their reach was longer than she had appreciated. It was typical that she had not been warned that her brother-in-law was coming to Italy and planning to visit her.

‘Are you scared of this man?’ Dante pressed, level black brows drawing together in a frown as he leant closer.

‘Of course I’m not scared!’ Topsy forced a laugh because she was undeniably afraid of the emotional blackmail her family utilised to make her toe the line, the subtle guilt-inducing reminders that she owed her happy childhood and everything she had become to their love, support and loyalty. She, alone of her sisters and owing only to her young age at the time, had escaped her mother’s neglectful care without sustaining any permanent damage and if her siblings were quite unable to accept that she no longer required their guiding hand, was that their fault? Or was it hers? Maybe it was some obvious lack in her that had convinced them she still needed to have her every move policed, she reflected worriedly.

Dante’s shrewd green eyes were pinned to the fluctuating emotions on Topsy’s intensely expressive little face. As someone who didn’t do emotion, he was fascinated, never having seen anyone betray so many changes of emotion and all within the space of seconds. Dark glossy strands of silken hair fanned her cheek, the exact match of the long flickering lashes framing her anxious amber eyes above the flushed rise of her delicate cheekbones. No, she was not a raving beauty but there was a softness about her, a seeming honesty and vulnerability that had the strangest appeal to a male accustomed to more sophisticated and controlled women. He blinked, disconcerted by that uncharacteristic thought. And that fast desire kicked in hard, tensing every lean muscle in his powerful length with an almost exquisite surge of arousal.

‘You may not be scared but you are upset,’ he contradicted, fighting to stay focused on the conversation but his mind in another place entirely as he imagined igniting all that obvious pent-up passion for his own benefit and riding her raw in his bed to sate the painfully strong hunger punching through him.

‘No, I’m not...it was just a stupid phone call...and sometimes I overreact.’ Topsy was mesmerised by the force of his stunning green eyes holding hers and she could hardly breathe for the excitement gripping her while she scanned the handsome features above hers. In terms of the physical, he really was the most absolutely beautiful man. A supersonic quiet had fallen inside the car so that she could hear her own breathing, air sawing in and out of her throat as if she had been running a marathon, her heart racing like an express train behind breasts that were swollen and tender tipped, that same terrifying heat rising between her legs.

Dante lifted an elegant hand and slowly and with great dexterity and deceptive calm wound long fingers into the glossy mane of her hair to hold her in place. He was in a car and in broad daylight at a place where anyone might see and recognise him. He didn’t know what he was doing but would never ever have admitted that a much more primal drive than intelligence had suppressed his innate caution and freed him from inhibition. The seething hunger was clawing at him like an angry beast, the pulse at his swollen groin threatening to control him as he brought her to him and kissed her with scorching heat, his tongue delving deep, his body firing as she loosed a strangled whimper of response than only made him harder.

Dante reached for her and lifted her out of the seat to bring her down over his spread thighs. He had never wanted anything so much as he wanted the hot, tight, wet heat of her body at that moment and the shockingly new strength of that wanting overpowering everything else inflamed him.

‘What are you doing?’ Topsy gasped, having got feverishly lost in that passionate kiss. He touched her and every sensible thought, every shred of self-discipline vanished as though it had never been. She studied that perfectly moulded, wide, sensual mouth, which felt so firm and sexy and unbelievably good on hers, and trembled, needing more, every skin cell evidently programmed to want more.

Slumberous green eyes below black lashes surveyed her. ‘I think you know the answer to that, cara mia.’

His fingers glided up the sensitive inside of her thighs and her heart rate went from fast to racing in seconds. Tell him no, a voice urged in the back of her head, but the craving for him to go further was too strong for her to fight. In conflict with herself, she shivered, breasts with beaded tips pushing against a bra that seemed too tight to contain her, inner muscles she hadn’t known she had clenching tight at the very thought of greater intimacy. She tensed as a fingertip eased beneath the lace edge of her panties and she knew she should move, knew she should be telling him, no, she wasn’t this kind of a woman. But just then, with Dante Leonetti’s hand on her all too responsive flesh, she knew she was exactly that kind of woman and she was quite unable to resist the temptation he offered. She trembled, gazed down into glittering emerald eyes as bright as gemstones and he found the place he sought, circled, teased, brushed, stroked while she moaned and tried not to lose herself in the terrible maddening pleasure of his caresses. But her body was on another plane of existence entirely, quivering and burning and leaping with new sensation.

‘D-Dante...’ she pronounced shakily at her second attempt to find her voice.

‘Sì...’ he purred like a jungle cat, yanking her head down to claim her already reddened mouth with fierce and passionate urgency. ‘Let Gaetano down gently—he’s a nice boy. I want you naked and hungry in my bed and tonight I will satisfy your every fantasy. Now come for me...’

And with a skilled flick of his hand, the quaking intensity became more than she could withstand and this great whoosh of sensational excitement engulfed her straining body, jolting her with wave after wave of almost unbearable pleasure. She heard herself cry out in ecstasy.

Even though his body was rigid with arousal and self-control, Dante was surprisingly satisfied as he rested his tousled dark head back against the head rest. He readjusted her panties, smoothed down her skirt where she knelt on his lap. He had put his mark on her: she was his now and he had no objection to admitting that she was the most exciting woman he had had in his arms in a very long time. He could not believe that she could be engaged in some sleazy relationship with Vittore at the same time as she was responding to him and, Dio mio, that was some response, he savoured sensually.

Shock and embarrassment roared through her in a head-spinning whirl and she scrambled off him in sudden horror, her face red as fire, her eyes momentarily closing in an agony of mortification. What had she done? What had she done? As she moved she saw another car parked a few yards away. ‘Oh, good grief, there’s another car nearby...we’ve been seen!’ she gasped, stricken.

Dante didn’t bat a single magnificent eyelash. ‘My bodyguards, you don’t need to worry about them.’

‘Bodyguards?’ she yelped in even greater dismay, because she knew all about bodyguards, teams of men who operated in all her sisters’ lives as protection and supervision.

‘I go nowhere without them. The bank insists,’ Dante said, unconcerned.

Biting her lip, Topsy did up her seat belt. You slut, she told herself, her body still humming with treacherous pleasure and frank astonishment at what he had made her feel. Even so, his erotic approach had made her feel ridiculously virginal and ignorant, so far out of her depth and foolish she could not even bring herself to look at him again. She would certainly never ever look in the direction of his wretched bodyguards, knowing very well that bodyguards were just as human as everybody else and equally prone to gossip. Had that not been why Mikhail moved her bodyguard Vlad to other duties when he considered that they had become too ‘friendly’. Prior to that, she had heard some very amusing tales from Vlad about his experiences, his Russian reserve crumpling around her. Mikhail had teased her about being a femme fatale for mortifying months afterwards yet nothing had ever happened between her and Vlad. If only she could say the same thing of Dante Leonetti!

CHAPTER THREE

DANTE WATCHED TOPSY bounce out of the castle and down the steps to greet Gaetano in his Porsche. She looked incredibly young and pretty in a fuchsia-pink dress and ridiculously high heels. He snatched in a breath, teeth clenching as she flashed her shapely legs climbing in. It was ridiculous: she should have cancelled the date. The very idea of Gaetano getting close enough to touch her made Dante incredibly tense. Yet he was not a possessive man and had often enjoyed non-exclusive relationships that enabled him to retain his freedom. Possibly it was because he hadn’t bedded her yet, he ruminated with brooding intensity.

‘Is that Gaetano picking up Topsy?’ his mother enquired from where she was still seated with Vittore at the dining table behind her son. ‘I hope he behaves himself—not like that Siccardi boy.’

‘Siccardi? Bruno Siccardi?’ Dante referred to one of their neighbours, a young and handsome playboy known for his wildness. ‘She went out with him as well? Maledizione, she does get around!’

‘And why shouldn’t she?’ Sofia enquired. ‘She’s cooped up all day every day with us and we’re middle-aged and not a lot of fun.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Vittore teased. ‘I think I’m just as much fun as the Siccardi boy!’

‘What happened to him?’ Dante prompted.

‘Oh, she had to fight him off, said he had more hands than an octopus and that was the end of him,’ his mother supplied cheerfully. ‘Topsy’s no pushover.’

But she hadn’t fought him off, Dante reflected with positive relish, using that recollection to suppress his exasperation with her at her determination to keep that date. It was a novelty to be with a woman who wasn’t falling over herself to meet his every demand and expectation but that didn’t mean he liked it and he was confident that her attitude would soon change.

* * *

Topsy was embarrassingly conscious of Gaetano’s family’s very hopeful and constant scrutiny of their table. So far, she had met his mamma, his papa, one sister and two younger brothers, for the restaurant in the village was a family affair and every one of his relatives was delighted to see Gaetano dining out in female company. Gaetano had already taken her step by painful step through the story of how his childhood sweetheart and former fiancée, Daria, had gone off to study for a further degree and had fallen madly in love with another man and dumped him, leaving him with a half-built marital dream home.

‘Your liveliness reminded me of her...a little,’ Gaetano had told her, clearly thinking that was a compliment until she advised him that the best thing possible for him would be to seek a woman who reminded him not at all of his lost love. By that stage both of them knew that they would never be anything to each other than friends and Topsy didn’t have to feel the slightest bit guilty at not having experienced any romantic spark in his direction.

‘Dante seemed...er...attentive,’ Gaetano selected, eyes dancing with amusement. ‘When he brought you to the house.’

Topsy blushed furiously. ‘I don’t think we’d have much in common.’

Gaetano nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’re thinking of his wealth and his fancy title but it would be a mistake to assume that Dante always had it easy.’

Topsy didn’t correct his assumption. ‘Hasn’t he?’ she pressed, full of a curiosity she could not suppress.

Gaetano grimaced. ‘When he was sixteen, my father found him lying by the side of the road one night. He’d been badly beaten up, broken nose, broken ribs, in fact every finger of one hand was broken. He wouldn’t tell my father or the police who had done it.’ Gaetano hesitated. ‘My parents always believed it was his father, Aldo. The old count had a filthy temper.’

Topsy had paled in shock, mentally picturing one of Dante’s long-fingered elegant hands, and she swallowed hard on her nausea. ‘If that’s true, he must have had a tough time as a child.’

* * *

That conversation was still lingering on her mind when she was climbing the stairs at the castle at the end of their evening. Just goes to show, never judge by appearances, she conceded ruefully just as she rounded the corner of the landing and entered the corridor to find herself face-to-face with the very man occupying her brain to the exclusion of all else.

‘Dante!’ she exclaimed, startled by his unexpected appearance.

Dante scanned her face with intent gleaming eyes of green. ‘Your lipstick isn’t even smudged,’ he commented with unconcealed satisfaction.

‘And what the heck is that supposed to mean?’ Topsy flung back at him, dark hair dancing round her slight shoulders as she tossed her head in annoyance.

‘You didn’t let him touch you.’

Topsy sucked in a deep, angry breath that filled her lungs to capacity. ‘And that is your business because...?’

‘Tonight you’re mine,’ Dante informed her with a level of unmistakable assurance that drove her breath right back out of her lungs again, deflating her when she could least afford the weakness.

A split second later, Dante did nothing to help her condition because he did something even more shocking: bending down, scooping her off her feet as though she were a doll and anchoring both arms tightly round her.

‘Have you gone insane? What are you doing?’ Topsy exclaimed, keeping her voice low though because she did not want anyone to come investigating, indeed would have done just about anything to avoid being caught in such a compromising position by anyone living at the castle.

‘Stop acting dim—you know exactly what I’m doing!’ Dante asserted, boldly thrusting wide a door and striding into a room she had never entered before for the simple reason that it was his bedroom.

‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’ Topsy yelped as he put her down on the giant four-poster bed with scant ceremony.

‘You went on your date to which I very generously did not object.’

‘You’ve got no blasted right to object!’ Topsy hissed back at him full volume. ‘No right at all!’

His features set rigid, his spectacular bone structure prominent. ‘I want you to spend the night with me.’

‘And even if you’d asked like any normal man, the answer would still be no!’ Topsy slung at him furiously, flushed and all of a quiver from the assumption he appeared to have made about her and anything but grateful to be forced to relive those deeply embarrassing and heated minutes in his car, which had led to his misapprehension that she would be so easily available that she would simply fall into his bed the instant he expressed the desire.

Dante dealt her an incredulous look from scorching green eyes. ‘No?’ he repeated, as though it was a word he had never heard before from a woman in the bedroom.

Topsy scrambled off his bed, retrieved a shoe that had dropped off and wedged her foot back into it at the same time as she smoothed down her rucked skirt. ‘I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression this afternoon but I’m not going to sleep with you,’ she told him squarely.

She reminded Dante of a determined little bird rearranging her bright-feathered plumage, her slightly snub nose in the air, her heart-shaped face pink as one of his mother’s precious roses. ‘Yet you want me,’ he breathed between clenched teeth, for all he had thought about all evening when he should have been catching up on work was his fantasy of getting her in his bed where she belonged.

‘This afternoon...er...well that was an aberration and entirely your own fault,’ Topsy told him roundly, furious at the situation he had put her in, fighting her mortification that he could have thought she would be that easy. Of course when she hadn’t objected to that shameless little session of intimacy in the car, could she really blame him? And it did not help that when she looked at that gorgeous dark angel face of his she felt breathless and boneless and prone to reliving every madly exciting moment of his touch.

‘How was it my fault?’ Dante demanded.

‘You shouldn’t be so good at seduction,’ Topsy responded with every evidence of conviction in that belief. ‘If I’d had a moment to stop and consider, it would never have happened and we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.’

Dante was furious with her for the ambiguous signals she had fed him, but for a split second he was startled to realise he was also on the edge of bursting out laughing at that response. ‘Perhaps we should begin again,’ he breathed instead, his hard mouth curling a little, for he had never said that to a woman in his life before, but then he could also not recall ever being quite so hot to have one.

‘No, we’re not going to begin anything!’ Topsy exclaimed, and then bent down as her heel dug into a sheet of paper on the rug, detaching it with careful fingers and lifting it up to see the columns of figures. ‘Oh, that’s wrong...’

Already detaching from her hand the sheet that had escaped from the file that had fallen to the floor when he put her on his bed, Dante frowned down at her. ‘What’s wrong?’

Topsy peered over his arm and stabbed a finger at one column. ‘It’s added up wrong.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ he responded impatiently, setting the document down on the file beside his laptop.

‘Dante, I have a doctorate in advanced maths and the one thing I do know is figures and I assure you that that final entry is a mistake,’ Topsy said drily.

‘A doctorate in advanced maths?’ Dante echoed, studying her with incredulous eyes while wondering what someone with such a background was doing working for his mother.

Topsy nodded, wishing she had kept her mouth shut while carefully edging back towards the door.

Dante stalked her like a fox set on cornering a hen. ‘I don’t want you to leave. I want you to explain why we can’t start again.’

Topsy groaned out loud. She hated these conversations with men, for in her experience they almost always went the same way and the men got disgruntled, unable to understand why she wouldn’t just drop into bed with them to scratch a sexual itch. ‘Look, all you want is sex and that’s not enough for me.’

Dante dealt her a pained appraisal, by which time she was plastered up against the back of his bedroom door, one hand curled round the door knob. ‘Doesn’t everybody want sex?’

‘I’m not looking for love and marriage either but there has to be something more,’ Topsy contended, because she had considered the subject in depth and had drawn up a list of desirable male attributes, none of which he met.

An eloquent black brow rose. ‘Something...more?’

‘I’m not into casual sex,’ she pointed out, almost adding any kind of sex but holding that revealing admission back. ‘You don’t know me or even care about me and we’re not similar or even complementary in character,’ she pointed out very seriously. ‘I mean, when did you last wear a pair of jeans?’

Not since his student days. Dante was feeling increasingly like a male version of Alice in Wonderland who had fallen down the rabbit hole only to emerge into an incomprehensible world. ‘Jeans?’ he repeated thunderously at what he saw as yet another red herring. Similar or complementary in character? What planet was she from?

‘You toured a building site today in an Armani suit and gold cuff links. I don’t dress up as a rule, don’t like that appearances sort of thing that people get hung up about. What on earth would we talk about or do together?’

Dante was much more interested in the doing than the talking and he leant forward, bracing his hands on either side of her face. ‘I don’t think entertainment would cause us much of a problem,’ he husked in a low-pitched growl that raised colour in her cheeks again, the clean, spicy, male scent of him entrapping her like a covert spell. ‘Mentioning stuff like clothing is just so superficial—I’m surprised at you.’

‘But superficial, ruthless and mercenary is what you are!’ Topsy protested helplessly, feeling crowded at the few inches that were now all that separated their bodies.

‘We would have maths in common,’ Dante countered with something that felt dangerously akin to desperation. ‘I’m terrific at maths.’

‘Oh...’ Topsy was also thinking about his reputation as a philanthropist, striving to cram him under an acceptable label on her all-important list of ideal male traits. But there was just no way he would fit there. He wasn’t modest or soothing and she seriously doubted that he could cook or clean. All he had going for him was sex appeal and a very immodest amount of it, she reasoned feverishly.

Dante skated a fingertip along the sultry line of her luscious mouth. ‘Let me make love to you.’

‘Don’t use words you don’t mean. It wouldn’t be making love, it would be grubby sex!’ Topsy snapped bluntly. ‘And I’m worth more than that!’

Dante frowned, green eyes radiating resolve while his face took on a sardonic edge at her use of that insulting label, ‘grubby’. ‘How much more?’

‘You really don’t give up easily, do you?’ Topsy framed, her mouth still tingling from his touch, but his bold determination was starting to intimidate her because he was like a guided missile locked onto target. ‘It’s just we really would be wasting each other’s time.’

‘I don’t do grubby, cara mia,’ Dante whispered. ‘I want you to waste my time.’

‘My goodness, I’m so tired I can hardly stay awake!’ Topsy lied in dismay, carefully screening her mouth as though she were yawning in a last-ditch effort to conclude the confrontation.

‘Tired?’ Dante repeated, unimpressed, but he retreated a disconcerted step.

Mercifully he had moved just enough to unblock the door and Topsy flipped round and opened it fast. ‘Night, Dante!’ she called over her shoulder and sped off fast.

Dante swore and not under his breath. She was a tease, nothing but a tease, he reckoned furiously. Maybe it was an act, designed to lure him in deeper and increase his desire for her. He could not remember when a woman had last knocked him into pursuit mode. In fact he could not recall ever having to pursue or persuade a woman. He needed a cold shower. He flicked a glance at the empty bed and cursed again. Jeans...similar or complementary characters? Superficial, ruthless, mercenary? Self-evidently, she was a nutcase. Furthermore, ruthless was a compliment, not a personality trait worthy of censure. He had had a narrow escape, he told himself impatiently, and if she was playing some childish girlie game with him, she would soon discover that she was indeed wasting her time for he wasn’t that desperate. She exasperated him. He headed for the cold shower with anger in his glittering eyes. There was a world of women out there, beautiful, sophisticated women, who didn’t talk rubbish, insult him or lead him on only to change their minds at the last possible moment.

* * *

Having climbed into her comfortable bed, Topsy checked the list in the back of her diary that she had written when she was eighteen and trying to make sense of the almost incomprehensible dating scene at university. She had never fit in, never met her soul mate but had truly believed that he was out there somewhere. Dante met only one of her listed requirements: he was clever. But clever wasn’t quite the right word, she reflected ruefully: conniving and unscrupulous came closer to how she would have described him. And she had no regrets, she told herself urgently. She was much too sensible to surrender her virginity to a male who only awakened her hormones and didn’t give a damn about her.

A little voice in the recesses of her less scrupulous conscience pointed out speciously that Dante was very probably very good in bed and would almost certainly make a great first lover. After all, it wasn’t as if she were looking for love or commitment, so perhaps it was a little unjust to blame him for a flaw she suffered from herself. Some day she would fall in love and want commitment, but she imagined that day was very far away and she fiercely suppressed that dangerous little voice in her brain.

Tomorrow, she would be lunching with Mikhail, who was as devious and manipulative as any Machiavelli when it came to delivering what would please her sister Kat most. Topsy knew she would have to keep her wits about her and make sure that she stood her ground.