The Sicilian's Passion by Sharon Kendrick Page A

heat in his loins. ‘Stay around for a couple of weeks and you can show me London.’
    Two weeks! He certainly wasn’t offering her anything in the way of permanence, was he? She saw how one hard, hair-roughened thigh had come up to shield his manhood from her, but not before she had seen how aroused he had become. She thought women weren’t supposed to get turned on by that kind of thing, but Kate found that she was. Very.
    â€˜You want me to show you London?’ she asked unsteadily.
    She must know how these games were played. He doubted if she would want to hear the unvarnished truth—that he wanted to lose himself in her body for just as long as it took for the fire to leave his veins.
    â€˜I’d love you to show me London,’ he smiled.
    It was the smile that did it. The first real smile she had ever seen curve his lips into an irresistible invitation. If he smiled like that he could ask her to show him around a municipal car-park and she would have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
    â€˜I think that can be arranged.’ She smiled back at him prettily. ‘Where are you staying?’
    He frowned. Again, so naïve—or was that all some kind of act? She was, he guessed, around twenty-seven, though she seemed to have honed her sexual prowess to resemble a woman in her forties.
    He went for broke. ‘Usually I stay at the Granchester—unless you’re offering me a bed here, Kate?’
    Then she understood what he was getting at. This was a game to be played, an erotic and exciting game. She pretended to consider it, while her heart raced. ‘It would make more sense, certainly,’ she said slowly. ‘Otherwise, I’d just have to pick you up from the hotel every morning, wouldn’t I?’
    His blue eyes flashed. ‘Of course it all depends…’
    â€˜On what?’
    Another smile. A more predatory smile this time. Much more predatory. ‘On how many bedrooms you have.’
    She struggled to adopt an insouciant air, even as she felt the honeyed rush of desire. ‘Just the one.’ She swallowed.
    â€˜Oh. That decides it, then. I’ll arrange to have my bags sent over from the hotel.’ He gave a dark smile which sent shivers down her spine. ‘But let us waste no more time talking of accommodation, Kate,’ he murmured. ‘Didn’t you say something about taking a shower?’
    She framed her lips to say ‘alone’, then shut them again. He was here. For two weeks. As her lover. She gave a shiver of anticipation. Why bother denying herself what she most wanted?
    She rose elegantly to her feet and stared down at him, the raw look of approbation which he washed over her making her revel in her nakedness. ‘Will you wash my back for me, Giovanni?’ she questioned innocently.
    Heat flooded him, and he snaked his hand around her ankle, whispered his fingertips up behind her knee to her inner thigh, and then found her where she was still as molten moist as before. Kate’s knees gave way and she sank back down to the carpet.
    â€˜The shower?’ she said weakly and she saw the look of dark intent on his face as he reached for the packet of condoms once more.
    â€˜Will wait,’ he growled, and began to kiss her.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    K ATE got her shower in the end, and so did Giovanni, because he joined her, just as he had said he would, and she found herself wondering whether this was a man who always got exactly what he wanted.
    She had never had a shower like it in her life and she had never given herself so freely to a man before. It was as though she was powerless to do anything other than to react to the mastery of his body.
    He slowly soaped every bit of her—indecently slowly, so that she heard herself moaning in protest beneath his touch. His fingers lingered on her breasts, and on the tiny swell of her belly, before sliding in between her thighs to bring her to a shuddering orgasm