‘Bella…?’
Maybe if he had continued to call her Isabella in that cold and distant way then Bella would have refused to answer him. Maybe. But when he said her name in that sexy, husky way she had no chance!
She sighed. ‘I really don’t want to argue with you again tonight, Gabriel.’
He nodded. ‘Fine, then we will not argue.’
‘We can’t seem to do anything else!’
He shrugged his shoulders beneath the cream silk shirt he wore.
‘We are here together for a week, Bella, with no other distractions. We have to talk about something.’
‘I’ve already told you what happened that night. I’m more interested in what happened afterwards,’ she said firmly.
Gabriel’s mouth tightened. ‘You are once again referring to the car crash in which two men died.’
The sudden coolness in his gaze, the slight withdrawal Bella sensed in his manner, told her how reluctant Gabriel was to talk about the accident.
At least as reluctant as Bella was to talk about that night they had spent together!
She gave him a direct look. ‘I assure you I’m not going to be hurt by anything you have to say concerning your feelings for Janine Childe.’
‘No?’ Gabriel’s eyes glittered in the moonlight that shone in the ever-encroaching darkness.
‘No,’ Bella said. ‘You aren’t the first man to go to bed with one woman when you’re actually in love with another one. I very much doubt that you’ll be the last, either!’ she added with a rueful smile.
Gabriel’s jaw tensed. ‘You believe me so utterly dishonourable?’
‘I believe you were a man surrounded by Formula One groupies who were only too happy to go to bed with defending champion Gabriel Danti, whether he was in love with someone else or not,’ Bella explained practically.
‘Formula One
groupies
?’ Gabriel exclaimed.
‘Oh, stop being obtuse, Gabriel,’ Bella teased gently. ‘Women of all ages find that macho image as sexy as hell, you know that.’
‘Did you?’ He sounded amused now.
‘We weren’t talking about
me
—’
‘Why did you go to bed with me that night, Bella?’
He had called her Bella again! Her defences were already in tatters after the momentous recognition earlier of her love for this man, without that!
‘Because you were sexy as hell, of course,’ she said brightly. ‘Now could you just—’
‘Past tense, Bella?’ Gabriel cut in softly, an edge to those husky tones. ‘You no longer find me sexy?’
If Bella found Gabriel any sexier she would literally be drooling down her chin at how gorgeous he looked this evening with the dark thickness of his hair flowing onto his shoulders and the way that cream silk shirt emphasised every muscled inch of his chest.
If Bella found him any sexier she would be ripping that shirt from his back just so that she could touch bare flesh.
If she found Gabriel any sexier she would be on her knees begging him to make love to her again!
And again.
And again…
Just thinking about it made Bella’s breasts firm and swell, the nipples hardening against the soft material of her dress, and an aching warmth begin to start between her thighs.
She shot him an irritated glance. ‘You should have a public health warning stamped on your forehead!’ She scowled as he began to smile. ‘I’m glad
you
think it’s funny,’ she muttered.
Gabriel continued to smile as he regarded Bella across the width of the table. Without Bella realising it—or particularly wanting it?—they were becoming easier together in each other’s company.
He sat forward slightly. ‘Your public health warning should be on your breasts.’
Colour suffused Bella’s cheeks. ‘My
breasts
…?’ she choked.
Gabriel nodded. ‘They are beautiful, Bella. Firm. Round. A perfect fit in my hands. And your nipples are—’
‘I’m not sure this is altogether polite after-dinner conversation, Gabriel!’ she gasped when she could once more catch her breath.
Gabriel allowed his gaze to lower to the part of her anatomy under discussion as they pressed firm and pouting against the material of her gown. A clear indication that their conversation had roused Bella as much as it had him.
Yet he could not—no, he dared not—make love to her. The fear of further loss and trauma in his life made Gabriel determined not to put Bella’s life at risk with a possible second pregnancy.
His mouth tightened as he realised the disastrous predicament he’d landed them both in. ‘You are right, Isabella, it is not.’ He stood up suddenly.
‘I—Where are you going?’ Bella frowned as Gabriel strode off towards the beach.
He turned on the pathway, the moonlight turning his hair to ebony and reflecting in his eyes. ‘I require some time to myself,’ he said distantly.
Gabriel needed some time to himself…
He couldn’t have told Bella any more clearly that after only two days alone together he was already bored in her company!
‘Fine.’ She nodded abruptly. ‘I’ll see you in morning, then,’ she added lamely, still slightly stunned by the way Gabriel’s mood had changed so swiftly from seduction to a need to go off by himself. After spending so many weeks resisting him, Bella was also shocked by the fierce desire that she
wanted
to be seduced.
‘No doubt,’ he answered curtly.
And, Bella realised painfully, he looked far from pleased at the prospect…
The two days it had taken Gabriel to find himself bored with her company was the same two days it had taken Bella to realise she was more in love with him than ever!
‘B
REAKFAST
, Bella.’
Bella felt as if she were fighting through layers of fog as she roused herself from a deep and troubled sleep, inwardly wincing as she remembered exactly where she was. And who she was with…
Once again Bella had pretended to be asleep the previous night when Gabriel had finally come to bed about two hours after her, and had known by the restlessness of Gabriel’s movements as he lay beside her that he was no more asleep than she was.
Still they hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t touched. Had just lain there, side by side, awake but totally uncommunicative.
‘Your coffee is becoming cold, Bella,’ Gabriel told her sharply.
Bella could smell that coffee, and warm buttery croissants, finally opening her eyes to frown up at Gabriel as he stood beside the bed holding a breakfast tray. He was already fully dressed, his hair still damp from the shower, evidence that he had been up for some time.
‘Why the breakfast in bed, Gabriel?’ Bella sat up against the sumptuous pillows, having decided attack was her best form of defence after the way the two of them had parted the previous evening.
He shrugged. ‘It seemed like something a new husband should do for his bride.’ He placed the tray across her knees and stepped back.
‘No one has ever brought me breakfast in bed before,’ Bella muttered uncomfortably, keeping her gaze averted from him to instead look down at the pot of coffee and the freshly warmed croissants with a deliciously tempting pot of butter.
‘As we are leaving later this morning I thought it best if I ensure you have something to eat—’
‘Leaving?’ Bella cut in incredulously, the breakfast tray forgotten as she stared up at Gabriel. ‘As in going back to England leaving?’
He gave a haughty inclination of his head. ‘As in going back to England leaving,’ he confirmed evenly.
Bella was completely stunned as she watched Gabriel begin to take his clothes from the wardrobe obviously in preparation for packing them.
Gabriel had decided they were leaving. After only two days of their planned week-long honeymoon!
She gave a confused frown. ‘This is all rather sudden, isn’t it?’
What on earth were her family going to make of them cutting their honeymoon short like this? Especially Toby!
Gabriel saw the doubts flickering across Bella’s face. A face that showed the strain of the last few days and nights in the heavy tiredness of her eyes and the unhappy slant to her mouth.
The same strain that Gabriel was feeling. Although he doubted that Bella’s strain was for the same reason as his own!
He shook his head. ‘You are unhappy here, Isabella.’
‘So are you!’ she shot back.
His mouth tightened. ‘We were not talking about me.’
‘No, we weren’t, were we?’ Bella said. ‘Why is that, Gabriel? Why is it that you can never give me a straightforward answer to a straightforward question?’
Those dark eyes narrowed warningly. ‘Perhaps because the questions you ask have no straightforward answer.’
She sighed in disgust. ‘You’re doing it again!’
Gabriel was well aware of what he was doing. But he could not tell Bella of his fears, of his need to leave here, before he once again put her life at risk if she conceived a second time. ‘If you think that your family will be concerned at our early return from our honeymoon, then I suggest you go straight to your cottage. That way no one even has to know we are back.’
Bella frowned. ‘What’s the difference between us staying here for another five days or hiding out in my cottage?’
Gabriel gave a humourless smile. ‘I said that
you
could go straight to your cottage, Isabella, not that I would be joining you there.’
Her face blanked of all expression. ‘I see…’
‘Do you?’ Gabriel said grimly.
‘Oh, yes,’ Bella snapped as she placed the breakfast tray on the bedside table before swinging her legs to the floor and sitting up. ‘I can be ready to leave in half an hour or so, if that’s okay with you?’
Gabriel had thought Bella would be pleased at the idea
of leaving the island today. That she would be even happier at the idea of being relieved of his company once they were back in England. But instead she merely looked angry.
‘There is no rush,’ he told her. ‘I have radioed ahead and instructed that the plane be fuelled and ready to leave as soon as we arrive.’
‘Now I know where Toby gets his organisational skills from!’ Bella huffed as she stood up. ‘I would like some privacy to get showered and dressed, if you wouldn’t mind, Gabriel?’ She looked at him challengingly.
‘Would it matter if I did?’ he growled.
Her eyes flashed violet fire at him. ‘Not in the least!’
His mouth thinned to a severe line. ‘As I thought. Eat some of the breakfast, Isabella,’ he instructed. ‘You will feel less sick on the helicopter if you have eaten.’
‘No—I’ll just have something to be sick with!’ she contradicted him mutinously.
‘That is true, also,’ Gabriel murmured dryly.
Bella glared. ‘Please don’t attempt to try and sugarcoat it for me!’
She looked so beautiful as she faced him across the room, her face flushed with anger and the darkness of her hair a wild tangle about her shoulders, the long, pale cream nightgown clinging to the lushness of her curvaceous figure.
It was all Gabriel could do to stop himself from taking the few steps that separated them before gathering Bella into his arms and making love to her until she screamed for mercy!
Instead he stepped towards the bedroom door. ‘I will be outside if you should need me.’
‘I won’t,’ she assured him firmly.
No, she probably wouldn’t, Gabriel acknowledged ruefully as he strode outside into the sunshine to take deep, calming breaths of the fragrant air.
Much as he had done the previous evening as he walked along the moonlit shoreline and reminded himself all the reasons he dared not make love to Bella again…
‘I thought you said you had to leave?’ Bella reminded Gabriel many hours later as, having driven her to her cottage, he now lingered in the sitting-room.
The helicopter flight to the mainland had been less traumatic than the one going to the island, Bella having been prepared for the uneven flight this time.
The long flight on the Danti jet back to England had been free of incident, too—probably because neither of them had suggested going anywhere near the temptation of the bedroom at the back of the plane!
Once they’d landed in England Bella had protested the need for Gabriel to drive her back to the cottage. She could find her own way, she’d said. But it had been a battle she had lost. As she lost all of her battles against Gabriel…
But having been delivered here safely, Bella now expected him to leave. In fact, she was counting on it. Mainly because if Gabriel didn’t soon go and leave her to her privacy, Bella knew she was going to give in to the hot tears that had been threatening to fall all day!
‘Are you not going to at least offer me a cup of coffee?’ Gabriel asked.
Her eyes widened. ‘It’s late, Gabriel, and I thought you had somewhere else to go.’
He frowned. ‘I did not say that.’
‘You implied it.’
Gabriel was well aware of what he had implied. As he was aware, now the time had come to part from Bella, that he was reluctant to do so.
‘I am not sure it is the right thing to do, to just leave you here on your own.’
She laughed humourlessly. ‘I’ve lived on my own for two years, Gabriel—’
‘You have lived here with Toby,’ he cut in firmly. ‘That is not the same thing.’
No, it wasn’t, Bella accepted ruefully, already aware of how quiet, how empty, the cottage seemed without her small son’s presence.
‘I’m a big girl now, Gabriel; I’m sure I’ll manage,’ she said dryly.
His eyes darkened in intensity, that familiar nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘I am well aware of the fact that you are a big girl, Isabella.’
‘Then I suggest you stop treating me like I’m six years old rather than twenty-six!’
His mouth flattened into a disapproving line. ‘Showing concern for your welfare is treating you like a child?’
Bella shook her head impatiently. ‘No, actually treating me like a child is doing that!’
‘How would you have me treat you, Isabella?’ Gabriel glowered his frustration with this conversation.
Bella became very still, very aware of the sudden tension in the room. She could almost feel the crackle of electricity that arced between herself and Gabriel…
She swallowed hard. ‘I think you should just go.’
Gabriel thought so, too. In fact, he knew so! Before
he did something he would later regret. Something they might both have reason to regret.
Except…
Bella looked tired after their long journey, her eyes purple smudges in a face that was pale with exhaustion, and the fullness of her lips bare of lip gloss. But nevertheless there was a beguiling determination to the stubborn lift of her chin, that challenge reflected in the brilliance of her eyes and the proud stance of her tiny body.
Gabriel felt the throb of his arousal just looking at her.
Telling him it was definitely time that he left!
‘I should go, yes,’ he acknowledged huskily.
‘Yes.’
‘Now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bella—’
‘Gabriel…?’
He drew in a ragged breath. ‘I need to go!’
‘You do.’
Except Gabriel moved
towards
Bella rather than away from her as he crossed the room in two long strides to pull her hard against him even as his head lowered and his mouth claimed hers in a need as primitive and as old as time.
As wild and primitive as his fierce, uncontrollable desire to possess Bella again…
Gabriel’s hands moved to become entangled in her hair as he kissed her hungrily, fiercely, his lips parting hers and allowing his tongue to plunge deeply into the heat beyond. Bella’s mouth tasted of honey, and was hot, so very hot, as she drew him deeper inside her.
Gabriel curved her body into the hardness of his as he continued to kiss and claim her. His hands spread over her bottom as he pulled her against him and pressed her to the ache in his thighs, his arousal hard and pulsing, demanding, the need to possess her so strong that Gabriel could think of nothing else, feel nothing else but Bella.
He wrenched his mouth from hers to bury his face against the satin smoothness of her throat, licking, tasting, biting. ‘We should stop this now, Bella!’
‘Yes,’ she breathed shakily.
‘I cannot be gentle with you!’ Gabriel groaned, knowing it was true. He had waited too long. Wanted her for far too long!
Bella already knew that, had felt his urgency the moment he took her in his arms. An urgency that she echoed, that had ignited the moment he’d touched her. No, even before he’d touched her! This physical awareness had been there between them all day, Bella realised now, burning just below the surface of even the most mundane of conversations.
‘I won’t break, Gabriel,’ she encouraged, her throat arched to the erotic heat of his questing mouth, her fingers entangled in the silky softness of his hair. ‘Just don’t stop. Please don’t stop…’ She quivered with longing, several buttons ripping off her blouse as Gabriel parted it to bare her breasts to his lips and tongue, drawing one swollen tip into the heat of his mouth hungrily as one of his hands cupped and squeezed its twin.
Bella sobbed low in her throat as the pleasure ripped through her, to become centred as a hot ache between
her thighs. She was so swollen there, so needy as she pressed against Gabriel’s arousal, she could barely think straight.
He moved against her, his hardness, his length and thickness, a promise of even greater pleasure. A pleasure Bella had no intention of letting Gabriel deny either of them. She wanted him inside her. Wanted to look up at Gabriel, to watch his face as he stroked long and hard inside her. Wanted to hear his groans of pleasure as they matched her own. To hear his cries as they reached that pinnacle together.
‘Not this time, Gabriel.’ She moved away as his hand went to open the fastening of her jeans. ‘I want to touch you first. Kiss you. All of you,’ she added huskily, her gaze deliberately holding his as she unbuttoned his shirt before slowly slipping it down his arms and dropping it onto the carpeted floor. Her fingers looked much paler than the darkness of Gabriel’s skin as she touched the hard wall of his chest. ‘You’re so beautiful, Gabriel…!’ she whispered before she began to kiss each and every one of his scars, her tongue a delicate rasp against the heat of his skin as she tasted him.
Gabriel knew that his scarred body was far from beautiful, but he ceased to care about anything else as Bella’s lips roamed across him freely, her tongue flickering against him even as her hand flattened against the hardness of his arousal, his erection responding immediately as that hand moved against him slowly, rhythmically. Gabriel felt his blood pulsing, pounding, increasing in urgency.
They had spent five weeks together before their wedding and two days alone on a romantic Caribbean
island. And yet it was here, and now, in Bella’s tiny cottage, when he knew they would be apart for several hours, that Gabriel completely lost control!
‘I need—Bella, I need—’ He broke off with a groan as Bella unfastened his jeans and pushed them out of the way so that she might fulfil that need.
Her mouth was so hot as she took him inside her, her tongue moist and her fingers curling about him as she caressed the length of him.
Gabriel became lost in the pleasure of this dual assault upon his senses, his neck arched, his muscles tensing, locking, as he fought to maintain control.
Just a little longer. He wanted—needed to enjoy being with Bella just a little longer, and then he would leave, Gabriel promised himself silently as Bella manoeuvred him gently backwards so that he sat down in an armchair, her hair a wild tumble about his thighs as she knelt in front of him.
Just a few minutes more of being inside the heat of Bella’s mouth. Of her wicked little tongue moistly caressing the length of his shaft. Of her fingers about him as he instinctively began to move to that same mindblowing rhythm.