CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS NO USE. Sleep really had no intention of coming. She could count as many sheep as she liked but they might as well be blowing big fat raspberries at her for all the use they were at getting her off to slumber.
Cara climbed out of bed and reached for her new robe, which was more of a kimono. However much she might tell herself that she was itching to get her well-worn flannelette dressing gown back, there was no getting around the fact this scarlet silk kimono was utterly gorgeous and felt like liquid on her skin.
After three days in Pepe’s Parisian home she still wasn’t as familiar with the layout as she should be, but she knew her way to the kitchen.
She hadn’t seen much of him since their drive back from the Loire Valley. Instead of keeping her chained to him, he’d had a change of heart and now insisted she be chained to Monique the housekeeper instead. Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration. What he had actually said, when they’d arrived back at the house after almost three hours of ice between them, was that all his meetings for the rest of the week were in Paris and that she was free to stay at home if she would prefer. Just as she’d thought he was becoming a more reasonable human being, he’d qualified it with, ‘Monique is around during the day. She can accompany you if you need to go anywhere.’
‘Where is there for me to go?’ she’d shot back. ‘I don’t speak the language and I don’t have any money to do anything. Parisian prices are stupidly high.’
He’d shrugged without looking at her. ‘I have a swimming pool and spa—you’re welcome to use them whenever you wish. Besides, if the paternity test proves your child is mine then you’ll have more money than you know how to spend.’
She’d responded by calling him a name that would have made the nuns from the convent she’d attended before moving to England blush.
The following morning he’d made matters even worse by having a top-of-the-range laptop, smartphone and e-reader delivered to the house for her. The e-reader had, from what she’d been able to ascertain, unlimited credit installed. She’d taken a perverse pleasure in downloading as many books as she could, all featuring the most unheroic, misogynistic protagonists that she could find. Hopefully Pepe would receive an itemised bill with all the titles listed for him.
She hated that he would do something thoughtful. It was the same as when he’d driven her home rather than make her fly back in the helicopter. She didn’t want him to be nice. She wasn’t going to be like her mother and forgive deplorable behaviour because of a stupid gift.
Making her way down the winding staircase, she headed for the kitchen. The house was in darkness but for the dim glow of night lights that were strategically placed throughout.
She switched on the main light of the kitchen, blinking several times as her eyes adjusted to the brightness.
It felt strange being in there, in a kitchen as large as the house she’d grown up in, feeling as if she were an intruder. She had no idea where anything was but found the fridge easily enough—seeing as it was a whopping American-style fridge large enough to use in a mortuary, it would have been hard to miss.
What she really wanted was some warm milk. Grace’s mother, Billie, would make it for them when she went for one of her frequent sleepovers there. It was comforting. Now, if only she knew where to even begin searching for a saucepan...
The whisper of movement froze her to the spot. Her hand gripped the plastic milk carton.
‘You’re up late, cucciola mia,’ a deep Sicilian drawl said from behind her.
She spun around to find Pepe striding languorously towards her. ‘You scared the life out of me,’ she snapped. Or, at least she tried to snap, but her mini-fright had left her a little breathless. Seeing all six feet plus of semi-naked Pepe also did something to her pulse-rate, but there he was, muscle-bound and gorgeous, and wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans that perfectly accentuated his snake hips and showed his taut, olive chest to perfection. The silky hair that ran from his chest and down in a thin line over his toned stomach, thickened where the buttons of his jeans were undone...
His hair was tousled, black stubble breaking out along his jawline, almost as thick as his trimmed goatee.
Sin. That was what he looked like. A walking, talking advertisement for sin. And temptation.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ he said, not looking the least apologetic. ‘I heard noise and came to investigate.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
His deep blue eyes held hers, meaning swirling in them. ‘Nor could I.’
She broke the lock first, aware of warmth suffusing more than just her face.
‘What brings you out of hiding?’ he asked, standing a little closer than she would have liked.
She took a step back. ‘I’ve not been in hiding.’
‘You’ve barely left your room in three days. Monique says you’ve been no further than the dining room.’
‘This isn’t my home. I don’t feel comfortable roaming around as if I belong here.’ She felt especially uncomfortable now, but in an entirely different way, in a ‘sexy half-naked man in front of me’ kind of way.
She must be delirious. Sleep deprivation could do that.
‘You do belong here. While you are under my roof, this is your home. You are free to treat it as you wish.’
‘Except leave it.’
‘You are always free to leave.’
She bit back the comment that wanted to break free. What was the point? It would only be a rehash of all their other arguments regarding her freedom.
‘I was after some warm milk,’ she muttered. ‘I thought it would help me sleep.’
‘I thought I heard you thrashing about in your bed.’ At her quizzical expression, he added, ‘My room is next to yours.’
‘Oh.’
‘You didn’t know?’ His lips quirked into a smirk.
‘No. I didn’t.’ It shouldn’t matter where Pepe slept. He could sleep in a shed for all she cared. But the room next to hers...?
Why the thought should heat her veins, she had no idea.
The playful, sensuous expression in his eyes softened a touch. ‘I make a mean hot chocolate.’
It took a moment for her to realise he was offering to make her some. ‘Thank you.’
He started busying himself, opening doors and rifling through drawers.
She suppressed a snigger and hoicked herself up on the kitchen table. ‘You don’t know your way around your kitchen any better than I do.’
‘Guilty as charged.’ He knelt down and leaned into a cupboard, giving her an excellent view of his tight buttocks straining against the denim. ‘I employ housekeepers so I don’t have to know my way around my kitchens. When I’m home alone, take-out is my best friend.’
Oh, the blasé way he pluralised kitchen! Cara thought of the poky galley kitchen she shared—had shared—with three other women. It would probably fit in Pepe’s fridge.
When he reappeared he had a milk pan in his hand. ‘It would be quicker to microwave it but my mother always taught me it was sacrilege to make a hot chocolate like that.’
‘I thought you had a fleet of staff when you were growing up?’
‘We did,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘But making our nightly hot chocolate was a job my mother always liked to do herself. She used to sit Luca and I on the kitchen table—much as you’re sitting now—while she made it.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ she said with more than a touch of envy. Evenings in the Delaney household had normally consisted of her mother fretting about where her father was.
He cocked his head while he thought about it. A glimmer of surprise flittered across his features. ‘Yes, it was.’
Pepe added the expensive cocoa powder to the warming milk before spooning some sugar into the mixture, whisking vigorously as he went along.
Looking at his childhood from Cara’s perspective, he could see it had been idyllic. His feelings about being spare to Luca’s heir were not something that had developed until he’d hit his teenage years, but Luca had always been the good one, whereas he’d always been the naughty one. Looking back, it was as if his parents’ expectations of him had been lower from the start.
Or had it been that their expectations of Luca had been set too high? His brother had been groomed to take over the family business. He’d had responsibility thrust upon him from the womb. For Pepe, the only responsibility he’d had—and it was a self-imposed one—was to make his serious big brother laugh.
He whipped the milk pan away from the heat right before it reached boiling point, then poured it into the two waiting mugs.
When he turned to pass Cara her drink, his chest compressed.
Her short legs dangled from the table, hovering inches above the floor, and she was chewing on her bottom lip.
He wondered if she knew the top of her robe had parted a touch, giving him a tantalising glimpse of that wonderful cleavage his senses remembered so well. The first time he’d buried himself in those glorious breasts he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
During the intervening months the wonder of that night was something he had suppressed with a ruthlessness he’d never before had to employ. But it had always been there, hovering in the periphery of his memories, taunting him, tantalising him. Often it would catch him unawares, a visual memory or a familiar scent, always with the same end result, a burst of need that would shoot straight to his groin and clutch at his chest. The same burst of need he was currently experiencing. The same need that had been a semi-permanent ache since he’d stood next to Cara at the font at Lily’s christening.
Under normal circumstances, that one night wouldn’t have been the end of them. He would have gone back for more. Hell, he might even have brought her here to Paris as he’d insinuated, but not for the sake of his art collection. No, he’d have brought her here so he could devour that delectable body over and over until he was finally spent and there was nothing left for him to discover and enjoy.
As she reached out a hand to take the mug, her kimono strained against her breasts, moulding them for his hungry eyes, and the need in his groin tightened, straining against the denim he wore.
The hem of the kimono barely covered her knees.
Was she wearing anything beneath it?
‘What are you doing?’ Cara’s voice was a husky whisper.
Without even realising it, he’d closed the gap between them. One more step and he’d be able to part her creamy thighs and slip between them...
Cara’s heart thumped so strongly she could hear it pound against her ribs.
‘I asked, what are you doing?’ How she managed to drag the words out, she didn’t know. Pepe was so close he’d sucked all the air from her lungs.
His large warm hand closed over hers and removed the mug, placing it on the table, out of her reach.
And then he was cupping her cheeks, forcing her to meet his stare. ‘I’m going to kiss you.’
‘No!’ It was more of a whimper than a refusal. She tried to wrench her face free from his clasp but his hold was too strong. And, somehow, too gentle.
‘Sì.’ He brushed a thumb over her bottom lip. ‘Yes, cucciola mia. I am going to kiss you.’
She didn’t want to respond. God alone knew she didn’t want to respond.
Yet when his lips slanted onto hers and held there for long moments before prising her mouth apart, and when his thick tongue slipped into her mouth, the only word revolving around and around in her head was yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
The only answer her body gave was yes.
The hands she tried to ball into fists fought back, tracing up his bare biceps and clinging to his shoulders, her nails digging into the smooth flesh.
And still she tried to fight. Desperately she fought against the growing rip tide of need pulsating through her blood, fought against the moisture bubbling in her most intimate area.
But mostly she battled for her head, a fight she was so far from winning she...
His hand was cupping her breast.
When had that happened...?
It felt so...good. Wonderful. His touch...
But it wasn’t enough. The silk of the kimono was too restrictive.
Pepe must have read her mind because he slipped a hand beneath the thin material and spread it whole against a breast so sensitive, the relief of him finally touching it—touching her—made her gasp into his hot mouth.
And then she was kissing him back, her lips moving against his with no conscious thought, her tongue dancing against his, her whole body alive to his touch, the heat from his mouth and the taste of him.
Roughly he tugged her kimono apart, exposing her naked flesh. He snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her flush to him, crushing her breasts against his chest, crushing her mouth with an ever deepening kiss, his other hand trailing up her back, up the nape of her neck and then spearing her hair, gently tugging at it, before trailing back and reaching down to take her hand, which he placed on the front of his jeans. His fingers curled into hers as he pressed her hand tight to him. Even through the thick denim she could feel the length and weight of his erection. She could feel the heat emanating from him.
It was a heat her starved body revelled in.
Because it had been starving.
It had been starving for him.
He had brought her to life, given her an appetite she hadn’t known she had, and then he’d left her. Alone. And pregnant.
‘See, cucciola mia,’ he said, breaking his mouth away and dragging kisses across her cheek and down her neck. ‘This is how badly I want you. Enough that I think I might explode if I don’t have you.’
His words, the sound of his voice, were things the small part of her shrieking at her treacherous body anchored onto, using them to bring her out of this erotic stupor he had put her in.
Somehow she managed to wedge her hands between their meshed chests—and, God, her body really didn’t want her to; her lips ached for just one more kiss, the apex of her thighs begged her to let him continue—and, using all the strength she could muster, pushed him away.
‘I said no.’
He almost reeled back.
Pepe’s chest heaved as he stared at her with eyes that penetrated, almost as if he were reaching into the deepest recess of her mind. ‘Your mouth said no. The rest of you said yes.’
Although his words were nothing but the truth, she shook her head, her shaking hands frantically wrapping the kimono back up, tying it as tightly as was physically possible. ‘When a woman says no, then the answer is no. No, no, no. You have no right to help yourself to me.’
His face contorted and he took another step back. ‘Do not imply that I am some sort of rapist. You wanted me as much as I wanted you. You kissed me back. You enjoyed every minute of it.’
The savagery of his words made her flinch.
To compound it all, she felt hot tears sting the backs of her retinas. ‘I don’t care how much I enjoyed it,’ she said, forcing the words out, aware her words were hitched. ‘This is not going to happen. Unlike you, my brain is in control of my actions.’
His lips curved into something that was supposed to resemble a smile. ‘You think? Well, cucciola mia, you will learn that my control is second to none. Have no worries—I will not touch you again. Not without a written contract from you saying yes.’
With that parting shot, he strolled out of the kitchen, leaving her rooted to the table she was still sitting upon.