Uncovering the Silveri Secret Read online

  Edoardo gripped her shoulders a little tighter. ‘I’m not pushing you away right now, am I? In fact, I’m about to bring you a whole lot closer.’

  He felt her body brush against his. It engulfed his in a wave of hot longing that was like wildfire as he pulled her against him, male against female, need against need. His mouth came down slowly, giving her plenty of time to get away if she wanted to—but she didn’t move. Instead, she parted her lips as his came down. He brushed the point of his tongue against hers, a teasing taste of the eroticism to come. He felt her whole body respond. She pressed close and whimpered in the back of her throat as his tongue teased her again, in and out, barely touching, just hinting at the sensual delight in store.

  Her tongue flickered against his, flirting, daring, increasingly provocative. Her hands snaked up around his neck, her fingers weaving through his hair, her pelvis jammed against his. His erection became painful as it moved against her urgently. She rubbed against him wantonly, her body pliant and soft against his.

  Edoardo devoured her mouth like a starving man does a succulent meal. He fed off her hot, sweet moistness, tasting the nectar of her; relishing in the answering dart and dance of her tongue as it met and mated with his.

  She was everything and more than he had dreamed of: sweet yet sultry, shy yet demanding. He couldn’t get enough of her softness. She yielded to his pressure, softly whimpering in delight as he drove deeper and deeper, demanding more and more of her with each thrust or flicker of his tongue against hers.

  Her perfume danced around his nostrils, teasing him, tantalising him with the scent of hot summer nights. He was almost dizzy with it, intoxicated.

  He moved his hands from her shoulders and splayed them roughly in her silky hair. Her slender hips moved against his, instinctively searching for him. Wanting him as a woman wants a man.

  He ached to feel her surround him, to milk him of his essence with every tight contraction of her body. The need inside him built to fever pitch. Had he ever wanted someone as much as this? It was like a raging torrent in his blood. He could think of nothing but how much he wanted to possess her. His body was rigid with desire, hot and pulsing against her.

  His right hand moved under her top to cup her breast through the lace of her bra, the softness and delicate shape of her thrilling him. That night in the library she had brazenly taunted him with her body. But it was her touch that had unravelled his control. The sexy little tiptoe of her fingers on his chest had been like throwing a match on a spill of gasoline. It had roared through his veins until he had finally snapped and grabbed her and shown her what a real man felt like instead of those pasty-faced adolescents she had surrounded herself with like a queen bee with drones.

  He had wanted her then and he wanted her now.

  He pushed her bra aside and bent his head to take her nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around and around until she was groaning in delight, her fingers digging into his waist for purchase.

  He moved to her other breast, taking his time exploring it in intimate detail: the tightly budded nipple, the pink areola and the sensitive underside where thousands of nerves quivered and danced under his touch.

  Her hands moved from his waist and danced over the front of him. His erection jutted proudly against her tentative touch, the blood thundering in him—the ache of need so intense he felt like a teenager at his first sexual encounter.

  He reclaimed her mouth and backed her up until she was against the kitchen table. He lifted her onto it, and she opened her thighs and wrapped her legs around him, her arms tight around his neck as her greedy little mouth wreaked havoc on his.

  The kiss went on and on, drawing him into a sensual whirlpool that was making it impossible to think of anything but possessing her totally. His erection was nudging her intimately, the damp barrier of her lacy knickers taunting him until he was fit to explode.

  He blindly went in search of her slick wetness, pushing aside the cobweb of lace so he could slip one finger inside. He felt the tight grip of her body, heard her little gasp of pleasure. But then she jolted and pulled back from him, her cheeks fire-engine red, her eyes shocked and wide with horror. ‘Stop!’ she said.

  He gave her a questioning look. ‘Stop?’

  She pushed at his chest with both of her hands. ‘Get away from me!’

  He stepped back and watched as she scrambled off the table and pushed her skirt down with shaking hands. She kept her gaze averted, her shoulders hunched as she wrapped her arms around her body. ‘You had no right to do that,’ she said.

  ‘To kiss you?’ he asked.

  She threw him a blistering look. ‘You shouldn’t have touched me…like that.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  She frowned fiercely at him. ‘You know why not.’

  ‘Because you fancy yourself in love with another man?’

  Her cheeks fired up again. ‘You went too far,’ she said. ‘You know you did.’

  ‘So,’ he said with a sardonic look. ‘You’re OK with me kissing you, but it’s hands off below the waist. Is that it?’

  She compressed her lips until they lost their rosy tint. ‘That shouldn’t have happened either,’ she said, still frowning furiously. ‘Although I accept it was partly my fault.’

  ‘Partly?’ He gave a scornful grunt. ‘That was the biggest come-on I’ve had since you flashed your breasts at me when you were sixteen.’

  ‘I wasn’t giving you the come-on back then,’ she said in a tight little voice.

  ‘So what were you doing?’

  She shifted her gaze. ‘I was angry with you. You were always ignoring me as if I was just a silly little spoilt brat who was always getting in the way. I wanted to teach you a lesson.’

  ‘You wanted me to notice you,’ he said. ‘Well, here’s the thing, princess—I noticed you. I noticed everything about you. I just didn’t follow you around with my tongue hanging out like all of your pimply suitors.’

  Her eyes came back to his, the colour still heightened in her cheeks. ‘Can we just forget this ever happened?’ she asked.

  Edoardo let the silence be his answer.

  She swallowed a couple of times, an agitated look in her eyes. ‘It meant nothing,’ she said. ‘It was probably just hormones or something. It happens to women as well as men, you know.’

  ‘Lust.’

  She gave him an irritated frown. ‘Do you have to be so…blunt?’

  ‘No point dressing it up in fancy euphemisms,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the hots for me. I’m gagging for you. The thing is, what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, folding her arms even tighter across her chest. ‘We’re going to do nothing, because it’s wrong.’

  He gave her a wicked smile. ‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.’

  She flung herself away. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

  He waited until she was almost out of the door before he spoke. ‘If you can’t sleep, you know where to find me. I’ll be happy to be of service.’

  She gave him an arctic blast with her gaze by way of answer and then disappeared.

  * * *

  Bella was still shaking with reaction when she got to her bedroom. She closed the door and wished there was a lock on it. Not for Edoardo, but for herself. She didn’t trust herself not to wander down the long corridor to where his bedroom was and take him up on his offer to “service” her.

  She groaned in self-recrimination. How could she have been so stupid to get so close to him again? He had danger written all over him; it was like a tattoo on his body only she could see.

  His touch had set her flesh alight. She had not been able to control her reaction to him. It had taken over her common sense, her principles and morals.

  She had wanted him.

  She still wanted him.

  The pulse of her blood was still reverberating through her body like a tiny bell struck by a sledgehammer. She could still feel where his long, thick finger had been.
If she squeezed her thighs together, she could recreate the delicious sensation of him touching her so boldly, so possessively. And that was just his finger! What if he were to…?

  No.

  She slammed the brakes on her traitorous imaginings. She could not, would not, go there. He was off-limits for a host of reasons.

  He was her enemy.

  He only wanted her to prove a point.

  She was a trophy he wanted to collect just like a big-game hunter. He would hang her up on his wall of sexual conquests. He would mock her as soon as he had finished with her.

  He didn’t have a heart. He was not capable of feeling anything for her other than lust.

  Bella wrenched herself out of her clothes, tossing them to the floor as she stomped to the en suite. But showering did nothing to quell the aching, pulsing need of her flesh. If anything, it made it worse. She was hyper-aware of her body, of all its nerves and sensations and needs. It was as if her skin had turned itself inside out.

  She wrapped herself in a towel and went back to her bedroom, but it was impossible to even think of sleeping. She looked at the bed, and her brain immediately conjured up an image of Edoardo lying there waiting for her. He was so tall he would have taken up most of the mattress. In his arms downstairs she had felt tiny and dainty, feminine and all hot, sensual woman.

  She imagined him naked on her bed, his muscled body lean, cut, carved and aroused.

  She let out a stiff curse, veered away from the bed and looked out of the window. The moon was high in the sky, casting a silvery glow over the rolling fields. She rested her forehead against the glass of the window and closed her eyes and groaned.

  She heard a sound of a door opening and closing downstairs and opened her eyes. She watched as Edoardo took Fergus outside for his last comfort stop. He waited near the parterre garden, his tall figure so still and silent as the dog went about his business in the shadows.

  Bella was transfixed.

  The moonlight captured Edoardo’s arresting features in relief. He looked like a dark knight or warrior fighting some internal battle of his own. His jaw was locked tight and his fists were thrust into the pockets of his trousers. His broad shoulders were fixed in position, the length of his spine straight and grimly determined. His brow was heavily furrowed, tense in fierce concentration.

  Then, as if he sensed her watching him, he turned and locked gazes with her.

  Bella felt the shock of the visual connection like a punch to her solar plexus. Her heart kicked like a horse’s hoof against her breastbone. Her breathing stalled and her mouth went dry.

  His eyes read her mind as surely as his hands and mouth had read her body only half an hour ago.

  She jumped back from the window like someone leaping away from a roaring blaze. She clutched at her chest, sure her heart was going to flop like a goldfish tossed out of its bowl and land on the carpet at her feet.

  What was wrong with her?

  She wasn’t a teenage girl experiencing her first crush. She was an adult, a mature, sensible adult who was about to become engaged to a man she loved and admired. She had no right to be lusting after a man she didn’t even like.

  It was shocking.

  It was immoral.

  It was tempting.

  She grabbed twin handfuls of her hair and castigated herself. ‘No. No. No.’

  She heard the stairs creaking as Edoardo’s firm tread came up to her floor. Her heart skipped another beat. She held her breath, her body poised, every nerve super-alert, her self-control and resolve gone to some far-off place she couldn’t access even if she wanted to.

  But then there was silence.

  Nothing but an empty, hollow silence, apart from the lone hooting of an owl as it flew past her window, the sound of its wings moving through the air like a velvet cape being swished around someone’s shoulders.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BELLA wasn’t sure what woke her. She hadn’t even realised she had been asleep, but she must have been because when she opened her eyes and checked the clock, it was close to four in the morning. She pushed back the covers and sat up, straining her ears in the eerie silence.

  She didn’t hear a thing for a full minute or so and then she heard a faint groan. Her skin lifted in goose bumps, as if a ghost’s hand had touched her.

  Don’t be silly, she chided herself as she reached for her wrap. Haverton Manor does not have any resident ghosts. At least, none that she knew of.

  She tiptoed out into the corridor and immediately noticed a sliver of muted light shining from beneath Edoardo’s door at the other end of the passage. She chewed at her lip, wondering if it was wise to go any further. But then she heard the groan again, louder this time, and it was definitely coming from inside his room.

  She pushed her reservations aside and padded down to his door, softly tapping on it as she leant her ear to the woodwork. ‘Edoardo?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  There was a rustle of sheets being wrestled with. ‘Go back to bed,’ he said, but his voice didn’t quite have the stern authority she was used to hearing in it.

  She turned the doorknob before she could change her mind and stepped over the threshold. Her eyes went to his figure lying in a tangle of sheets, the pallor of his face almost the same shade of white. ‘Are you ill?’ she asked.

  He cranked open one eye and told her to get out with an expletive graphically sandwiched between the curt command.

  Bella turned on the major light near the door but he immediately swore again and put his forearm across his eyes. ‘Turn off the damn light!’ he growled.

  She flicked the switch off and came over to the bed where the light from his bedside lamp was shining with a pallid glow. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Get the hell out of here.’

  ‘But you’re sick.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  Bella rolled her eyes and leaned forward to put a hand on his brow but he must have sensed her coming for him and blocked her by grabbing her wrist with his other hand. He opened his eyes to narrow squints and glared at her. ‘I told you to get the hell out of here.’

  She felt the bruising crush of his fingers around her wrist and winced. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  He dropped her wrist. ‘Sorry.’ He let out a serrated sigh and covered his eyes again. ‘Just leave me alone…please?’

  Bella sat gently on the edge of the bed next to his thighs. ‘Migraine?’ she asked softly.

  His whole body sank against the mattress. ‘It’ll pass,’ he said on another weak sigh. ‘They always do.’

  ‘You get them often?’

  ‘Now and again.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you sick before,’ she said.

  He cranked open one eye again. ‘Enjoy the show,’ he said dryly.

  She placed a hand on his brow, frowning at how clammy it was. ‘Have you taken anything for it?’ she asked.

  ‘Paracetamol.’

  ‘That’s hardly going to do much,’ she said. ‘You need something stronger. What if I call an after-hours doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No,’ he said, glaring at her again. ‘Will you quit it with the sweet little nurse routine and get the hell out?’

  ‘I’m not leaving you like this,’ she said. ‘You could fall and knock yourself out or something.’

  He flopped back down, but within a few seconds he suddenly reared up and, almost shoving her aside, stumbled to the en suite, not even stopping to close the door. Bella winced in empathy as he was violently, wretchedly sick. She gently pushed the door back, rinsed a face cloth under the tap and silently passed it to him where he was huddled over the toilet bowl.

  ‘You don’t give up easily, do you?’ he said but there was no sting in it.

  ‘I choose my battles,’ she said and rinsed out another face cloth.

  He took it from her once he had flushed the toilet. ‘Thanks,’ he said a little gruffly.


  ‘My pleasure.’

  He gave her a look. ‘I bet you’re enjoying this.’

  Bella frowned at him. ‘Why would I enjoy seeing you, or anyone, suffer?’

  He hauled himself upright and took a moment to steady himself against the basin. She could see the outline of every muscle of his back and shoulders beneath the thin cotton T-shirt he was wearing. The boxer shorts left most of his long legs bare, the muscles strongly corded with regular and strenuous exercise. ‘There are people in this world who would enjoy nothing more,’ he said with a bitter twist of his mouth. ‘It’s sport for them. Cheap entertainment.’

  ‘I hope I never meet someone like that,’ she said, giving an involuntary shudder.

  He looked at her for a long moment. She sensed he was looking at her but not actually seeing her. His eyes had a far-away look, a shadowed look. But then he blinked, turned away and moved back to the bedroom on legs that didn’t seem all that steady.

  Bella came up alongside him and put an arm around his lean waist. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let me help you.’ She led him back to the bed and, while he was still standing, quickly straightened the mangled linen.

  He closed his eyes once he was lying flat. ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll have to kill you,’ he said after a moment’s silence.

  She smiled, and before she could stop the impulse, she briefly touched the ends of her fingers against his where they were lying on the mattress close to her thigh. ‘You’ll have to catch me first.’

  He gave a soft little grunt without opening his eyes. ‘That will be the easy part,’ he said and within half a minute he was soundly asleep.

  * * *

  Bella woke again as the sun touched her face in a golden slant from the window. She stretched her legs—and encountered a hair-roughened one. Her eyes flew open as she realised she was in bed with Edoardo.

  You’re in bed with Edoardo Silveri!

  The words were like a neon sign flashing inside her head.

  Had she slept with him? Had she actually had sex with him? She squeezed her thighs together and was momentarily reassured. But why, then, was she lying in his arms with her legs caught up with his?