One Night To Wedding Vows

Her rescuer was doing some looking himself, his expression shielded by his heavy eyelids, but when he reached her bare feet one dark brow hitched higher.

Lara felt a giggle well up in her throat.

Up to that point he’d been making an effort to retain what grip on reality he had left, but the seductive sound she made precluded any return of common sense. He felt as hot as the glorious waves of her hair looked, and it was all he could do not to reach out and touch the flames.

‘Long story.’ She lowered her voice and leaned in closer, placing her hands on his forearms to steady herself. As her fingers pressed through the fabric she could feel the hard, sinewy strength beneath, and her stomach muscles quivered. ‘Would thank you be premature? Are they still there?’ she whispered.

‘A couple.’

Lara wanted to ask how he knew when he’d not taken his eyes off her face, but she couldn’t. Her throat was full, not with tears, but with something else, the same something that was sending intermittent tremors through her body.

They were standing close enough to be taken for lovers, close enough for his nostrils to quiver in response to the scent of her hair. He fought the primitive compulsion to pull her into him, let her feel what she was doing to him.

‘You saved me.’

‘It was a pleasure,’ he said, breathing in that scent.

The corners of her mouth lifted in a rueful grimace. ‘I didn’t handle it very well.’

He watched her smooth brow furrow. There was something quite fascinating about the expressions that flickered across her vivid little face.

‘I lost my temper.’ She bit her lip and tilted her head downwards, looking up at him through the mesh of her lashes. ‘It’s been a...not good day.’

‘I’ve had one of those too.’

It was a connection. The silence could have been companionable, but it wasn’t. The air was charged with a sexual tension so thick that Lara struggled to breathe. She’d never experienced anything like this before.

‘Have I said thank you?’

His dark eyes smiled, the crinkles at the corners deepening. ‘My money was on you.’

‘I was scared stiff.’ She gave a tiny shudder. ‘Well, thank you anyway...?’

‘Raoul. Raoul Di Vittorio.’

‘Thank you, Raoul. I’m Lara—Lara Gray.’ Ignoring the voice in her head that warned she was playing with fire, she tipped her head back; hooking one hand behind his head and stretching up, she brushed his mouth with her soft, pouting lips.

She was about to pull back when his mouth began to move slowly and sensuously over her lips. She kissed him back, not teasingly now, but with a hungry longing she hadn’t felt before. A moan drifted up from her throat as his tongue slid deeper. Afraid she would fall, even more afraid that this would stop, she clutched at his jacket and hung on.

When they broke apart the street was empty.

Lara stood there, gasping for air like someone who’d just run a marathon.

There were so many alarm bells ringing in his head that Raoul could barely hear himself think. What the hell was he doing?

He was forgetting.

He took hold of her hands, releasing the lapels of his jacket from her death grip. As she let go and stepped away from him her face lifted. Her lips, swollen from his kisses, quivered as she ran the tip of her tongue over them and blinked like a sleepwalker on waking somewhere unexpected.

‘Oh, my!’ she whispered.

The visceral stab of lust that lanced through him took Raoul’s breath away. Dio, but she was beautiful, and he wanted to taste her again, he wanted to do a lot more than taste her.

Lara stared up at him wanting him to kiss her again, willing him to kiss her again. It was hard to escape the bold, sensual glittering in his deep-set eyes, but Lara didn’t even try.

The warm, heavy, dreamy sensation that held her rooted to the spot was now being supplanted by a heart-racing excitement that left her dizzy. Her stomach muscles quivered as her eyes lingered on his mouth. She couldn’t tear her eyes clear of the sensually sculpted outline, nor forget the taste of brandy in his kiss.

‘Are you drunk?’ she asked, struggling to think through the sexual fog in her brain as she tilted her head to one side. She’d have liked to think it would matter if he was, but she’d never run full tilt into a solid wall of lust before, so the whole experience was new for her.

His mouth quirked, one corner lifting in a way she found utterly fascinating. Actually, everything about him fascinated her. She had no idea what it was she was feeling. It was visceral in a way that went beyond anything she had ever felt before.

‘Not strictly sober, but not drunk.’ It was, he realised, true. ‘How about you?’

She shook her head, the excitement fizzing through her blood more intoxicating than champagne. ‘Are you married?’

His expression didn’t change but she saw something unidentifiable move in his eyes before he responded, ‘Not any more.’

She reacted to his comment with a small grunt of satisfaction as the tiny furrow between her brows smoothed out. ‘That’s good.’

He smiled again and Lara’s knees started to shake. None of this made any sense. She had planned on being seduced tonight but at no stage had she planned on not being in charge of the process. Or of being seduced by a total stranger!

‘You’re very beautiful.’

The faint rasp in the smooth, dark-chocolate purr of his voice made her shiver; the touch of his finger on her cheek made her insides dissolve.

‘So they tell me.’ His stare was hypnotic; the sensory overload was making her light-headed. She turned her head, not enough to break the connection. ‘This is quite mad.’

‘Mad can be good.’

‘Can it?’

His dark eyes gleamed. ‘Oh, yes.’ The furrow between his dark brows deepened. ‘Where did you come from?’ he asked, continuing to stroke her cheek.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You just dropped from heaven.’ No angel had a mouth like hers. He focused on her lips and the pain in his groin, not the deeper pain that cut up his insides. She was an oasis to escape that pain, to lose it and himself inside.

His thumb touched the pouting curve of her lower lip and his hand stilled. ‘Boyfriend?’

Her chin lifted a notch, her nostrils flaring as her green eyes sparked. ‘Not any more,’ she rebutted firmly.

‘Where are you going?’

She closed a door in her head, blotting out Mark’s rejection and her stupidity.

‘With you, I hope.’ She heard the words, the supremely confident tone, even though inside she was anything but. Inside, she was holding her breath. She’d only just picked herself up and now she’d set herself up for another fall.

Head thrown back, she fixed him with an emerald stare that sent a fresh flash of heat through his already primed body. He could feel the hairs on the nape of his neck tingle as his body hardened in anticipation. Another time he might have blocked out his primitive response to this woman, might have heard the alarm bells, but tonight he didn’t think beyond it, instead he embraced the mindlessness of it.

For the first time since he’d discovered Jamie’s body he wasn’t hearing Rob’s broken voice in his head sobbing, ‘What am I going to do without him? He’s gone for ever. He’s gone...gone...gone...for ever...for ever, Raoul.’

That was what he had kept repeating over and over until Raoul could feel nothing but pain, his, Rob’s, just a universe of pain that went on and on.

Now he was feeling something that wasn’t pain and regret, and it didn’t matter that it was shallow or transient. He needed breathing space—not that he could breathe when he looked at this woman.

Did the ability to think of sex while in the depths of grief make him shallow? If Jamie had been burying him, would his brother have been able to escape so easily? Would he have wanted to?

He pushed away the speculation, the grief, the anger, the loss and lost himself to the moment of this intoxicatingly beautiful woman in his arms. He looked down into her sensual face and released a slow sigh. If he’d believed in fate, if he’d believed there was actually some grand plan, he’d have thought fate had sent her there at that moment.

He didn’t believe in fate but he did believe in embracing opportunities when they appeared, and the thought of shutting out the blackness in this woman’s arms just for an hour or two was irresistible.

‘That works for me, cara.’

She felt a rush of relief—for a moment she’d thought he’d been going to say thanks but no, thanks. Her confidence had already taken a battering today.

‘Good.’

He laughed, the sound sending a fresh tingle of excitement through her.

‘I’ve never met anyone quite like you.’

‘I have an identical twin sister.’

He slung a teasing look over his shoulder. ‘Is she around?’

If she were she wouldn’t be doing this with you. The thought came with an unbidden image of their headmistress berating her for some minor infringement ‘People will not respect you, Lara, unless you respect yourself. Your sister would never—’

‘No, she isn’t.’

Her flat response drew a sardonic look. ‘I was joking.’

For a split second as their eyes locked, Raoul thought he glimpsed a vulnerability that did not belong to the self-possessed, sensual creature who stood in front of him. But a moment later it was gone.

It had probably never been there.

Hell, he was not going to talk himself out of this. From the corner of his eye he saw a taxi and lifted his hand. His place was within walking distance but prolonging this agony was not on his agenda.

It was happening so quickly, she had no time to think; was this a good thing or a bad thing? She didn’t know and didn’t want to—the answer might make her walk away.

And she didn’t want to...she really didn’t want to.

Her senses were strangely heightened and yet she felt distanced from what was happening as a taxi stopped and then with the snap of the door she was inside, the jarring noise introducing a sense of reality to her dreamlike state.

But this was no dream.

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