A jolt of desire shot through her, making her achingly aware of the heat at her feminine core. Her cheeks burned with morti cation. "We only got out of bed a couple of hours ago!" she slung.
"And I"m stil hungry, bel a mia," Vito growled deep in his chest, drawing level with her to bend his head.
"Doesn"t that disprove your theory that I"m ready to let you go?"
"You don"t let me do anything!" Ava launched back at him in a rage. "And I know you wel enough to know that you won"t be ready to let me go until you make that decision."
His ngers feathered slowly through her tousled coppery hair and curved to her taut jaw. "You"re a lot of hard work but I stil burn for you."
Ava ung back her head in de ance. "Wel , my ame"s gone out. Common sense snuf ed it," she traded.
"What the hel does common sense have to do with this?" Vito demanded thickly, crushing her stubbornly compressed mouth beneath his and revel ing in the way her soft ful lips opened for him as the tip of his tongue scored that sealed seam.
His mouth devoured her and she wanted to eat him His mouth devoured her and she wanted to eat him alive, powered by a frantic desire that terri ed her when she was trying so hard to make him see sense. But there was no sense in that al -encompa.s.sing overwhelming hunger that gripped her. Her hands came up of their own volition to cup his high cheekbones and then threaded into his thick silky hair. The spicy scent and taste of him only made her want more ... always more.
When did she reach satiation level? When would that terrible craving ease enough to al ow her to hold it at bay?
"I"m packed, I"m leaving," she mumbled obstinately when he freed her swol en mouth long enough to let her breathe again.
"I could chain you to the headboard to keep you here,"
Vito told her silkily as he closed a possessive hand round a ful breast below her sweater, a thumb ma.s.saging the already swol en peak. "Now doesn"t that open an interesting field of possibilities?"
Ava trembled, s.e.xual frissons of sensation running through her like liquid lightning. "Only if you"re a perv,"
she told him doggedly.
"You like it when I"m dominant in bed," Vito traded with fiery erotic a.s.surance in his stunning eyes.
Ava planted her hands to his shoulders and pushed forward, o balancing him back against the pil ows. A wol sh grin split his bronzed features and he laughed with rich appreciation, hauling her down on top of him with rich appreciation, hauling her down on top of him with shocking strength to take her mouth again with ravishing force. She shivered violently, insanely aware of the male arousal resting like a red-hot brand against her and the hand sliding down over her quivering stomach below her unfastened jeans to tease her with knowing expertise.
"Don"t forget that I"m an equal opportunities employer," Vito reminded her raggedly, lifting her out of her jeans with more haste than finesse.
"I"m in the middle of packing!" Ava raked at him in a frustration steadily becoming more laced with self-loathing.
"But you"re not going anywhere now," Vito pointed out, shedding his jeans with positive violence and drawing her back up against him, al hot and ready and hard.
"We should have discussed this like civilised adults-"
"You talk too much," Vito told her, delicately tracing her lush opening with carnal skil and then, having established her readiness from the whimper of anguished sound that exited her straining lungs, he shifted over her and sank into her with a raw primal sound of satisfaction that she found insanely arousing.
That fast the moment to stand her ground was lost and her body took over, her hips angling up to accept more of him ... and then more and then, heavens, the pulsing, driving ful ness of him was pushing her closer and closer driving ful ness of him was pushing her closer and closer to the edge she had never thought to visit again with him.
In the aftermath, his heart stil thundering over hers, she held him close, adoring the weight and intimacy of him that close, wanting and barely resisting the urge to cover him in kisses. But while her body was satis ed, her brain was not and with every minute that pa.s.sed she was seeing deeper into herself. She wanted to run away because she was scared of get ing hurt. Why was she likely to get hurt? Solely because she felt too much for him. She was hopelessly, deeply and irretrievably at ached to Vito Barbieri, indeed as much in love as a woman could be with a man. For too long she had denied her true feelings, suppressed them and refused out of fear to examine them.
"And now you"re thinking too much ... for a sensible adult," Vito reproved, noting her evasively lowered lashes and mutinously closed lips before he lowered his handsome head to rub a stubbled cheek against the soft slope of her breast and drink in the familiar scent of her with a sense of bone-deep satisfaction. "This isn"t complex. We"re in a good place right now ... don"t spoil it, gioia mia."
"I need a shower," she said stubbornly, whipping her clinging arms of him again.
"You are so obstinate," Vito grated, rol ing o her with sudden alacrity and viewing her with forbidding cool sudden alacrity and viewing her with forbidding cool from the other side of the bed.
"Whatever turns you on," Ava replied glibly.
And she did, any time of day, every time, al the time, Vito mused grudgingly, watching the lithe swing of her slim curvy hips and spot ing the tat oo of his name inked onto her pale skin as she vanished into the bathroom.
Ava had taught him what a weekend was, how to walk away from work, daydream in important meetings. She was like an express train to a side of life he had never known before and sometimes it spooked him. He should have let her leave, a lit le voice intoned deep in the back of his mind, get his work focus back on track, return to ... normal? Yet being with Ava felt astonishingly normal even when her backchat was ricocheting o the wal s around him. The phone by the bed buzzed and he flipped over to answer it.
In the shower, Ava was scrubbing the wanton evidence of her weakness from her skin when Vito appeared in the doorway, a towering bronzed gure with a physique to die for.
She rammed the shower door back. "Don"t I get peace anywhere?" she sniped.
"That was Eleanor on the phone. Your sisters have arrived for a visit-she put them in the drawing room."
Ava froze in stark shock and equal y sudden pleasure.
"Gina and Bel a have come here to see me?"
"Obviously they read that newspaper article ... or your "Obviously they read that newspaper article ... or your ex-father gure talked. Dress up," Vito advised. "You don"t want them feeling sorry for you."
"Or thinking that you would consort with a poorly dressed woman," Ava completed cheekily.
"I"d consort with you no mat er what you wore," Vito imparted with a lazy sardonic smile.
"But you probably prefer me in nothing," Ava pointed out drily.
Her mind awash with speculation, Ava dug in haste through her extensive col ection of new clothes. Gina and Bel a, both in their thirties, were always wel groomed.
Vito"s comment had struck a raw nerve. Ava didn"t want to look like an object of pity, particularly after the humble let ers she had sent in hope of renewed contact with her siblings had been ignored. So, why on earth were they coming to see her now? Her generous mouth down curved as she wondered if her sisters were planning to ask her to leave the neighbourhood to protect them from embarra.s.sment. Gina, married to an engineer, and Bel a, married to a solicitor, had always seemed very conscious of what their friends and neighbours might think of their mother and her drink problems. Elegant in a soft dove-grey dress teamed with a pale lavender cardigan, her revealingly tumbled hair careful y secured to the back of her head, Ava slid her feet into heels and went downstairs.
Nerves were eating her alive by the time she opened Nerves were eating her alive by the time she opened the drawing-room door. Vito was not there. Gina and Bel a were smal , blonde and curvy like their late mother and both women swiftly stood up to look at her.
Recognising the p.r.o.nounced lack of physical similarity between her sisters and herself, Ava marvel ed that it had not previously occurred to her to wonder if they had had dif erent parentage.
"I hope you don"t mind us cal ing in for a chat," Gina said awkwardly. "We came on impulse after seeing that photo of you in the paper with Vito Barbieri. Dad didn"t realise that you were staying here at the castle when you visited him and Janet yesterday."
"I don"t think he would have cared had I come down on a rocket from the moon," Ava declared wryly as she sat down opposite the other two women. "I was only in their home for about ve minutes and once he"d said his piece there didn"t seem to be anything more to say."
"Wel , actual y there is more," Bel a spoke up tensely.
"Dad might stil feel that he has an axe to grind over the fact that he chose to pretend that you were his child al those years but, no mat er what Mum did, you"re stil our sister, Ava."
"Half-sister," Ava quali ed sti y, unable to forget her unanswered let ers. "And let"s face it, we"ve never been close."
"We may have grown up in a very dysfunctional family," Gina acknowledged, compressing her lips. "But family," Gina acknowledged, compressing her lips. "But we don"t agree with the way Dad is behaving now. He"s made everything more di cult for the three of us. He demanded that we keep you out of our lives. He prefers to act like you don"t exist."
"And for too long we played along with Dad for the sake of family peace," Bel a admit ed unhappily.
"And sometimes we used his at itude to you as an excuse as wel ," Gina added guiltily. "Like us not coming to see you while you were in prison. To be frank, I didn"t want to go into a prison and be vet ed and then searched like a criminal just for the privilege of visiting you."
"We did once get as close as the prison gates," Bel a volunteered with a wince of embarra.s.sed uneasiness.
"Prison-visiting ... it just seemed so sordid," Gina con ded more frankly. "And the gates and the guards were intimidating."
"I can understand that," Ava said and she did.
Eleanor Dobbs entered with a laden tray of co ee and cakes, providing a welcome distraction from the tension stretching between the three women.
"Mum wrote a let er to you just before she died," Gina volunteered once the door had closed behind the housekeeper again.
Ava sat up straight and almost spilt her cup of co ee in the process. "A ... let er?"
in the process. "A ... let er?"
"That"s why we tried to work ourselves up to come and visit you-to give you the let er," Bel a confessed.
"Why didn"t you just post it to me?" Ava demanded angrily. "Why didn"t anyone ask if I could visit her before she died? I didn"t even know she was il ."
"Mum pa.s.sed away very quickly," Gina told the younger woman heavily. "Her liver was wrecked. Dad didn"t want you informed and Mum insisted that she couldn"t face seeing you again, so we couldn"t see the point of tel ing you that she was dying."
Ava absorbed those wounding facts without comment.
News of her mother"s death had come as a shocking bolt from the blue while she was in prison. She had been excluded from the entire process. Now she had to accept the even harsher truth that, even dying, her mother had rejected a chance for a last meeting with her. "The let er ..." she began again tightly.
Bel a grimaced. "We didn"t post it because we know prisons go over everything o enders get in the post and the idea of that happening to Mum"s last words didn"t feel right. But we"ve brought it with us ... not that it"s likely to be of much comfort to you."
"Towards the end Mum"s mind was wandering. The let er"s more of a note and it makes no sense." Gina withdrew an envelope from her handsome leather bag and pa.s.sed it across the cof ee table.
"So, you"ve read it, then," Ava gathered.
"So, you"ve read it, then," Ava gathered.
"I had to write it for her, Ava. She was too weak to hold a pen," Bel a explained uncomfortably. "It"s obvious that she was feeling very guilty about you and she did want you to know that."
Ava"s hand trembled and tightened its grip on the crumpled envelope. She stil felt that her sisters could have made more of an e ort to ensure that the let er came to her sooner but she said nothing.
"We al loved her but she wasn"t a normal mum," Gina remarked awkwardly. "Or even a decent wife and we al suf ered for that."
Her at ention resting on Ava"s pinched pro le, Bel a grimaced and murmured, "Let"s leave this subject alone for the moment. Are we al owed to satisfy our crazy curiosity and ask what you"re doing living in Bolderwood Castle?"
"I"m organising the Christmas party for Vito," Ava advanced. "Everything else just sort of happened."
"Everything else?" Gina probed delicately. "You used to be besot ed with him."
"I got over that," Ava declared, privately re ecting that proximity to Vito and a closer understanding with him had merely made her reach a whole new level of besot edness.
"Come on, Ava. The whole countryside is talking and you"re kil ing us here," Bel a complained. "Spil the beans, for goodness" sake!"
beans, for goodness" sake!"
As the door opened Ava was rol ing her eyes in receipt of Bel a"s pleading look and saying, "Vito"s not my partner or my boyfriend, nor are we involved in anything serious ... he"s just my lover."
"Outside the bedroom door I rarely know where I am with your sister!" Vito quipped without bat ing a single magni cent eyelash while he strol ed uidly across the room to greet her sisters as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Registering that Vito had heard that unplanned statement, Ava turned a painful beetroot shade, her discom ture intense. But she hadn"t wanted her siblings to get any ambitious ideas about where her relationship with Vito might be heading and a dose of plain speaking had seemed the best approach to take. Ava watched as her siblings reacted predictably to Vito"s stunning good looks and white-hot s.e.x appeal. Gina stared at him trans xed while Bel a giggled ingratiatingly at almost everything he said. Vito, in comparison, was smooth as silk as he invited her sisters to the Christmas party and asked them about their children. As distanced as though she were on another planet while she had that al - important let er stil clutched in her hand, Ava learned that Bel a had given birth to a baby boy the previous year, a brother to round out her trio of daughters. Gina, of course, never as child-orientated, stil had only one child, a ten-year-old son, and a successful career as a photo-journalist.
photo-journalist.
Ava was stunned to hear Vito invite her sisters and their husbands to at end the private lunch that was always staged for his closest friends before the party kicked of in the afternoon.
"Why did you do that?" she demanded accusingly when her siblings had gone.
"It seemed polite and you do want your sisters back in your life again, don"t you?" Vito asked level y.
"Sort of ..." Too much had happened too fast for Ava to be sure of what she wanted, aside of Vito. He was the one constant she did not need to measure in terms of importance and that hurt as wel . How could she have been stupid enough to let her guard down and fal for him again?
"What"s wrong?" Vito prompted, watching troubled expressions skim across her expressive face like fast-moving clouds.
Ava explained about the let er.
"Why haven"t you opened it yet?"
"I"m afraid to," she admit ed tightly, her blue eyes dark with strain. "Bel a implied it would be disappointing. It"s one thing to imagine, something else to actual y see her words on paper. If it"s unpleasant those words wil live with me for ever."
"Maybe I should open it for you ..." Vito suggested.
But such a concession to weakness was more than Ava But such a concession to weakness was more than Ava could bear and she slit open the envelope to extract a single piece of lined notepaper adorned with Bel a"s copperplate script.
Ava, I"m so sorry, sorrier than you wil ever know. I made such a mess of my life and now I"ve messed up yours as wel . I"m sorry I couldn"t face visiting you in that place or even seeing you here in hospital- should the authorities have agreed to let you out to visit me. But I couldn"t face you. The damage has been done and it"s too late for me to do anything about it. I wanted to keep my marriage together-I always put that rst and it couldn"t have survived what I did at the last. I do love you but even now I"m too scared to tel you the truth-it would make you hate me.
Eyes wet with tears of regret and disappointment for she had had high hopes of what she might nd in the let er, Ava pushed the notepaper into Vito"s hand. "It doesn"t make any sense at al . I don"t know what"s she"s talking about," she declared in frustration. "Gina said Mum was confused and she must have been to dictate that for Bel a to write."
Frowning down at the incomprehensible let er, Vito replaced it in the envelope. "Obviously your mother felt very guilty about the way she treated you."
very guilty about the way she treated you."
"Did she think I"d hate her when I found out that I wasn"t her husband"s child?" Her brow furrowed, Ava shook her head, conceding that she would never know for sure what her mother had meant by her words. "What else could she have meant?"
Vito rested a soothing hand against the slender rigidity of her spine. "There"s no point get ing upset about it now, bel a mia. If your sisters are equal y bewildered, there"s no way of answering your questions."
He was always so blasted practical and grounded, Ava re ected rueful y. He didn"t su er from emotional highs or lows or a highly coloured imagination. Reluctant to reveal that she was unable to take such a realistic view of the situation when the woman concerned had been dead for almost eighteen months, Ava said nothing.
His mobile phone rang and he dug it out with an apologetic glance in her direction. That was an improvement, Ava conceded. In the s.p.a.ce of lit le more than a week, Vito had gone from answering constant cal s and forget ing her existence while he talked at length to keeping the cal s brief and treating them like the interruptions they were. She focused on his bold bronzed pro le as he moved restively round the room, another frown drawing his straight black brows together.
For once the cal er was doing most of the talking, for his responses were brief.
Ava was staring out of the window at the white world Ava was staring out of the window at the white world of snow-covered trees and lawn stretching into the distance when he finished the cal .
"I"m afraid I have to go out," Vito murmured flatly.