He’d tried to start a conversation a few times, but she’d given him one or two-word answers before he seemed to understand her feelings and had gone silent.
And his silence had helped her relax.
With the sun on her face and the fervent caress of the wind on her cheek, she’d relaxed into the bucket seat and let her eyes close as she filled her lungs with the fresh air of her home town.
When she opened her eyes, it felt like it had only been a minute, but the tall bricked buildings towering over her told her that she’d likely fallen asleep.
It made sense. At least to her.
The night before, knowing that Uberto was in the house, she’d had a difficult time resting. She wanted to blame it on the unfamiliar bedroom, but what had shaken her awake no less than five times the night before, were dreams of Uberto with his hands and mouth all over her body.
She would never have tried to say that she was unaffected by his visit. Emiliana was more than cognizant of his ability to shake her from across the room. Heaven knows she’d always dreamed of him, even when he was thousands of miles away, but having him so close… only made it worse.
Thousands of times worse.
And now as she turned her head to look at him in the driver’s seat, the look in his eyes said that he was affected by her too.
It wasn’t his natural mischievous smile that greeted her.
No, the look in Uberto’s eyes was focused, on her. As she watched him, she’d seen breath after breath slowly expand his chest, his eyes darkening with his bear.
And her bear, the shameless little hussy, came prowling up to the surface.
She heard a growl in her ears and knew by the way the vibrations tickled along her skin, that it was from him.
Before she could offer up some scathing comment, she felt her bear return the greeting. The vibrations rushed through her like ocean currents, sweeping away her frustration and leaving her in a languid state where the soft caress of her clothes against her skin was almost as arousing as the heat in his gaze.
“You look,” he seemed confused at the sound of his own voice, “lovely, Ana. So very lovely.” His gaze dipped down and she followed it with her own.
Her hand, which had been holding her skirt to her thigh was now resting on the console between them in the convertible, and her skirt had slipped away from her knee toward the top of her thigh, revealing the soft silken shimmer of her stockings, and the lacy edge flirted with the curved flounce of her skirt hem, revealing the outline of her garter clip.
She bit her teeth into her bottom lip as she lifted her gaze to his face.
He was already watching her, his breaths fillings his chest as his eyes went midnight dark.
She knew the moment her eyes matched his. She felt her bear as if she was just under her skin, all over her body. The edges of her sight had darkened with a little halo of light at the edges, like an eclipse.
Emiliana felt her fingers curl on the console, dragging the tips against the hard shell of the car’s interior.
It took everything inside of her to wrestle the building control that her bear wanted to exert on her body. She knew she had to make a move. She had to get out of the car before she climbed over the middle of the console to straddle his lap and steal the breath from his lungs.
She wanted to blame this feeling on him. Excuse this new physical demand on the easy elegance of his tailored clothing, his freshly shaved face, the scent of his skin that reached out across the narrow interior of the car.
But she left her hands where they were.
She worried that any movement would free her bear from her hard-won control.
Almost too late, she was saved by the bell.
The ringing melody of the bells in the church tower seemed to sever the thread that had kept her in thrall.
With a gasping, indrawn breath, Emiliana turned away toward the door and quickly unbuckled her seatbelt. When Uberto opened her door, she took his hand and was proud to see that her own didn’t shake when she touched him.
A small miracle, but she held tightly to the little victory, knowing that it wouldn’t last.