Page 21 of The Maid Married To The Billionaire

Skye spun round with a moisture-beaded glass of water for him. He set it down on the counter behind her and stared down at her with intense dark golden eyes. ‘You shouldn’t be crying about that bastard, you should be celebrating the fact that you escaped him!’

‘That letter upset me. I’ll get over it. And I wasn’t crying abouthim, I was crying about how stupid I was to trust him and now the kids have had all this upheaval...’

‘Your siblings are perfectly happy here.’

‘Enzo...working here is only a staging post because it’s temporary. I have to think of the future and we’ll be moving onagain.’

His hands slid down from her shoulders to her hands. ‘Take a deep breath and give yourself time to recover from what happened to you first. It’s much too soon for you to be freaking out about the future.’

‘I wish it was, but I’ve already been here two weeks and in another six weeks you may be gone,’ she pointed out, frantically striving not to look at his bare chest.

Half naked, there was so much of him, an expanse of bronzed hair-roughened muscular flesh that any woman would have gawped at. He towered over her with his taut abs, well-developed biceps and a flat stomach framed by that fabled vee of lean muscle leading down to his hips. Perspiration broke out on her short upper lip as she looked up at him, connecting with stormy dark-as-night eyes, beautiful eyes, changeable according to mood, she had long since learned. The tension in the atmosphere was stifling her ability to breathe. She sucked in air a little desperately.

Enzo ran a long finger along the lower line of her lips, feeling that soft pillowy mouth he wanted under his and fighting that instinct with all his might. Holding her breath tight, in a spirit of unfamiliar daring, Skye lifted her hand and shakily traced the waistband of his jeans. He was as aroused as she was. The prominent bulge below the denim assured her of that and it made her feel almost light-headed with satisfaction, vindicating the feminine power that Ritchie had assured her she didn’t have. One of the many insults he had hurled while she’d lain on that floor in terror had been that she was sexless and frigid, useless to any normal man.

‘You don’t want this,’ Enzo told her hoarsely.

‘What I don’t want,’ she whispered unevenly, ‘is another man makingmychoices for me.’

‘I’m trying to protect you,’ Enzo gritted between clenched teeth, because with every breath she drew her small breasts stirred beneath the thin pyjama top she wore, the peaks of her nipples indenting the cloth, and he wanted to grab her, ravish her, do everything his raging libido demanded that he do. His lean hands clenched into knotted fists by his side.

‘I can protect myself,’ Skye argued, spinning round to walk away, chin lifted against rejection, determined not to betray that another ego-squashing wound had been inflicted.

Enzo ground something out in explosive Italian and then lifted her up against him to set her down on the table edge, standing back again, deliberately not crowding her. ‘You need a friend right now,nota lover.’

The ease with which he lifted her off her feet and set her down again struck her as ridiculously sexy. He was strong but he didn’t use that strength against her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a friend with benefits,’ Skye heard herself say.

And that declaration disagreed with every moral tenet and ideal Skye had ever cherished and she knew it did. But she wanted Enzo, and she was willing to fib because she knew that it would only ever be a passing thing with him and that there was no other way of being with him. Either she accepted that, or she didn’t. But right now, after her life had fallen in round her ears with every hope and expectation destroyed, she was struggling to find her feet in a new world and somehow being desired by Enzo made her feel better, so much better she couldn’t believe it.

‘I’m not sure I can believe that you mean that,’ Enzo murmured, searching dark golden eyes compelling hers. ‘I was very sure you were a white-picket-fence girl with a church at the end of the drive.’

Skye flushed to the very roots of her hair because Enzo had already had her labelled and he was entirely correct with his estimate. She had wanted love, she had wanted a wedding, she had wanted everything perfect, only to discover that life was not perfect any more than men were or even she was. And now she was in a new place, ready to try something different, something more, something much bolder than her usual choices.

‘I’m changing my outlook.’

Enzo rested his mesmeric dark golden eyes on her hot face. ‘But I don’t want you doing that just for me. I don’t want to hurt you. With me, it’s sex and a good time. There’s nothing else on offer,’ he spelt out curtly.

Skye gulped because that sounded so harsh and hurtful and risky and she wasn’t a risk-taker, never had been. It sounded like a devil’s bargain for a young woman who believed in love, who was already getting more attached than she should be to the man in front of her. She swallowed hard, her hands gripping the edge of the table as she sat there. ‘I understand.’

‘I don’t think I’d be much good at anything deeper,’ Enzo breathed in a roughened undertone.

But he had a huge heart even though he hid it to the very best of his ability, Skye reflected, confused by him and by all the conflicting messages he gave her. His actions with her had taught her to trust in that heart of his even though he was not emotionally available to her. He could be warm and gentle one moment, then cold and hard the next. He was unfathomable, unpredictable, everything she had once avoided in a man. Her brain screamed that she would be making a mistake but thought had no control over instinct and every instinct she possessed drew her to Enzo.

‘You deserve a much nicer guy,’ Enzo added, still stubbornly holding back.

Skye looked up at him and laughed because she couldn’t help it. She stretched out her arms to tug him closer, hands travelling up his taut spine to his shoulders and even sitting on the table it was a stretch for her. ‘Shut up, Enzo...please stop talking and just kiss me...’

CHAPTER SIX

ENZOLOOKEDDOWNinto those entrancing lilac eyes of hers and all his disciplined restraint evaporated in the same moment. His hands rose of their own volition to cup her triangular face, long fingers slowly spearing into her soft mop of curls.

Her face was already so familiar to him that he wondered sometimes if she reminded him of someone, but she was too individual to be a copy of anyone else. The only woman he had ever known who had breakfast with him without make-up on. The only woman who finished a phone call even faster than he did. The only woman, who seemed to see him for who he was rather than what he possessed and who treated him accordingly, just as if he was the same as everyone else. And best of all, Skye had not a clue how special it was for someone like him to be treated as though he was no one special either. In much the same way, he registered, he had not a clue why he found that so appealing a trait.

‘Enzo...’ Skye urged, every fibre of her being tensely awaiting the slow descent of his lips onto hers, his lips brushing back and forth over hers, so gentle, so stimulating as he gathered her up off the table like a doll and literally welded her to every muscular line of his long, hard body. Every sensitive spot she possessed squirmed with delight at that full contact and she gasped. It was like the kiss in the car, like sticking her finger in an electric socket, like a tidal wave engulfing her. Excitement rolled through her in a heady surge and made her wonder if she could be quite normal in such an overreaction.

When she surfaced, she was in Enzo’s bedroom with no recollection of the journey upstairs. ‘Youcarriedme up here?’ she exclaimed as he settled her down on the tumbled bed.

‘You don’t weigh much more than your little brother. It was hardly an extraordinary feat.’ Enzo laughed.

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