Page 12 of Bound By The Italian’s 'I Do'

Absolutely not!

‘My pleasure,’ she purred, taking the bottle from him and resisting squirting it in his eyes.

Standing behind him, she controlled the urge to squirt it cold straight onto his naked skin and dolloped a load into her hand.

Holding her breath, she put her hands to his back.

The muscles bunched.

Her heart clenched with her lungs.

She rubbed the lotion into the smooth skin. Her heart unclenched and began to pound.

Up to his neck her hands worked, over the shoulder blades, down the spine, around the sides. By the time she reached the waistband of his swim shorts her lack of breath was no longer deliberate and her lips were tingling as she fought their yearning to press a kiss right into the centre of this sculpted masterpiece.

She had to physically force herself to step back, and when he turned and caught her eye, every organ in her body made a double flip.

‘My turn,’ he said, a slow, sensual smile forming.

‘I...’ The urge to lie and say she’d already screened her back was almost stronger than any future potential melanoma threat.

The sense of danger was stronger than ever.

She turned around.

Saying a prayer for luck, she forced air into her lungs and untied her sarong. It floated to her feet.

She heard him take a sharp intake of breath.

Her refilled lungs expelled in a whoosh the moment his fingers made contact with her skin.

Sensation shivered through her, deepening as his fingers slowly caressed the lotion over her back. When they dipped under the thin string holding her excuse of a bikini together, a wild fantasy sprang into her mind of him untying the knot and cupping her aching breasts...

She didn’t even know breastscouldache. She didn’t have to look down to know her nipples had puckered. She couldn’t look down even if she wanted. It was taking everything she had to keep her gaze fixed ahead and to stop her legs from collapsing beneath her.

His fingers skimmed the top of her bikini bottoms. This time she could do nothing to stop the betraying quiver of her body.

Too much sun.

But this was okay! The thought punched through. This was okay. Better than okay. Wasn’t she supposed to be leading Gianni on? Holding his interest in the only way a woman could because all he cared about when it came to women was the superficiality of their appearance and what he could get out of them in the bedroom.

She just had to keep hold of herself and not let her sun-addled brain trick her needy virgin body into believing it could possibly be attracted to one of the men directly responsible for the loss of everything she’d ever held dear. Her body was so starved it would likely react in the same way to any man!

His hands clasped her biceps. He was going to press himself against her.

Without warning to either him or herself, Issy stepped out of his hold, kicked her sandals off and, only just remembering to throw a cheeky grin over her shoulder, ran to the pool and jumped into the cool water.

Gianni didn’t hesitate to follow her.

Dio, there was something about Issy’s skin he reacted to, from her touch on him to his touch on her, infecting the whole of him, soaking him in erotic awareness.

By the time he dived into the pool, she’d swum to the far end, treading water as she faced him.

Half a dozen long strokes and he reached her.

Although she met his stare with that fantastic insouciance, she was trembling.

He closed the gap, gripping the walls of the pool on either side of her slender body, trapping her, and drank in her beauty.

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