Page 30 of Bound By The Italian’s 'I Do'

She looked at the snooker table. While they’d been bantering, Gianni had cleared the table so only the black ball remained. She couldn’t beat his score with the value of it.

‘Do I get my prize?’

‘What prize? You cheated,’ she accused.

‘No, I didn’t.’ He placed his cue on the table and stalked to her. ‘I was observing. Your bottom really is delectable.’

Heart thumping again, she sidestepped away from him and pulled the triangle for the red balls out of the slot. ‘You distracted me. Play again without cheating.’

‘You call that a distraction?Bella, that isnothingon what I could have done.’

Her pelvis practically contracted at the meaning, but she kept her focus. ‘I call it cheating, and you’re going to play fairly this time. I’ll make the break.’

Completely blurring him from her vision, Issy ordered fresh drinks over the intercom then set the table. After chalking her cue, she folded herself to take the first shot but before she could hit the cue, she forgot to keep blurring Gianni and he appeared in her line of sight. He’d removed his polo shirt. His glorious chest was naked.

His eyes gleamed as he noticed that she’d noticed. Raising his drink to her, he said in an innocent tone, ‘I was getting hot.’

‘Then turn the air-conditioning up.’

‘And waste power unnecessarily?’ He tutted in disappointment. ‘Feel free to remove your own clothes if you find it hot too.’

‘Shut up.’ Issy gritted her teeth to concentrate and hit the white ball with just enough force for it to reach the triangle of reds without breaking them up.

Gianni stepped to the table, hardly glanced at the balls as he took his shot and smashed them. Two reds dropped into the pockets.

Within ten minutes he’d cleared the table. Other than making the opening break, Issy didn’t get a single shot. It was a masterclass in snooker, as good as anything she’d watched on TV as a child.

But she’d hardly paid attention to the shots. Throughout, Gianni kept his focus entirely on the table, not looking at her once. There had been nothing for her to fight against, no sensuous glances, no velvet-delivered innuendoes...

She’d fallen into a trance, mesmerised by the raw grace of the man and the beauty of his masculinity as he’d demolished the table.

By the time he potted the black ball for the last time and, finally, lifted his eyes to her, she couldn’t have torn her gaze from him if she’d tried.

A smile slowly ghosted his face. Casually placing his cue on the table, he drained his Scotch and, with the gait and expression of a lion approaching its prey, stalked to her.

His eyes were intent, deadly, his words husky. ‘I think that has earned me my prize.’

Her heart filled her chest with thick, heavy beats.

Fight or flight. That’s what prey experienced when their senses registered the big cat emerging from the flora. Those semi-seconds of intuition and experience before adrenaline kicked in was the entire difference between life and death. Fight a lethal predator bigger than you and die. Take flight a moment too late and die.

There came a point when every captured prey gave up the fight and welcomed death to release them from the pain.

Gianni had captured her that night in London. She’d arrived at the club having badly underestimated the power of his sexuality and spent every waking moment since battling her own reactions to it.

She couldn’t run any more. The will to fight had deserted her.

Submitting didn’t mean death. Gianni wouldn’t inflict pain on her, only pleasure, and for this one night, she wanted to explore where that pleasure could take them because she knew, with a marrow-deep certainty, that she could live a hundred lives and never feel what she felt for Gianni with anyone else.

Feeling a strange combination of shyness and boldness, Issy took a step towards him. ‘What prize?’ she whispered.

Gianni’s chest swelled before he splayed a hand against her back to draw her flush to him. Her eyes were wide and filled with the desire he caught so often in them, but they were filled with something else too that he’d never seen before, an openness, as if she’d ripped an invisibility cloak away.

He dipped his face to hers. ‘You.’

As their mouths fused together, Gianni had the strangest sensation that this was Issy kissing him. Issy, the young woman in the screenshot with the ice cream sundae, not Issy the polished seductress. Whichever Issy it was, he hungered for her with a power that was coming close to taking possession of him, and as her lips and tongue danced against his, the electricity that had flickered and crackled between them the entire day magnified and fired huge jolts through his veins and deep into his loins.

Dragging his fingers down her back, he clasped the bottom he’d spent most of the day fantasising about and gathered the silk of her dress until it was high enough for him to lift her onto the snooker table.

---