Free Flora's Defiance by Lynne Graham Page B

poker-faced, the smooth, darkly handsome planes of his lean visage taut with self-discipline. He was determined not to put any real emotion on show, she realised with regret. Yet he was pure volatile male below that cool, calculated front that he showed to the world, she reasoned ruefully. She could not resist recalling the shockingly hot and explosive surge of the passion he had unleashed in Amsterdam. Heat slowly crept up from low in her tummy to the responsive peaks of her breasts, stiffening her nipples into tight dagger points below her clothing.
    ‘Don’t look at me like that,
enamorada mia,’
Angelo purred, his rich drawl low and rough-edged in pitchwhile he surveyed her with his amazing royal-blue eyes, the dark pupils as dilated as no doubt her own were.
    Suddenly the atmosphere was thick as wet cement and the breath rattled in her throat. ‘What does
enamor
—whatever—mean?’
    ‘My lover,’ Angelo supplied huskily.
    ‘No, I’m not, not really,’ she reasoned jerkily, fighting the compulsive pull of his charismatic masculinity with all her might, for every skin cell and nerve-ending she possessed was urging her to walk right into his arms.
    His stunning eyes, accentuated by the ebony luxuriance of his lashes, narrowed to become even more devouring and magnetic. ‘Then, what are you?’
    Denying her vulnerability, Flora deliberately dropped her attention to study the floor at their feet. ‘A mistake?’
    ‘That is not how this feels,’ Angelo growled, reaching out a hand to close long brown fingers round her wrist and tug her closer. But he knew he was lying, because that same word was flashing on and off like a warning neon sign at the back of his brain. Yet, as his attention slid from the pouting cherry-tinted invitation of her luscious mouth to the telling indentation of her prominent nipples below her top he had never been further from intellectual control; he was hard and erect and hungry for the tight sheath of her body and that was all that mattered to him.
    As Angelo drew her to him dismay sent Flora’s lashes skyward, green eyes flaring bright as jewels as she looked up at his bronzed sculpted features, scanning the slash of his high cheekbones, the jut of his arrogant masculine nose and his obstinate jaw line. This late inthe day his golden-toned skin was steadily darkening with a shadow of stubble that simply highlighted his beautifully shaped mouth. Colliding with his startlingly blue eyes, she was utterly transfixed: he truly was gorgeous.
    ‘Mistake,’ she told him again unevenly. ‘We’re a mistake—’
    Her voice died beneath the passionate onslaught of his sensual lips plunging down on hers and it was as if cautionary buzzers went off throughout her taut, quivering body. She craved him like a woman starved of oxygen, stretching up to kiss him back with fervour, needing and revelling in that heady taste of him with every fibre of her being.
    She heard the whirr as the doors opened and he backed her out of the lift without breaking their connection. She stumbled in her heels until her spine was braced against a solid wall and she felt his hands splay to her hips, tilting her pelvis into provocative collision with the urgent thrust of his erection. A split second later, she was free again and reeling dizzily back against the wall for support with her body still greedily humming while she struggled to rescue her wits.
    A mere step away, expelling his breath in an audible roughened hiss, Angelo thrust wide the door of his apartment for her entry. It was an effort for him to be that controlled. In fact it was a wonder that he wasn’t still trying to take Flora out on the landing, he acknowledged with derision, resenting and distrusting her sexual power over him. She roused the hot-headed all-consuming sexuality he had believed he had left behind him. With Flora sex was elemental and as fierce and basic in its energy as ahurricane. Still hugely aroused, he was fighting a driving