Free The Sicilian's Mistress by Lynne Graham

twilight, Faith focused on his lean bronzed features with a heart that was chilled even as its beat involuntarily quickened. His dark, deep-set eyes had an aggressive golden glimmer that challenged. He was tougher than titanium and he wasn’t going to quit. ‘You’re so unfeeling,’ she condemned unevenly.
    Moving fluidly forward, Gianni braced one lean hand against the trunk and stared down at her, spiky black lashes low over his slumbrous gaze. ‘Am I?’ he questioned in a lazy undertone as smooth as black silk.
    That deep, dark drawl sent tiny little shivers running down her taut spinal cord. Her bemused eyes locked to his and feverish tension snaked through her. For the space of a heartbeat she wanted to move away, and then she wasn’t sure what she had wanted or even why she might have wanted it. As rational thought blurred, other more intrusive physical sensations took precedence.
    That close, Gianni truly mesmerized her. Her breathing quickened, her mouth running dry. Dark excitement flowered into being inside her. Her muscles tightened on a delicious thrilling edge. The sudden aching fullness of her breasts and the urgent sensitivity of her nipples made her tremble, every pulse racing at fevered speed.
    She could hardly breathe as Gianni watched her with the still golden eyes of a hunter. He brought up his other hand and let his thumb slowly graze the full curve of her lower lip. At the first touch of his hand, heat burst into being low in her pelvis, and she was betrayed into a tiny startled gasp. As Connor played at their feet, Gianni let long fingers curve to her flushed cheekbone and slowly he smiled. Faith braced herself against the tree to stay upright. That smile dazzled her, knocked her sideways, and filled her with an elemental hunger so powerful it hurt.
    â€˜Poor Edward…’ Gianni husked with indolent satisfaction as he withdrew his hand and straightened again with innate grace. ‘This is all about to blow up in his face. Let him go before it gets dirty, cara .’
    Only slowly emerging from what felt vaguely like a partial black-out, Faith stared with darkened eyes up at the tall, dark male towering over her as if he had suddenly become the devil incarnate. Now she recognised the studied insolence of that smile. The frantic heat that had filled her with such mindless yearning seconds earlier now engulfed her in shame. How could she be attracted to him like this? How could she be? Maybe it was the disorientating sense of having one foot lodge in the past and the other foot threatening to buckle in the present. All of a sudden it was so difficult to know what she was really feeling.
    â€˜Leave Edward out of this!’ she told him, with all the fierceness of her own guilty mortification.
    â€˜But he’s right in the middle,’ Gianni responded with supreme cool. ‘So why drag out his demise? There’s no contest, is there?’
    â€˜I don’t know wh-what you’re talking about,’ Faith stammered, although she was dreadfully afraid that she did, and what he was now suggesting terrified her.
    Gianni dealt her a long, slow, sardonic look. ‘I don’t have much compassion to spare in Benson’s direction, but I’m fair enough to concede that he didn’t know he was poaching on my territory…so let him go now.’
    â€˜Your territory?’ Faith parroted, scarcely believing her ears.
    Gianni ran a mocking fingertip down the exposed line of her extended throat and watched her jerk and instinctively lean closer. ‘You’re still mine, cara . You don’t have any resistance to me at all. But then you never did have… I want you back, Milly.’
    â€˜You couldn’t possibly! You’re nothing to do with me any more. Our only connection now is Connor!’ Faith asserted in a feverish rush of protest. Hurrying forward, she stoopedto grab her son’s hand and turn back the way they had come.