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Gwenna rested her chin on his shoulder, absently drinking in the warm and already familiar scent of his skin. ‘I wasn’t there when it happened but I used to dream I saw my mother’s car crash. Then when I was at boarding-school—’ Angelo tensed. ‘When was that?’ ‘I was ten when Dad first set up home with Eva and her daughters. Unfortunately, Penelope and Wanda didn’t take to me and, for the sake of peace, I was sent off to school. I hated it.’ ‘Why…were you bullied?’ ‘For waking the other girls up with my nightmares and being a terrible cry-baby.’ Gwenna winced in remembered shame over her past weakness. ‘I was horribly homesick—’ Angelo reached behind him with a long arm and tipped her round and deftly forward into his lap. ‘I was too, but I didn’t have a home to go to any more.’ ‘You boarded too?’ ‘My mother was dead and her generous employer paid for my education at an exclusive school. I didn’t fit in. Sardinian mothers spoil their sons. I spoke lousy English, and I was a science geek and very small—’ Gwenna squinted up at his shadowy profile.’ Small?’ she interrupted in disbelief.
Angelo nodded. ‘Tiny…I didn’t shoot up until I was well into my teens.’ ‘Were you bullied too?’ ‘Of course not.’ But Gwenna caught a certain intonation in his dark-timbred drawl and sighed.
‘Yes, you were . I can tell.’ ‘How? With your crystal ball, bella mia ?’ Long, taunting fingers explored beneath the shirt she wore and she shivered, her breath catching in her throat.
He cupped a pouting breast and in coaxing its tender pink nipple to straining prominence he provoked a gasp from between her lips.
‘Stop trying to distract me…’ she muttered breathlessly.
Angelo swung her down onto the bed beside him and shifted over her in one lithe motion, angling his hips into the soft cradle between her thighs to acquaint her with his thrusting hardness. Scorching eyes scorned her reproachful scrutiny.
‘Is that what I’m doing?’ ‘But I want to know…Ireally want to know what happened to you to make you sound so scared!’ she protested.
His fabulous bone structure clenched hard and he was pale. ‘I was burned with cigarettes, kicked where it most hurts and beaten up.’ ‘Oh my word…’ She was overcome by horror and consternation, and her eyes glistened, awash with moisture. ‘Angelo…that’s awful. And you still dream about it?’ ‘Sì…’Even as he wondered why the hell he had told her, Angelo was surveying her reaction in fascination.
Gwenna struggled to fight off the tears of sympathy without much success. She gulped, swallowed, sniffed and finally linked her arms tightly round him and hugged him hard. She was thinking of that bewildered and bright little boy, suddenly deprived of a loving mother and plunged into an alien environment.
‘It made me tough…I was too soft,bellezza mia . It was good for me—’ ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ Gwenna gasped, sucking in a steadying breath of oxygen. ‘I mean, I was just teased and scolded. But you were brutalized—’ ‘Do you think I deserve a sympathy shag?’ Angelo enquired in silken interruption.
Her clogged lashes lifted on troubled blue eyes. ‘Sometimes you can be really offensive.’ Almost imperceptible colour scored his superb cheekbones.
‘And the answer is no…not because I’m annoyed with you but because—and I find this very embarrassing—I think I would find it rather uncomfortable right now.’ Grinding to a mortified halt as she referred to the fact that she was rather sore, she bit her lip and turned her face away.
Angelo hadn’t thought of that possibility and guilt came out of nowhere and attacked him full force. It was less then forty-eight hours since she had been a virgin and he had been pretty demanding as well as passionate. Either he had a cold shower or he introduced her to a more creative way of satisfying his high sex drive.
‘I can be a selfish bastard,’ he remarked and waited confidently for her to argue that description.
But it did not even occur to Gwenna to contradict him for a statement she considered accurate. ‘Maybe we could…later.’ ‘Later I’ll be in New York,cara mia ,’ Angelo groaned in frustration, releasing her reluctantly from his weight but tugging her into his arms, fully intent on attacking her learning curve.
Gwenna squinted at the face of the clock by the bed and gasped. ‘My goodness, is that the time?’ ‘It’s only half past six,’ Angelo told her gently.
