'Breakfasting upstairs in the nursery suite.'
His clean-shaven jaw supported by an indolent hand, Luca gazed down at Darcy's startled face with a slow, mocking smile that made her pulses race. Her shocked ap¬praisal absorbed the width of his bare brown shoulders above the sheet. Instantly she knew that he wasn't wearing a stitch.
"This bed was busier than the Rialto at high season last night,' Luca remarked.
'Zia needed the security of being with me. She was too cranky to settle somewhere strange on her own,' Darcy rushed to inform him, heart banging violently against her breastbone as she collided with flaring eyes as bright as shafts of golden sunlight in that lean, dark, devastating face.
'Were the dogs insecure too?'
'They cried at the door, Luca! They were really pa¬thetic...'
'I wonder if I should have tried getting down on all fours and howling. I could have pretended to be a werewolf,' Luca suggested, taking advantage of her confusion to snake out an imprisoning arm and hold her where she was before she could go into sudden retreat. 'Then you would've had every excuse to tie me to the bed again.'
Darcy turned a slow hot crimson. Every inch of skin above the collar of her pyjama top was infiltrated by that sweeping tide of burning colour. Again! That single word was like a depth charge plunging into her memory banks to cause the maximum chaos.
And, worst of all, he was exaggerating. With the aid of his bow tie, she had only got as far as anchoring one wrist before laughter had got the better of her dramatic intentions.
'Speaking as a male who until that night had never, ever relinquished control in the bedroom, I was delightfully sur¬prised by your creativity—'
'I was drunk!' Darcy hissed in anguished self-defence.
'With a passionate desire to live out every fantasy you had ever had. Yes, you told me,' Luca reminded her with¬out remorse as he leant over her and long fingers flicked loose the button at her throat without her noticing. 'You also told me that I was your dream lover...and you were undeniably mine. I don't have dream aspirations, but what I didn't know I was missing, I had in abundance that night, and since then no other woman has managed to satisfy me.'
'You're not serious,' Darcy mumbled shakily, mesmer¬ised by the blaze of that golden gaze holding her own.
'So that is why you are here,' Luca confided with husky exactitude.
'I want to know why I find you so tormentingly attractive when my intelligence tells me that you are full of flaws.'
'Flaws?'
'You don't give a damn about your appearance. You're untidy, disorganised and blunt to the point of insanity. You hack wood like a lumberjack and you let dogs sleep on my bed. And, strange as it is, I have to confess that none of those habits or failings has the slightest cooling effect on my libido...' Lowering his imperious dark head on that admission, Luca skimmed aside the loose-cut pyjama top to press his mouth hotly to the tiny pulse flickering beneath the delicate skin of her throat.
'Oh...what are you doing?' Darcy yelped.
Involuntarily immobilised by the startling burst of warmth igniting low in her belly, she gazed up apprehen¬sively at Luca as he lifted his head.
'Don't do that again,' she muttered weakly, her voice failing to rise to the command level required for the occa¬sion. 'It makes me feel peculiar and we have to talk about things—'
'What sort of things?' Luca enquired thickly.
"That wretched ring for a start—'
‘No.'
'I didn't steal it, Luca! And you should be trying to find out who did!' Darcy told him baldly.
His heated gaze cooled and hardened in the thumping silence.
Darcy gave him a weary, pleading look. 'I wouldn't do something like that...and as soon as I get home I'll be able to prove that the ring my father sold wasn't yours!'
'What do you hope to gain from these absurd lies and promises?' Luca demanded with raw impatience. 'I know that you took the Adorata! It is not remotely possible that anyone else could have carried out that theft. An idiot would confirm your guilt on less evidence than I have!'
'Circumstantial evidence, Luca...nothing more con¬crete,'
'While you refuse to admit the truth, there's nothing to discuss.' Luca studied her flushed and frustrated face with smouldering dark golden eyes. With cool deliberation, he smoothed the tumbled curls from her brow. 'What I want to do at this moment is make passionate love to you.'
'No!'
Luca let a teasing forefinger trail along the taut line of her mutinous lips, watched her shiver in shaken reaction to that contact. 'Even when you want to?'
'I don't want to!'
Suddenly alarmingly short of breath, Darcy looked back at him. Little prickles of tormenting awareness were filling her with tension. She was shamefully conscious of the raw, potent power of his abrasive masculinity, and of its dev¬astating effect on her treacherous body. Already her breasts felt heavy and full, her nipples wantonly taut. The silence pulsed.