Mercifully, the waiting staff chose that moment to deliver exquisitely presented chocolate tarts she would usually fall into raptures over.
She doubted she’d be able to manage a single mouthful. It had been hard enough eating with Gennaro on the other side of the vast room, but with him sitting so close that his thigh was pressed against hers and with his molten eyes holding hers with such desirous intent and his scent swirling into her airwaves with each inhalation, her senses were going haywire.
God, he was just so divinely beautiful and so, so sexy. She hated him. Loathed him. Ached for him.
His body still angled to her, his attention fixed solely on her, he cut into his tart with the side of hisspoon. “You still haven’t told me what your last dining companion said that made you laugh.”
She had to unscramble her brain to think. “He was telling me about his pet dog chewing his specially imported furniture.”
“You looked like you were enjoying his company.”
“I did enjoy it. Very much.”
His eyes narrowed a touch before he brought his mouth to her ear. “Would you have enjoyed it if he’d touched you?”
He’d barely finished asking the question when warm fingers slipped through the split in her dress to caress her naked thigh. The shock of his touch was so strong that she froze.
Molten eyes holding hers, he spooned another mouthful of chocolate tart into his mouth, chewing slowly while the fingers of his left hand made tiny circles on her thigh. “Would you have welcomed his touch?”
Although her external body was frozen, inside she was a giant throb of heat.
His mouth came back to her ear. Warm breath danced over her sensitised skin as his fingers tiptoed a little higher. “Would you have let him do this to you?”
Hot blood was roaring in her ears, and when he drew back, she gazed dazedly into his pulsing stare.
He spooned more chocolate tart into his mouth. His fingers tiptoed a little higher.
“Tell me about yourself, number sixty-four,” he said huskily, as if his hand wasn’t caressing her naked flesh. “What do you like to do? What is your passion?”
“I…” she could hardly speak. “I like to paint.”
“Let me guess… watercolour is your preferred medium and you paint illustrations?”
Her eyes widened in surprise.
His fingers tiptoed a little higher. “Illustrations for greeting cards and children’s picture books?”
They were the exact words needed to cut through the haze and bring Luisa back into the room. Snatching hold of his hand with every intention of pushing it away, she instead clasped it tightly. “How…?”
“It was always obvious to me that you would find a career in the world of art. My mother still keeps one of your illustrations in her study. She believes – and I agree with her – that one day it will be a collector’s item.”
“You never said you knew,” she accused in a whisper, her mind reeling. One hundred and three weeks of marriage, and not once had he even hinted that he knew she’d made a career from her art.
“I didn’t speak of many things but I can say them now – not only are you ravishingly beautiful but you’re a phenomenally talented artist. You always have been.”
She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed as hard as she could, wanting to hurt him as he’d deliberately hurt her. “Aphenomenally talented artistyou forbade from working.”
“Being my wife was your work. Your art is exquisite but I remember how it took your full concentration and how oblivious you became to the world around you when in the process of creating. I needed your attention on the role I was paying you to perform.”
“You knowingly took my art away from me.”
“Only in a professional capacity and only for a fixed period of time.”
Still holding tightly to the hand on her naked thigh, she shook her head in disbelief. “If you’d bothered getting to know me, you’d have known my art is my life and so my work is my life.”
“I already knew that about you and didn’t want to knowmore – you were the last woman in the world I wanted to know more than I had to.”
“Because my beauty makes me dangerous?” she challenged tremulously, throwing his words back at him.