"Yes, I have seen them. They display their breasts

as crudely as whores, offering up their wares for any

man who feels like examining them."

Whores? Was he suggesting…? "I suppose the way

you like your women dressed is—" Jodie began angrily,

only to have Lorenzo interrupt her.

"The way I like to see a woman dressed is in something

that hints subtly at her sexuality instead of

flaunting it, and in fabrics as sensual as her skin. Not

clothes that make her look like either a child or a

whore," he told her and he dropped her basque onto

the bed.

A child? Was he referring to her nightshirt?

"How is your leg this morning?" he added calmly,

as he helped himself to a cup of coffee and walked

over to the balcony to join her.

Suddenly what had seemed like a pleasant spot to

enjoy the morning air had become an intensely intimate

and very small space. Had he deliberately referred

to her leg now because he guessed how sensitively

aware she was that its weakness made her less

desirable as a woman? If she hadn’t already sworn

off men and love for ever, Jodie decided bitterly, then

surely Lorenzo would have been enough to make her

do so.

"It’s fine. Anyone can get cramp, you know," she

told him defensively. "Even someone with two perfectly

normal legs."

"Which you think yours are not? There are many

places in the world where people, often children, subjected

to the injustice of wars they Don’t understand,

have been left with injuries, including the loss of

limbs, that make a mere weakness such as yours

something they would welcome."

Jodie listened to him in disbelieving fury. Was he

actually daring to preach at her? When he lived the

kind of privileged life isolated from reality he obviously

did?

"What would you know about other people"s suffering?"

she demanded scornfully. "I bet the closest

you have ever been to witnessing the ravages of war

is in a newspaper or on a television screen."

She put her cup down on the small table with a

small angry movement and made to walk past him

back into the bedroom. But Lorenzo, who had become

engrossed in looking down into the garden, put his

hand on her arm to stop her.

"Caterina is watching us from the garden," he told

Jodie quietly.

"So?"

Putting down his own cup, he turned towards her,

saying softly, "So this…"

He was closing the distance between them and

there was nowhere for her to go. His arms locked

round her, imprisoning her, their warmth pressing

through the thin fabric of her nightshirt. His hands

spread against her back, curving her into his own

body as though she were completely formless and

malleable, his to do with as he chose. One hand remained

flat against the small of her back, arching her

against him — draping her against him, she recognised

dizzily — whilst the other slid up to her neck, his fingers

burrowing into the soft thickness of her hair, tangling

in it so that he could draw her head back and

lift her face towards his own.

Trembling from head to foot with furious outrage,

Jodie glared up at him.

His head blotted out the sunlight as he lowered it

so that his mouth could take possession of hers. Jodi

stiffened defensively, not daring to move. His lips felt

cool and firm against her own. She could smell the

fresh scent of soap and clean linen. Stubbornly she

refused to return his kiss. The pad of his thumb

stroked caressingly behind her ear and against the vulnerable

flesh of her neck, and a small betraying shudder

of reaction galvanised her whole body.

His lips brushed hers, the silver-grey eyes glinting

with a knowledge that made her whole body burn as

he demanded silkily, "Don’t you even know how to

kiss properly? And you were betrothed! Open your

mouth."

Faced with a choice of being branded as a woman

so sexually inept that she couldn’t even kiss, or giving

in to his arrogant demand, Jodie chose female pride

over anger. Her lips softened and parted, the golden

shimmer of her gaze meshing recklessly with the hypnotic

silver of Lorenzo’s as though it were a lodestone

luring her to a destiny she couldn’t escape. Her mouth

clung to his and her arms lifted to wrap around his

neck. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her

back, but it was the heat of Lorenzo’s touch that her

flesh was responding to, the sensation of his hand

spread flat against the bare skin of her back beneath

her nightshirt, whilst she stood on tiptoe, arched

against him, kissing him with a sensual intimacy that

would normally have shocked her.

She could feel his hand shaping her waist and then

moving upwards to cup her bare breast beneath the

nightshirt, his thumb-pad brushing with deliberate

emphasis against her suddenly tight nipple, making it

and her quiver as readily as a bow drawn by an expert

archer. His other hand was massaging the base of her

spine and then moving lower, pushing aside her briefs

so that he could stroke the naked rounded curve of

her bottom.

The sudden fierce sexual thrust of Lorenzo’s

tongue against her own brought her up intimately

against him, her breath escaping on a soft, shivered

rush of pleasure. "What is it?" Lorenzo whispered.

"Do you want me to stroke your breasts? To kiss them

and caress them? Do you want me to take your nipple

into my mouth and bring it and you to the highest

pinnacle of pleasure? Is that what you are asking me

for with that wanton thrust of your hips against

mine?" As he was whispering to her Lorenzo’s hand

moved round to caress the soft swell of her sex.

This was what she had longed for so much from

John — desire, intimacy, sensuality — and she absorbed

it into herself with each and every one of her senses,

lost in a private world of erotic pleasure.

It was the sound of angry footsteps crunching

across the gravel beneath the balcony that brought her

back to reality, her body stiffening in outraged rebuttal

as she wrenched her mouth from beneath

Lorenzo’s.

"You had no right to do that," she told him angrily.

"So why didn’t you stop me?" Lorenzo shrugged,

infuriatingly matter-of-fact.

She hadn’t stopped him because she had been enjoying

what was happening too much to want to,

Jodie realised guiltily. "You said there would be

no…no intimacy between us," she retorted, sidestepping

Lorenzo’s charge.

"That wasn’t intimacy," Lorenzo informed her. "If

I’d wanted intimacy with you, I’d have taken you

somewhere where we couldn’t be overheard, and right

now, instead of standing here glowering at me, you’d

be lying under me, and the only words you’d be uttering

would be your eager pleas for my possession.

As I warned you, I was simply demonstrating for

Caterina’s benefit the fact that you and I are to marry.

Or is that glower you are giving me because you are

not lying beneath me right now, while I show that

virginal body of yours what sex is all about?"

"I am not—"

"You are not a virgin? Is that what you were going

to tell me?"

"I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that

I’m not interested in having sex with you."

"So you are a virgin?"

"What if I am? Is it a crime?"

"In law, no. Against nature, yes. Where is the plea-

sure in a closed book that has never been read? A

song that that never been sung? A scent that has never