Happy Mother’s Day!: Accidentally Pregnant, Conveniently Wed / Claiming His Pregnant Wife / Meant-To-Be Mother

And to her?

Aisling didn’t know. A lifetime of hard work and denial and playing to the rules had been vanquished by the tall, powerful man they called Il Tigre on that scented Italian evening. Something alien and tantalising was driving her and she was being propelled by an instinct she was in no mood to fight. Or maybe it would have taken a stronger woman than her to fight the night and the moonlight and the man. This man.

Her heart was beating very fast as they stepped out into the scented air and walked away from the noise of the party in silence, like two conspirators.

The moon was full and the sky full of stars but they weren’t moving anywhere and Aisling quickly turned her face upwards, as if to reinforce the real reason why they were out here. Except that deep down she knew it was not the real reason. Because who cared about stars?

‘Which shooting stars? I can’t see any,’ she said, in a voice which didn’t sound like her own.

‘It is a little late in the year,’ he conceded, but he wasn’t looking at the sky—his attention was captivated by a cloud of dark hair and the pale profile which looked as if it had been carved from marble—intensely beautiful because it was so unexpected. How could he have been so blind not to have seen her loveliness before?

‘You see them mostly in August,’ he said distractedly. ‘The feast day of St Lorenzo is known as the night of the shooting stars—and then you can see meteors showering the skies like fireworks. People consider them lucky and they make a wish.’

‘Gosh. How … romantic.’

‘You like that?’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘And yet this morning you told me you preferred the pragmatic approach,’ he mused.

‘Did I?’ But this morning seemed a lifetime ago. She kept looking upwards towards the heavens, losing her gaze in its star-studded blackness, terrified of what she thought might be about to happen—and yet her heart was beating fast with a mad kind of eagerness because she wanted it to begin. ‘Aisling?’

His soft voice made her stop looking at the sky and turn her gaze instead to the sculpted shadows of his face. In the dim light she could see the glitter of his eyes and the gleam of his lips.

Her voice was tremulous. ‘What?’

‘Do you know what I would wish for, if I saw a star blazing across the night sky right now?’

She shook her head, so that the hair moved like a heavy silken curtain. ‘No.’

His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘Yes, you do,’ he taunted softly as he pulled her into the shadow of a large tree and into his arms.

CHAPTER THREE

HIS body was hard, his breath was warm as he pulled her close against him and Aisling could scarcely breathe as every longing she’d ever had about him fused into that single moment. ‘Gianluca!’ she gasped, her voice a mixture of plea and protest.

‘Mia bella! Kiss me. Just kiss me!’

‘But this is wrong!’

‘Why is it wrong? How can it be wrong?’ he demanded.

She tried to think of a reason but her brain had gone to mush and so had her body. Was it the raw urgency in his voice which made her want to obey him without question, or her own overwhelming hunger which made Aisling stay right where she was? Perhaps it was simply the fleeting feeling that if she didn’t, then she would regret it for the rest of her life. That she would become one of those bitter old women who had rejected a taste of paradise when she’d had it offered to her on a soft, warm night in Umbria.

‘You know you want me,’ he asserted harshly.

‘Yes,’ she assented breathlessly. And with a little moan, she wrapped her arms around his neck, lifting her mouth to meet his hard, seeking kiss.

A thousand fireworks exploded in his head as her lips opened beneath his. ‘Aisling,’ he groaned, her name as unfamiliar on his lips as the taste of her, the smell of her, this sheer unexpected reality of having her soft and compliant and oh-so-hungry in his arms. The ice-queen melting! The cool Englishwoman kissing him!

Aisling swayed as she responded with a fervour which seemed to sap her of strength and reason. His hands were touching her breasts, and—oh, heavens!—she was letting them, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Fingertips moving over her body, as if examining her by touch alone. Lingering at the indentation of her waist. Skating over the curve of her hips. Cupping the swell of her buttocks and pulling her into the hard rock of his arousal.

‘Oh!’ she gasped.

‘You like that?’

‘Yes!’

‘And that?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She breathed. ‘Yes!’

‘You want me to keep doing it?’

‘Yes!’

He flicked his tongue over her bone-dry lips. She was like molten lava, bubbling beneath his touch—so responsive, so unbelievably receptive in a way which belied her normal cool image.

Gianluca thought quickly. If his barn were not filled with villagers and local dignitaries, he would have thought nothing of taking her there, beneath the tree. He could have fought to get her jeans down and thrust deliciously into her. Then they could have gone back to the party afterwards as if nothing had happened.

He frowned with concentration. If he kissed her thoroughly enough, silenced the sounds of her orgasm, he might yet be able to accomplish it. And yet he was still not certain of her. Some women were needlessly sentimental when they took a new lover—insisting on the formality of a bed rather than a shadowed space in an orchard. Would Aisling be one of them?

He realised that this was madness—that there were a million other women more suitable to take to his bed than this one. She was a good head-hunter and this could impact badly on their professional relationship. Yet for once he failed to heed the note of caution in his head. He wanted her in a way which surprised him. Against her lips, he smiled. He wanted her and he knew how to guarantee that she would be his.

He moved his hand to touch her thigh through the thick material of the denim, feeling her shudder against him.

‘Gianluca?’

The word came out breathlessly against his lips and he heard her uncertainty. Ruthlessly, he moved his fingertips upwards, alighting and burrowing over her mound with irresistible precision, and heard her helpless little moan.

‘You like that too, I think, cara mia,’ he murmured, and now he began to move his hands with accurate sweetness, knowing that the barrier of her jeans was exciting her as much as frustrating her. ‘Don’t you?’

The world tipped on its axis as for one second Aisling really thought she was about to lose it there and then.

‘Don’t you?’ he prompted huskily.

Mutely she nodded her head—words beyond her ability as she clung to him with all the hunger of someone who hadn’t had sex for so long, she’d almost forgotten what to do. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? It was because it was him—her every fantasy personified. ‘Gianluca,’ she moaned.

‘We can’t stay here,’ he ground out.

Again, it was a statement. He was not given to asking permission, Aisling realised weakly—in the same moment realising that she didn’t want him to ask. She wanted him to take control in that masterful and autocratic way of his. Because that will take some of the self-recrimination away—is that why? questioned a mocking voice in her head, but she silenced it.

‘I know,’ she whispered, her answer making her complicit in what they were doing.

Those shaky words were all he needed—and he didn’t realise how much he had been fearing that she would tear herself away from him and let sanity prevail until he heard the rush of pent-up air escape from his lips. The slow seep of anticipation began to ensnare him and, compelled by some primitive instinct, Gianluca did what he had never done before. He picked her up in his arms and carried her up towards the house.

‘Put me down,’ she whispered.