Lessons Learned

wasn’t sure whichwords to use. He’d never felt quite like this before with any woman. He’d never expected to. How could he tell her that and expect to be believed? He was having a hard time believing it himself. And yet…perhaps truth was the hardest thing to put into words.
    “You feel very small when I hold you like this,” he murmured. “It makes me want to hold you like this for a long, long time.”
    “I like having you hold me.” The admission was much easier to make than she’d thought. With a little laugh, she turned her head so that she could see his face. “I like it very much.”
    “Then you won’t object if I go on holding you for the next few hours.”
    She kissed his chin. “The next few minutes,” she corrected. “I have to get back to my room.”
    “You don’t like my bed?”
    She stretched and cuddled and thought how wonderful it would be never to move from that one spot. “I think I’m crazy about it, but I’ve got a little work to do before I call it a night, then I have to be up by six-thirty, and—”
    “You work too much.” He cut her off, then leaned over her to pick up the phone. “You can get up in the morning just as easily from my bed as yours.”
    Finding she liked the way his body pressed into hers, she prepared to be convinced. “Maybe. What’re you doing?”
    “Shh. Yes, this is Franconi in 922. I’d like a wake-up call for six.” He replaced the phone and rolled, pulling her on top of him. “There now, everything is taken care of. The phone will ring at dawn and wake us up.”
    “It certainly will.” Juliet folded her hands over his chest and rested her chin on them. “But you told them to call at six. We don’t have to get up until six-thirty.”
    “Yes.” He slid his hands down low over her back. “So we have a half-hour to—ah—wake up.”
    With a laugh, she pressed her lips to his shoulder. This once, she told herself, just this once, she’d let someone else do the planning. “Very practical. Do you think we might take a half hour or so to—ah—go to sleep?”
    “My thoughts exactly.”
     
    When the phone did ring, Juliet merely groaned and slid down under the sheets. For the second time, she found herself buried under Carlo as he rolled over to answer it. Without complaint, she lay still, hoping the ringing of the phone had been part of a dream.
    “Come now, Juliet.” Shifting most of his weight from her, Carlo began to nibble on her shoulder. “You’re playing mole.”
    She murmured in drowsy excitement as he slid his hand down to her hip. “Mole? I don’t have a mole.”
    “Playing mole.” She was so warm and soft and pliant. He’d known she would be. Mornings were made for lazy delights and waking her was a pleasure just begun.
    Juliet stretched under the stroke and caress of his hands. Mornings were for a quick shower and a hasty cup of coffee. She’d never known they could be luxurious. “Playing mole?”
    “An American expression.” The skin over her rib cage was soft as butter. He thought there was no better time to taste it. “You pretend to be dead.”
    Because her mind was clouded with sleep, her system already churning with passion, it took a moment. “Possum.”
    “Prego?”
    “Playing possum,” she repeated and, guided by his hands, shifted. “A mole’s different.”
    “So, they’re both little animals.”
    She opened one eye. His hair was rumpled around his face, his chin darkened with a night’s growth of beard. But when he smiled he looked as though he’d been awake for hours. He looked, she admitted, absolutely wonderful.
    “You want an animal?” With a sudden burst of energy, she rolled on top of him. Her hands were quick, her mouth avid. In seconds, she’d taken his breath away.
    She’d never been aggressive, but found the low, surprised moan and the fast pump of his heart to her liking. Her body reacted like lightning. She didn’t mind that his hands weren’t as gentle, as patient as they’d been the night before. This new desperation thrilled her.
    He was Franconi, known for his wide range of expertise in the kitchen and the bedroom. But she was making him wild and helpless at the same time. With a laugh, she pressed her mouth to his, letting her tongue find all the dark, lavish tastes. When he tried to shift her, to take her because the need had grown too quickly to control, she evaded. His breathless curse whispered into her mouth.
    He never lost finesse with a woman. Passion,