Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin - Carol Marinelli Page 0,48

out. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and feel the sudden dryness of his mouth. Suddenly his fear was laced with fury.

How dared she risk it?

If she fell and the horse bolted, it would take for ever to find her, assuming she wasn’t trampled.

He wanted to press on the horn, but he did not want to startle Massimo, and anyway it appeared as if she was heading back to the stables.

Well, Dante would be there to meet her.

As Mia came into the yard she was tired in that nice physical way, but her head was no clearer and she had no idea how to deal with Dante’s questions.

She felt better now, though, and Massimo had ridden like a dream. She praised him as they came into the yard. ‘There’s no slowing you down, is there, boy?’

She was just getting her breath back, a little elated, and looking around for the stablehand because it was awfully quiet, when she saw Dante come round the corner. She was suddenly breathless again because his face was as thunderous as the sky.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked, and he took the reins.

‘What does it look like?’

‘Don’t be facetious,’ he said. ‘Get down.’

Mia ignored him and cast her eyes around the yard. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘I have given the staff the rest of the day and night off, so we can have some decent time to ourselves.’ He got back to the issue of her riding. ‘What the hell were you thinking, riding Massimo?’

‘Dante, I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. My mother rode until two weeks before she had me. I even checked that it was okay with the doctor...’

‘You didn’t check with my doctor,’ he snarled.

‘Thank goodness for choice, then.’

‘Get down, Mia.’

He would not be argued with, and she had the awful feeling he was going to come and fetch her himself, so she took her right foot out of the stirrup and went to dismount. It was a manoeuvre she had made hundreds if not thousands of times, but she had never been more aware of her movements.

Dante was too.

Relief was seeping into him that she was back at the yard and safe, yet it was tempered with anger. Those thousands of questions he’d had were fading with the ache of distraction as she went to dismount.

Mia held Massimo’s mane with her left hand and swung her leg over, taking the cantle of the saddle with her right. It was going to be a very long, slow slide to the ground with Dante’s eyes trained on her.

Her breathing was difficult but for very different reasons now and when his hands came to her hips, instead of guiding her down, he held her there, suspended.

In fact, he took all of her weight and held her with strong hands that seemed to burn through her. It felt electric, it felt like something she had never known, and her eyes screwed closed.

He lowered her down very slowly and with such utter precision that had they not been completely dressed she might have been forgiven for imagining he was lowering her onto him. A jolt shot through her as her boots hit the stone ground, and there she remained.

His hands were still hot on her hips and pressing in and she did not know how she could go from defensive and defiant to wanting to fold over and be taken, but then slowly he turned her round.

‘You are pregnant,’ Dante stated, although she took it to be a question.

‘Yes!’

‘So there is to be no more riding.’

‘You can’t stop me, Dante.’

‘Actually...’ he smiled that black smile ‘...I can and I will have the horses moved this afternoon unless you give me your word that you won’t ride again.’

‘Very well,’ Mia said. ‘While I’m staying here, I shan’t ride. However,’ she added, ‘if you question this pregnancy again, I’ll walk. It took enough guts to tell you without you accusing me of making it up.’

‘I did not accuse you. In fact, I can see now that there are changes.’

He could see the swell of her bust in her T-shirt, and now he held her in his hands he could feel a fleshiness to her hips. It was turning him the hell on.

She was flushed in the face and he wanted to claim that pouting mouth, to slide down the zipper of her jodhpurs and feel her heat, but there was just one thing stopping him: now, when he had her, right