The Legend of de Marco by Abby Green Page B

felt so
hot
. And so out of her depth. She’d truly believed that her guilty little secret of obsessing about Rocco would never be noticed. Or reciprocated.
    Gracie shook her head again, more forcefully this time. ‘No. You’re bored … or trying to make her jealous or something. I’m just convenient.’
    Rocco grimaced then. ‘You’re definitely not convenient. And I am not bored. I don’t care if she
is
jealous, because it’s over and I’m never going to see her again.’
    Gracie reeled. The full magnitude of what he was sayingstarted to sink in. He’d had a fight with his fiancée over
her
? And he’d chosen
her
?
    ‘But … you had a relationship. You were going to marry her.’
    Rocco went still for a second as the enormity of her words sank in. He had just ended his relationship with Honora Winthrop, and in doing so his grand plans to marry her. He’d done it because he wanted to sleep with Gracie O’Brien more urgently than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. More than the social acceptance he’d hungered for for so long? He didn’t even want to answer that.
    In some rational part of his brain that was still functioning Rocco knew very well that if he ran after Honora Winthrop and caught her just as she reached home he might salvage something.
    And like a slow-dawning yet cataclysmic realisation he knew he didn’t want to. The feeling of claustrophobia that had been dogging him for weeks had lifted.
    Rocco shook his head. ‘We didn’t have a relationship—not really. What we had was an understanding that a more permanent relationship would be mutually beneficial on many levels.’
    ‘But that’s … so cold.’
    Rocco shrugged and said cynically, ‘That’s life. I hadn’t yet asked her to marry me, and I haven’t been sleeping with her.’
    Gracie was trying to take it all in. She knew that Rocco wouldn’t feel he had to hand her platitudes to get her into bed. She believed that he hadn’t cared for that woman, and that he hadn’t slept with her. He was too powerful to care about lying. She knew he wouldn’t shy away from hurting her with the truth if he
had
slept with that woman.
    Her head started to throb. She couldn’t take any more in. She didn’t want to hear anything else. Rocco pulled hereven closer. She felt as if she was on a train with only one destination and there was no way she could get off now. Unconsciously she’d gone up on tiptoe, her body knowing what it wanted even before she did.
    His head lowered towards hers, that beautiful mouth came closer and closer, and Gracie’s eyelids fluttered closed just as darkness and heat swept over her mouth and settled there like a brand.
    At first the kiss was like falling into a whirlpool. Instinctively Gracie reached out to hold onto Rocco’s shirt because she couldn’t feel her legs any more. And then an urgency gripped them both, as if the first taste was merely a civilised veneer. Rocco’s hands went to Gracie’s face. She was being backed against a wall, or some sort of solid surface, and Gracie leaned back and let it support her weight.
    Rocco’s mouth was hard, and yet his lips were soft, pressing, tasting, coaxing. She felt the slide of his tongue against the closed seam of her lips and her hands clenched tighter as her mouth opened up to Rocco. The kiss deepened. His chest pressed hard against her, crushing her hands between them. But Gracie didn’t care. She revelled in Rocco’s big hands holding her face just so he could plunder her mouth.
    Gracie was falling, slipping and sliding into another dimension. Rocco’s scent intoxicated her. His tongue stroked along hers in a wicked caress. Teeth nipped at her lower lip, only to soothe it in the same moment. It was tart and sweet all at once. It was all-consuming, like jumping right into the middle of a fire.
    He took his mouth away and amidst the fiery excitement pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth—an incongruously gentle gesture. Gracie opened heavy