Still embarrassed, and hyper-conscious of their neighbours, especially the women, who could hardly keep their eyes off Alessandro, though now he was angled away from them they couldn’t catch more than an occasional stunning profile, Lara leaned over and whispered, ‘I think we should go now.’

‘Ah,’ he said silkily, his eyes lighting, ‘but where? Where should we go, tesoro?’

‘Well…home, I suppose.’

‘Your place?’

‘God, no.’ She felt his hand come to rest on her knee under the table, and her heart rocked into a dance number. ‘I mean, that is…’

Under stress, her brain cells were capable of some pretty rapid calculation. Her place was out of the question. But, though time was running out, she was having such a good time, all stirred up like a flesh-and-blood woman for the first time in years. Home would have been such a tame end to things.

Alessandro began an absent-minded, gentle stroking motion along her leg. It might have been comforting, if it hadn’t been so arousing. She struggled with herself to pull away, but her limbs were still heavy with the intoxication of the kiss.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, panting a little, hardly daring to meet his eyes for fear of alerting him to what his supple fingers were absent-mindedly doing, and breaking the fabulous connection, ‘perhaps we could have-dessert at your hotel.’

He didn’t smile, exactly, but satisfaction settled into the lines of his sensuous, chiselled mouth.

She was so grateful for long linen tablecloths. More places should have them, she thought. Especially when, to her absolute shameless pleasure, his fingers slipped under her dress and to the inside of her leg, and traversed her silky stocking all the way to the top.

‘Although,’ he said, holding his menu in his other hand to peruse, ‘it says here that they have wild strawberries with dark drizzling chocolate. Couldn’t we enjoy drizzling our wild strawberries with chocolate?’

That bare skin at the top of her stockings was even silkier than the stocking, and Alessandro’s fingers seemed to know that and adapt accordingly. Absent or not, his very fingertips acquired a magic touch that roused her skin cells to heights of delight, inside her thigh, nearly all the way up to the elastic edge of her pants.

Inside the flimsy fabric, skin cells yearned in burning anticipation for their turn at the magic fingers. How high would those clever, artful fingers go?

She noticed a slight beading of sweat appear on Alessandro’s upper lip.

‘Oh, oh, perhaps…’ She managed to sit perfectly still, though she parted her thighs a little further to give greater access and her breathing started to come in short quick gasps. With her breasts rising and falling like an abducted maiden’s in a sheikh film, her voice had a husky, breathless quality, brought about by trembling, pleasurable suspense. ‘Perhaps strawberries in sauce can be a little messy. With-the strawberries being so-so juicy, and all…’

‘Oh, no, carissima,’ he said in his most velvet voice, gazing at her with grave assurance. ‘I am sure nothing-well, hardly anything-could be tastier. What’s a little juice?’

Hypnotised, she felt his soft fingers trail across the fabric of her pants, every subtle stroke delivering shock waves of delicious, tingling pleasure to the yearning delta beneath.

‘Sorry, what was that you said?’ He was teasing her, wicked laughter in his eyes, knowing her difficulty in speaking while swooning with the forbidden ecstasy.

‘Oh,’ she gasped, ‘I mean, yes, yes, Alessandro, Alessandro…’

The waiter hovered into view, to her intense regret, and Alessandro swiftly removed his sinful hand, leaving her in a severely aroused and unresolved state while attempting to appear like a model citizen, and not to pant.

The boy stood by their table once more, and Alessandro smiled charmingly at him and said, ‘You know, I don’t think we’ll stay for dessert after all.’

Outside in the small foyer as she buttoned up her coat, Alessandro said, ‘The taxi shouldn’t be long.’

‘Can’t we just walk? I don’t want to stay here another second.’

‘Oh.’ He looked rueful. ‘And I thought you were enjoying yourself.’ She glowered at him, and he added, ‘I don’t want you to get cold. I was shocked by how thin that dress is. I could feel everything through it, every curve, every little hill and valley.’

She said repressively, ‘I need to be cold.’

He laughed, and she pushed open the street door and threw him a stern glance.

‘Are you coming?’

Outside, her face registered the blessed chill, but despite her brisk tone there was a bubbly exhilaration in her blood that had an insulating effect against the night air. It had been so long since she’d been seduced by a gorgeously sexy man with smiling eyes and no morals. Still, did that mean she should allow herself to plunge enthusiastically back into being his wanton plaything?

A shameless part of her was almost inclined to think it did. Having gone so far…with nothing resolved…

For God’s sake, though, even if he didn’t, she had principles, and responsibilities, and loyalties that came first. And then there was the time element. It was well after nine, and she needed to be home early enough for her mother to make her hospital shift.

Despite the chill night there were people strolling around the streets, gangs of tourists taking snaps of each other, spilling from the crowded cafés. Didn’t Sydney people ever stay at home?

She shouldn’t, she knew, lose sight of the fact that she’d aged. Twenty-one was a million years from twenty-seven, in terms of smoothness, slenderness and muscle tone. Certainly she was still slim, but it was a different sort of slim at twenty-seven. It was the slimness achieved from washing, cleaning, ironing, bending to pick up toys, staying constantly alert to the whereabouts of a small dynamo, and running, running, running.

Would he notice the difference?

She walked quickly, his long stride keeping easy pace with hers. Their words hung in the air in little drifts of vapour. She made an earnest attempt to chat about neutral, non-inflammatory things-the unusually hard winter, the boutiques and lighted shop windows they passed, occasional alluring little laneways and their fascinating old houses. She even seized one promising moment when they passed a children’s bookshop for some deep probing into his attitudes about early childhood education, but instead of looking at the books, his dark sensual gaze remained on her.

In fact, it would be true to say that every conversational gambit she tried evoked an amused glance from Alessandro, while inside she was a turbulent sea of indecision.

With every second that passed she could sense the deepening vibration of sexual inevitability. Every shimmering glance from his dark eyes reflected the fever she felt churning through her own veins. That kiss and its sexy little aftermath had started a fire that could turn into a forest blaze at any tick of the clock. And if her recent compliance was anything to go by, she was unlikely to have much power of resistance.

She’d resolved not to go to his room, and where was she headed at this very moment, if not the suite at the Seasons? Perhaps, if he didn’t touch her, she’d cool down and summon up the resistance to catch the train home.

After a few minutes he said, ‘Slow down a little, carissa. Enjoy the crisp night.’

She shrugged and slowed her steps. Smiling, he held out his hand to her and what was she to do? It would have taken a stronger woman than her to resist the invitation in those dark eyes. She allowed him to clasp her hand in his strong grasp. She might have been weak, but it felt so pleasant, that electric connection with his warm, hard palm, as if she were all at once tuned into the cosmos after being buried for an eternity in some black hole in outer space.

Still, she needed to make some attempt at reason before she let herself be consumed by the whirlpool.