Italian Surgeon to the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

girl any more. That girl had got herself into trouble, and the last thing I wanted to attract was trouble.
    Alessandro might have been in any sort of career and I would still have been attracted to him. I had been totally swept away by him—charmed and captivated by his take-charge, can-do attitude, which was so at odds with the way I had been raised. He was goal-orientated and disciplined. He didn’t dream or drift aimlessly, or wait for someone else to tell him what he should do. He made plans and set about fulfilling them. He hadn’t let his background or lack of family money stophim from becoming one of London’s top heart specialists. He had laid down a career path as a young boy and got on with making it happen.
    His intelligence was the biggest turn-on for me. I don’t mean his doctor status, because that sort of thing doesn’t impress me. I loved it that he was well read and well informed on topics I had barely even thought of before. But it was the physical intensity between us that took me completely by surprise. I had never considered myself a sensual person. The event I refuse to talk about put paid to that when I was thirteen. I wasn’t the touchy-feely sort. I didn’t hug or kiss. I didn’t seek affection and I didn’t give it—unless there was no avoiding it, like at Christmas and on birthdays.
    But with Alessandro I embraced my sexuality. I celebrated my womanhood with every cell of my body. I bloomed and burned and blazed under his touch. I discovered things about my body I had no idea it was capable of—wickedly delightful things that left my skin tingling for hours afterwards. I loved exploring the hard contours of Alessandro’s body. I just about crawled into his skin once I lost my first flutter of fear.
    I had never seen a man more beautifully made. Although I’m not a doctor like my sister Bertie, who sees naked men all the time, I’ve seen a few. My parents went through a naturalist stage when I was in my early teens, so the male form is no stranger to me. Talk about embarrassing… Most of those men had the sort of bodies one would think they would be desperate to cover up with clothes—layers and layers of them. But, no, it was all out on show. However, none of the men I had seen in their birthday suits had looked anywhere as perfect as Alessandro. He wasn’t gym-obsessed perfect, but rather healthy and virile and in-his-prime perfect.
    I had to give myself another mental slap to keep my mind on the conversation. Images of his naked body were flooding my brain to such a degree I could feel warmth blooming in my cheeks. I rarely blush. I lost my innocence a long time ago. But something about Alessandro’s penetrating gaze made me feel as if he could see exactly where my mind was taking me.
    I realised then with a little jolt that the intimacy we’d shared would always be between us. We had ‘A History’. It wasn’t as if I could wipe it away, like I do the day’s lesson fromthe whiteboard in the classroom. There was a permanent record of it in my flesh.
    I was tattooed with his touch, indelibly marked, so that when any other man touched me I automatically compared it to Alessandro’s and found it sadly lacking. It’s basically why I haven’t bothered dating. I don’t see the point. Quite frankly, I could do without being reminded I’m basically dead from the waist down with anyone else.
    ‘I’ll…erm…show you the bathrooms,’ I said, and made to turn away.
    But his hand stalled me again. I had folded my arms across my body, which meant his hand was tantalisingly close to my breasts. I felt the stirring tingle of my flesh, as if my breasts had picked up his proximity like some sort of finely tuned radar.
    My breath stalled somewhere in the middle of my throat. I brought my gaze up to his. His eyes were so dark it was impossible to make out his pupils. A girl could get lost in those eyes. Disappear and never be found again.
    My gaze went to his mouth as if of its own