The heavy drapes blocked out the light, denying him the sight of her body, so he turned on the bedside light and looked down at her.
‘Get into bed.’
‘But you forgot to switch off your phone, darling,’ Aurora said, in the voice of his fabled wife.
Nico wagged a finger to chastise her for the poor imitation. ‘She would not ask me to.’
‘That is true,’ Aurora conceded, for Nico’s perfect demure wife would not ask him to do any such thing. And yet she fixed him with a glare. ‘But every game has its rules.’
And for the first time—and only for Aurora—he turned off his phone, while silently vowing his perfect revenge: she would scream out his name.
His eyes roamed her body and made her flood with warmth and shiver at the same time.
‘Get undressed and into bed before I turn off the light.’
‘Don’t turn off the light,’ Aurora said, for she wanted to see him.
‘But I come home in the dark, dear wife.’
She swallowed, and reminded herself of the game they were playing.
It was a little hard to get undressed, sitting on the bed, and Nico did not help with the zip at the back of her dress. He watched her struggle.
She got the zipper undone and wriggled the dress down instead of up. Took it off by lifting up her bottom and sliding it down her legs.
Aurora could feel that her face was flushed, but not for a second was she embarrassed. Instead she was turned on by his scrutiny, turned on by his silent observation. And wondering how she could even have cared that her underwear might clash when it mattered not.
Again, her hands went behind her back and she unhooked her bra. She heard his ragged breath as, without support, her breasts fell heavy.
Her nipples hurt because they were so erect, and she glanced over and saw his hands that had been clenched by his sides were now undoing his belt.
‘Wait,’ she choked. ‘I want to see you undress too.’
Oh, what was this game they were playing? For they had not so much as kissed, and she was not even in bed—they had not even started—but her thighs wanted to squeeze together and her throat was closing with the tension.
She slid down her panties and went to move back the sheets, impatient to get into bed, impatient for his touch. But he growled a word.
‘Fermare.’
Stop.
Halt.
Do not cover your body just yet, Nico said with that one word. Do not remove it from my gaze.
For on that torrid night, so many years ago, he had not gazed and he had not lingered.
Now he took in the gleaming olive skin and the delicious softness of her stomach, the dark brown nipples that were like searchlights for him and the dark shadow where her shapely thighs met.
He fought not to take her this very second.
He fought not to unzip himself as he parted her legs and take her there and then.
He admired his own control as he removed his jacket.
But it was not quite perfect control, because he could not seem to stop the thrill of anticipation that made his breath shorten.
For it might be daylight on the other side of the curtains, but this was their one night as husband and wife.
And so he dropped his jacket to the floor, and with the same carelessness and impatience discarded his socks and shoes. And then he took off his shirt and felt her eyes reclaim his skin.
Oh, Nico.
She had missed that chest so. It was broad and had a smattering of hair. His long arms were so toned that he could have been out working the vines.
Her breath hitched as she watched him remove the last of his clothes.
‘You could have had me on Monday night,’ Nico said.
‘I know.’ Her voice was so low and thick that she almost turned around to see who stood behind her, but of course it came from her.
‘Why didn’t you?’ he asked. For that was a side of Aurora that he wanted to know.
‘Things were different then,’ Aurora said.
Then she had been trying to get over him—then she had been denying the throbbing of her body and the beckoning of his soul to hers and telling herself she did not have to succumb.
But she did not have to tell Nico all that. She did not have to tell him that this very morning she had thrown a coin in the Trevi Fountain and asked to be made love to by Nico in Rome.
She hastily amended that wish.
For now she did not want to be made love to by Nico, she told herself. She wanted powerful sex with him, the way she had known it before.
Aurora was too afraid to know his love and then attempt life without it.
‘Please…’ she said.
Please come to bed. Please let me know again that flat stomach and those muscular thighs. Let me be taken by you again.
He got into bed.
‘Hello, husband,’ she said.
And this time when she said it Nico did not roll his eyes.
He turned off the light and lay beside her. ‘Are you awake?’ he said to the dark.
‘I’m awake,’ she said, and rolled to face him.
Have me now. Take me now, her eyes told him as they lay facing each other on their sides. Give me your untamed passion again.
Instead he spoke. ‘Life is peaceful with my wife—calm and without demands.’
Except his heart battered his chest as if he had run home from the hotel and his body was primed.
They faced each other and embraced the war that raged between them.
Her silent screams were for all of him, for Nico’s refusal to give anything other than the inches that now nudged her thigh. Aurora wanted his fire and his untamed passion, and she provoked and pushed for the same.
But instead he gave her a taste of slow love.
Just this one time, Nico said to himself. He would give in once and kiss her as he should have on her first time. Not hot, raw sex on a sofa, but deep, slow kisses in his bed.
And while Nico told himself he was giving Aurora the experience she had deserved back then, he was aware enough to know that he wanted it for himself too.
‘I should have been more tender then…’
Four years on from that night he answered the question she had asked the following morning, and told Aurora his regrets.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It was perfect just as it was.’
She was actually scared to know him as tender, but that was the kiss he now gave her. A slow kiss that sent her mind dizzy with little arrows of affection delivered by his velvet lips.
His clean, male sent made her ache for more—more of his body, more of his mouth—but she lingered a while in this bliss.
He kissed her slowly. His hand was warm on the back of her head and she almost fought him with her mouth, fought for him to kiss her harder.
Because a taste of his slow love was now a terrifying prospect. The game they had been playing was just a little too much for her heart to recover from.
He removed his mouth from hers.
She did not want him to stop. His mouth, tender like this, made her tremble, and his tongue, his lips caressing hers, demanded her pleasure. She let herself revel in it.
‘I should have seduced you,’ Nico said.
‘You did,’ Aurora breathed as she recalled that even with walls between them on that hot, sultry night, desire had coursed through her, just as it was rolling through her now. ‘You are.’
He slipped in his tongue and she tasted him again. He devoured her with his mouth and her hands shot to his head, just to feel his hair, just to hold his face so that she never had to separate from this bliss.
Their mouths touched and she found out how powerful his slow kiss could be. For she was not here in his dark bedroom in Rome, and she was not even thinking of that nigh
t in Silibri. She was in a place that was reserved on this earth just for them. A place that could be found whenever their mouths met.
He dragged his lips from hers, and then Aurora discovered that there were kisses she still did not know.
He took his hands from her head and turned her with a silent command, so she lay on her back as his mouth met her neck. And the slight suction he made on that sensitive flesh made her gasp.
‘Take me, Nico.’
She did not want to linger in this bliss. She did not want to know the tender pleasure of this Nico, for it would surely be safer not to know.
He licked her nipple, making generous wet circles. And she bit on her lip as he blew cool air there. Then moaned as he sucked hard. She felt her hips rise and his hand slip down.
‘I want you so badly, Aurora.’
‘Take me, then…’ she pleaded again.
‘I was too rough that night.’
‘No, no…’ she sobbed. ‘You weren’t.’
‘I should have been gentler for your first time.’
He kissed her stomach. She had always thought it too fat, yet she found she adored her own ripe flesh when it was loved by his mouth.
‘I should have tasted you…’ He moved down the bed so that his head was between her legs. ‘I should have cooled you with my mouth.’
‘Cooled me?’ she checked, for she could never have been cooled. And certainly not by what he did now.
‘Oh…’
His tongue made deep, slow strokes and he nibbled at places she did not think it right for him to do so, but her hands knotted in his hair and she let him show her bliss.
Nico was turned on by the humming noises she made, but she refused to call out his name. He could feel the tension building in her and the grip of her thighs on his head.
He sucked and he probed with his tongue and though sometimes he licked slowly he did not let up for a second.
He was relentless.
‘I—I’m…’ she gasped.
He knew.
For how could he not know when her tension was unleashed and she held on to a scream? How could he not know when he was drinking from her pulsing, tender place?
He pulled himself up over her.
Now he would take her—fast. Now this torture would be done. Aurora pleaded with him in her mind, and she knew she should never have made that wish at the Trevi Fountain.
To know his love even just once more would hurt later.
But when he slid into her…when he crushed her with his weight, and when she anticipated his rapid thrusts…she wrapped her legs round him, to join in and bring them both to the delicious end.
And yet his hands removed her legs and now he took her arms and held them above her head on the pillows as he moved onto his forearms.
‘Slow, boring love…’ he said.
Aurora heard the creak of the bed and the way his breathing sounded as he strove to hold on to his release.
‘Am I boring you Aurora?’
‘No…’ She no longer knew the rules of the game. For she was burning and melting at the same time.
He released her hands from the trap of his arms. Her fingers pressed into his shoulders and she wanted to dig her nails in, but she did not. Instead, her hands disobeyed her mind and slipped around the sides of his torso, lovingly stroking him, feeling the bliss of his smooth back and sliding her hands over the slight sheen of his skin, exploring the muscles. And then she met his taut buttocks.
Now her head lifted and she offered Nico a devoted kiss.
Better that than sob his name.
Better that then tell him how much she loved him.
She would not give in.
And soon Nico would have no choice but to give in himself, because he was moving faster now, thrusting without any measure of control.
‘I want you,’ he told her, and he took her faster.
‘Nico,’ Aurora said, ‘I can’t do this over and over.’
‘You can.’
‘I can’t pretend I don’t want you.’
‘Keep wanting me,’ he told her.
‘I’m scared to keep wanting you,’ she admitted.
‘Never stop wanting me,’ he told her.
And those ragged words felt like permission simply to give in.
She collided with the stars, with the darkness, with the fantasy of husband and wife, with the rush and power of the orgasm he had made. She had not known such intensity lived in her and it felt as if she’d been tasered.
‘Nico!’ She thought she screamed his name, but her throat was so tight it came out as a hoarse cry.
Nico let out his own breathless shout as he drove into her for the final time.
And then they kissed—a breathless panting kiss that sedated her in her post-coital bliss.
He rolled off her and she lay in the dark bedroom, naked and uncovered, for the sheet had long since gone.
And now she found out what he had meant. For she was cooling now. The air on her damp body felt calming, and she could hear his breath evening out as hers did the same.
No, his slow love was not boring.
For even as she lay cooling she knew that at any given moment she would want him again.
Like this.
In his bedroom.
Night after night after night.
Did he regret it already? Aurora pondered as he lay quietly beside her.
Possibly she did, for she was replaying his words.
Keep on wanting me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KEEP ON WANTING ME.
Aurora lay there repeating his words in her head.
Was that to be her destiny?
To keep on wanting him? To keep on being available to him?
That sated feeling was fading, and as Nico reached across her for his phone the doubts and the hopelessness kicked back in.
‘Nico, why did you come back to Rome early?’
‘Work finished sooner than I expected and I had a good visit with my father, for once.’
Couldn’t he just say he had come back so he might see her?
‘Can’t you give me even the smallest victory, Nico?’
He couldn’t.
Instead he sat on the edge of the bed and checked his damned phone.
What was she supposed to do? Get showered and dressed and head back to work?
Sit in her hotel room biting her nails and wondering if Nico would take her out on her last night in Rome?
She was far too easy where Nico was concerned. The sum total of their dating history was having a drink together.
‘Nico,’ she said. ‘Tonight, I would like—’
‘Aurora, stop.’
Just stop.
He looked at the endless missed calls and the frantic texts, and knew that if he had been able to choose he really would have preferred to be alone for this moment.
‘Pronto?’ he said into his phone.
Aurora heard for the first time a slight shake in his strong voice as Nico asked when. And if anyone had been with him. And if his father had been in pain when he passed.
She started to cry.
When he’d ended the call Nico did not speak. Aurora went up on her knees and pressed herself into his back, wrapping her arms around him and crying and kissing his neck. Not in a sensual way. This time she was the tender one. But though she held him, it was Aurora who shed the tears.
Nico did not know how to.
‘Your mother took him lunch,’ Nico said. ‘Then called for the doctor to come quickly. It was peaceful, the doctor said.’
She moved around him so she sat facing him, on his lap, her legs wrapped around his body. She tried to read his face, to measure his pain, but it was blank.
‘I shouldn’t have come away this
week,’ Aurora cried. ‘I knew he was weak…’
Her tears were genuine, for she had both loved and hated the old bastard. Loved his wit and his humour and his proud ways. Hated that his hands had put bruises on her beautiful Nico, and she detested the insults that had been hurled from his mouth.
‘I need to get back,’ Nico said.
He prised himself out of her arms, but they sprang back.
‘Soon.’
‘Now,’ Nico said, and stood so she slid off his lap.
He went towards the bathroom and she followed, but he closed the bathroom door in her face.
She stood there with the thick wood between them.
Geo was dead.
Panic thudded in her chest.
She opened the drapes, and although Rome looked the same, as she turned naked from the French windows the bedroom did not. There were rumpled sheets and discarded clothes and the scent of sex in the air.
Aurora saw the chaos she’d brought to him.
He had returned to this.
She dressed. It seemed wrong to be pulling on a red dress when Geo was dead, but she had a black one back at the hotel she could change into.
Aurora wanted to help, and so she thought about what Marianna would do—she would pack, of course, except Nico had not even unpacked.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked as he came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist to the sight of Aurora going through his wardrobe.
‘Finding a black suit…’
‘I can manage.’
‘And a black tie…’
‘Aurora, go back to work—get on with your job.’
‘Work?’ She swung around and looked at him aghast. ‘How selfish of you! Do you really think we can all carry on working now? We have lost someone too.’
‘Cut me some slack, Aurora. I’m not thinking straight.’
He was hanging on by his fingernails even as she turned away in that red dress with tears streaming down her face. It dizzied his mind.
Where the hell was the calm wife from their game? The one who’d pour him a drink and leave him to spend these first moments on earth without his father alone.
Where was the demure woman who would accept his silence and lack of outward grief?
He would like to take Aurora back to bed, right now. To close the drapes and to weep.
The Sicilian's Surprise Love-Child (Mills & Boon Modern) (One Night With Consequences, Book 58) Page 8
