by Tara Pammi
And then they came, so easily, slumbering awake from some deep place he didn’t even know existed within himself. They burned in his chest, lit a fiery path through his throat as he tried to process the weight of the feeling. Of how unprepared he was for them.
“I’m yours, bella. Like I’ve never been anyone else’s.”
She came at him like a wild storm then, pushing into him, pressing into him, shaking the very ground he stood on. Her mouth... Madre di Dio, in all the wildness, her mouth was a lush escape. A warm invitation to heaven.
“And I’m yours. All of me is yours,” she whispered frantically against his mouth, a benediction he hadn’t even known he’d been waiting for.
Vincenzo cupped her hips, eager for more of her taste. He growled when she sank her teeth into his lower lip and then swiped that wicked tongue over it. Desire pounded at him, urging him to pull the flimsy dress up and away, until he could reach the hot apex of her sex. Patience was a hard-earned battle as he buried his mouth in her neck. The warm, sweet taste of her skin calmed him even as it aroused him, and he nipped at it with his teeth.
She rocked her hips into him at that, making him uncomfortably hard in his trousers. “I missed you, bella. I missed this with you,” he whispered, licking the tiny mark on her neck. “But I’ll be damned if I do this here, on the floor like an eager schoolboy when I can think of a hundred different ways of torturing you for all the months I’ve waited.”
Her laughter enveloped him. She clung to him as he easily pushed them both off the floor. He was stunned at how much he had missed that laughter of hers too. The open joy she found in the most intimately carnal things he did to her.
“I would have much preferred the floor if for nothing else that it clearly says you can’t wait until we get to the bedroom to have me.”
“Ah...but I want to take my time with you. You cut our honeymoon disastrously short and there’s so many things we still have to discover about each other, si?”
She shivered at that and he took her mouth roughly, thrusting his tongue into the warm cavern of her mouth. His muscles burned with the need for more... More contact, more friction, more of her. She and him... It had never been just sex between them.
Antonio had seen it. Had warned him.
And yet, Vincenzo couldn’t even imagine controlling this somehow, much less walking away from it.
CHAPTER NINE
“I’M YOURS, BELLA.”
Alessandra hugged those words close as Vincenzo deposited her on her bed and devoured her with those penetrating eyes. The luxurious sheets were cold against her skin, a startling contrast to the heat pouring off the man, looking down at her as if she were his downfall and salvation all at the same time. For long, painfully pregnant moments, he did nothing but look at her. Pushing up on her elbows, Alex returned his stare without hesitation.
Like I have been never been anyone else’s. Those quiet words resonated around them, explosive in the silence, though she knew they had been given reluctantly.
Her breath hitched in her throat as urgent hands landed on her knees and pushed them indecently apart, making space for himself between her legs. The silk of her dress whispered sinuously against the sheets as those very same hands found her buttocks and pulled her to the edge of the bed. Until his hips kissed her inner thighs. His fingers dug into her bottom as he tilted her up. Until his erection glided against the hottest part of her.
Alex thrust involuntarily, the shape and weight of that hardness making her feverishly delirious for more. Fingers clutching the sheets, she let out a moan when Vincenzo rocked against her, his hips doing that wickedly erotic thing that had made her go crazy that first time.
Hungry gaze holding hers captive, he pushed aside her flimsy thong and traced a finger up and down her wet folds. Circled the hot place she needed him to touch without quite giving in to her.
“Please, V,” she whispered, desperate for the clawing under her skin to subside.
“You mean this is better than your new technological friend?” It sounded like a tease, but the fire in his eyes told her it was anything but. His hands cupped her knees. Bent over her like that, he looked like a warrior intent on plunder.
Alex could barely hold the whimper at the loss of the acute pressure. “You never let me finish the story that night,” she murmured now.
“Si?” His tongue licked at her mouth, his flat, hard abdominal muscles gliding temptingly against her wet folds. She slid up and down on the bed, and he rewarded her with a movement of his own.
Alex groaned, her lower belly corkscrewing at the contact.
“Finish it now, Alessandra.”
The quiet command sank into her pores. Alex opened her eyes and smiled. “I had an orgasm that night, yes. But it felt empty without your whispered commands in my ear, without your body pushing down on me, without the warmth of your skin against mine... Nothing feels as good as you do, V. Nothing in the entire wide world.”
His answering grin, full of wicked charm and self-satisfied arrogance, was so devastatingly gorgeous that she reveled in it.
And then his hand drifted down again, down her belly to that aching place, rubbing the sensitive bundle of nerves with those wickedly clever fingers. His thumb drew erotic circles while he thrust a finger inside her.
“Cristo, I’ve missed this warmth of yours,” he said, his gaze devouring every dazed expression in her eyes. “Make those sounds for me, bella.”
His fingers moved again with a mesmerizing rhythm that lit up every nerve center in Alex’s body. When he bent down and took her mouth in a sensual tangle of a kiss, she clung to him, her body writhing under him, chasing that rhythm.
“Tell me what you need,” he asked, like he’d done every time they made love. Every time, he learned her body by making her learn her own. Every time, he pushed her to new discoveries about herself and what she liked. “Tell me what will make this all the sweeter for you, tesoro.”
“Touch me here,” she said, cupping her aching breasts. Just imagining his mouth there had sent her off the edge that night she’d had her empty orgasm.
“Pull the straps down.”
Alex raised her hands automatically, every cell in her body attuned to his demands, ready to surrender to his every wish. Slowly, with movements that made those gray eyes darken into something indecently erotic, she hitched each index finger under the straps and flicked them off her shoulders. But the straps didn’t fall all the way down and she locked them about her elbows by stretching her hands toward him.
“I want to touch you first,” she demanded in a husky voice, knowing that once he got his hands on her flesh, her all too willing flesh, she was going to be cast into a vortex of sensations. Of need and pleasure.
If she wanted to take a little of him, wanted to ensure he was as far gone as she in this, she needed to do it now. She needed to touch, caress, kiss, every inch of him before he took over.
“You haven’t tormented me enough, bella?” he said, his thumb tracing her collarbone, while the other dipped into her wetness, and out, in a mesmerizing rhythm that threatened to steal her resolve.
Fingers on his wrist, she stilled his hand. “I want to be more than a participant in this. I want to take something from you too.”
He dipped his head in a sudden movement and took her mouth in a rough kiss that mocked his control. “You think I haven’t given myself to this...to you?” he whispered against her mouth, his breath melded with her own.
“But whatever you give,” she said, pressing her face into his throat, tasting his skin, “it’s not...”
He didn’t let her finish. As if he knew she was about to say. That whatever he gave, it wasn’t enough until she had his heart.
She couldn’t bear to look at him, to see the answer in his eyes.
And he... For the first time since she’d known him, Vincenzo didn’t meet her
gaze. He capitulated. Lost the battle, she knew, instead of the war.
Long lashes hiding the expression in his eyes, he brought her hands to his shirt. “Then do what you will with me, Princess.”
Alex blinked away at the hotness that threatened behind her eyes. She was going to live for what she did have.
Him.
This.
She was going to build the family she’d never had. She was going to give it her all, regardless.
She didn’t hesitate as she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers. Almost frantic with the need to touch, she pushed the shirt off his shoulders and ran her hands, palms down, from the tight muscles in his shoulder to his jutting collarbone and then down, tracing the ridges of his chest to the rock-hard muscles of his abdomen.
Up and down, left and right, she zigzagged her hands, her cold hands, over his warm, taut skin. Though he stayed still, she didn’t miss the way his breathing became shallow, even harsh, with each path she traced on his skin. Pushing herself up, up, she followed the path her hands traced on his chest and abdomen with her mouth.
He tasted of sweat and salt and something so gloriously masculine that she whimpered. This close to him, each breath he inhaled and exhaled hit the upper curves of her breasts in a tantalizing rhythm that had her nipples tauten, begging for more.
She tested the give of his muscle with her teeth, and an animalistic grunt escaped his mouth when she gently bit his pectorals. She busied her hands with, first his belt, and then the clasp of his trousers. And still she was aware that he was letting her. His control, she had no doubt, was on a short leash tonight. Almost at the end. But then, she had given him her surrender, unconditional surrender, and she had known from the first moment she’d met him, that Vincenzo would gift her with the entire universe in return for that surrender. She shivered now, even as his warm skin somehow diffused its heat into her skin.
All thoughts fled her brain when she pushed his trousers off his hips and instinctively reached for the hardness that she wanted. Again, that guttural grunt, that sharp hiss of an inhale, when she touched the thick length of him.
Steel coated in velvet, he lengthened and hardened further even as she wrapped her fingers around him. As a man, he was just the same, she realized. Smooth words, gorgeous smile, and at the core of him, he was unshakable in his resolve, in his quest toward revenge.
If destruction was what he wanted, then she would give it to him.
She turned her fingers into a fist and moved it up and down that hard length, as she’d done in those first few days when they’d been busy discovering each other’s bodies like explorers on some new land. But there had been no challenge between them then.
Only an intrinsic need for each to discover what gave the other the most pleasure. She rubbed the soft head with her thumb in movements that mimicked the gentle torture he’d rained over her. Head thrown back, eyes closed, that lean, hard chest breathing deep, he groaned out loud.
But she wanted even more. She was determined to wrest the last of his control from him. Until he too stood in the wake of this thing between them, stripped and vulnerable.
“Tell me your deepest fantasy,” she coaxed, the very thought of that steely length inside her making her sex ache with want.
“This,” he said, his face bathed in moonlight from the French windows. He clasped her jaw, his thumb tracing her lower lip. His other hand tightened in her hair, tugging, raising her face up. “You...like this. All mine.”
“Me...doing what?” she demanded, scooting to the edge of the bed. She pulled her legs up and under her, and propped herself up on her elbows, bringing her face to the height of that hard evidence of his arousal. Leaning down, she blew on it.
He tensed. “Do it,” he whispered after what felt like an eternity.
“Do what?” she threw back, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “Ask me nicely.”
“Take me in your mouth now,” he commanded, but there was a desperation to it.
Falling onto her knees, she obeyed.
Another loud groan ripped through the air around them. Digging her nails into his hard thighs for purchase, Alex licked the entire length of him, up and down. A filthy curse came next, filling her with power and arousal, a cocktail that vibrated through her.
Then she took him in her mouth and his fingers plunged into her hair, giving her instructions in a hoarse voice that rumbled right through her.
She had no idea how long he gave her free rein of his body, but she loved having him like this. Had no sense of time or the world around them as she played with the evidence of what she did to him. For a few minutes, or it could have been hours, he was putty in her hands.
Every thrust and jerk of his hips as she licked the length of him with her hands at the base, every curse gritted out through a tense jaw, every tug of his fingers in her hair urging her to go faster and harder, was music to Alex’s ears.
“Enough, bella!” he declared, and within moments, Alex was lying back on the bed, her dress rucked up to her hips, and Vincenzo eyeing her as if he meant to consume her.
With her golden-brown hair spread out on pristine white sheets, her eyes glittering in her flushed face, Alessandra was the most beautiful thing Vincenzo had ever seen.
Her bare breasts with those plump brown nipples, the taut flat belly with the white bridal dress rucked up to her waist, and the long, toned legs, the strip of hair covering the wet warmth he desperately wanted to bury himself in... And that mouth, that gloriously pink, pouty mouth that had licked and stroked him right to the edge of heaven...
If she’d asked him for something tonight, he wouldn’t deny her. Yet even that warning thought couldn’t clear the fog of desire claiming his senses.
But nothing could compare to the expression in her eyes as she looked at him now. As if he were her safe harbor in the midst of a storm. As if he were the only thing that could save her. As if he were as necessary to her as air.
He stepped out of his trousers and filled his hands with her butt cheeks and pulled her close. A light coating of sweat shone on her body. He ran his hands from the sleekly soft skin of her inner thighs to the toned muscle of her midriff, up, up, to the perfect globes of her breasts. Followed that with his mouth, licking and nipping as he went.
Every time, he pulled the skin between his teeth, she jerked and thrust up with her hips. And he got a little harder. When he finally reached her mouth, he thrust his tongue into hers and she clung to him, panting, sobbing.
And then he began the journey back down, drinking in the silky softness of every inch of her. He pinched the plump nipples between his fingers and tugged, just as he knew she liked.
She bowed off the bed, her body arcing like she’d been hit by lightning. He bent his head and flicked his tongue over one tight bud and teased her. Her hips, her breasts, everything jerked up toward him as if she wanted to burrow into his skin and remain there. He wanted to tell her that she was already there. That she had gotten under the skin of a man whom nothing had ever touched before.
That he didn’t know how to dislodge her. That already he was seeing things differently, seeing a future for himself that jarred violently with his present path.
“Please... Vincenzo, please. I need your mouth there,” she said, not in supplication though. But with demand, with fierce need. He had loved that about her. She demanded pleasure as fiercely as she gave it. She demanded it as if it were her due.
“With pleasure, cara mia,” he said, and closed his lips over her sensitive nipples.
Tremors took over her entire body. Holding her lower body tight against his own, he alternated between both breasts, kissing and licking, sucking and blowing air on the wet tips, until they were swollen and glistening in the moonlight. Slowly, he brought her down to the bed and tilted her hips up toward him.
“Keep your eyes open, bella,” he instructed
, wanting her to see what she did to him.
He rubbed himself in her wetness, the erotic glide sending long moans out of their mouths. A shudder racked his entire body when he entered her in a deep thrust that took him home. Alessandra cried out and he stilled inside her, holding her to him.
“Damn it! Did I hurt you—”
“No.” Her lithe body stretched under him, as if she wanted to feel him everywhere. “I just...” She locked those beautiful eyes on him, and Vincenzo knew this was the home he’d been chasing for most of his life. “I just forgot how...achy this feels. How thoroughly you fill me up. How well you know what I like.”
And then she smiled and raised her hips in an experimental thrust and an arrow of pleasure shot up the base of his spine. But it wasn’t just pleasure as he started moving in short, fast thrusts. He had no words for what it felt like when her gaze moved over him, her fingers tracing each feature.
It had felt like home that first time too. It had felt like nothing he’d ever known before. Excitement and arousal, pleasure and warmth, satisfaction and peace—all the things he’d never had in his life, he’d found in her embrace. Only he hadn’t seen it then.
And now it was too late.
There was no sense of him when he was inside her—his goal, his ambition, his cause, his revenge—everything disappeared. When she clasped his face in her hands and kissed his mouth. When her hips thrust up in a desperate need to be closer to him. When she was pulling him irrevocably into the fabric of her own life. Her loved ones, her family, her goals, her generous heart.
She made him drown; she pulled the ground away from under him.
“More, please. Everything you have, V,” she demanded, her core contracting and releasing him, her thighs slapping against his hips with every damp slide of his body against her.
Every tiny pulse of her body hit him as he pulled out and then thrust back in again. Every muscle in his body curled against the next, bracing for the surfeit of pleasure.
But he knew Alessandra’s surrender did not come without a price.
