The Amalfitano's Bold Abduction (The Italian Billionaires Collection)

by Jennifer Blake

Immediately, he eased away from her and turned to hold her close for a breathless instant. She urged him to her with shaking hands. He took her mouth in a fast, deep kiss, and then settled over her, easing between her thighs. With a single twist of his hips, he slid into her tight, hot depths.

  Internal pulsations welcomed him, held him as he filled her. Beatitude washed over her in a heated wave, expanding her heart. She lifted against him, taking him deeper. He moved in a slow glide that tested her resilience, yet seemed to seek contact against every possible millimeter of her depths.

  She sighed, gasped as he left her room for breathing, keened as he drove deep again. His movements gained power, went deeper still. She grasped his hips, feeling them flex and tighten, holding him seated in her core as she moved against him. He allowed it, aided it for long seconds before withdrawing and then sinking in again.

  He was tireless and unhurried, fierce in his concentration, though perspiration gathered on his skin and his muscles leaped and quivered with the constraint he put on his need. Heated, liquid and yielding, she took him, accepted his demanding strokes, returning them with variations of her own. She could feel days, weeks, even months of tension seeping from her, flowing away as it was replaced by the mounting fervor inside her.

  Her breath sobbed in her throat. Tears gathered along her eyelids. She curled inward, fastening her mouth on his neck as they jolted together, tasting the salty essence of him on her tongue.

  Abruptly, her very being turned on its axis and cleaved to him. She cried out as the orgasm overwhelmed her. His hold tightened. He thrust once more then stiffened with a hard shudder of his body, holding that utmost depth with a fierce contraction of muscles and labored breaths as he bent protectively above her.

  Moments passed before he eased from her. With gentle hands, he brushed her hair away from her face, tucking stray strands behind her ear, a gesture so caring it caught at her heart. His breathing had slowed, but he was still damp with perspiration. And so was she, Dana discovered as wind sweeping in at the open door lifted the curtain and swept over her skin.

  “You are okay?” he asked, his voice a soft rumble above her ear.

  “Fine.” It was all she could manage while warm languor still oozed in her veins, though she was sure she had never been more okay in her life.

  “You are always fine, no?”

  He sounded more Italian than usual. It seemed to happen when he was most moved, or maybe that was only in her mind. She smiled a little at the idea as she answered almost at random. “Most of the time.”

  “Would you tell me if you were not?”

  “It depends.” She spread her fingers wide over his chest, captivated by the pulsing of his heartbeat under her palm and the way her every nerve ending and skin cell seemed attuned to his.

  “On?”

  “I don’t know, maybe on what’s wrong.”

  “So I am left to guess.”

  It hardly seemed to matter since they were unlikely to be together long enough for problems to arise, though she immediately pushed the thought away. “I suppose you could learn to do that in time.”

  He was quiet, as if absorbing that. Meanwhile, he traced the line of her cheek with a fingertip, brushed her jawbone with his knuckle and then down her neck to her collarbone. He flattened his palm on her chest and then slowly clasped her breast in the prison of his fingers.

  “Then I could explain that I did not plan to simply throw you on a bed and make love to you as I did just now. If that was a problem, you would tell me?”

  She stared at him in the dark, frustrated at being able to see only shadows where his eyes should be, though she could feel the tingle as he slowly circled the mound of her breast with a fingertip, never quite reaching the top that tightened in hopeful anticipation. “What did you plan?”

  “There was no plan, only a hope. But if I had intended it, I would have at least have waited for a time when you might be ready, after we had enjoyed fine food, wine and music with, perhaps, a little moonlight.”

  “You think I need the trappings of romance.” It sounded rather lovely, really, now it was too late.

  “I think,” he said quietly, “that you deserve them.”

  For some reason, she wanted to cry. “That’s very nice of you, but not required.”

  “I see that, and yet—”

  “What?”

  “The least I can do is make certain the next time is not quite so hurried.”

  “That was hurried just now?” she asked with incredulity in her voice. Her heart fluttered inside her ribcage at the idea there would be a next time.

  “You did not find it so?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “Your lovers must have been imbeciles without self-control.”

  “Lover.” She grimaced in the dark as she made that correction.

  “Lover? One?”

  “He was my fiancé and considered quite the lady’s man. Or at least he thought so.”

  He circled to the bottom of one breast and then across to the other to wind around to its peak. “I believe the phrase is something like ‘a legend in his own mind’?”

  “You have that right,” she said on a low chuckle.

  “And afterward?”

  “He wanted to get married right away. I—didn’t, as I told you before.”

  “A lifetime of sex too soon over did not appeal.”

  “Then or later.” It hadn’t been entirely her fiancé’s fault, she thought. He had tried, but somehow foreplay to him was merely a job he had to do to get her ready. In his frustration, he sometimes lost it. Sex became something neither of them could win, since the harder she tried to hurry her arousal, the more difficult it became to respond at all. Too often she simply let him have what he wanted while she felt next to nothing.

  “We must see what we can do to erase that experience.”

  He bent his head and took her nipple into the heat of his mouth, drawing on it with gentle suction, flicking it with his tongue before drawing on it again. Molten desire stirred inside her like the slow building of a volcano, though doubt based on experience threatened to cap it.

  “You don’t mean now?” she asked as she touched the plane of his face, fascinated by the sensation as she felt the working of his jaw.

  He pressed against her, nudging her with the hot shaft that lay between them while heat rose off him in waves.

  Her breath caught in her throat. “You do mean now!”

  “We are together in this bed, you and I,” he said against the moist, tight tip of her breast, “and the night has just begun.”

  ~ ~ ~

  He couldn’t get enough of her. She was so natural in her responses, so generous—so very polite, just as her T-shirt had promised. There was no coquetry in her reactions, no overt awareness of their roles as male and female, and yet she was more deeply, naturally sensual than any woman he’d ever known.

  She was guarded at times, but he suspected it was from self-protection. The way she shied away from speaking of what she wanted or needed from him caught at his heart. To discover that she would answer if pushed far enough was his secret pleasure, one he intended to hold close until she realized it on her own. She would, Andrea thought, and soon. She was as intelligent in bed as she was elsewhere.

  She slept now, curled against his side with her knee across his thigh. The vulnerability of that position was a torturous enticement, but he resisted the urge to wake her with an intimate caress. Later, it might be impossible to resist, but he was replete for now. At least he was in body, if not in mind.

  She drove him to frenzied, brainless need, truly she did. He’d been so enthralled with her during the past hour that he had nearly forgotten the men who had dared invade the villa. They were long gone, he was sure, but he could have at least closed and locked the door.

  Protection had also escaped his mind. The dangerous excitement beforehand had some bearing, also being in Dana’s bedroom instead of his own where he had access to condoms, but thes
e things could not excuse him entirely.

  He was not so self-centered as to expect his partner to arrange such matters. This was his responsibility and he had failed. It was something he must discuss with Dana when morning came.

  Her slow, even breathing tickled the hair on his chest, but he endured it, just as he endured the numbness of his arm where her head rested upon it. The trust in the way she had turned to him, sighed and slept breached some place inside that had never been touched. He was content to the point of amazement to simply lie there and hold her. Some things were worth any discomfort.

  A part of it was that he had no idea how long it would last. She gave no sign of being impressed by what he had or how he lived. He was fervently glad of that, but it also gave him no possible hold upon her.

  Moving with slow care, he picked up a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. Drawing it out to its full length, then, he draped it over his chest, letting it fall to lie on his abdomen. It was a yearning realized. Or another one, really, as making love to her had been the greatest of his dreams.

  It was one he still held, as he was far from sated with tasting her freckles and other pale places untouched by any sun, might never be entirely satisfied.

  Smiling wryly in the dark at his satyr’s urges, he closed his eyes.

  Sleep still eluded him. As his libido quieted, his mind replayed the sight of Dana struggling with the two assailants in black. He felt again the savage fear that had sent him unarmed onto the balcony.

  They had been after Guaio, and nearly had him. That Dana had risked so much, possibly even her life, to save a cat was the stuff of nightmares.

  Something would have to be done.

  Dana was right; he needed to intervene in this business between Bella and Rico. It had gone too far, much too far.

  He should do it now, while rage burned hot inside him. If Rico was behind the business he deserved a few hard words about his methods, as Dana had suggested. That was not all he would hear, either. There were ways to make certain he stopped what he was doing or paid the price.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough. Tomorrow, when he was cooler and would say nothing that Bella might wish unsaid. Tomorrow, when he was no longer a pillow for the woman in his arms. Tomorrow, when he would have to let her go. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight.

  “Andrea! Andrea, wake up!”

  He came upright with his heart throbbing in his chest. The alarm in Dana’s voice triggered his own, along with a slicing edge of terror for her.

  She was not in the bed beside him. He heaved over, shoving to one elbow, and then exhaled in sudden sharp relief as he saw her silhouetted against the light coming through the open doorway.

  He ran a hasty gaze over her, searching for injuries. He saw none but did notice the sexy curves of her naked bottom as she stood with her back to him, along with the intriguing inked outline of her girl-on-a-dolphin tattoo that covered the base of her spine.

  “What is it? What happened?” he demanded in annoyed despair over the unmistakable stirring below his waist.

  “Look!”

  He was looking, though he was trying to direct his attention elsewhere. It was fully five seconds before he noticed the dust that boiled around the curtain in a pale yellow cloud, heard its telltale whisper and patter against the floor and exterior villa walls, or saw the growing darkness outside where there should have been the brightness of morning sun.

  “Close the shutters,” he said, whipping back the covers as he powered to his feet. “Then shut the door. Do it now, at once.”

  She did as he said, batting aside the curtain that swayed in the rising wind, stepping out to drag the shutters together. He was beside her, then, holding them while she slammed the bolts into place. He swung the glass-paned door closed and twisted the lock.

  The double barrier closed the wind outside. In the sudden quiet, he looked down at Dana, taking in her wide eyes. “Don’t look like that, it’s all right.”

  “What was that? I mean, what is it?”

  “The Scirocco,” he said, “or Sirocco, as you would say in English. It comes now and then in August.”

  “I thought that was just wind.”

  He tipped his head in assent. “Hot wind out of Africa, though sometimes it brings dust from the Sahara.”

  “You mean we are standing in dust from the Sahara desert?”

  They were indeed. It had spread across the floor in a thin sheet marked by windblown waves. It also lay in small piles against their feet. And that wasn’t the only place it had landed.

  “The very same,” he answered, and reached to skim the back of his finger down the rounded slope of her breast so sand drifted from it like gold dust, sifting down into the captivating curls that proved she was a natural redhead. “It looks as if it was doing its best to bury you.”

  “And you,” she said, reaching to brush away the coating on the tops of his shoulders, glancing pointedly at the dusting that lay atop his semi-erection.

  “It’s also burying my bedroom,” he said in sudden realization. “I must close the door there.”

  He turned away with reluctance, though he caught her hand to pull her along with him. Together, they slammed shutters and doors closed to bar the sand from that room as well. When it was done, he turned to her once more.

  “As sad as it might be to wash this African dirt down the drain after it has come so far, I believe we are in need of a shower.”

  Her grimace as she wiped dust from her arms was agreement enough.

  “I could be all gallant and say ladies first, but—” He stopped, lifted a brow.

  Her movements slowed. Daring gleamed in the rich brown of her eyes, while pale rose color filtered through the dust on her face. She swallowed with a quick movement in the line of her throat, and then reached to take his hand again. Turning toward his en suite bath, she glanced at him over her shoulder.

  “The lady has a better idea.”

  It was far better, that joint shower, but not nearly as fast as two separate ones might have been.

  He rubbed shampoo through her hair and kissed her while her eyes were screwed too tightly closed to see what he was about. She soaped the hair on his chest and pushed her fingers through it until he thought he would explode.

  Shower gel made a lovely, slick surface for exploration of her curves and hollows, though she couldn’t hold still for laughing at his tickling progress. She half drowned him, making him kneel while she rinsed the shampoo from his hair.

  That was her mistake, however, for the position gave him an unfair advantage that he seized without mercy.

  By the time the water finally ran cool, he had her exactly where he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen the sand coating the rounded hills of her breasts, had her with her back against the shower’s warm tile and her legs around his waist. The splashing of the water around them, joining the sounds of wet flesh against wet flesh and half-strangled moans, sent him spinning into the a possessive fury. He wanted to mark this woman as his for all time, to make it impossible for her ever to make love again without thinking of him.

  He needed her to come undone in his arms in a way unlike any other, one that could never be repeated. It was crazy and he knew it, but that did not prevent him from plunging into her until he thought his heart would burst.

  When he had what he wanted, when she shuddered and cried out as he held her, he rested his forehead against hers and leaned into her because it was the only way he could keep from collapsing to the shower floor. And he cursed himself for ten kinds of fool because, though he had used protection this time, being in his own bathroom with condoms mere feet away, he wished devoutly it had not been necessary.

  Chapter 8

  Dana returned to her own room well before Luisa, Tommaso and the others were due to arrive for the day. Andrea left out at the same time, saying something about checking the helicopter to be certain its tie-downs were holding and there was no damage from the ongoing storm. He’d rem
oved her shoulder bandage first, however, leaving the scratches uncovered as they were well enough for it. He kissed them again to make them better, however, and then kissed her with breathtaking thoroughness, making her better as well.

  As she brushed tangles from her hair and smoothed cream on the beard burns she’d found here and there, she glanced at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looked no different, yet is seemed she moved in a sensual haze. Her body and mind were so sensitized to Andrea that a mere look or brush of his hand was enough to send her into trembling readiness. She had lost count of the times they made love in the night. As for what had happened in his shower—

  No, she wouldn’t think about that, couldn’t without flushing from head to toe. She’d never dreamed it could be that way between lovers, teasing and laughing one moment, wild with driving desire the next.

  A smile of purest feminine pleasure curved her mouth as she thought of his concern afterward, his fear that he’d been too rough or not careful enough. She was made of stronger stuff than that. She was indeed, even if she was aware of soreness in muscles she hadn’t known she had and tenderness where she’d never felt it before.

  She felt a lot of things she’d not known until now. It stunned her to realize how many, and how close she had come to never experiencing them.

  No matter what happened, she would always have the night before to remember.

  Guaio, watching her from where he lay in a regal sprawl on the foot of the bed, gave a plaintive meow. Dana chuckled as she moved toward the huge old armadio that served as a closet for the clothing Andrea had provided.

  “I know, and I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “It was most unkind to dislodge you last night after your scare.”

  The cat mewed again while he flicked his tail up and down with every sign of irritated agreement.

  “Yes, and unfair as well. I don’t blame you at all for finding somewhere else to spend the night. It can’t have been too restful for you, with everything that was going on.” She took down a simple and lightweight shift in sand-colored linen as something that should be cool in spite of the heat, tossing it across the bed next to the cat.