Neither one of them moved. Elena wasn’t sure she breathed. This disastrous, unquenchable attraction seemed to swell and grow, radiating from his hand to hers, a hard, gnawing ache that every heartbeat only made worse. It penetrated every part of her, and made her want. Crave. Need.
“It haunts you,” he said, a dark, male hunger stamped across his face. “I haunt you. Believe me, Elena. I know.”
She jerked her hand from his. But as she did, she had a searing burst of clarity.
She wanted him. She always had. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, that a single dance should never have affected her so much. It had. He had. And that wanting had ripped apart her world, changed everything. She’d been paying for it for six long months, in isolation and often in fear, moving from odd job to odd job across the whole of Italy, trying to keep herself out of sight and away from Niccolo.
All because of this. All because of Alessandro.
She had already been crucified for this crime. She paid for it every day. Why not commit it?
And if there was a part of her that knew that this was also the best way to prove to Alessandro that she was exactly the kind of woman he believed her to be, that this would cement his opinion of her, she told herself that only made the decision easier.
“This isn’t a haunting,” she whispered, watching the thunder roll through his eyes. “Neither one of us is a ghost.” She smiled then. “I can prove it.”
And then she indulged the roaring inside of her, that terrible hunger, and put her hands on him.
Not a light touch on his shoulder as she had when they’d danced, polite and appropriate. She slid her palms over the whisper-soft cotton that strained against his marvelous torso, and felt the pure, raw heat of him. The iron strength. Her head spun, dizzy and delicious.
Alessandro let out a sound that was almost a laugh, and then he tugged her closer, lifting her up against him. Her aching breasts pressed hard against his beautiful chest, sending a frantic shiver through her, and he muttered a curse. He settled her on the rail, his arms strong and hard and exquisite as they held her fast. She heard her boat shoes fall off, two loud slaps against the stone floor, and then she forgot them.
Alessandro stepped between her legs, and it wasn’t enough. Her skirt kept him from pressing against her, into her, even as he leaned into the palms she’d flattened against him. She was surprised to see her hands were shaking. She was shaking. Or maybe the world was, all around them, and she didn’t care.
This was finally happening. Finally.
He held her with one hand in the small of her back, hot and hard and his, while his other hand moved to her neck, her jaw, tracing patterns. Igniting her. And it wasn’t enough—
“Look at me,” he commanded her, that low voice of his snaking through her like a brushfire, making her skin seem to pull tight over her bones, and she would do anything. Anything he wanted. Anything at all.
Anything to keep them both burning like this.
His dark green eyes flashed, triumph and fire, and that wonder she knew was only theirs. Only this. His mouth looked nearly grim with need, and she knew she should be afraid. Of him. Of what was about to happen—what had always been going to happen, sooner or later.
But again, she felt only that wild passion. That desire. And that conviction that she was safer now, in his clever, dangerous hands, than she had been in months.
“Inevitable,” she whispered before she knew she meant to speak, and the faintest hint of a smile moved across his mouth, then was gone.
“Hold on,” he ordered her with a gruff intent that made her core seem to glow.
He moved his hands to cradle her face between them, and she grabbed his shirt in greedy fists.
At last, that voice chanted inside of her, again and again. At last.
And then he took her mouth with all of that ruthlessness and command, and Elena lost her mind.
CHAPTER THREE
HOT. WILD.
She was his.
And she kissed him back as if she wanted to devour him, too.
As if he’d set her on fire and this was how they’d burn, together, in this tumult of heat and glory, and her perfect mouth he couldn’t taste enough.
She was better—this was better—than Alessandro had dared imagine in the middle of a hundred nights, when he’d pictured this in stark detail. When the dark fury that she could bewitch him as she had and be so much less of a person than he’d hoped didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter now, either. Need stormed through him, making him closer to desperate than he’d ever been before.
He wanted her skin against his, slick and sweet. He wanted his hands on those tempting breasts, her enchanting curves. He wanted to lick between her legs and stay there until she screamed. He wanted deep inside of her. He wanted. And every kiss, every taste, every little way she moved against him, only drove him higher.
“More,” he said, and he picked her up again, yanking that damned skirt up and over her hips.
Deep masculine elation pounded through him when she lifted her legs and wrapped herself around him. And then he was there. Hard and hot against her melting heat, separated only by his trousers and the slightest wisp of material she wore. A delicate shudder moved through her, and for a moment he thought he might lose control.
But Alessandro wanted her too much, and had for too long. He took her mouth again, thrilled when she met him with a passion he could taste. She arched against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, and it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
He carried her to one of the loungers scattered about the terrace, then set her down. She was unsteady on her feet, her blue eyes wide and dazed, bright with need, and he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone else. More than he’d imagined it was possible to want.
“Please,” Elena said, her voice ragged with desire. The most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. “Don’t stop.”
Her hands were still on his chest, and he could feel each touch, each caress, directly in his sex. He kissed her again, deep and demanding, ravaging her mouth, and she thrilled him by returning it in kind.
Out of control. So good it hurt. Again. And again.
“These clothes need to come off,” he muttered, pulling his mouth away from hers.
Alessandro moved to tug her T-shirt over her head, then hissed out a breath when he threw it aside and she stood there before him, bared to the waist. No bra to block him from her perfect breasts, small and round, with nipples like hard, ripe points. Lovely beyond reason. He nearly shook as his hands went to her skirt, working the zipper and then grabbing on to her panties as he tugged all of it down over her hips and out of his way.
And then Elena was naked. Gloriously, beautifully naked, and she was real and here and his. Finally his.
For a moment he only stared at her, a kind of awe sweeping through him as his body went wild, so desperate for her he could hardly bear it. He swept her up and then took her down with him, splaying her out above him as he lay back on the chaise.
Elena twisted against him, and then her frantic hands were on the hem of his T-shirt and he sat up slightly to peel it off. He brushed her hands out of the way to rid himself of his trousers, kicking them aside. And when he pulled her back into place they both sighed in something like reverence. And then she was like silk against him, all over him, soft and naked and hot.
Finally.
Alessandro’s heart pounded. He was so hard it bordered on the painful, and then she rolled her hips and moved all of that slick, wet heat against the length of him, and he groaned. He traced the line of her spine down to her bottom, and then bent to take one of those achingly perfect nipples into his mouth. She made a wild, greedy sort of noise, and he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t take another moment of this magnificent torture.
It had been too long already. It had been forever.
He sat up, holding her against him, her soft thighs falling on either side of his. She knel
t astride him, her hands moving from his chest to his shoulders, then burying themselves in his hair. Alessandro reached down between them, sinking his fingers deep inside the molten core of her.
She cried out, and he loved it. He tested her slickness, learned her lush shape, his palm hard against the center of her need. He watched her pretty face flush, felt her hips buck against his hand, and he returned to her breasts, sucking a taut nipple into his mouth and then biting down. Just hard enough.
She broke apart in his arms with a wordless cry, hot and wet in his hand, her head falling forward until her face was pressed into his neck. He lifted her in his arms while she still shook and shuddered, and then he thrust hard and deep inside her.
At last.
She was scalding hot, so deliciously soft, and still in the grips of her climax when he began to move. Alessandro held her hips in his hands and guided her into the rhythm he wanted. Slow, but demanding, catching the fire that was tearing her apart and building it up again with every stroke.
Higher. Hotter. Hungrier.
He heard her breath catch again, felt her stiffen, heard the shocked sound she made in his ear. She gripped his shoulders tight and shook all around him again, just as he wanted. He watched her arch back into the sunlight—so painfully, perfectly beautiful. This woman, his woman, lost to her pleasure, mindless and writhing against him, while he moved hard and deep inside of her.
He rolled them over on the lounger, coming on top of her and deeper into her. Alessandro let his head drop down next to hers, and then her arms wrapped around him, her hips meeting his in a wild, uncontrollable dance.
He felt her move beneath him, heard her gasp anew, and each hitch in her breath, each mindless cry, made him want her more. He was so deep inside of her, and they moved together like a dream—like a dream he’d had a thousand times, only much slicker, much hotter, much better.
And this time, when she began to break apart around him, when she threw her head back once more and arched up against him, Alessandro called out her name like the incantation it was and fell right along with her.
Elena came back to herself slowly. Painfully.
She was tucked up against Alessandro’s side. He was sprawled out on the lounger beside her, one arm thrown over his head, looking for all the world like some kind of lazy, sated god. There was no reason he should be so appealing, even now, with his dark lashes closed, his arrogant features with the marks of the previous night’s violence stamped into his skin. And yet …
She sat up gingerly, surprised her body still felt at all like her own when he’d made it his—made her his—with such devastating completeness. Her body still hummed with pleasure. So much pleasure Elena could hardly believe she’d survived it, that she was still in one piece.
Then again, perhaps she wasn’t.
He shifted, and she felt his hand on her back, smoothing its way down to curl possessively over her hip. Impossibly, she felt something in her catch anew. A spark where there should have been nothing but ash and burned-out embers.
Surely this was the end of it. Succumbing to what had burned so bright between them had to have destroyed it, didn’t it? But his fingers traced a lazy alphabet across her skin, spreading that fierce glow deep into her all over again, making her realize this wasn’t over at all.
Elena had made a terrible mistake, she understood then. There were many ways to pay, and she’d just discovered a brand-new one. Perhaps, on some level, she’d held out the hope that what had surged between them was all smoke, no fire. That indulging it would defeat it.
Now she knew better. Now she knew exactly how hot they burned. She would have to live with that, too.
“Come here,” he said, and she felt his voice move in her like magic, making her chest feel tight.
Despite herself, she turned. She looked down at him, bracing herself for a smug expression, a cocky smile—but that hard gaze of his was serious when it met hers. Almost contemplative. And that was worse, because she had no defense against it.
He reached up and traced a lazy line from her collarbone down over the upper swell of her breasts, and there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes when she caught his hand in hers and stopped him.
“Alessandro …” she began, but she didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he tugged her back down beside him, surrounding her once again with all that warm male strength. As if she were safe, she thought in a kind of despair. As if she’d finally come home.
When she knew perfectly well neither one of those things were true.
His gaze darkened as he watched her. He slid a hand around to the nape of her neck, but she was the one who closed the distance between them, pressing her mouth to his, spurred on by a great wealth of emotion she didn’t want to understand.
This time, there should have been no wild explosion, no impossible heat. This time, she should have been more in control of herself, of all these things she didn’t want to feel.
But his mouth moved on hers and something incandescent poured through her, lighting her up all over again. She felt that spark ignite, felt that same fire grow again inside of her. His kiss was tender, something like loving, and it ripped her into pieces.
She kissed him back, desperately, letting her hands learn his fascinating body all over again, letting herself disappear into this madness that she knew perfectly well would destroy her. It was only a matter of time.
And this time when he slid into her it was a different kind of fire. Slow, deliberate. It stripped her bare, made her eyes fill with tears, battered what was left of her defenses, her carefully constructed veneers. He gazed down at her as he moved inside of her, his dark eyes grave and something more she didn’t want to name, as he spun this wicked fire around them.
As he wrecked her totally, inside and out, and she loved every second of it.
And then he pushed them both straight over the edge of the world.
When she woke a second time, the sun was beginning to sink toward the sea, bathing the sky in peaches and golds, and Alessandro wasn’t next to her. Elena sat up in confusion, only realizing as she almost let it slide from her that she was draped in something deliciously silky. A robe, she discovered when she frowned down at it.
She pulled it on as she stood, belting it around her waist, and when she looked up she saw him.
He sat at a nearby table in the gathering dusk, a wineglass in one hand, his gaze trained on her. He hadn’t bothered with his shirt. A quick glance assured her he was wearing those loose, soft trousers, low on his narrow hips. That lean, smoothly muscled body was even more beautiful from a distance and now, of course, she knew what he could do with it. She knew. She snapped her attention back to his face—and went still.
He was watching her with an expression that made her breath catch in her throat. She recognized that look. This was the Alessandro Corretti she remembered, brooding and dark.
And it seemed he’d remembered that he hated her.
Elena steeled herself. It was better this way. This was what she’d wanted. She ran her hands down the front of the silk robe, but then stopped, not wanting him to see any hint of her agitation.
“Sit down,” he said, indicating the table before him and the selection of platters spread out across its inlaid mosaic surface. His voice was cold. Impersonal. A slap after what they’d shared, and she was sure he knew it. “You must be hungry.”
The moment he said it she realized she was ravenous, and she told herself that was the only reason she obeyed him and sat. Alessandro seethed with a dark menace, lounging there with such studied carelessness, watching her with a slight curl to his lip.
She’d expected this, she reminded herself. She’d known sleeping with him would make him despise her, would confirm his low opinion of her, when he believed her still engaged to Niccolo and all manner of other, horrible things. But it shocked her how much it hurt to see it, how it clawed into her, threatening to spill out of her eyes. She blinked it away.
And then she settled herself in the seat across from him as if she hadn’t a care in the world, and gazed down at the food spread out before her. A plate of plump, ripe cheeses, tangy cured meats and an assortment of thick, lush spreads—an olive tapenade, a fragrant Greek-style taramasalata—next to a basket of fresh, golden semolina bread. A serving dish piled high with what looked like an interesting take on the traditional Sicilian caponata, a cooked aubergine salad laden here with succulent morsels of seafood, rich black and green olives and sweet asparagus spears.
Elena took the wine he poured for her, a rich and hearty red, and sipped at it, letting the mellow taste wash over her, wash her clean. She tried to match his seeming insouciance, leaning back in her chair and holding her glass airily, as if she spent most of her evenings with her various lovers in their magnificent island estates. As if this—as if he—was nothing but run of the mill.
“It’s quite good,” she said, because she thought she should say something.
Not for the first time, she was painfully aware of how deeply unsophisticated she really was—how categorically unsuited to playing in these deep, dark waters with men like him. Niccolo had dressed her up and taught her how to play the part, but here, now, she was forcefully reminded that she was only Elena Calderon, a nobody from a remote village no one had ever heard of, descended from a long line of mostly fishermen. She was out of her league, and then some.
Alessandro only watched her. Something about that cold regard, that dark, silent fury, made her feel raw. Restless.
“Alessandro Corretti with nothing to say?” She attempted a smile. “Shocking.”
“Tell me,” he said in that calm, easy way that only emphasized the deadly edge beneath. “When you run back to your fiancé and tell him what you did here, how detailed a picture will you paint for him? When you tell him you slept with a man he loathes, will you also tell him how many times you screamed my name?”
Elena paled, even though she knew she shouldn’t—that she should have expected this. That she had expected this. Her fingers clenched hard on the stem of her glass.
A Scandal in the Headlines Page 4
