by Lucia Black
The sound of a car pulling up and the door opening interrupted his thoughts. He went to collect the large pepperoni pizza and case of beer and pay the delivery boy. The kid’s jaw dropped when he gave him a generous tip. Lorna wandered away from the targets to one of the little tables where Alessandro set their food and drink.
He opened the lid of the pizza box and grinned at the way it looked like it would clog his arteries. “Buon appetito.”
She raised her eyebrows and went for the beer first. “You and greasy pizza, huh?”
“This happens to be some of the best pizza in the state of New York, so watch yourself.” He pulled a piece out and broke the strings of cheese with his fingers. It was good pizza, and it tasted like nostalgia for Alessandro. His brothers would get pizzas like this at the gym. Tony would scold them for getting grease on the mats. Life was simpler back then.
They didn’t need plates, but they were thankful for the napkins. Lorna took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.
“Good, right?” Alessandro prompted.
She swallowed carefully. “Good, yes. The best pizza in the state of New York? I should hope not.”
“No, no, that’s where you’re wrong,” he started, shaking his head.
Empty beer cans collected in the middle of the table while they debated the components of a perfect pizza. “So the crust has to be thick enough to not be crunchy, but thin enough not to overwhelm the flavor. There should be enough sauce to hold everything on, but not enough to make it soggy. And the ideal pizza has pepperoni completely covering the cheese,” Alessandro summarized.
Lorna giggled, looser than when they arrived. The healthy competition and the beer probably helped with that. “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “I see right through you.”
“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting to be called out. “What am I trying to do?”
She sat back and lifted her chin. “It won’t work.”
He stood up and crossed to her side of the table, widening his eyes innocently. “What won’t work?”
She stood up so he wouldn’t tower over her. She wasn’t wearing high heels, so he still stood a head taller, but her presence loomed over him, anyway. Her confidence added at least a foot to her perceived height. She pushed her chair in. “The pizza. The date. The competition,” she said, leveling him with a look.
“I recall a time you enjoyed sharing pizza and a friendly game with me,” he said softly. “I thought it would be nice to reminisce. That’s all.”
“Oh, come on, Alessandro. You’re trying to win me over. To make me turn against my family.” She crossed her arms and stared him down. “I won’t do it.”
He considered. In a roundabout way, she was right. He wanted her to choose him over her duty. He wanted her to be as in love with him as he was with her. He wanted her to walk away from Giovanni and fall into his arms. So yes, he supposed it was accurate to say he wanted to win her over and turn her against her family. He nodded. “Yeah.”
She looked triumphant for a moment, and that precious little smirk pushed Alessandro over. He stepped forward to wrap his arms around her and pull her in. He pressed his lips against hers, kissing her slowly, but with purpose.
She relaxed for a moment as she started to open her mouth to him, but then tensed up again and pushed at him. “Stop. We can’t do this.”
He dragged his lips over her cheek and spoke into the corner of her jaw. “You’re not married yet.” He kissed back toward her mouth, but she grabbed his face.
“No, I’m not, but I will be married.” Her voice didn’t waver, but her honey-brown eyes didn’t like that fact. “To your brother,” she added, as if he didn’t remember. As though that changed anything.
Maybe it did for her, but not for him. She wouldn’t marry him, anyway. Not if he could help it. He swept his fingers through her hair to brush it behind her ear. “That’s all a technicality. You must have had lovers over the years.” She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. “It’s just like that,” he soothed, pressing his forehead against hers. “In this case, until you’re married, you’re not bound.”
She swallowed thickly. “I know your family doesn’t think of it that way.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “It doesn’t matter what they think.” She tucked her chin down to avoid him, but she wasn’t pushing him away anymore. His hand smoothed over her back to press her tighter against him. “Do you really want to walk down the aisle and meet my brother at the end?”
“You know I don’t . . .” she trailed off.
“If you want me to stop, I will. I’ll stop right now. If you want to save yourself and let whatever false commitment you have to that marriage bind you now, just say so. But tell me the truth. That’s all I ask.”
She lifted her face, looking painfully conflicted, and shook her head. “No.” She slid her hands around the back of his head to weave her fingers through his hair. “I don’t want you to stop.”
His smile landed on her lips. In some way, that meant he won.
17
Lorna
Kissing Alessandro meant a fight for dominance. Pushing and sliding tongues together in a frenzied, messy effort to gain control. His hands felt huge on the backs of her thighs. They pulled her in, and she jumped to wrap her legs around his hips. His body was solid and real, an enigma she knew. He was made of sharp curves and soft steel and freezing heat. His stubble scratched against her skin, smoothing her out like sandpaper. Because the longer she kissed him, the less she wanted anything else.
He swept a hand over the table, knocking the pizza box and remaining beer to the floor. Lorna wanted to care, but his intensity and urgency were hot. She landed on the table, still warm where the pizza had been, and he stood between her legs. The hungry look in his eyes set a fire in her gut that twisted and writhed, yearning for release. Her shirt landed on the floor next to the pizza and spilled beer. Alessandro’s deft fingers unbuttoned her pants while his mouth sucked a bruise onto the side of her neck. He pushed her jeans and panties down her thighs in one go and allowed her to kick them off. She pulled at his shirt and he leaned back to pull it over his head in what would have been an obnoxious show of egotistical ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ if he weren’t so damn hot.
She traced her fingers over the lines of his abs, loving the way they flexed under her touch. He didn’t humor her for long though, and he wrapped his hand around the back of her head to pull her into a crushing kiss. His other hand wandered down her body; over her shoulder to squeeze her breast and tweak her nipple, along her waist, and over her hip to dip his fingers around the inside of her thigh.
He pulled off her mouth with a wet pop and licked his lips when he dragged a finger through her folds. “Wet already, princess?” he smirked.
She reached out a hand to palm him through his jeans. “Hard already, asshole?”
Without warning, he grabbed her wrist and pushed her back against the table, knocking the air from her lungs. He hovered over her, pinning her wrist to the table. “I wouldn’t tease if I were you.” His voice was a low growl.
The unspoken threat thickened the air between them and made it hard to breathe. If she teased him, he’d tease her. He’d done it before, and he could do it again. And at this point, not being able to come sounded like the worst thing she could imagine. She nodded her understanding, but pride wouldn’t let her go down without a fight. She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him against her. She held his gaze and ground against the hard outline of him in his rough jeans.
He huffed a laugh and pushed her legs apart. She hissed at the cool air against her warm wetness. His teeth scraped against her collarbone and his fingers pressed into her thighs hard enough to hurt. He flicked his tongue over her nipple and her hands flew to his shoulders. He pulled it into his mouth and sucked harshly, swirling his tongue around. She couldn’t hold back the breathy moan pushed up from her diaphragm. Teeth and tongue and lips, pinching, biting, sucking, licking over her sensi
tive bud made her back arch up from the table toward his mouth.
She didn’t notice one of his hands move between her legs until his thumb pressed against her clit and she made a noise completely unbefitting her professional public persona. He raised his head to watch her intently as he teased his fingertips over her entrance.
“What?” she demanded, as steadily as her rapidly beating heart and uneven breathing would allow.
He pressed just the very tip of one finger inside her and she whined. A slow smile bared his teeth like some predatory animal, but it only added to his seduction. “I like to watch you come undone,” he said slowly, pronouncing each syllable deliberately. “Like to watch while I take you apart bit. By. Bit.” He accented his words with tiny back-and-forth movements of his finger. She pressed her lips together and clenched her hands into fists to avoid showing him how much he was doing just that. Then he had his whole finger inside her, curling and twisting, and her head fell back in a gasp without her permission. He chuckled low, curling his finger again. “You’re so helpless for me.” He twisted his finger, then added half to himself, “Only for me.”
She shuddered. His possessiveness turned her on, but she didn’t want to think about why. And she couldn’t have thought about why if she wanted to when he thrust another finger into her. She arched her back off the table, eyes squeezed shut. It felt so good. His hands were bigger than hers, his fingers longer and thicker, able to reach places she couldn’t. They scissored and curled, quickly finding all the ways to make her want to explode. She pressed a fist to her mouth to hold back her moans, biting her knuckles hard enough to leave a mark, if not draw blood.
Alessandro pulled her hand away from her face. “No.” He’d never looked more beautiful, eyes darkened by lust, lips red and kiss-bitten, dark curls falling over his forehead in sweat-damp spirals of sin. “I want to hear you scream,” he said.
She rolled her hips against his hands. “Then give me something worth screaming about,” she taunted. He had too much power, and it was going to his head. She couldn’t simply lay here and submit. He didn’t deserve that.
He pulled his fingers out of her abruptly and she clenched her jaw to hold in any noise of displeasure. “Oh, you’ll scream, princess.” The best sort of threat. The sort you want to be fulfilled. “But you’ll have to ask me nicely.”
Lorna laughed. “You really think I’m going to beg?” He of all people should know that she didn’t beg.
He thrust his fingers in hard, hitting the place that made her see stars. “I do.” He pressed at the same spot, thrusting shallowly. She couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t think past the waves of pleasure coursing through her every nerve. “I think you’re going to break, and I think you’re going to say ‘please, Alessandro, I need your cock.’”
She squirmed on the table to ease the pressure. She wouldn’t say that. No matter how much it was true or how hot his voice sounded against her ear. He finger fucked her at a punishing pace, driving so hard and deep, she had to kiss him to muffle her moans. But she couldn’t quite kiss him while she was gasping for air. Their teeth clicked together, and their hot breath mingled in a mixture of pepperoni and beer that did nothing to detract from the way her core tightened, and lightning crackled on the edge of bursting. But he sensed that she was close, and his fingers slowed to a torturously lazy rhythm.
“No,” she whined, not caring how breathless and wanton she sounded. “No, don’t stop.”
“That’s not begging,” he informed her, twisting his fingers sharply. She felt her climax recede and banged a fist on the table. She wouldn’t beg. He had to know that. He only smiled at her. “I can do this all night.”
The hard-on stretching his jeans to their limits said otherwise. “Bullshit,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Just fuck me.”
He leaned in and whispered against her lips. “You have such poor manners, princess. Ask me nicely.”
She bit his lip and tasted blood. He continued his abuse of the bundle of nerves that would push her over the edge and this time, swept his thumb over her clit quickly. “I want you to fuck me,” she said with far too much authority for someone flat on her back on a table.
His free hand circled around the base of her neck, not applying pressure, but showing her he could. “You know that won’t do. I need a please, not an order.”
The coil of heat in her stomach wound tight again and she was so, so close. “Fuck, Alessandro.” He slowed again, edging her, and she cried out her acute displeasure.
“It’s not that hard.” His hand pressed the sides of her neck, cutting off some of the blood flow to her brain and making it difficult to breathe. “It’s really not.”
He curled his fingers in a beckoning motion and released his hold on her neck. Every feeling intensified tenfold, leaving sparks bursting behind her eyes. “Fuck, please!” she sobbed, “Oh my god, please. Fuck.”
“There. See? Was that so terrible?”
Unable and unwilling to open her eyes, she heard rather than saw him lower the zipper of his jeans and the crackle of a condom wrapper and the low grunt as he rolled it on. A moment of nothing, just breathless anticipation, and then his hands on her waist, pulling her off the table to spin her around and stand her up so her back pressed against his bare chest. His hand circled her neck again, no pressure, but a threat. And even if she’d never admit it to him, she loved it.
He doubled her over, so her stomach pressed against the table and his hard length pressed between her thighs. He rutted against her and she bucked her hips back. Teeth on her shoulder and then he pushed into her without any warning. His low moan nearly killed her, and if that unrestrained sound weren’t the cause of her death, it would be the perfect way he filled her. She could feel him pulsing against her walls for the breath it took to collect himself. Then he pulled out to the tip and thrust back in, setting a pace that buckled her knees. His grip on her hips held her as she pressed her cheek against the table. The heat of his smooth stomach against her back felt oppressive in the heat of the room in general. Sweat beaded at her temples. His fingers would leave bruises on her hips and his mouth would leave a deep purple mark where he was alternating biting and sucking her shoulder.
Alessandro fucked hard, and she pushed her hips back to meet him every thrust. She lost herself in the suffocating heat of the moment. His hips stuttered and his breaths against the back of her neck grew irregular. He was close. So was she. She clenched around him, and her legs stiffened as her orgasm began to take over. “Come for me, princess,” he growled behind her ear.
An especially perfect thrust and the coil of heat in her stomach snapped in a burst of light and heat. “Alessandro,” she cried, clenching her fingers and toes around nothing as the weight of her orgasm crushed her.
He followed with a cry and let his whole weight rest on her back. They stayed there, waiting for the air to return to their lungs and their souls to return to their bodies from whatever heights they had soared to.
Alessandro stood up shakily and pulled out of her with a sigh. She didn’t lift her head until she felt her clothes land on her back. “Get dressed,” he said, sounding gratifyingly fucked out. “I told Luca we’d bring dinner home.”
Lorna took a deep breath and stood up to put her clothes back on. It felt odd in the aftermath. As though they weren’t going to talk about it. In all reality, that was fine. It was probably better that they didn’t. It might force her to come to some realizations she didn’t want to admit. She indicated the pizza box and spilled beer on the ground. “What about the mess?”
He shook his head and bent down to throw the pizza box and the beer cans in the trash, then used leftover napkins to wipe down the table. She buttoned her pants and stepped back. He looked at her with a softness around his eyes that she didn’t know how to feel about. He reached out to brush stray hairs away from her face and tuck them behind her ear. There was tenderness behind the motion, and it twisted in Lorna’s stomach because she wanted to fall int
o his arms and lay her head against his chest and stay there indefinitely. But she couldn’t. The fact remained that in a short time, she would marry Giovanni.
Alessandro dropped his hand, and they didn’t say a word as they went to pick up dinner for Luca and Caroline.
18
Alessandro
Alessandro couldn’t take his eyes off her. Lorna sat across the table, innocently gnawing on a cheesy breadstick. Innocently until she met his eyes and licked the salt off the side of the breadstick suggestively.
He took an aggressive bite of his buffalo wing. She could tease him because she was his to some degree. Had been his. He could still see her face twisted up in intense pleasure. He could still feel the way she clenched and trembled around him. And he couldn’t wait to feel it again.
Part of him worried he had been too rough with her, but the way she touched her shoulder where he had left a bruise with a slight smile told him she didn’t mind. He knew he couldn’t break her, not really. She was not delicate.
He licked sauce off his fingers, holding eye contact with her across the table. She rolled her eyes, smiling. He loved her smile, the one little dimple in her cheek. He didn’t see it much since she came back. Probably due to the wedding. He didn’t know how he planned to stop the wedding, but he knew he couldn’t let her go through with it. Not when she fit so perfectly in his arms.
Luca nudged him, and he realized he was grinning like a fool. “Pass the fries,” Luca said.
Alessandro gave him the fries, and Luca looked meaningfully between him and Lorna. The unspoken question made Alessandro smirk. He nodded once, not caring at all if Luca knew. What would he do about it? Luca rolled his eyes and shook his head, his body language berating Alessandro because this was a bad idea. But Alessandro simply did not give a shit. He felt the happiest he’d ever been.
