The Divorce Party

by Jennifer Hayward

  He rotated his thumb against the hard, aching center of her. “But it wasn’t as good as the real thing, was it? Because I know it wasn’t for me.”

  “No,” she groaned. “It wasn’t.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her, made her remember exactly how good he could make her feel. She grabbed a hold of his shirt to steady herself as he slid a finger inside her, his touch so unbearly good she thought she would scream.

  “More,” she murmured against his lips.

  He withdrew and slid two fingers inside her, filling her deeper, harder. She arched against his hand as the ache inside her became unbearable.

  “Please,” she moaned.

  He dropped to his knees in front of her. Lilly made a sound of protest, reaching down and grabbing his arms to pull him back up to her. She felt too exposed, too raw to have him do this to her right now.

  But he shook her hands off and looked up at her, eyes glittering. “Immersion therapy, Lilly. Relax and enjoy it.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, too hot, too aroused to do anything but obey. And then he was parting her with gentle fingers, his raspy, “Bella...” filling the air before he bent and feasted on her. She held the back of his head as he slid his tongue against her aroused flesh. The rush of pleasure that swirled through her was so incredibly good she felt as if every nerve in her body was concentrated right there.

  “Ric—I need—”

  “I know,” he murmured against her skin. “Let go, Lilly.”

  Her legs started to tremble wildly. He slid his fingers inside her again and shot her into another stratosphere. God. She just needed him to curve his fingers like—that.

  “Oh.”

  He kept his fingers there and flicked his tongue over the hard bud at the center of her. Her insides contracted as she came in a rush of such sweet, hot pleasure he had to hold her upright. It was white-hot, blinding. All-consuming.

  She was floating on a sea of pleasure when he got to his feet, scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. “You are so sexy,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her. “Your reactions...everything about you turns me on.”

  The taste of herself on his lips was unbearably intimate. And she felt her last barrier come tumbling down.

  He left her to pull his shirt over his head, his impatient, jerky movements so unlike him she smiled. “Need some help with your pants?”

  He stepped closer and brought her hands to his belt.

  She took in the hard muscles of his torso, the perfectly defined six-pack, the undeniably hot vee that disappeared beneath his jeans. She had undressed him hundreds of times, but this time her hands were shaking and her throat was dry.

  She worked his belt buckle open and fumbled with the button of his jeans.

  “Lilly,” he murmured, covering her hand with his. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded and bit her lip. With a smothered curse he stepped back and shoved his jeans and boxers off. The masculine beauty of his body made her want like a woman who’d been stranded in the desert far too long. When he sank down on the bed and reached for her she straddled his muscular thighs, wanting to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her.

  He was hard, aroused, barely leashed male power beneath her, and she wanted him inside her more than she wanted her next breath.

  He buried his lips in her shoulder, a tremor running through his big body. “I can’t play around like this much longer...”

  “Who’s playing?” She sat back on her haunches, her eyes riveted to his beautiful toned body. “I’m not,” she assured him, sliding her fingers to the insides of his thighs.

  His gaze moved to her hands. “Lilly...”

  She curved her fingers around him and reveled in his sharp intake of breath. He was smooth and hard like steel, pulsing underneath her fingers. With a muffled curse he sank his hands into her waist and lifted her over him, the movement bringing her swollen flesh into contact with his engorged length.

  Ruddy color dusted his cheekbones. “Maledizione, Lilly...”

  She slid the thick head of him inside her, her body so aroused, so wet, she accommodated him easily. He cursed under his breath, the muscles of his arms bulging as he braced them on either side of himself. She took more of him, and more, until she felt as if she couldn’t go further. She’d forgotten how big he was, how the length of him caressed every last centimeter of her. Closing her eyes, she focused on taking him, adjusting her hips until he slid in to the hilt.

  Her gasp split the air.

  He stayed completely still beneath her while her body adjusted to his, his jaw clenched, his face a picture of grim self-control. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” she breathed, relaxing into him. “You’re just so damned big.”

  He closed his eyes. “That’s not usually a complaint.”

  “It’s not, it’s j— Oh, God, you feel so good.”

  “I’d feel better if I could move,” he rasped.

  She leaned down and kissed him. “Let me.”

  She rode him slowly, deliberately at first, every movement designed to drive him wild. He twisted his hips and tried to control the rhythm but she shook her head. “Like this.”

  He clamped his jaw shut and let her take the lead. Lilly shut her eyes and just felt. Felt the size and girth of him stroke her, reach every nerve-ending. Her body clamped around him as she remembered the pleasure he could give her, cried out desperately for it.

  No man had ever been able to turn her on this much. Only Riccardo.

  She threw her head back and let herself go. Every powerful stroke of his body up into hers was filling her from the inside out—filling the lonely place inside her that had never gotten over the loss of him. And when she looked down at him the dark glitter in his eyes told her he felt it too.

  “Are you with me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Please tell me you’re with me.”

  “Always,” she whispered.

  Something tilted in his face. A look of such raw, uncensored emotion that she felt it in a place she’d never felt it before. He might not love her anymore, but he wasn’t devoid of emotion.

  She committed it to memory, held onto it as he surged up inside her and demanded she ride him harder, faster. Something told her she was going to need it as he made her drown in the sensations he was creating. As he branded her with his touch and found that sweet spot he knew would take her over the edge. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as he stroked her deliberately, repeatedly, until she felt the white-hot beginning of her release. Once, twice, three times he drove into her, and she screamed, her body contracting around his in an orgasm stronger and more shattering than the first.

  He cursed under his breath and fell back onto his elbows, his body surging up inside her. She felt him throb even bigger, watched his face as he lost control. His hands clamped down on her hips and his body shook in a release that rocked them both.

  Winded, shaken to her core, she collapsed forward onto his chest, listening to his heart thunder beneath her ear. This was the time when he’d used to whisper that he loved her in Italian. When he’d tuck her into his side and cradle her until she slept. When she had been sure beyond a shadow of a doubt of his feelings for her.

  The hot, humid Caribbean air throbbed around them—heavy and full. A loaded silence stretched between them. They stayed like that for several long minutes. Then Riccardo lifted her off his chest and tucked her beneath the sheets.

  “You need to sleep.”

  She wanted to beg him to hold her. To prolong what they’d shared for just a few more minutes. She heard him snap off the lights and come back to the bed, felt the mattress dipping beneath his weight. Then he reached for her and pulled her into his arms, curving her back against the warm length of him. She exhaled in a long, slow breath. This was enough. Being back in
the place where everything felt right. Even for one night.

  She fell asleep almost immediately.

  Her pounding head woke her at two a.m. She stumbled into the bathroom and grabbed her painkillers out of her bag. She had unscrewed the bottle and downed two tablets with a glass of water when the unthinkable occurred to her.

  In the hustle of traveling this morning she’d forgotten to take her birth control pill.

  It had been almost twenty-four hours since she had.

  “Do me a favor.” Alex’s words rang in her ear. “Whatever you do, don’t get pregnant.”

  She pulled the birth control pills out of her bag and desperately shoved one in her mouth. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours... It would be fine.

  But even as she reassured herself she knew it had been stupid, stupid. How could she have complicated a relationship in which the only thing that was clear was that it didn’t need complicating?

  CHAPTER NINE

  LILLY WOKE UP with such a supreme feeling of well-being she thought she might have been accidentally transported to a land of paradise, where everything was silk sheets, hard male and a bone-meltingly familiar sense of satisfaction she never wanted to end.

  Turning her head from its face-down planting in the pillow, she slid her palm across the sheet in search of more warm, hard male. Nothing but silk. Her eyes flickered open. She was alone in the huge king-sized bed.

  She flipped over, settled back against the mountain of pillows and stared out at the brilliant blue sky. She might almost think it had been a dream, the ridiculously hot sex she’d had with her husband. But the ache between her legs begged to differ. And in the blinding light of morning everything seemed magnified by ten.

  She’d let the man she was still madly in love with, who didn’t love her anymore, strip her of the defenses she’d spent a decade building. Then she’d slept with him in a moment of madness without using protection, which demonstrated exactly what a moment of madness it had been.

  Damn.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. It had been a monumentally stupid thing to do. The one thing she’d never been able to deny was the connection they’d had in bed. And once that took over all bets were off.

  It was the reason she’d refused to see him for so long. Because she didn’t trust herself around Riccardo.

  Her stomach churned. Both she and Riccardo had extremely fertile families. But hadn’t it taken her girlfriend, Darya, forever to conceive? Surely it wouldn’t happen in one night?

  Finding the whole thing entirely too disconcerting, she threw back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. Riccardo would have been up hours ago. He’d probably swum fifty lengths of that Olympic-sized pool and gone through every set of weights in the exercise room by now.

  She padded restlessly over to the patio doors and threw open the curtains. The humid heat hit her immediately, and the perfume-soaked, salty, heavy air was filled with the scent of dozens of exotic flowers. It begged complete lethargy—a sunchair, a book and a drink, followed by a cool swim.

  She blinked and shaded her eyes against the brilliant sunlight. And found her guess had been right. But rather than laps her husband was slicing through the ocean with a powerful front crawl that ate up the distance between the raft that bobbed about a mile out and the beach.

  She watched as he hit the shore and walked up the beach, water sluicing down over his washboard abs. The drool that formed in her mouth was swift and uncontrollable. As if having him so completely last night had done nothing to stem the urge she had for him.

  He lifted a hand to swipe the water from his face. And saw her standing there.

  A heart-meltingly sexy smile curved his mouth. He walked up the beach and came to stand below the balcony, a fully relaxed, content-looking Riccardo who turned her insides to mush.

  “You coming down?”

  A smile twisted her lips. “If you’ll come swimming with me. I’m sweating already.”

  “We have fifteen minutes before breakfast is ready. Get your suit on and get down here.”

  She slipped off her négligée and pulled on the fuchsia bikini she’d bought with Alex. She might have made the huge mistake of sleeping with Riccardo last night, but that didn’t mean she had to continue her foolish behavior today. She needed to focus on keeping her head. She bit her lip as she pulled on a short cotton dress over her bathing suit. So what was she doing, running down to swim with him? And what had he meant when he’d said, “This is not over. We are only getting started”?

  It didn’t matter what he’d said! She swiped some sunscreen across her cheeks and nose. Riccardo was a lethal banned substance for her. Best to accept that last night had been inevitable between them, like a storm reaching its conclusion, and find a way to make it through the next six months without killing each other.

  Hot sex wasn’t going to accomplish that.

  A rational brain would.

  Tell that to her hormones, she thought as she joined Riccardo on the tiny private beach in front of the villa, the sand as smooth as silk between her toes. Because the intensity of her husband’s dark gaze on her was making her overheating problem a virtual crisis.

  “You’d better lose the dress,” he advised. “Nowhere down here to leave it.”

  She darted a self-conscious glance around her. The bikini wasn’t French Riviera material but it was revealing enough. She would rather have just gotten in the water, but since there really wasn’t anywhere to leave her cover-up on the beach she walked up to the terrace, draped it over a chair and headed back down to him, self-conscious in her halter top bikini.

  The smell of bacon wafted through the air. “Mrs. Adams is cooking?”

  He nodded. “We thought we’d let you sleep in. You needed it.”

  She walked toward him, ultra self-conscious in her halter top bikini.

  Her husband took her in from beneath veiled lashes. “And here I thought we had declared a truce.”

  She frowned. Looked down at herself. Pink. Her swimsuit was pink.

  Heat filled her cheeks. “It was the only suit that didn’t make me look like an adult movie star.”

  He reached for her, his fingers closing over her forearm. “Why go for modest when you look that good, cara?”

  She sucked in a breath as he pulled her against his hard, dripping wet body. “Did you listen to a word I said last night?”

  “Si. I am intent on desensitizing you.”

  She pressed a hand against his chest to balance herself. “You can’t just wave your fairy wand and cure me, Riccardo. Anorexia is something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life, even if I have it under control.”

  “I know,” he said, bringing his lips down on hers as he swung her up in his arms. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”

  She smiled at his arrogance. His lips were warm from the heat of the sun, his kiss as leisurely as the mood he seemed to be in, and she found she just didn’t have the willpower to fight him.

  He walked into the sea, and the water was so warm it barely registered on her heated skin. Then he wrapped her legs around him so they floated on the buoyant sea.

  “Riccardo...”

  “What?”

  “I—I don’t think this is appropriate.”

  He gave her an amused look. “We’re married. What’s inappropriate about it?”

  She focused her gaze on his Adam’s apple. “Last night was...amazing...but I think anymore of that is just going to complicate things between us.”

  He lifted her chin with his fingers. “If you mean sex, Lilly, then I’m going to have to disagree. Sex breaks down the barriers between us, and if you think, now that we’re finally talking, I’m going to let you put them up again, you’re mistaken. By the end of this weekend there isn’t going to be anything I don’t know about yo
u.”

  She went rigid. “There isn’t anymore to say.”

  He pressed his lips together. “How did you keep it from me? I never saw the signs.”

  “My anorexia?”

  He nodded.

  She pressed her hands against his chest to put some distance between them, but he kept his arms firmly banded around her. “I was better when I met you. I’d gotten control over it. I’d spent my career practicing physiotherapy, learning how incredible the human body is—how strong it is—and how much more important it was to honor your body than do what I’d been doing to it.”

  She swallowed hard. His gaze on her face was making her feel as if she was under a microscope.

  “It started to get bad for me again after that first year, when our honeymoon with the media wore off and they made a game out of criticizing how I looked or what I wore.”

  “Which they do with anyone who’s in the limelight like that,” he interjected.

  “Yes. But for me it was harder. Anorexia isn’t something with a lot of outward signs. It’s insidious. I withdraw. I stop eating. It becomes impossible for me to look at my body objectively. Everything gets distorted.”

  He frowned. “I thought it was a vanity thing. The need to look perfect.”

  A rueful smile curved her mouth. “The need to not hate myself would be more accurate.”

  His jaw hardened. “Was I really that impossible to talk to? Did I really demand that much perfection from you?”

  “It comes with your life, Riccardo. It’s expected from those around you.”

  His jaw hardened. “We could have made adjustments to our life to make things easier for you.”

  She shook her head. “You’re going to be the head of a ten-billion-dollar conglomerate when you take over from your father. You couldn’t make those changes even if you wanted to.”

  His dark eyes glittered. “We could have. We could have done what was necessary and let the rest go.”

  “You’re a dreamer,” she bit out. “You needed a new wife. And you refused to admit it.”