by Dani Collins
She was used to being a curiosity. People disbelieved things she said about herself and her life. For the most part she didn’t care what others thought of her, but Giovanni’s skepticism was different. That shadow of doubt he wore provoked a small outrage in her along with a clench of something more defensive. She wanted him to see her exactly as she was. To know her and like her and want her despite all the nicks and dents that life had left upon her.
“There wasn’t at least one young man at university who tempted you?”
“They all seemed very one-track and immature.” The one she had thought had potential turned out to play for another team. She shrugged self-consciously. “No one made me feel like I wanted more than coffee and kisses.”
“But I do?” His face was impassive while the line of his shoulders had turned to granite.
“Why is that hard to believe? You invited me here. I thought that meant we were mutually attracted.” She crossed her arms protectively.
“I’m very attracted to you,” he assured her in a voice that curled her toes in her boots. “It’s still a big step for you to take with someone you barely know.”
She hunched her shoulders to her ears. “Growing up the way I did, always moving to a new place, I learned that I don’t often get second chances. If there was a place I wanted to see or something I wanted to do, I had to take the opportunity when it was presented or we would be in the next town or across a border and I couldn’t go back.”
“I’m a unique experience you don’t want to miss?” His voice chilled with warning.
“Am I not for you?” she asked with a spark of tetchiness. “Because if I’m a run-of-the-mill hookup, then yes, I would prefer to take my jacket and bag and find my own way home.”
His cheeks hollowed and his mouth pursed in doleful humor. “You’re definitely unique, Freja.” He absently ran the backs of his fingers under the angle of his jaw.
The silence drew out until her stomach was so tight she could hardly breathe. She looked to her bag where he’d set it on the table by the door.
“I’m trying to make myself say that this isn’t your only opportunity to sleep with me,” he said in a voice that went gritty and thick. “I know I should tell you that if you’re feeling pressured, we can back off. We can date and wait for a time that feels right.” He shook his head, jaw clenched. “But I’ll be leaving for Europe next week. Which is another reason you should be sensible about this decision. I’ll be there through the summer, possibly longer. I wouldn’t expect you to wait for me.”
And wouldn’t invite her to come with him. He was warning her this wasn’t the beginning of anything serious. She absorbed that as a clash that rang through her whole body. But as she weighed little against nothing, there was no contest. She would take what she could get.
“If you want to leave, go. I’ll call you tomorrow. If you want to stay the night, then I want you in my bed.”
That declaration was as weighty as a thick wool quilt, a little abrasive, but strangely comforting. She warmed under it. Fast.
“I want to stay.” Even though her stomach was nothing but butterflies in anticipation. “That’s why I’m here.”
His breath left him in a jagged laugh. “That frankness of yours is going to be the death of me. Come here.” In a well-practiced shift, he used the arm of the sofa to transfer himself onto the cushions. He held out a hand to her.
She came around and let him draw her to sit next to him. He set one arm along the back of the sofa and angled toward her. His light touch encouraged her to angle toward him and drape her legs across his thighs.
“You won’t hurt me,” he assured her, but it was the way his touch played across her knees that made her twitch in reaction. He pointed to what was left of his right leg. “This one is completely without sensation. I can’t control it at all. Sometimes it spasms. This one I can move a bit and feel some pressure, but no heat or pain.” He thwacked his finger against his meatier left thigh. “I don’t feel anything at all right here.” He drew a wide band from his spine around his rib cage to the middle of his chest on the right side. “Sensation is patchy through here.” He waved his hand over his abdomen and lap. “If I move your hand when you’re touching me, that’s why.” He picked up her hand and played with her fingers. “Go ahead and do the same with me. I want to touch you where you enjoy it most.”
Her fingers flexed in reaction at the idea of setting his hand in intimate places.
The corners of his mouth deepened knowingly. He set a tiny kiss on her knuckle, melting her thought processes one brain cell at a time.
“My shoulders and scalp and earlobes are really sensitive. My left nipple.” He shrugged at that incongruity. “I may not finish the way you expect. Don’t take that as a reflection on you or my level of enjoyment.”
“I don’t know what to expect,” she reminded him, trying to keep the moment light while she quaked internally at the enormity of what they were discussing so calmly and naturally.
“Right. I should have said, everything that happens between us is a completely typical experience exactly as you would have had with your able-bodied university nits.”
She chuckled dryly, but her smile faded as he trailed his reverent gaze over her face.
“Or not.” He picked up a tendril of her hair, letting it sift through his fingers. “That is sleek as a satin ribbon, isn’t it? I’ve been dying to know.” He did it again. “Smooth and cool. Like you,” he added in a tone that maybe was supposed to be whimsical, but she was having trouble tracking.
Her scalp grew sensitized and a shiver chased down her spine. She reflexively pulled from his light hold on her hand to cross her arms and rub away the goose bumps that rose beneath her sleeves.
“Am I making you shiver? I want to.” He stroked a light touch from her shoulder to her elbow and back, reigniting the prickling sensation she’d tried to erase. His touch firmed into a warm massage that was equally inciting. “Don’t hold back any of your reactions. Your pleasure is my pleasure.”
“Really?” Her experience with men was...not that. More like, Go farther, faster. Why aren’t you into this?
“I want to know you’re as excited as I am.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and played his fingertip along the whorls he exposed, caressing behind and into the hollow beneath her earlobe.
Why that made her nipples stand up, she didn’t know, but she felt them tighten and sting. She bit her lip and wanted to lift her hand to erase that sensation, too, especially when his gaze dropped. She looked down and yes, her nipples were poking against the soft red knit of her pullover.
“I want it to be so good, you can’t bring yourself to leave my bed.” His voice grew husky and intimate, his concentration wholly on the vision he created as he slid his hand to her side. He pressed the knit of her turtleneck taut so her breast was blatantly outlined, nipple standing firmly against it. “No bra?”
“I don’t like them,” she confessed faintly.
“Neither do I. Not anymore.”
She had never experienced such a strange euphoria simply by being near someone, barely touching. His light caress through her clothing was feathery and wonderful. She liked being snuggled close to his solid warmth, able to discern his strength and take in his scent of wool and outdoors and faint aftershave and a more intimate, personal fragrance that was spicy and musky and all him.
His touch slid back to her shoulder, encouraging her to lean in as he did, closer and closer, gaze on his mouth. He didn’t kiss her, though. He touched light kisses along her jaw, then stole a very brief kiss. Started to come back for more.
She drew back slightly. “Shouldn’t we go to the bedroom?”
He frowned with insult. “I’ll have to turn in my Italian citizenship if I don’t seduce you.”
“But I already said yes.”
“You agreed to the sensual attack I promised you.” He g
rew serious. Maybe faintly suspicious. “Why the hurry?”
“I’m nervous,” she admitted with a sheepish wrinkle of her nose.
“Then we should take it slow.”
“But I feel...impatient.” Her low-grade blush increased until she was so hot, she probably glowed, fully embarrassed by how urgent she felt. “I want to be naked and feel all of you and know how it will be when we’re...together.”
He gathered her in his strong arms and his chest muscles flexed as he pulled her to sit fully in his lap, so they were nose to nose. His big hands moved over her lower back and hips, waking her up to swirling sensations that expanded into her inner thighs.
“This is how it will be,” he told her, opening his mouth against her throat and licking at her flesh. “Better and better with every minute that goes by.”
He really did attack her senses. She caught her breath at the onslaught of sensations, gasping when his hands hardened on her, holding her in place.
“I’m dying to have you naked and spread out on my bed, weak with need for the release I give you.” His hot breath wafted against her nape. “I’m going to take liberties that are liable to shock you. I’m as impatient as you are for all of that.”
“Are you?” He seemed in such complete control.
“Do you lack sensation below the waist? What do you think that is against your ass? A penknife?”
She chuckled shyly and glanced down to where a stiff ridge dug into her cheek. She gave a small wriggle that made heat flare in his eyes.
Oh.
She did it again, testing her newfound feminine power.
“You will be the death of me,” he said in a rasp and rocked to shift his legs open a little farther, nestling her deeper into his lap. “Can we lose these?” He tugged the zipper on the inside of her boot.
She nodded, wondering how the slow relaxing of her boots and their loose drop could pull such an erotic sensation from her loins to the arch of her foot.
He caressed her calf and invited, “Kiss me.”
She did, sliding her arms around his neck while she worked her mouth over his, dabbing her tongue into the taste of him between his parted lips. Trying to slake a greedy hunger she’d never experienced—or expressed—in her life.
Gradually, she became aware of his arms firming around her. His hand was in her hair, his other one soothing along her rib cage while he took control of their kiss. He was unhurried about it, but she slowly became aware that they were fully involved. He was thoroughly ravaging her and it was fantastic. She curled into him with a groan, pressing her thighs together to ease the growing ache between them. When his touch crept over her breast and he molded the swell while sweeping his thumb across her nipple, she moaned into his mouth.
He drew back and his heavy-lidded gaze was fixated on where he was fondling her. “Let me see,” he said in a thick voice and gave a tug against the back of the turtleneck.
“Yes, I’m so hot,” she breathed anxiously.
“Me, too.” He swept off his own pullover first, then helped her do the same. He swore as she twisted her naked torso back toward him, stalling her with his wide hands against her shoulders, still balancing her on his thighs.
“You’re so beautiful.” His palms went down to cup the sides of her breasts. His thumbs shaped the swells to plump them and tilt her beaded nipples higher.
She trembled as she tried to work his shirt buttons loose. It wasn’t easy. He dropped his head to set the sweetest kisses across her shoulders. His light touch grazed her stomach and ribs and tickled the curves of her breasts. It was such a tease! Her breasts grew heavy with anticipation. Everything in her wanted to sit still for the lovely sensations he was causing with those clever fingers and damp lips, but more than that, she wanted to feel him. His hair against her jaw made her turn her nose in to his scent, but she finally had his shirt undone enough to push it open and—“Oh!”
She thrust her arms beneath the edges, hugging his sides. The scrape of her naked breasts against the silken hairs on his chest sent a glorious, electrical excitement through her. He made a growling noise and caught her into a passionate kiss. As they devoured each other, tongues tangling, they moved against one another, skin against skin in hedonistic friction.
It took her a moment to realize her perception of falling was real. He was tipping her onto her back on the cushions, but coming down with her. He leaned over her, mouth finding her throat and taking soft, wet bites.
“Giovanni,” she moaned.
“Say it like you mean it.” His expression was so stark and intensely masculine, it should have been intimidating, but his touch as he cupped her breast was reverent. He looked at her naked flesh, licked at her nipple, then blew softly. Her loins pulsed in reaction.
“Giovanni,” she said with all the yearning in her, tone ringing with plea and command.
He rewarded her with a delicate suction that had her tangling her fingers in his hair, arching up to offer more. She was going insane, she was so aroused, but he moved from one breast to the other and back until instinct drove her to slither herself more completely beneath him. Her body screamed for the weight of his. For his thighs between her own.
As they rearranged themselves, her skirt rode up, allowing her to bend her knees on either side of his hips.
He balanced on one elbow over her. “Tell me if I’m too heavy.”
“I like it.” She pulled his shirt from his waistband and slid her palms all over his back.
He had the torso of a power lifter, thick chest and shoulder muscles rippling under her touch. When her fingers grazed his left nipple, he sucked in a sharp breath.
She lifted her hand. “Hurt?”
“No,” he said on a jagged laugh. “It feels really good.”
She touched him again, watching his eyes drift shut as she very deliberately played her thumbs across his nipples. His breathing grew uneven and her own arousal intensified as she watched the way he was reacting.
He suddenly snapped his eyes open and dragged her hand to his shoulder. “I’m going to lose it if you keep that up. Ladies first.” He kissed her parted lips and settled his weight on her.
When she felt the pressure of his erection through their clothes against the juncture of her thighs, she tilted her hips to increase the pressure.
“What do you need?” He rolled onto his elbow and pressed the heat of his palm against her mound. “This?” He rocked his palm firmly.
“Yes,” she moaned in anguished relief. “Was I hurting you?”
“Quit asking that.” He nipped at the edge of her jaw. “The only thing that’s hurting me is that I can’t feel more of you.” He searched beneath her skirt for the waistband of her leggings and worked his hand inside, fingers cleverly getting into her underwear.
He watched her expression as he did. She bit her lip, shy, yet dying of anticipation. She never let men get this far. It had never felt right, but now she dearly wanted to know how it would feel.
One long touch parted the wet seam of her folds, intimate and lovely. He returned to the swollen bundle of nerves he’d only grazed, as if he’d known exactly what he was doing all along. One firm circle and such an exquisite streak of pleasure went through her, she clenched her eyes shut to savor it while a decadent groan filled her throat.
“Hurt?” he mocked with a hot chuckle of his breath against her cheek. He did it again.
She groaned again and met his kiss with a flagrant offer of her tongue while she rocked her hips to match the slow rhythm of his touch firming and gliding away, returning and easing, dipping lower and deeper, invading so that she clung to him with all her might, driven by sheer desire to cast off propriety and seek the pinnacle that suddenly loomed.
And there it was, quick and sweet and expansive, bathing her in a rush of tingles while her cries of satisfaction were muffled by his carnal kiss.
/> His touch stayed under her skirt, but eased to a proprietary hand on her belly while he let her break their kiss and catch her breath.
“You very nearly took me with you. That was incredibly sexy.” He circled the tip of his nose against her own, kissed her temple, then her cheekbone. Through her haze, she thought he might be shaking.
She wished he had climaxed with her. She’d never orgasmed with anyone else in the room and she felt incredibly vulnerable right now, having done it by his hand. Letting him draw that from her gave him a power over her that she didn’t know how to take back. He had broken down barriers in her before she fully understood how much protection they offered.
Even knowing that, however, latent desire throbbed in her blood. She was still aroused. She wanted more and the depth of want in her—for more of his touch, his kisses, and the pleasure he gave her—was genuinely painful. Her need for him felt as basic as breathing or eating. It was unsettling to become so carnal within the space of a few minutes.
“Now I want to go to the bedroom,” he informed her smokily, setting one short, suggestive kiss on her mouth.
Her lips clung to his and she felt obvious in her desire. As though he knew her better than she knew herself. As though a single feel-up on the sofa had turned her into a slave to the lure of his touch.
Which it had. Her legs barely worked and she wound up in his lap, kissing his jaw and neck as he bumped them down the hall into the master bedroom.
One lamp glowed next to a huge, low bed. The floor-to-ceiling drapes had been drawn shut, but judging by the two walls of them, the entire corner was nothing but glass overlooking the city.
He nodded for her to sit on the bed while he opened the drawer of the nightstand to withdraw condoms. “I don’t ejaculate, but I always wear one.”
She perched nervously and watched as he threw off his shirt and moved onto the mattress beside her. He dropped back and opened his fly, worked his pants off and pushed them to the floor. Then he stayed propped on his elbows, letting her look her fill.
She tracked her gaze from his alert expression to his powerful shoulders and flexed biceps to his flat abs. There was a distinct tan line above the band of his snug blue briefs. His erection pressed a line against it. Below that, his thighs were visibly different sizes, the right one thinner and amputated higher than the left. There was more scarring on the right one, too, and a nasty bruise.
