by Tara Pammi
“Leo, enough games. Now, please,” she said, half sobbing.
Lust riding him hard, he pulled her on top of him until she was straddling him on the lounger. He sank his fingers into her thick hair, took her mouth in a hard kiss. Adjusting her body slightly, in one smooth thrust, he was inside of her. A filthy curse fell from his lips as she fit around him like a snug glove.
With a soft gasp, Neha stiffened in his arms, her spine bowing back, her nails sinking into his shoulders.
Stars blinked out behind his eyes at how incredibly good she felt. Cristo, he’d never felt anything remotely like this before. He’d never had sex in his life without a condom, he instantly rationalized. He’d never let a woman seduce him like Neha did and she had, so thoroughly tonight, even though he’d taken the ropes from her in the end.
As much as he tried to, he couldn’t pin down the gloriousness of being inside this woman to some rational reasons. He buried his face in her neck, breathing her in, listening to the racing of her heart, letting emotion after emotion run through him, trying to center himself. Trying to not let it unsettle him.
Or was it the fact that there was an element of the emotional commitment already between them? Something he’d never let enter his relationships with women. The simple fact that while he always made sure there was an expiry date to his relationships, here, in every look and touch and caress, there was that awareness that they were tangling with each other for more than one night and not to just satisfy their desires.
But in an incomprehensible way, it felt more than just good. It felt right. It felt right that his experience with Neha should be different from any other sexual experience he’d ever had. It felt right that the woman who would bear his child should somehow be different. Be more than all the women he’d been with in his life before that.
“Are you well, cara?” he asked belatedly, aware that his accent was thick, aware that every inch of his body was drawn tight into a sharp point of need and desire and an unknown quality he didn’t want to put a finger on.
When she looked down, her eyes held the same wonder Leo was sure his did. Her face glowed from within, a tentative, slumberous smile touching her pink lips. “You know how there are moments in life you want to use fancy words to describe how...big and grand they are and then you suddenly realize no language has a word that could ever encompass the enormity of everything you feel and yeah...”
He crushed her tart mouth with his, needing the anchor of her taste. Needing to know she was just as lost as he was. The kiss went from soft to devouring, morphed with the sure knowledge of how good it was between them, becoming something neither could corral or define.
Every simple touch turned into a conflagration. Passion ebbed and flowed between them in perfect rhythm, sometimes he the aggressor and sometimes she, and Leo knew he could spend an age kissing her like this, breathing her in, joined in the most intimate way possible.
Soon, he was dueling his tongue with hers, her teeth were scraping at his jaw, their bodies slick with sweat sliding and gliding against each other in an instinctual rhythm that defied something as rational as good sex. Arms vining around his back, she snuggled closer, her breasts rubbing up and down his chest. Pleasure came at him in waves, building up into unbearable pressure in his pelvis, a tingling storm sweeping up the backs of his thighs.
Hands on her hips, he gently pulled her up and down, testing the fit. A spark of sizzling sensation raced up his spine and he closed his eyes, as if he could will the climax coming at him hard to slow down.
A soft cry fell from her mouth as she wriggled in his hold.
“I don’t remember it ever being this good, Leo.” A bemused, overwhelmed quality clung to her words.
Leo ran his hands over all of her again and again, not getting enough of her supple, sweat-slick skin. All the while, she moved forward and backward, up and down, kissing his mouth when she came closer. The friction was incredible. Sweat beading on his brow, he willed his self-control to last just a little bit more when all he wanted to do was pound into her.
Eyes wide open, she held his gaze as he trailed his hand behind a bead of condensation tracking all over her skin, and reached the curly hair at her sex.
He dipped his thumb and found the slick bud throbbing for his attention. He saw her swallow, her breath coming in shallow bursts. Every time he stroked that bundle, she tilted her pelvis up and down, sending friction down the length of him. Every muscle in Leo’s body screamed for release. She was so close he could feel her body clamping down on him, contracting and expanding, and he wanted to push her to the last edge.
“Look at me, cara,” he said, and she tilted her head down. “Cup your breasts for me.” He wanted to give her what he’d promised.
Eyes wide in her face, she raised her breasts to his face. Leo rubbed his stubble against the tender nipple and then flicked the tight knot with his tongue while he kept his finger on her and worked her over and over. Soon, she was writhing and twisting and moving up and down on him and then with a cry that shot shivers down his spine, she orgasmed.
Her muscles spasmed around him, setting off his own climax.
Leo rode the wave of it with her, pushing her down onto her back. Wild and abandoned, she was the boldest creature he’d ever seen. And all he wanted was to lose himself inside her. He pounded in and out of her with a savage need he didn’t even recognize. Her eyes flew open, she clasped his jaw, and when she pulled her upper body and took his mouth in a shuddering kiss, she sent him over the edge faster than he’d ever known.
His climax swelled through him, splintering pleasure far and wide. His breath was so deafening in his ears that Leo could see or hear nothing for a long while. He was still shaking with the force of his release when he opened his eyes. Sweat dripped from his forehead and fell on her neck, and the drop pebbled down her damp skin. He followed the drop with his finger, a fierce possessiveness filling him.
Her eyes closed, her head tilted away, she was a study in sensuality. Leo ran his knuckles over her cheek before turning her to her side and joining her on the lounger. She was damp and trembling and warm when he wrapped his arm around her waist. Tenderness filled his chest and he gathered her to himself. For himself as much as her for he needed a physical anchor right then.
It was a long while before the high of his release and the glut of emotions that had overpowered him ebbed. And in its wake an unusual knot formed in his stomach.
Leo couldn’t shake off the sense of alarm that he’d gotten more than he had ever bargained for. And yet, as he tucked her into his side and wrapped his arm around her trembling body, he didn’t want to leave her.
Not tonight. Not for a long time.
Her body’s unfamiliar aches in new places woke Neha up when she tried for a more comfortable position on the lounger. A deep languor thrummed through her, as if her limbs were filled of honey.
The first thing that struck her was the delicious kind of soreness between her legs. Enough to short-track the details of where and what had led to it. As did the scent of what they had done thick in the air around her.
She tried to sit up on the lounger when firm hands on her bare shoulders pressed her back down. “It’s okay, cara. I’m here.”
Her chest ached at the tenderness in Leo’s voice. Neha stretched her neck back. To find herself looking up into that impenetrable gaze that she’d have known in the midst of a dream.
His thick hair formed a wild halo around his face; his mouth was a little swollen, his expression as always hidden. Leo sat leaning against the back with one foot dangling down and the left folded at the knee, while her head lolled about on his thigh. He’d put both his trousers and shirt on, though the latter was unbuttoned. All she wanted to do was sink her fingers into his thick hair and pull him down to kiss her.
She kicked back up into a sitting position. “How long did I sleep?”
�
��Thirty minutes, at the most.”
A shudder of relief passed through her as she noticed that her bare torso had been covered up with the T-shirt she’d discarded. Her shorts hung loosely on her hips.
“You put my shorts back on me?” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.
She was aware of his shrug from her side vision. “Sì.”
“You should’ve left me here.”
He turned her to face him with a rough grip. “And leave you to find your way to your suite at the crack of dawn? I know you have this idea that I’m allergic to being tied down, but it doesn’t mean I treat women like trash.”
“That’s not what I meant.” It was exactly what she meant. Heat washed over her. “I’m sorry for—”
“Dio mio! Stop apologizing. It was either cover you up or wake you up for session two. You were exhausted after everything from the evening and that was the last thing you needed.”
A rough shove of his fingers through that thick hair. Which like hers had taken on a life of its own thanks to the humid air. This version of Leo—hair wild, shirt unbuttoned—the intimacy of seeing him all rumpled and sexy, broke the tension choking her.
“I wouldn’t have minded session two,” she said, tongue in cheek.
His expression didn’t relent. If not for the muscle jumping in his cheek, she’d have thought he was already regretting everything. Did he regret admitting that he’d wanted to make love to her again? Or was he wondering if she’d make it all awkward and weird now that it was done?
No, she wasn’t going to go digging for things that weren’t there. Overanalyze what was there. With a man like Leo—who exercised the utmost self-control and discipline—it was his actions that mattered. What he chose to say would always be more important than what he left out.
She’d gotten more than she’d ever dreamed of having of him. If she lived to be a hundred, this would remain the most extraordinary night of her life. She’d found not only incredible pleasure but an inexplicable joy in what they had shared.
Time to make a graceful exit. Without wondering what could be or what it hadn’t been.
“I only meant to stay horizontal for a little while.” She looked down and up into his eyes again. “I’ve read that it’s good to prop your hips up after...to increase your chances of conception.” He folded those corded arms and waited. “So I didn’t immediately get up and then I fell asleep.”
“You do not need a reason to not run away as soon as we’re finished, bella.”
She nodded and pushed to her feet. He stood up, too, and all Neha could see was the broad sweep of his shoulders, the delineated line of his muscles, the lean tapered waist, the strong, hard thighs that had cradled her.
Hand on his chest, she rose up on her bare toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Leo.”
He took her wrist in his hand and slowly returned it to her. His gaze studied her as if he meant to look beneath the amiable expression she was determined to keep. As if he wanted to know everything she was neatly stashing away to be explored later. Or never.
She tossed around in her head for some mundane topic while looking for her shoes. “What’s going on here?”
His head tilted down, he was buttoning his shirt. A slightly reddish mark above his pectoral winked at her. Furious heat climbed up her cheek when she realized she had raked his skin with her nails.
She watched greedily until the last patch of olive skin stretched taut over hard muscles was covered up. Fisting her hands, she swallowed the longing that rose through her.
Asking him to sleep with her so that they could conceive had been easy. But now there was so much more she wanted, so much more she still didn’t have. Small, intimate things she wanted to share with him—like buttoning that shirt, or pushing that thick, unmanageable hair away from his forehead, or kissing away his frown...those would always be out of her reach.
She looked away barely a second before he faced her.
“With what?”
It took her a few seconds to trace back their conversation. She walked around the lounger and ran her hand over one of the vines that had crawled up all the way to the high ceiling. “The greenhouse.”
“I’m having it restored.”
“Why did it get to such a dilapidated condition in the first place?”
There was a tenuous quality to his silence behind her that raised the hairs on her neck. A cold remoteness entered his eyes. Those rough fingers moved over and over on an ancient-looking ceramic pot with two handprints on it—one adult and one child.
“This ghastly place needs new memories.”
Realization slammed into her. Her throat closed up, words coming and falling away to her lips.
“It belonged to my mother.”
“Oh.” There was a violence to his contained stillness, a restless energy that would only singe her if she ventured closer. And yet she couldn’t help it. “You must have got your green thumb from her, then. Massimo says there’s not a flower in the world that won’t blossom in your care.”
A shrug that conveyed so much without saying it.
“Do you remember much—?”
“After she left, it went to hell,” he said, cutting her off. It was as if a door had slammed in her face. The tender lover of just a few moments ago was gone.
“When I realized I wanted a greenhouse, I asked the architect to build a new one in the same spot.” He passed her and opened the door. “He said it would be a waste to gut the structure. He’s restoring it instead.”
There was no doubt left that he’d preferred to have it ripped out. Maybe remove any sign of his mother in the process, like he’d done in every other area of his life. Like he’d advised her to do earlier.
And yet, Neha intrinsically knew she’d never be capable of that. Removing the bad stuff meant removing the good stuff, too, and she could never sterilize her life of her mum’s presence. Before it had all been destroyed with her papa’s long illness and death, she had known happiness with her parents. She’d been loved by her mum, before her papa’s death had broken her, had changed the course of their lives permanently.
The moment she stepped out of the greenhouse behind him, Neha took a bracing breath. The dip in the temperature outside had her shivering.
Leo tucked her under his arm as they walked, their thighs wedged close all too comfortably for her.
She knew she was dangerously skating over the invisible boundary he’d always drawn around the topic of his parents, but Neha couldn’t keep quiet. Couldn’t bear to know that it had affected him but had never been addressed.
Because who would do that for him? Not his father, who’d been an abusive man. Not Greta, who knew no tenderness. Leonardo had always taken the role of the head of the family and the burden that came with it whether he wanted to or not...but had anyone ever asked him what his mother’s leaving had done to him? Had anyone even wondered?
“I didn’t see any pictures of her in the villa.”
“I have an early start tomorrow and I’d really like to get to bed now.”
“Of course,” Neha replied, keeping her tone steady, even as tension swathed them. She wanted to push—she had a feeling he’d talk about it to no one, but the last thing she wanted was to be told it was none of her business.
Physical intimacy didn’t equal emotional intimacy. Especially with Leo.
Finally, they reached her suite. He turned the knob but didn’t release the door.
“I didn’t mean to be so curt,” he said, his hand on her lower back, his breath raising the little hairs on her neck. He was a wall of warmth and want behind her.
She nodded, refusing to give in on the issue but accepting his apology. Years of habits couldn’t change overnight, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted Leo’s secrets. That way only lay more blurring of lines and emotional labor she didn’t want to pay.
“Everything is okay?”
“Yes.” She turned her head and laughed softly. “Don’t worry, Leo. It’s not going to be awkward between us. I won’t let it be.”
She didn’t wait for his answer as she went into her bedroom and headed straight for the shower. Even though she wanted to linger in the scent of him still clinging to her skin. She wasn’t going to turn what had been a fantastic evening into what could only be a dream made of cards.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT HAD BEEN three days since Leo, for the first time in his adult life, had woken up late, sunlight streaming onto his huge bed the morning after the party, and felt a strange reluctance to begin his sixteen-hour workday. He had wanted to revel in the complete languor that had filled his mind and body. Three mornings ago, since he’d wandered through the villa only to discover that Neha had caught a lift with Massimo to London.
He had no idea how the woman had found the energy to disappear the morning after what had to have been an eventful, emotional night for her. But then Neha had always possessed a no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to life.
Three days in which he’d thought of her every hour, on the hour, as if someone had set an alarm in his head. Of how pliant and responsive and eager she’d been in his arms. Of how she’d felt around him, her gaze boldly holding his. Of how she’d tried to assure him that he had nothing to worry about.
If he were honest with himself, he hadn’t needed that cheeky reassurance. Taking his honesty a step further, he even admitted to himself that he’d been annoyed by her reassurance that she wasn’t going to act the part of a clingy lover.
He’d never had a connection like that with a woman even during sex before, the connection that had gone a little beyond the physical.
Whatever the reason, he was finding that one evening hadn’t been nearly enough. If anything, seeing how incredibly good it had been between them, Leo wanted a lot more of her.
