Chapter Ten
HIS PROMISE HAD been a whisper in her mind from the moment they left the restaurant, her cheeks flushed with remembered pleasure but also embarrassment as she looked around to see if anyone was staring at them.
Knowing what Massimiliano had just done.
He kept his hand pressed to the base of her spine as they stepped out onto the street.
The restaurant was exclusive, and, as befitted such a venue, there was a gaggle of paparazzi waiting to get pictures of whoever exited.
The camera lights flashed and Massimiliano immediately pulled her closer to his side, holding her against him, shielding her, just as he had in the restaurant.
Making her feel safe. Not alone. Making her feel dangerously close to belonging.
In the limousine, they were both silent, but for Amelia, every single instant was like the stretching of her nerves, so by the time they rode the elevator to his penthouse, she was a tangle of need.
If anything, what he’d done in the restaurant had just stirred her up, so she barely managed to make it to the expansive lounge room, on legs that were not at all steady, before she spun around to face him.
But Massimiliano was regarding her with a quirk of his lips that told her he knew what he was doing, and she resented that.
She wished she were more sophisticated. That she had at least some experience with men.
She must have seemed so gauche compared to the women he usually slept with.
Her stomach twisted for a different reason now, as self-doubt clicked into her brain.
Then, though, he was striding towards her, his eyes darkening as he got close.
‘I seem to remember making you a promise,’ he said.
As though he sensed that she was suddenly riddled with uncertainty.
He stopped, though, a few strides away from her, lifted his finger and crooked it.
Inviting her to approach him. To be the one to initiate this.
With those still-trembling legs, she closed the distance between them, and then his hands found the bottom of the dress and began to lift it.
As with the afternoon before, it was a torturously slow process.
Where she wanted it removed swiftly and thrown to the ground, he delighted in inching it over her body, his hands touching her as it went, before discarding it. Finally.
‘I said I’d kiss you all over, I believe,’ he murmured, moving his mouth towards her but stopping short of doing any such thing. She tilted her face, silently inviting him to take her mouth with his own, to claim it. He lifted a finger between them, pressing it to her lips.
‘I also said I’d start here,’ he reminded her, dropping his other hand between her legs, so she yelped at the very welcome, yet unfamiliar, sensation of his touch.
‘Massimiliano,’ she groaned, tilting her head back.
‘Yes, Signora Moretti?’
Forks of awareness threatened to split her apart.
‘Please,’ was all she could say, even when she had no idea what she was asking for, exactly.
‘I promised you,’ he reminded her. ‘And I never go back on my word, Amelia.’
For the second time that night, Massimiliano did something unusual.
Something he hadn’t felt an interest in doing with another woman.
Not since he’d been a teenager, experimenting with sex.
But with Amelia in bed, naked and begging for him, he ached to give her every single ounce of pleasure he could.
To flood her body with sensations that were almost too powerful to bear.
‘Do you trust me?’ he asked, voice dark with intent.
Her eyes lifted to his, and, despite the tugging of her lips, she nodded. ‘Yes.’
Something flexed in his chest. ‘And what do you do, if you want me to stop?’
‘Tell you.’
‘Good girl.’
His hands moved to his belt then, removing it slowly from his trousers. Her eyes followed the gesture, her tongue darting out to moisten her lower lip in a way that made some of his seed spill. Cristo, but she was beautiful.
‘I want to try something, Amelia.’
Her eyes lifted to his face as he came to straddle her, deliberately pushing his cock against her sex so she groaned and twisted her hips, silently inviting him to take her. He leaned forward, capturing first one wrist, and then the next.
She bit into her lower lip as he moved her hands above her head, pinning them between the timber slats of the bedframe.
She kept them there, her breasts drawn towards him because of how he’d positioned her hands.
‘I want you to lie there and feel everything,’ he said. ‘Without touching me.’
She gasped as he began to weave the belt through the bed slats and around her wrists, fastening it with the buckle. She moved her hands reflexively, to test the restraints. They didn’t give.
Excitement had his cock jumping.
‘Do you understand?’
She nodded quickly.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
And then, because he was a man of his word, rather than kissing her body, as he was aching to, he moved his mouth slowly from her forehead and then lower, keeping his lips a centimetre from her flesh at all times, so only the hint of his breath touched her.
Goosebumps lifted visibly across her, so by the time he reached her legs, she was whimpering and twisting her hips.
He bit back a smile. His hands caught her thighs and moved them wider, exposing her to him completely, and then he buried his face between her legs, tormenting her and tasting her until she was exploding against his mouth, until her cries filled the room, the sound of them as addictive as they were unbearably tempting.
But he was a man of his word, and he’d promised her a full sexual awakening. This was just the beginning…
It was some time later when Amelia found she could breathe reliably enough to speak, much less think.
Shimmering stars were now a regular feature of her eyes.
She’d lost count of how many times he’d brought her over the edge of sanity, with his mouth, his hands, the kisses he’d dragged over her entire body, before he’d released the belt from her hands and kissed her mouth, murmuring against her, ‘Okay?’
Okay? She’d wanted to scream. She was so much better than okay.
Okay wasn’t a word that belonged anywhere in the ballpark of the magical way he’d just sent her over the edge.
But she hadn’t yet been capable of speech, so she’d simply nodded, collapsing back against the pillows and staring at the ceiling, feeling a little as if she’d run a marathon.
The mattress shifted and she realised he was leaving. ‘Sleep tight, cara,’ he said, winking at her in a way that made her pulse flood with renewed heat.
‘You’re going?’
‘You’re not done?’ he prompted, raising a brow in a manner that was both sexy and teasing.
She bit into her lip, not wanting to admit that she wanted to see him.
To touch and hold him, to explore him as he had her.
Not wanting to admit that she wanted to talk to him, to be held by him.
But the last two were firmly outside the boundaries they’d established, and as for the first, she didn’t know how to ask for it.
‘Goodnight,’ she murmured, and then, when he reached the door, ‘Thank you.’
‘Do not thank me for this, Amelia. I am enjoying myself, perhaps more than you realise.’
The next morning was the same as the one prior. He was gone when she woke, with another note propped against the coffee machine.
See you tonight, MM.
Her heart turned over in her chest at that, but she focused herself on the day ahead. On how to fill the day. Because this was a two-year marriage, and she couldn’t just sit around in his sky palace, waiting for Massimiliano to return home and pick up the threads of her sexual education.
She had to keep busy and have a life of her own.
Once they’d slept together, it would be the end of this. That was their deal, and he never went back on a deal.
So she made herself busy, liaising with his assistant to confirm the Italian tutor she’d asked to be arranged, getting the online enrolment forms for her degree and wrapping her head around what she’d need to apply as a mature-age student.
Only then did she go out and explore, dutifully using the airphone in his apartment to call for the bodyguards, who she now knew lived in another apartment in this luxurious building, along with his team of drivers.
She spent hours in the historic city centre, walking, exploring and, despite the fact it was a cool early autumn day, buying gelati from a small stall near the Colosseo.
She stared up at the arched, ancient building, a heavy thunderclap of emotion moving through her. Surrounded by the evidence of millennia of civilisation, she felt so incredibly insignificant and alone.
Alone, as she was.
It was ridiculous for her to be standing there, wishing, for reasons she couldn’t explain, that her husband were with her.
Because he wasn’t really her husband. No matter what their marriage certificate said, or the articles in the paper, or the way they were in bed, nothing changed the fact that this was a purely practical marriage.
‘Signora Moretti?’ Her bodyguard appeared at her side, dark glasses covering his eyes. ‘You said you needed to be back at the apartment by four?’
She glanced down at her watch, surprised to realise she’d lost hours in her slow, reflective exploration of the city.
‘Goodness, yes. Thank you, Pietro.’
‘This way, Signora.’
The Italian tutor the agency had sent was a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, who spoke Italian as his native language, as well as flawless English, French, German and Russian.
His name was Christiano, and he was, Amelia came to realise, a perfect choice for someone like her.
While she had once held a basic grasp of Italian, she’d actively worked to blot it out, so, to all intents and purposes, she was a complete beginner.