Chapter 19
Nat woke with a start early the next morning to a pale finger of daylight peeking through the gap in the curtains.
She’d slept on and off most of yesterday and like a log last night, so she was disorientated for a beat but, yep, she was still in Alessandro’s room.
In fact, so was he, his big bulk behind her, wrapped around her, his strong forearm so close to her cheek she could have turned her face and pressed a kiss to it.
Had she sought him out like the previous night or had it just been a natural position for their bodies to assume? The lovers within finding a way to be together if only subconsciously?
She realised suddenly she actually felt quite good.
No aches or pains. Her headache had gone and her thought processes didn’t seem sluggish.
She didn’t feel feverish either and she hadn’t coughed much overnight that she could remember.
Was she up for a marathon? No. But the worst seemed to have passed.
Wriggling a little for the sheer joy of being able to do so without pain, she suddenly became aware of a hardness pressing into her from behind.
And she knew instantly what had woken her, as surely as she knew her own heartbeat.
The woman inside had subconsciously responded to the signal from her lover.
Lover. She and Alessandro were lovers. But that was all they’d ever be.
‘Alessandro?’ she whispered.
A groan ruffled her hair from behind as his forehead thunked against her shoulder blade, his breath warm on her neck. ‘I’m sorry, il mio amore. My body betrays me.’
A rush of desire slammed down low and she squeezed her legs together as a burst of heat tingled between them. He sounded in agony – wanting something and knowing he shouldn’t – and she could definitely relate.
She shouldn’t want him like this either after his betrayal. But she did.
He sucked in a deep steadying breath. ‘If you let go of my arm, I’ll get up.’
Nat realised his lower arm was trapped against her body. But suddenly she didn’t want to release him. They’d forged a new kind of intimacy the last couple of days and she didn’t want to let it go – not yet.
Her body was burning with a different kind of fever now – one only he could cure. She wanted him. Around her, on her, in her – deep and pounding.
Maybe her illness had weakened her and stripped away all her pride – she didn’t care, but suddenly her blood was boiling with lust. His aroma filled her senses and the lust surged around her body, filling up every cell, every heartbeat, every breath.
It was crazy, she knew, but was it so wrong to want one last moment – one last hurrah – with him to cherish forever?
She reached behind, sliding her hand between them, seeking and finding his taut erection straining against his underwear.
His forehead pressed harder. ‘Nathalie!’ he said, half groan, half warning.
But Nat’s hands shook and her pulse raced – she was beyond logic.
She gave him a fierce squeeze before burrowing past his waistband and sliding around his naked length, revelling in his guttural moan that echoed around the room.
He sounded like a bull elephant in rut and she could barely see, she was so inflamed with need.
It was like her illness had fried away all her higher thinking, reducing her to just a base model – just breathing and fucking.
She grabbed his lower hand and brought it to her breast, crying out herself as he squeezed it, needing him to touch her. ‘Yes!’
‘Nathalie…’ he muttered as her hand slid up and down his length, sliding it enticingly against the cheeks of her ass. ‘I don’t think we should be doing this now. You’re not fully recovered.’
Nat shook her head as his fingers rubbed through her shirt at the tortured peak of her nipple, hurting so damn good.
‘I’m fine,’ she panted, her breath hot and strangled in her throat.
‘I need this.’ She moved her hand from his cock to yank down her underwear, dragging it over her hips as she pressed her bare buttocks into the hard heat of him, grinding against his erection.
‘Nathalie!’
She reached for him again, wrapping her hand around his girth. ‘Please.’
‘We should… talk first,’ he muttered, his hand sliding to her hip and holding fast.
Nat shook her head. No, if they talked they wouldn’t get to this and she needed this. When she was gone and she was lying in her lonely bed aching for him – she was going to need this.
‘Later,’ she insisted. ‘I need you in me now.’
He muttered something low under his breath she couldn’t understand as his hand strayed from her hip and slid between her legs, her back arching as the stimulus shot through her like an electrical current. ‘Oh God,’ she whimpered, moving against him frantically. ‘Yes… there… please.’
His fingers found her clit and rubbed. ‘Slow down,’ he whispered.
Nat shook her head. ‘No.’ She was ready for him and she was greedy for it, needing him inside her like some biological imperative.
After this there would be nothing, so this one had to count.
Rubbing her hot slickness against his rampant hardness, she stretched her arm over her head, slinging it around his neck. ‘Now,’ she demanded.
He gave in on the kind of guttural groan she would never forget – deep and so fucking needy – sliding himself into place where she was wet and hot for him, the thickness of his head nudging intimately as his hand dragged her hips back and he thrust deep inside.
And it was perfect.
Nat cried out at his decisive invasion, revelling in his thickness, his power. Her pulse throbbed through her entire body as he pulled out and thrust in again to her chant of, ‘More, more, more.’
He gave her more. And more. His breath hot at her neck and, somehow, his hand was between her legs again stroking and stoking and his teeth were nipping along the length of her neck and his fingers were taunting the impossibly hard point of a nipple.
It was all so perfectly perfect.
Her whimpers grew more frantic as he thrust deeper and stroked harder, his grunt exhaling hot on her nape as he snapped his hips for full thrust, sending her into a frenzy until she was trembling and clinging to him, crying out and then coming, shattering around him, her climax surging through her belly and breasts, bucking her against him as it roiled from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.
And then he joined her, a muffled cry into her neck as he pulled her tight to him and emptied inside her, calling out, ‘I love you,’ as they shuddered and quaked in unison.
Alessandro’s unexpected declaration floated up around her in the pulsing swirls of her release.
Had he actually said it? Or had her post-feverish brain just conjured it up in her strangely inert yet somehow gliding state.
She didn’t know, she just let it pass her by, not wanting to interfere with the slow burn of ecstasy fizzing in her blood.
Wanting to hang on to this forever.
It was full daylight when Nat next woke.
The clock said six-thirty and her bladder was making itself known, so she gently moved out of Alessandro’s embrace.
It was good to feel her legs strong beneath her as she padded to the en suite.
Her stomach growled and she actually felt hungry for the first time in two days.
Alessandro’s I love you played through her head as she used the toilet and then washed her hands. How could it not? She looked at her rather wan reflection, admitting to herself, now the ecstasy was gone, how wrong it was of him to utter it in the throes of passion.
Were they the words she wanted to hear? Of course. But not if he didn’t mean it. Not if he didn’t feel it. Not if it was a product of orgasm.
She steeled herself to go back out. To face him.
To excuse what had happened with a cheery smile and get through the next few days with it firmly plastered on her face.
Being ill had sapped her energy. And being angry required more energy than she possessed.
She just wanted it to be over now so she could leave and lick her wounds far away from the man who had inflicted them.
He was sitting on the side of the bed in his boxer briefs, waiting for her when she stepped out of the bathroom and, heaven help her, her gaze ate up his broad shoulders and his long, bare, powerful thighs.
‘We need to talk.’
Nat faltered. Wanting to prolong their nearness, to hear his voice but not wanting it at the same time. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to explain, Alessandro.’ Her gaze fixed on a point on the mattress. ‘I’m not going to hold you to anything you might have said in a moment of passion.’
Nor was she going to be angry about it. She’d very selfishly sought that moment out for herself – her own gratification. Her own uses.
Maybe his orgasmic declaration was to be her penance for such debauchery.
‘I want you to hold me to it.’
Nat shook her head, rejecting his offer and the note of sincerity in his voice. ‘It was a nice thing for you to say and I understand where it came from but I really wish you hadn’t.’
‘You’re not listening to me,’ he said, exasperation colouring his voice. ‘I. Love. You.’
Nat lifted her gaze to him, steeling herself. His eyes were like polished river stones – black and glassy with emotion – but she refused to be taken in by the sincerity she saw there.
Rob had said he loved her. So had her father. Neither of them had stuck around.
‘No. I just remind you of your wife. I think they call it transference, don’t they?’ She tried to make light of it but it hurt. ‘It’s her you love.’
Swearing in Italian, he pushed off the bed and stalked two paces to the window, yanking back the curtain, placing his fists against the window ledge.
He didn’t say anything for several beats and Nat hovered in a moment of indecision.
Did he have anything more to say? Was there anything more to say when the truth of it was between them?
‘I didn’t love her.’