Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
S ERENA HAD NEVER been reckless. Never thought she would be compelled to behave in such a way. Danger was for people like Luciano, who would suffer no consequences, no qualms. People who could afford to make mistakes.
Or so she’d believed.
But everything changed tonight. She did not know how, and perhaps at some later date, when her body wasn’t throbbing with a need she did not fully recognize even if she knew what it meant, she would dissect it all. Understand it all.
Despair of herself.
But for this moment, the only thing she could possibly think to do was dive down the reckless, fiery disaster of it all. Disaster felt like a revelation. Giving in felt like something she owed herself for once.
And what would it matter if she crashed and burned on the glorious mountain of him? Tomorrow she would wake up, still Serena Valli. Still in charge of Valli and marching her way toward a merger—marital and business—with this man. And her mistake might be there, but what would it change?
Nothing. Except she would know where all this led and how much her body could feel.
So for tonight, none of what they were mattered. All that mattered was his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. The way his hands streaked over her, stoking fires she had never once thought possible within herself.
She’d preferred ice to deal with her weakest emotions until this moment. Fire seemed everything now. At the end of all this, she would not be a hollowed out shell like she usually was. She would be something rising from the ashes.
Powerful.
And that’s exactly what she felt. Though she was in nothing but her underwear, and he was fully dressed except for the fact his shirt was unbuttoned, it felt like she had brought this moment on.
This wasn’t about her vague plans of letting him seduce her. Because she had not been seduced. She had not been lulled into something. She had chosen.
This kiss, his searing touch and wherever this led was about…whatever stirred between them that neither of them particularly wanted, clearly. Neither knew what to do with it.
So they were diving into the unknown together.
Except it wasn’t fully unknown. He clearly knew what he was doing. The way his mouth dragged down her neck, causing her head to fall back. The way his hand moved over the front of her thigh, huge and hot, and she thought aiming for the most intimate part of her, only to bypass it entirely.
A game. Meant to stir, to tease, to frustrate. And if there was anything she knew how to do, it was how to match wits with her rival. She lowered her hands down the length of his torso, reveling in the impossibly defined muscle. Though she’d never even seen this man break a sweat…
He would now.
She unbuttoned his pants and grinned into his shoulder when he tensed. She took her time with the zipper but lost her train of thought when she felt her bra loosen because he’d unclasped it. He pulled it off her arms, dropped it onto the ground.
Serena’s breath caught. She’d never been naked in front of a man before, and she did not know quite what to feel about being exposed this way. Except there was no hiding that the man liked what he saw. And there was really nothing her quivering muscles could have done except work exceptionally hard to keep her upright as he reached forward and cupped her breasts. A move both possessive and thrilling, sending an intoxicating jolt through her. When his thumbs brushed the taut nipples, Serena’s legs nearly buckled. Would have, maybe, if he had not smoothed his hands down to her rib cage and pressed her to the wall.
All so that he could taste. His mouth, hot and foreign, feasted on her. Everything inside of her began to wind like a taut string. She wanted so many things, she did not know how to find them, how to demand them.
“Luciano.” She sounded breathless and desperate and that might have bothered her if it did not prompt a rumbling sound deep in his throat, like a predatory, primal growl. The sound shot sparks through her, like she was nothing but fire and heat and wonder.
Then his finger traced the seam of her underwear. Then it wasn’t tracing, it was dipping underneath the fabric and exploring a new part of her. Her head thunked back against the wall, and his laughter was dark against her neck.
“Serena,” he murmured, his mouth tucked against the sensitive skin under her jaw. “I can feel how much you want me.”
“Yes.” With what little control she had, she reached out, placed the palm of her hand against the hard jut of his arousal against his pants. “And I can feel how much you want me.”
“I suppose we are evenly matched then.”
She wanted to say something—something cunning and sophisticated—but the only sound that escaped her mouth was a wordless noise, some mix of a gasp and moan. Because his finger was inside of her, sparking to life fires she had not known could exist. An all-encompassing, heady climb that had her forgetting about everything except that center point of her body.
Until something imploded within her and she shattered into crumbling rubble. It was a blooming, arcing explosion that messed with her equilibrium, because somehow the pleasure another person could bring her was better than anything she’d ever done herself.
Still shuddering, she tried to catch her breath. Still standing, pressed against a wall in the living room of his apartment. In front of huge windows.
She had lost herself, and that could be terrifying if they stopped here. If that’s all that happened. He’d touched her and she’d fallen apart. How would she live with that?
She couldn’t. There was no turning back. Not now. Not so close. She needed to know how it ended. She gripped his face, met his gaze. “More. Luciano. All.”
Though he hesitated, he did not pretend to misunderstand her. After a halting moment, he swept her into his arms. In an impressive feat, he carried her through the penthouse and into a bedroom. The light had faded, so it was all dusk.
He laid her out on the bed, surveying her like some hulking conqueror, and she supposed later she might consider what it said about her that it sent a thrill through her. That she wanted to be conquered in every way by this man she would no doubt regret wanting.
“There will be no going back. When you think of your first, it will always be me.”
It was meant to be a warning. She should take it as one. The stark way he looked at her. The planes of muscle and sinew that made up his powerful body. What could possibly come after this and compare?
Which was enough of an answer. Perhaps she would curse him, her weakness, this moment, forever.
But it might be worth it.
So she held his serious gaze. She could not to be afraid of mistakes now, not when she’d already made so many. It would be worse to hide and stand still. “Then it will always be you.”
Something flared in his gaze. She wasn’t sure she’d understand that emotion even if she was experienced. But he shrugged out of his shirt, revealing the impressive musculature of his arms. She had known he was strong. An impressive form of man, but she had not realized how deep that went.
He divested himself of his pants, all while she watched. And while she had read about all sorts of romantic encounters, she had no real-life scenario to compare this to. Nerves fluttered, but they weren’t the kind made from worry. It was something else. Something akin to hope.
And then he pushed his boxers down, revealing the impressive hard length of him. She hated to be a cliché, but she simply did not know how that was truly meant to fit inside of her. She nearly laughed at the foolishness of the thought, but she was breathing too hard to laugh. Heated and pulsing too much to do anything but watch .
He pulled something out of the drawer, and she realized dimly that he must have more brain cells left than she did. He opened the condom package and rolled it on, watching her the entire time. She did not know if this was really considered an intimate act, or part of it, but she supposed it only mattered what they wanted it to be. And she could scarcely look away. It was all so new, so enticing.
To have a man move atop her, glare down at her. Hard and surely aching as much as she was. He wouldn’t be doing this otherwise. Not like this.
“It may hurt,” he said, his voice sounding like it was being scraped out of a closed throat.
“What a shocking revelation. I have no concept of how sex works despite my twenty-six years on this planet. Please explain it to me, Luciano.” She felt him tense every time she uttered his name, so she drew it out syllable by syllable, hoping she might hear him growl again.
He made a low sound of amusement instead, but it rumbled through her all the same. Because the hard, dangerous length of him was positioned at her entrance.
Nerves fluttered around her heart, but they were the anticipatory kind. That breathless feeling before jumping into the unknown. It felt like power. A choice. Her choice. Everything she wanted.
It didn’t so much hurt as feel impossible as he moved into her, slow and determined. A deep, uncomfortable stretching, but it was buffeted by so many wonderful sensations it was impossible to focus on that discomfort. Especially when she moved and he growled.
He liked it, she realized. Pleasure gave pleasure, and the more she relaxed into that, the less she felt as if it simply wasn’t physically possible to enjoy the feel of being so stretched, so invaded.
But it wasn’t just possible, it was elemental. Echoing through her, with every slow, controlled thrust. She wriggled beneath him, desperate for that climax he’d given her with his hand out in the other room. She wanted it now. So she began to meet his thrusts. Knew it was what he wanted as the muscles in his neck strained for control.
It felt wild and free. Nothing she’d ever been. Nothing she’d ever wanted. But that reckless fury in his eyes felt like everything she’d been missing. For maybe her whole life.
She came apart in panted sighs and his name on her lips. It was earthshaking. Rearranging everything she’d ever thought…if she could ever reasonably think again.
He held her still, there under him, as the orgasm rattled through her, eased. But he was still deep inside her. He was still here, looking down at her like she was something he could not bear to look away from.
Because he could see her. Her . He had gotten under her armor, her mask, and he saw her and wanted to.
She felt oddly emotional. Wanted to reach out. Wanted something she did not know how to express. A connection, somehow. Because she’d seen underneath his armor too. The way he’d talked of his father. Not the careless throwaway lines about how they didn’t get along.
The cord of truth as to why .
She put her palm to his cheek, needing some kind of guidance for this huge thing expanding inside of her. “Luciano.”
“Hush,” he ordered. And then he was pulling her up. Into his lap. Sliding into her from this new angle. She nearly burst apart again in one simple thrust, everything whirling in her mind forgotten in lieu of feeling. His mouth found her breast, one hand holding her hip as the other slid up her back, then gripped her hair.
It was not pain exactly. Instead, it vibrated through her like rapture.
“You will come apart for me again, cara mia, ” he muttered in a dark, commanding voice. “Now.”
The order thrilled her, and yet she couldn’t resist some reluctance to be ordered about. “You cannot tell me what to do, carissimo. ” But she panted it, at the end of some race she couldn’t fully understand, and couldn’t imagine not wanting to do again. Moving against him, building that climb again. Again and again, she wanted this and him.
His laugh was dark and thrilling. He was deep inside of her. He was everything.
And she was lost.
* * *
She had stripped him of everything. Every mask he’d worn, every piece of armor he’d lovingly crafted for himself. He felt soft and weak and utterly…lost with need. Not a need for that final push, the rush off the cliff. As much as he wanted that, he did not need it as much as he needed her in his arms.
It was inexplicable and problematic and horrible, and still she was so warm and pliant against him. And still she had breathed his name like a prayer. And still all he wanted was this, knowing all the ways it could not, would not, work in his favor. It wasn’t even a tactical error at this point, it was simply catastrophe.
Understanding that did nothing to stop his enjoyment of her. The lavender smell that had infiltrated his bed. The soft, sweet give of her skin. She was perfect from head to toe. The pleasured sleepiness in her hazel eyes a kind of drug he could not imagine finding elsewhere.
“Now it is your turn,” she murmured. “You will come apart for me.”
“Will I?”
She made a sound low in her throat, then she moved against him, clearly testing. When he sucked in a breath through his teeth, her grin was self-satisfied and gorgeous. What an unexpected siren she was.
And since she was, he let her take over, with her teasing moves, her careful strokes, her breath fluttering against his sweat-slicked skin. Her breasts brushed against his chest, and every time she sighed, it was in pleasure. Because she was building herself up again. Finding what she liked along with him.
He let her. He tried to let her. Until he could not control it because she was tightening around him yet again, breaking that last grip on his command. He moved her onto her back and thrust home one last obliterating time. The climax exploded in a preternatural burst of pleasure that made very little sense to him. That something he had done many a time could feel different and unique and important .
He would deal with that later. When he could breathe. When he could see. When he came down from whatever high he was on. When he could find the sense to roll off her.
It should have come when she stroked a hand down his back, then up again, as if to comfort. It should have come when she gently raked her fingers through his hair.
It was such a soft, gentle gesture that everything inside of him tensed. Iced. A strange niggle of something that felt like fear chased through him.
Her hand slipped from his hair. Her expression grew grim. But she did not look away.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose that is done.”
But everything in him, no matter the fear or the ice, rejected that sentiment. Because no . No. It wasn’t done .
“Not yet.”