Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
Jax settled onto his back after discarding the condom, still damp with perspiration, head pillowed on his arm, heart rate not yet steady, mind blown by the intensity of his orgasm.
He wasn’t sure why their lovemaking had been so potent, but he’d actually forgotten where he was as well. His only point of consciousness had been the way their bodies rang in unison.
Why? It hadn’t been that long since his last affair. He was twenty-eight, wealthy, and good-looking. Women threw themselves at him all the time. When they were clear about wanting a brief and uncomplicated encounter, he indulged.
He didn’t need sex. He merely liked it. A lot.
But as he heard his phone buzz yet again from the pocket of his discarded jacket, he kicked himself for lingering to indulge today. And wondered why it had felt so imperative.
“Do you need to get that?” Bree asked drowsily.
“No.” It was his brother, demanding a status report. Nico was up early in New York. Very early. It was a testament to how important it was for Jax to get to Naples and deal with Blackwood. If he had left as scheduled, he would be there by now, signing the deal Nico was badgering him about.
He should leave. Now.
But Bree curled into his side with a sigh of satisfaction, the kind his ego delighted in. Her head found his shoulder and her soft curves rested against his side.
“Good,” she murmured.
He wasn’t a cuddler, but he liked the way she fit against him. He liked the smell in her hair where strands caught in his stubble. He liked the taste of her on his lips. Her thigh rested on his own and her fingers traced patterns from the middle of his chest to his navel, making him loath to move.
A tryst with a tourist had been the last thing on his mind when he’d left Nonna’s. He’d come to Como for exactly the reason he’d given her. After flying in last night, he had monitored some work this morning, then stopped for a bite on his way to the heliport. Alphonso had been his head of catering until a year ago. He’d also been a running partner. Alphonso had left when he’d fallen in love with a chef, and Jax had provided financing for their enterprise. He dropped in when he could, to check on his investment.
His mind had been on Domenico Blackwood. Despite the financial beating Jax’s family had recently delivered, Dom was not staying down. In fact, he was driving up the price on the property Nico wanted, thus Nico wanted Jax in Naples, closing the deal.
Jax thought Blackwood was bluffing. He would overextend himself if he kept raising the bid, but Jax never shirked his responsibility to the family or the Visconti Group.
Almost never.
The second he had arrived at the ristorante , his inner caveman had clocked a pretty woman sitting alone. His interest probably would have leveled off at admiration if she hadn’t glanced over, arresting him.
Her sea-green eyes had delivered a sexual punch that took his breath. The rest of her was equally compelling. Her lips were heart shaped, feminine, and wearing a pink gloss that set off her golden tan. Her hair was a rich chestnut brown that had been gathered into a messy ponytail behind her neck. The breeze lifted flyaway strands that he wanted to smooth with his hands.
Her sundress was printed with lemons and had narrow straps that would only need a gentle brush off her shoulders to drop the silk around her feet, revealing what his practiced eye discerned were firm, lovely breasts and a lush ass. The lower half of her tanned thigh and bare shin was visible beneath the flirty length of the dress, ending in a chic sandal.
Everything about her called to him in a way he’d never experienced, not even when he’d been engaged to be married.
The painful fallout from that broken engagement was firmly behind him, but it was the reason he stuck to flirtations and flings. He’d assumed his lack of deep connections since then had been a deliberate choice. He would decide when he was ready to feel something more than superficial attraction.
He hadn’t expected a magnetic sort of carnality to hit him square between the eyes. Or the middle of his chest. Or take hold of his groin like a barbed hook.
American, he had judged her. It wasn’t just the handbag. It was the fact she’d met his gaze so boldly. He liked Europe for the fact most people kept their nose in their own business. Americans were always heads-up, eyes locking in readiness to meet, assess, and connect.
He could have—probably should have—left when he realized she was rebounding from heartbreak. Perhaps he would have, if she hadn’t been so candid about her desire to move on. If she hadn’t been so enchanting and responsive to his slightest touch, blushing when he caressed her wrist.
He’d been utterly entranced by her, watching her lips, losing himself in her eyes.
Her nervousness as she’d led him back here had been another yellow flag, telling him she lacked the sophistication of someone who could separate physical connection from emotional. He’d been prepared to leave if she changed her mind, but when they kissed, she grew bolder, then shattered under his touch.
Good sense had gone by the wayside at that point. He always carried condoms, and it had taken all his control to put one on before falling onto this bed with her.
Somehow, he’d kept from unleashing the full force of his inner beast, but that hadn’t lessened the intensity of the culmination. It had been prolonged and so satisfying, it damned near tore him in half.
He still felt turned inside out.
He still felt hungry .
It wasn’t garden-variety horny, either. Yes, he was recovering and itching with renewed arousal. He had a very healthy sexual appetite, and he couldn’t help respond to the feel of her soft curves and the trail of her fingertips against his abs and the brush of her lips as she turned them against his pec.
A deeper sort of insatiable desire was digging claws into him, though. Something that felt thwarted despite the fact they were sated and she was inside the crook of his arm. He was trying not to acknowledge it, but he wanted more. Not just more lovemaking, but more time. More of her.
The last time he’d allowed himself to become deeply entangled with a woman, he’d been forced to choose between his love for her and the kind of man he thought he was. The kind of man he wanted to be. That push-pull had frayed things inside him to the point of nearly snapping. He still hated himself for the way things had played out.
Leave , he ordered himself and drew a breath.
She stretched against him. “You’re a man of your word, aren’t you?”
“I try to be. Why?” Had she heard his inner thoughts and wondered about his personal code of ethics?
“That was the best sex of my life. As promised. Thank you.” She shifted to sprawl herself across his chest, breasts sitting warmly against his rib cage. Her pretty mouth, bruised by their kisses, held a smug smile, but shadows flickered behind the screen of her lashes.
She was remembering sex with someone else, feeling disloyal for comparing.
Jealousy bit him. It was completely misguided. That other man was already out of her life. Jax would be soon as well.
There would be others, though. She was far too passionate to deny herself, and he was inordinately resentful of those future lovers she would take.
He rolled her beneath him. “Best so far .”
“Oh?” Her eyes flared with excitement. “I thought all those texts meant you have places to be.”
“They can wait.” They couldn’t, but he brushed aside the veil of obligation that tried to descend on him and used the superior strength in his thighs to open hers. He settled his thickening erection where she was molten and silky, then kissed her until she was buttery soft beneath him. Until she whimpered and rocked her hips, seeking stimulation in the apex of her thighs.
He moved his lips into her throat and slid down so he could graze his stubble in the valley between her breasts.
“Come back,” she pleaded, clasping at his shoulders, but he caught her hands and trapped them against the mattress while he detoured to kiss all the most beguiling places—her beige nipples and the scented underside of her breast. The place where her ribs ended and the tremble of her belly began. Her navel and the point of her hip and the musky thicket of her bush.
When he was half off the bed, her thighs clenching his ears and her fingers in his hair, he was exactly where he wanted to be.
He could have stayed there forever, making her shudder and gasp and sob with need, but even though she was utterly his in this moment, that primal need to possess her forever wouldn’t abate.
Rather than take her over the edge, he slipped on the other condom from his wallet and loomed over her, catching at his control even as he was draping her thighs over his arms, grasping her hips and driving into her.
“Too hard?” he asked through clenched teeth, body singing with the need to claim.
“I like it,” she gasped. “It makes me feel sexy.” Her soft hands drifted over his shoulders then down to his hips. Her nails scored his buttocks, urging him on.
“You are.” He thrust heavily. “Too sexy.” Another thrust. Deeper. “Dangerous.”
Because he wanted to keep her.
He didn’t say it. His capacity for speech dried up. Their noises became animalistic as he made love to her the way he was aching to, driving her into spasms of pleasure, then shifting to arch her over his arm while he buried his mouth in her neck. He rolled so she was straddled across his hips and tumbled her onto her back again, riding her through one orgasm after another, keeping her at the heights of arousal with the pump of his hips and his mouth on her breast and his hands caressing every inch of her.
She matched him every step of the way, flushed and incoherent with lust, nipping at his lips and lifting her hips to meet his, grasping at him in desperation. Mews of need filled his ears.
They wrecked the bed, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to wreck her for future lovers, so she only thought of him for the rest of her life. It was a primitive compulsion. Atavistic.
When her cries of anguished joy rose and his own need for release pressed like a branding iron, he was both fiercely triumphant and incensed that the end had arrived.
He dropped her onto her back and drove into her, trying to forge a link that would chain her to him for the rest of their lives. For all of eternity.
Jagged, ecstatic cries left her as she convulsed beneath him.
His final thrust into the contractions of her sheath was so intense, so pure, so abruptly exquisite, it tore a shout of exaltation from him.
Time stopped. He was held in that paroxysm of painfully sweet pulses. The fiery throbs bathed him in heat, the sensation acute and lasting for what seemed like hours. Days. A lifetime. Until he was hollow and defeated.
With a final shudder, he let his arms fold. He was so weak with gratification, he barely kept from crushing her.
It was only when his erection relaxed and slipped free that he realized the condom had split.
***
“The condom broke.”
“Hmm?” Bree was made of lead. From toenails to eyelids, all of her was too heavy to function. Her brain was a bed of moss, her entire being dulled into supreme indolence. “Issokay.” Even her lips were too sated to move. “I’m onna pill.”
“Are you sure?” The mattress shifted.
“Yes.” She made herself drag her eyes open to find his wide chest dominating her vision. The fine hairs lay in a treelike pattern that stretched toward his light brown nipples.
He was propped on his elbow, looking alert and powerful. His shoulders were satin, his mouth a stern line. His penis was naked so he must have removed the remains of the condom.
When she lifted her gaze to his, he penetrated hers with a steady stare, not nearly as destroyed by their lovemaking as she was. Angry?
“They’re in the bathroom next to my toothbrush,” she said of the pills, growing indignant. “See for yourself. Or do you mean…” She reached for the sheet, beginning to feel chilled.
The sheet was bunched below their knees. He was lying on the edge of it and didn’t move, forcing her to lie here naked before him.
“I had a physical after Kabir left.” Her friend had suggested she check that he hadn’t been cheating, leaving her with more than disappointment. He hadn’t. “I don’t have any health concerns. Do you?”
“No. I get checked every year and always wear condoms.”
“So it’s okay.” She quit tugging on the sheet and sat up to hug the one pillow that was still on the bed. “I can get a morning-after pill from the pharmacy on the way to the train station if you’re worried.” She had time, she noted with a glance at the clock.
Blues hit her as she realized she was not only at the end of her vacation, but very much at the end of her time with him. And, like the end of a vacation, stepping back into reality hit like a slap in the face.
“That would be wise.” He rose to gather his clothes.
He paused when his phone buzzed. He drew it from his jacket pocket and sighed, standing naked as he read it, an erotic silhouette of the masculine form against the striped light of the closed blinds.
If her phone had been within reach, she would have snapped him like that and called it “blind passion.” Amused with herself, she opened her mouth to tell him, hoping to return to some of the lighthearted humor they had enjoyed all day, but he swore under his breath.
“I have to go.” Tense energy had taken hold of him. When he flashed her a look, it was almost as though he blamed her in some way.
“Is everything okay?”
“An ongoing problem with a competitor. Nothing life threatening, but I should have been in Naples by now.” He pulled on his clothes. “I’ll leave my assistant’s card in case you need to get hold of me.” He flashed another of those piercing looks at her.
His assistant? That told her where she was in his circle of intimates, didn’t it?
She picked up the sheet and pulled it up to wrap across her breasts, under her arms, wondering what she had done to make him rush away—
No . No more blaming herself for men who left. Her heart might be twisting with a desire to maintain the connection they had seemed to share, but she’d been a one-afternoon stand for him. He hadn’t tried to disguise it as anything more than that. In fact, he’d given her countless opportunities to reject him, and when she hadn’t, he’d delivered exactly what he’d promised: electrifying sex that had made her forget Kabir existed.
She refused to pine and torture herself with wondering if he would have invited her to Naples if she’d been staying in Europe longer. She was the one who was unavailable.
“I guess this is the part where I say thanks, this was nice?” She aimed for a flippant tone and must have nailed it because he shot her a look of arrogantly lifted brows that rejected her tepid adjective.
Spectacular was more fitting. So was unforgettable . She would be damned if she would stroke his ego, though.
After a charged moment, he showed her a card, then scribbled something on it. “That’s my direct line. Reach out if you need to.” He left it on the table with a muted snap.
So she could be left on read? No thanks.
She waited for him to ask for her number. To say he wanted to see her again.
“I enjoyed this. Grazie .”
He didn’t sound grateful. He sounded mad.
She was still on the bed wearing only the sheet. She suddenly felt cheap and couldn’t bear it. She only wanted him to leave.
“You’re welcome,” she said with one of her mother’s stage smiles, the kind that covered anything from a wardrobe malfunction to a lost crown. “I have a train to catch so… .” She wiggled her fingers. “Arrivederci.”
His cheek ticked. “Ciao, bella.”
The door closed behind him and she clenched her hot eyes shut, thinking, There goes another one .
No . She might not be the one to physically leave, but she was damned well leaving him behind.
After a quick shower and finishing her packing, she walked out with her suitcase and locked the door, leaving his card on the table without even looking at it.