Chapter 14 - Sofia #2
I grabbed my glass and offered it to him, but the movement only had me rubbing up against him with him not backing up or giving me any space. “Here.”
He took it and set it right back down without looking at it. Tearing his focus off my clearly blotching and puffy-eyed face wasn’t happening. “What’s wrong, Sofia?”
I shook my head, lying nonverbally. I had to. Because the genuine concern and worry in his stern tone almost made me crack. To hear him care was too much.
“Sofia…” He firmed his grip on my chin and stepped just a little closer. As if looming over me could force an answer out of my lips. I was sick of men controlling my life—but that was a grievance I had to take up with my uncle and the Giovanni force. Not Andre.
He didn’t control me. He didn’t push.
The only control that he could hold over me was this desire and lust that snapped into place as soon as we’d met.
Playing back Esmeralda’s wisdom, that I should live my life to the fullest even though she couldn’t, I looked at Andre in a new light.
I didn’t track the lean features that were etched with annoyance or disdain or impatience at my rejecting him. This time, I saw the lines of worry and the serious angst in his stormy eyes.
He cares.
He really does.
After he’d gotten me off on the table that one time, I’d been so bothered by the fact that he saw me as a convenient thing to play with. Not a person to appreciate.
In the darkness of the kitchen, alone with him in the middle of the night, I felt seen like never before. I experienced the wonder of being cared for and worried about like I hadn’t been in so long—if ever.
“I…”
“What’s wrong?” he asked again, almost desperate for me to tell him. He brought his other hand up and framed my face with both of them as he urged me toward him. “What is it?” He pressed his lips to my forehead before rearing back to search my face again. “Fuck, Sofia. What’s wrong?”
The simple touch of his lips on my forehead broke me.
He wasn’t faking anything with me. He wasn’t trying to seduce me. He hadn’t shown up to taunt me and flirt with me—maybe he’d wanted to at first. But his eyes seared me with concern, not lust.
“I was thinking about some stuff. Dark and heavy stuff.” Esmeralda’s inevitable premature death would be hard enough. But to know she was suffering in her last days? It was too cruel. Too ugly. And with Andre here, so worried and willing to make me feel better, I fell under the spell of wanting it.
Of needing him.
Of tossing all my woes and worries aside just to embrace something good for once.
“And…” I let out a shaky breath, committing this turning point to memory. The depth of sincerity in his dark-blue eyes. The shadows on his rugged face and the start of stubble that made him look rougher.
The grip of his hands on me grounded me, and I discovered that I can’t didn’t have to mean I won’t.
“And I don’t want anything dark and heavy weighing me down anymore.” I swallowed hard, knowing that once I went down this path, there would be no turning back. “I want… something good. For a change. For as long as I can. I want…” I frowned and reached up to kiss him.
Heat infused me through the contact. His hot lips parted for me. A low, visceral grunt shot from him, and I swallowed it down.
Kissing him like he was my lifeline, I dared to think it could be this easy. That surrendering—at last—I could have a loophole to having to deal with feeling like a liar and traitor. That I could take this shortcut out of stressing about Esmeralda and hating my uncle.
“I’ll show you something good,” he said on a gravely rasp when we parted for air.
I clung to him, kissing him again before he could retract the offer.
“I need you, Andre. Please, I don’t want to fight it anymore. I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to fight us.”
He growled again before slamming his hungry lips on mine. Wet and demanding, he brushed his mouth over mine and insisted that I open for him. As I did, welcoming his tongue, chasing his taste, he banded his arms around me and clutched me tightly.
Lust filled my veins. Adrenaline pumped my heart faster. The thrill and elation of his dominating me—heart, mind, and body—was the trifecta of an escape I’d been needing all this time.
“Please,” I begged. “I need… I want… you, Andre. I—”
He cut me off with another ragged kiss, forcing his mouth over mine with so much pressure that he canted my head back and had me craning my neck as he leaned me against the edge of the counter.
His arms slid lower, and when his hands found purchase on my hips, I gasped against his open mouth as he hoisted me up.
Onto the counter. The cool surface chilled my thighs, but he didn’t keep me there long. I had a half of a second to wrap my legs around his waist before he picked me off the counter and carried me away.
Closing my eyes allowed me to savor the heat of his kiss. Holding on to him tightly emphasized his fingers digging into my ass. And with every step he took as we left the room, the hard bulge of his erection rubbed against my core.
Mindless with desire and helpless to think or speak, I felt him. And it was just what I needed. All I could handle.
His hands as he carried me. The thudding steps of him walking through the house. The heat of his kisses and the bite of his nips as he dragged his mouth down my neck.
Once he’d brought me to his room, he kicked the door shut and strode toward his bed.
I hadn’t been in here since that first night. When I’d sat here so nervously but driven to give him all the first-aid that I could.
“I’ll give you something good, sweetheart,” he growled as he lowered me to the bed. Following me down, he kept all that delicious heat from his hard body with me.
“Sweetheart?” I tried to laugh because I refused to cry. “A little early for that, isn’t it?”
He either didn’t care that I was trying to joke or didn’t agree. Pulling back to tug my shirt up, he shook his head and gave me a smoldering, searing stare that melted me. “Fine. I’ll wait until the next time to be sweet on you.”
“Next time?” I asked, sucking in a hard inhale when he dragged my cami up high enough to latch his hot mouth on my nipple. “Oh—”
“Next time.” Between his hand shoving my shorts down and his head moving over so he could suck on my other breast, he showed how needy he was for me. For me, the liar and rival sent here to spy on him. “And every time after that.”
I lifted my hips to help him get my shorts off. Holding the back of his head so I could keep his mouth on my breast, I moaned as sparks of heat sparked and lit a path down to my aching, throbbing pussy.
“This time,” he said as he leaned back to shove his pants off, watching me as I removed my cami, “is going to be fast and hard. I’ll give you something good, sweetheart,” he said so gruffly, his voice thick with desperation.
He’d already screwed up by letting that endearment slip out now. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t. All I was capable of was parting my legs to let him lower back down to me. The only thing I dreamed of focusing on was holding my arms out to embrace him as he braced himself over me.
Every inch of his hard body burned me as he stretched out over me. His long, stiff, thick cock stunned me as he rubbed it, bare and wet with pre-cum, over my slick entrance.
Foreplay would take too long.
The weeks of heated looks, stolen kisses, and veiled teasing were enough to get me clawing for him now.
“This time,” he said as he positioned his dick at my pussy, “won’t last long enough.” With a jerk of his hips, he pushed the wide dome of his cockhead into me. Stretching me. I gasped out loud and thrust my breasts up at him.
“A fucking eternity won’t be long enough,” he threatened as he gritted his teeth and rammed into me.
My lips parted as he filled me. All the way to the hilt.
Stuffed with his huge dick wedged inside my sopping-wet pussy.
Instead of gasping at the sting of the widening, the burn of being so full, I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his head toward mine.
Kissing him like I was in withdrawal of his greedy lips, I silenced anything else he could’ve said.
Like how he was realizing just now that I was a virgin.
Or how I was giving myself to him in a way I hadn’t with any other man.
But he knew. He could tell, somehow, because as I dueled with his tongue and acclimated to the split second of his shaft all the way inside me, he slipped his arms around me and held me so crushingly tight that it seemed like he needed to take a moment to let it sink in for him.
As if it felt too damn good for him and he didn’t want to come yet.
Still kissing him, and whimpering with need as tension stayed tight inside me, I felt him drag back. And slam home again. Over and over. He whipped his hips and ground me down into the mattress without any pause, without any hesitation.
No words were necessary. Foreplay and slowing down to caress me wouldn’t have changed anything, either.
Fast and hard, hopelessly and desperately, he fucked me until I shattered apart. Proving him right.
He made it good.
He gave me something so out-of-this-world and perfect with the bliss that swiftly washed over me with my orgasm. Waves of relief had me trembling. Flutters of my climax robbed me of any mental energy.
Free and floating with the euphoria of letting go, I pressed my hands on his back and held on tightly. Hugging him. Securing him to me until he stiffened and groaned. He sucked hard on my neck as his thick dick jerked deep inside me, flooding me with his cum.
We lay there catching our breath but not moving. In this silence, with our ragged exhales, I stayed in the moment of bliss for as long as I could. To savor the endorphin rush. To welcome the lax numbness.
But he had to ruin it.
“How was that for something good?” he asked smugly before kissing my shoulder.
Good.
It was good. Just as I knew it would be.
But as I realized how much I wanted more, the guilt consumed me all over again.
I caved. I surrendered.
And I couldn’t dismiss how terrible it would be when it had to end.
Because it would.
I was fated to the curse of being a Giovanni, and he had the fortune to be an Orlov.
There was no us when our families were rivals. No matter how perfectly we fit together in this forbidden tryst.