Italian Wife Wanted

CHAPTER EIGHT

T OGETHER , E MMA AND Dante moved through the penthouse suite with haste. So quickly that she barely acknowledged how magnificent it was. A mansion all on one level. Made of black marble with silver edges and glass. Huge vases held small cherry blossom trees, pink petals falling everywhere.

As they reached the bedroom door, he slowed.

The fingers in hers loosened and were pulled from her grasp.

Dante opened the door, and stepped aside to allow her to enter. Her gaze moved to the floor-to-ceiling windows that formed two of the four walls of the room.

Outside she could see the bright lights on the city—gold and white and red.

How many rooms like this had she stood in with Dante? How many stories had they shared in rooms she couldn’t remember? How many beds had they found each other in until he had demanded they have just the one bed?

Before he had proposed they marry?

Did it matter? Tonight, this would be their bed. The only bed she’d remember sharing with him.

Her eyes moved to the white stone wall to her left, over the soft lights glowing like candles, down to the black wooden headboard carved with swirls, to the bed. An imposing bed of stark white pillows and black sheets.

Excitement pulsed through her in a tidal wave of heat.

She stepped towards the bed—

‘Wait.’ Strong fingers locked around her wrist. His large masculine hand commanded she be still.

‘I don’t want to wait,’ she said, her skin tingling, her body demanding she find release from this tension holding her every limb hostage.

His thumb stroked the pulse point on her wrist. ‘I want to undress you.’ He released her wrist. Breath hit her nape, a whisper of warmth on her skin, and the pulse in her core quickened. ‘Slowly . ’

He pressed in behind her, and her spine arched into him. The outline of his body penetrated hers, the heat of him seeping inside every pore of her exposed flesh.

Never had she been undressed with care when urgency demanded they were already naked.

It was dizzying.

‘Then undress me,’ she demanded, her voice smoky. And it felt like she was giving him more than the permission to remove her clothes. But to remove her armour too. Because never had anyone unwrapped her like a gift. Like she was something special . Or maybe Dante had, but she just couldn’t remember.

‘I will. But first I want to do this.’ Click . Her hair fell from its high ponytail to fall to her shoulders.

His fingers speared into her hair, loosening the strands. ‘I have dreamed of your hair. Feeling it through my fingers. Wrapped around my fist.’

Her heart hiccupped. ‘You’ve dreamed of me?’

‘Yes.’ He swept her hair over her left shoulder, over her taut collarbone. And the touch was teasing. It was too light. Not what she wanted. She wanted his hands. She wanted his touch to imprint itself on her, to brand her.

When his knuckle grazed down her naked spine, she couldn’t hold it in. The gasp.

‘Every night—’ the whisper of his lips grazed her nape ‘—I have thought of nothing but kissing you here.’ Feather-light, he placed his mouth to the tip of her spine. ‘And here.’

His lips lifted from her skin to move to the flesh of her throat. Where her neck met her shoulder. And a noise was ripped from her lips. A wail that demanded he give her more.

His mouth climbed higher, a teasing caress of his mouth, to the spot behind her ear, and Dante whispered, ‘And here.’

And the lips that had fluttered gently across her skin now pressed deeper. Sank deeper into her flesh. He pulled the skin between them and sucked.

Until Emma panted. Until she was breathless with the sensations his mouth tugged from her core.

His fingers pressed into the dip of her spine and she gasped as he tugged the zip down her buttocks to the top of her thighs.

His hands spanned her waist as he brought her back into him, his arousal pressed into her bottom.

‘Please...’ Emma could barely stand it any longer.

‘Turn around,’ he commanded, and on unsteady feet, she did.

Her breath hitched as black eyes caught hers.

‘Please what, Emmy? ’

‘More,’ she confessed. ‘I want more .’

‘More of what?’ he asked. ‘My hands?’ His hands moved back to her waist and up. ‘My fingers?’ His fingertips brushed the sensitive flesh beneath her arms.

Dante peeled the bodice of her dress down over her breasts, revealing the sheer black lace of her bra. And her nipples strained against it.

‘My mouth?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I want them all.’

His hands cupped her breasts.

‘Like this?’

She swallowed. ‘Harder.’

His fingers held her firmly, his thumbs flicking over the pebbled peaks. ‘Better?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now, do you want my mouth?’

‘Please,’ she mewed. ‘Yes, please.’

His head dipped to her breast, and he sucked her nipple into his mouth until it throbbed. Pulsed .

He lifted his mouth—

‘No!’ Her hands reached for him. Clung to the lapels of his black dinner jacket.

‘No more?’ he asked, nostrils flaring.

‘No,’ she corrected, her voice not her own. It was wanton. ‘ Please , don’t stop.’

With deft fingers, he released the front clasp of her bra and let it drop to the floor.

His eyes coveted her chest. ‘You have beautiful breasts,’ he said.

She cried out as he dipped his head again, took the neglected breast into his mouth and suckled.

The blood in her veins whooshed deafeningly with the speed of her heart.

He tugged at the skirt of her dress, pulling it down. But this time his lips remained on her skin. His kiss moved down the valley between her breasts. To the flat of her stomach. And her skirt went down with him. Past her thighs, her knees. Until it fell to the floor and pooled at her feet and she stepped out of it. And Dante was on his knees before her.

‘For months,’ he growled, his features tight, dark, ‘I have thought of the taste of you. Your skin. How it trembles beneath my mouth. How it sings for me. For my touch.’

Her pulse slowed. She searched his gaze, watched as it burned with something primal. Possessive. ‘Only my touch.’

The possessive sentiment didn’t scare her anymore. It made her burn. Made her wet between her legs. It excited her.

His hands gently parted her thighs, and she opened them for him. ‘Can you feel it, Emma?’ he asked. ‘The adrenaline building between us?’ His thumbs stroked her on the inner flesh of her thighs. ‘The power of it?’

Heart raging, she nodded.

‘Put your left hand on my shoulder,’ he demanded, and she did. She reached for him. Held on to the tight hard muscle of him and steadied herself.

Anticipation thrummed through her. Quickened her pulse. Her breathing. Every nerve ending was exposed.

His eyes holding hers, his hand stroked down her right inner thigh, to graze along her knee, until he gripped her sheer-black-stocking-covered calf and lifted it. Placed it on his shoulder.

He stroked back the way he came. Back up to her knee with a gentle drag of his fingers, up her thigh, until he stroked her. There.

‘Do you want my mouth here?’ he asked, his voice a dark thing. A hot thing that spoke directly to her sex. And it pulsed. Clenched in places she couldn’t name. Couldn’t decipher. But she wanted that. His intimate kiss.

‘Please...’ she breathed. ‘Kiss me. Kiss me now.’

A guttural noise from deep in his chest vibrated in her ears. On her skin. And then his mouth was there again. Kissing her on top of the fabric. His tongue slowly sliding against her intimate folds.

Emma reached for his head and pushed her fingers into the raven silk of his hair and pulled his mouth closer to her core. The faster he moved his tongue, the deeper he licked, the ache inside her sharpened, tightened.

‘Oh... Oh. Oh! ’ she gasped, again, and again, as he speared his tongue between her sex, until his lips claimed the pulsing nub at the apex of her sex and sucked.

Faster and faster, until she couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t breathe for the sensations rippling through her body. Sensations of unlimited pleasure and relentless passion that he was gifting her.

And the need for more was overwhelming. And it was demanding. Demanding that she chase it. This feeling. This rush.

Her hands moved everywhere. Over his scalp. His shoulders. Pulling him nearer to her.

With his hands on her hips, he held her steady against his mouth. Let her body rock against his mouth.

And then he released her and his hand went between her thighs, pulled aside her panties and claimed her oversensitive nub without the hindrance of the lace. The pleasure was almost unbearable.

She threw her neck back involuntarily.

Two fingers entered her. Stretched her. Until they slipped in to the hilt, and pumped.

‘Oh, my God!’ Tightly, she held on to him, relying on the support of his shoulders. His hand on her hip. She was going to fall. She was—

‘Coming,’ she breathed. ‘I’m—’

A third finger pushed inside her.

‘Oh!’ She was full, so full of him. But her body wanted more. It wanted the thick length of him where she ached the most.

‘I want you inside me,’ she admitted.

‘Soon,’ he breathed. ‘I want to pleasure you first.’

Her thoughts became disjointed, disoriented.

‘I want you wet,’ he rasped. ‘I want you ready to take me. All of me inside you,’ he rasped, and his words fired her blood into a hot, raging, needy thing that needed more. More oxygen. More water. More of something that she couldn’t identify. But most of all it needed him.

His fingers curled inside her. Found a place she didn’t know lived inside her and pushed against it. Stroked it. Until all she could feel was pleasure.

Emma fought her release. It felt too big, both in this moment and the journey that she had been on to chase it. She knew that what was coming, what was building inside her, had the ability to break her, to shatter her, to change her completely.

And it was everything he’d promised it would be. A rush. A high she’d never found with anyone but him.

‘Come for me,’ he roared against her skin, her flesh singing for him.

He wanted this. Her . Undone in ways she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams. And she wanted it too. To strip herself of the chains she’d shackled herself with and surrender to it. To what they were. To who she was with him. Bold. Sensual. Fearless in his arms.

She truly understood now why she had chosen Dante. For the first time since her accident she was confident that this was where she was meant to be. Where she was always meant to be. In Dante’s arms. In his bed. In this marriage they’d created to suit each other. She was safe to expose all her needs. All her physical wants. Without consequence.

Only then did she let go.

Without fear.

Without inhibition.

‘Dante!’ she screamed. Every syllable was torn from somewhere deep inside her...

Carefully, Dante withdrew from Emma before standing and reaching for her again. Pulling her into his embrace and lifting her into his arms.

‘Dante—’

‘Shush,’ he breathed. Quietly, although nothing within him was quiet.

His body demanded more than her undoing. It not only demanded everything they’d had before, but it demanded... He wasn’t quite sure. But he knew her being back in his arms didn’t feel like enough. His gut told him so.

And yet he didn’t trust it. His instinct was to fasten his mouth to hers and take them to bed and ignore that feeling. To find oblivion in the two of them coming together.

Never in his life had performance anxiety made him falter. But he was faltering now. Denying himself his primal needs because he was thinking about what came afterwards.

That concept was alien to him, though. He didn’t quite know what to do with it. And so he’d do nothing; he’d stay firmly in this moment and he’d take his time. Prolong the moment until he would have to face that foreign feeling again.

His neck dipped, and he met her gaze.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and her fingers splayed on his heated cheek. ‘That was—’

‘Only the beginning,’ he said, because he did not want her thanks. He wanted his wife back.

And she was coming back to him. It was all that mattered. Having her beneath him, where she belonged and where she’d stay until his body no longer ached.

He swept her into his arms and carried her over to the bed. And she clung onto him, her arms around his neck, breathing against it, her breath fanning across his flesh.

‘I will make this good for you,’ he promised rawly.

‘I know,’ she said. She trusted him to keep his word. To meet her every desire.

And he would.

He’d make her shake. Tremble. With a desire so rampant, so addictive, that neither would be able to think straight.

She reached for him as he set her on the edge of the bed, placing a hand on his stomach.

‘I want to learn every inch of you,’ she confessed, her fingers moving to the silver buckle of his belt. ‘I want to learn how to give you pleasure too.’ A blush bloomed a deep scarlet on her cheeks. But she did not release his eyes. She did not remove her hand. ‘I want to pleasure you with my mouth.’

He nodded. A single dip of his head, because he didn’t trust himself to speak. Because he had only missed her body, her mouth, not her .

Slowly, she unbuckled him. And he made himself stand still. Taut. As he prepared himself for the silkiness of her mouth. The warmth.

Belt open, she undid his button, splayed the waistband of his trousers, and her hand crept inside his boxers. She withdrew him with gentle fingers. Until he was free and his arousal stood tall and erect in her small, pale hand.

Her blond head dipped...

‘Emma,’ he said, and she flicked her tongue over the tip of him, the silken edge beading with his need for her to take him deeper.

And she took him, inch by inch, until her throat flexed and accept him, and he—

‘Emma!’ he roared as she sucked him. Used her pale hand to pump him in unison with the slide of her lips, the sheath of her warm, wet mouth.

He fisted her hair. Wrapped it around the palm of his hand. Watched her please him.

And he couldn’t stand it. How easily she took him to the edge of his control. How easily she undid him. How easily she made a mockery of the way in which he ran his life, the rules he’d put in place.

‘Emma, stop,’ he growled, need lacing the words. Because she would not undo him yet. He wouldn’t lose control. He would show her the strength of his control. The power he had over himself to resist the ultimate satisfaction so that he could bring them both to climax, together.

He drew an agonising breath into tight lungs. ‘Can you feel what you do to me?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘I’m so hard, it hurts, Emmy. But I don’t want to spill myself into your mouth. I want to be inside you. To feel you wrapped around me as I drive you to the edge again,’ he said. ‘I need to be inside you,’ he confessed.

‘I want that too,’ she breathed, and with gritted teeth, he watched her slither back into the centre of the bed.

‘Come to bed,’ she breathed. It was all he’d wanted for months. To hear his wife say those words.

He reached for the tie at his throat. Loosened it, tugged it free, and let it flutter to the floor. The buttons were next. So many of them that it felt like an eternity before he could bare himself.

Her gaze seared his skin. But he didn’t stop. He removed his trousers, his boxers, socks and shoes.

He crawled between her thighs. Felt her raise her hips to meet him, meet the hardness of him pulsing against her. And he removed the final barrier between them, the black lace of her panties. Pulling them down over her calves, her ankles, and tossing them aside.

On the way back, he kissed the exposed softness of her ankle bone, her knee, her inner thigh.

‘Put your legs on my shoulders,’ he commanded, because he wanted her open to him. For her to be in a position to take all of him so deeply she wouldn’t be able to breathe for the fullness.

She did as he instructed, and he shifted against her, feeling how ready she was for him, the wetness at her core.

His need to be inside her was frantic, all consuming.

And he pressed into the intimate centre of her, entered her. Slowly, inch by inch.

He took his time, knowing that once he was fully inside her he would be lost to the urgency between them. Compelled by the need to drive into her again and again until his body was released from the hold she had over him.

He needed a moment to gain back a modicum of control.

‘Dante, do you want to...stop?’

‘Is that what you want?’ he growled, his neck straining as he fought every instinct to thrust up inside her.

‘No.’ Her hair, strewn over the white pillow, moved with the shake of her head. And he wanted to fist it. Drag her mouth to his.

‘I want to go slow,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You won’t hurt me,’ she promised. ‘My body will remember you.’

Her hips flexed, and she took him inside her a little more. ‘But if you want to stop,’ she said, and he heard the tightness in her voice. Heard a need he mirrored in his taut muscles, begging for release. ‘We can.’

‘I do not want that,’ he ground out.

Her hands, open palmed, smoothed over his chest. And when she ran her fingertips over his bruised nipples, her touch ignited a fire in his skin. And he was burning.

‘Then don’t stop.’

Sweat beaded on his brow. ‘I won’t.’

He thrust up into her.

‘Yes!’ Her face contorted. ‘Again. More .’

He gripped her hips, plunged, hard and deep.

Dante strained against his instincts, despite her words, despite his, to do what he wanted and take her mindlessly.

His muscles burned with his resistance. If he did these things, if he let go, gave in to the animalistic instinct to rut these thoughts away, he’d hurt her.

Slowly, he slid into her again and again, let her body remember him. Welcome him back.

Her ankles locked around his neck. ‘Faster, Dante,’ she pleaded. ‘Harder.’

And her whispered words were what his body longed for. Had longed for, for months. And she knew, didn’t she? She knew what he needed because she needed it too. To end the endless days of foreplay, the months of self-denial. To surrender to this agony between them.

‘Dante, please !’

And whatever control he’d held on to shattered.

He possessed her.

Her body.

He came back to the only home he’d ever know, ever needed. And the truth of that overwhelmed him now.

Emma was his home .

And that was terrifying. But he pushed it aside.

‘Never stop,’ she said, and he wanted to roar.

‘Dante!’ Her nails bit into his skin. Into his hands. She contracted around the pulsing hardness of him, with the sweetest, most delicious vise grip.

He panted, his breath coming out in short, sharp rasps. But he did not close his eyes. Neither did she.

In sync, their hips locked. Their bodies tightened. And he no longer knew where she ended and he began.

‘Emma!’ he shouted as he came. Harder than he’d ever come.

And the pleasure blinded him to everything but the feel of her beneath him.

Panting, he collapsed on to his elbows and buried his face in her throat.

‘That was incredible.’

‘ You are incredible,’ he husked into her throat—her skin. Because she was something mystical. A creature who had crept into his life and bewitched him.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her hands sweeping up his back and wrapping around him.

And he was no longer blind. He could see with an undiluted clarity.

He’d won.

Emma was back.

And he’d keep her here.

Beneath him.

Where she belonged.

For now.