CHAPTER TEN
FRANCESCAFELTMADE of sunshine. Heat and liquid and summer, swirling around inside a body that surely wasn’t hers anymore.
She wanted it to be his.
There was a beat of a moment where she thought he’d set her aside yet again, but the please seemed to sweep through him like magic. When she reached out, he caught her, and then swiftly brought his mouth to hers.
And plundered. She was caught there against the cotton of his T-shirt, the hard, unforgiving landscape of his chest. All while his mouth took hers with no mercy, no give.
She didn’t want any. She wanted the harsh demand of it all. The certainty. The way his hands moved over her as if they had a route in mind. As if he knew everything about her. The way his rough palm over her abdomen made her arch toward him. The way his mouth on her neck made her want to make sounds she was sure she’d never made before. Some strange kind of purring to encourage him to keep at it.
Every kiss, every nibble, every slide of his hand was some new universe opened up to her. Sparkling and vast. But giving more only opened up the need for more. She pulled his shirt over his head, following whatever impulse took hold of her.
Like scraping her nails lightly up the large, muscular expanse of his back. When he growled against her throat, she laughed with abandoned joy.
Until he touched her, where she had touched herself. For him. The memory and the reality crashing through her, dragging her up that delicious, twisting tension in need of release. But just as she thought she might find it, as she strained toward him trying to find it, he took his hand away.
And it was his turn to laugh. Then he dragged that laugh down the center of her, his mouth a delicious tangle of new sensation until he settled himself between her legs and tasted her long and deep. Just as he’d said.
She hadn’t known. She hadn’t dreamed. All her life she had been tethered to earth, but Aristide cut those ties and let her fly. He didn’t stop this time. His mouth explored her most intimate places until she crashed apart, with a throbbing, echoing joy.
As he moved back over her, she saw the flash of that detachment in his eyes. Like he might pull away. Like he might stop. She couldn’t bear the thought. Not when they’d come so far. Not when it could be so much.
And she had found the key to this. If she felt him pull away, try to find that distance he was so good at employing, she only had to say one thing.
“Aristide, please.” She didn’t mind asking. Begging. Whatever it took. Because touching herself in front of him had certainly been a revelation in what passion could be found with only his eyes on her.
But she wanted his touch. She wanted him. She needed to know what more there could be. She reached for the pants he still wore, and he didn’t stop her. He let her unbutton and unzip. To push them out of her way so she could feel more than the outline of his delicious hardness.
She touched him reverently, because it was a delicious thrill. To be this close to a man who could be so remote. To feel the most intimate parts of him, and know he was hard for her.
It was a gift to be so consumed with whatever pulsed through her that it didn’t matter if she was naked or he was. All that mattered was that they found their way together.
“Please,” she whispered again, meeting his gaze, one arm looped around his neck, one hand stroking the long, hard length of him. “Show me.”
He muttered something dark that she didn’t quite catch as he moved, pulling his pants off, so that he was as naked as she. All bronze skin and harsh lines. There was no laziness here in this body, no matter how he could affect the mask of it. He was all energy, all strength.
And for the moment, all hers.
He arranged her on the lounge, covered her body with his. His muscles tensed, his gaze fierce, and then him, there, slowly moving inside of her. Too much. It was all too much, and he was too much. She wanted to sob, but somehow in a good way. As if all releases could be good.
It didn’t seem as though it were possible she could accommodate him, but slowly, inexorably, she opened, softened, accepted. Until he was so deep inside of her, she had no idea how she could ever exist again, empty and without him.
“So beautiful, so perfect,” he murmured as she struggled to breathe, to process, to still. She had to move, she had to pant, she had to...
“So impatient,” he said, with dark amusement in his tone. “When you have found such pleasure already. Luckily, greed suits me.”
He moved inside of her like this was all they were and ever would be. Bound, fused. As if this was always where her life had been leading. Right to this point. Right to him. She’d escaped not to save herself, but to find him.
“Mio angioletta,”he murmured there against her skin. Deep inside of her.
She hadn’t wanted to be an angel, but she would be anything if he considered her his. To protect. To cherish. To make love to, just like this.
Stars seemed to explode around her. Bigger, somehow, when she would have said she’d already achieved every pinnacle of pleasure there could ever be. She shook, she sobbed, and when he pressed deep one last time, she gripped him hard and held him to her as he pulsed out his own release.
For a moment, they were still, shaking in each other’s arms. She needed to catch her breath, her racing thoughts. Come back to herself. But before she could, he swept her up into his arms. And carried her, back into the house, through too many rooms to count into a giant bedroom that must be his. Because she got the sense of color and brightness, but she could not drag her gaze from his.
He placed her on his bed, looking fierce and haunted. She shook her head because she didn’t want him haunted or hunted. She wanted him to feel what she felt.
Freedom. She got to her knees on the mattress, reached out and traced his face with her fingers. He stood stiffly, but not unmoved. No, he was trying not to be moved. Because his eyes didn’t leave hers, and there were too many emotions in those dark depths.
But the one she recognized was fear. She had been afraid and brave all at the same too many times in her life not to recognize it.
She would find a way to reward him, for both. For this. For them.
It was like being worshipped. Pleasure, yes, so big it threatened to split Aristide’s chest in two. But pain, because what a responsibility. To be that which this woman worshipped. Her fingertips followed every bone, every angle, ever line of his face. Slowly, gently, reverently.
And kept going. Down the cords of his neck. The ridge of muscle across his chest. Light, exploratory. Combing wildfires he did not know how to put out. Did not want to, if it meant she was the one setting them against every inch of his skin.
When her hand closed around where he was once again hard and wanting, he gripped her wrist. To stop her.
Surely.
But she shook her head, looking up at him with big, wide eyes luminous in the fading light of day.
“Let me. Let me show you,” she whispered, and then said that word that made every vow he’d ever given himself and only himself crumble to nothing but dust.
If she begged him, he could not resist.
And then she followed every touch with her mouth. Soft and precious. Praise and veneration no one man could possibly deserve.
Until he was shaking. Until the need was too much to hold himself apart. He took her wrists again, this time to move her so that she was underneath him. He spread her soft, silky thighs wide and settled himself there.
“Say it again.” He’d meant it as a command, but it sounded more like a raspy plea.
He found he didn’t care when her mouth curved, a sultry smile tinged with sweetness that came from some secret part of her she’d not yet shown him.
And now it was here. Something she had found because she was strong and brave and wonderful, but something he’d helped her find. Helped her create.
“Please, Aristide,” she said, somehow knowing exactly what he wanted, somehow sounding stronger and more powerful than any woman begging rightly should. But this was Francesca. His angel. Sent to save him or perhaps he would drag them both to hell.
It didn’t matter in this moment. As long as he was inside her again. Where he fit. Where he belonged. Where he took his time, moving her close and closer still, but never over that edge she wanted again.
So she writhed there underneath him. Begging and perfect.
He placed his hand on her chest, fingers spread wide, the wave of possession so big and deep he wasn’t sure how any man could bear it.
Then she moved against him, all her own. An arch up against him, and a roll back down And the sound of perfect pleasure that escaped her mouth was art.
“Go on, then,” he said, watching her eyes, for that flare of everything that echoed inside of him. “Find it yourself.”
She did not jerk at that as she had outside. She did not even pause. She arched against him again. And he leveraged over her, while she moved, set the pace, and raced toward her own staggering release.
She sobbed out his name as the sun set outside. As he lost himself and gripped her hips, thrusting inside of her once more. In a fever of body to body and gasping breaths and a climax so big and bright he thought perhaps the world had collapsed around them.
Since he could not hold himself up, he rolled to the side, and she fell with him. Somehow, fitting just as if she belonged tucked up next to him.
They both breathed heavily and said nothing as darkness engulfed the room. He listened as her breath went from ragged to even, as her clenched hand relaxed. Until she slept there, tucked in beside him, her head on his shoulders and her soft, thick hair seeming everywhere.
Aristide lay as the passion and energy of release slowly drained out of him, as his own breathing slowed. As everything warm and good was replaced not with exhaustion, or contentment, or anything but a terrible, beating panic.
He had not been careful.
He had lost himself. Lines crossed. Complications created. All because she was a siren he hadn’t been able to resist. And normally, he would not curse himself for a lack of resistance, but he knew she was...not understanding the situation.
Francesca thought this could be something. He saw it in her careful tending of him. The careful little battles she’d waged. Giving him space when he grew too cold, then pushing him again.
She thought maybe someday they could be domestic and happy. That chemistry could be love. That surrender could be strength. She had planned this, as she planned everything so carefully, so successfully.
But he had no doubt that instead of whatever dreams she was weaving, it would end with her crumbling in his clumsy, brutal hands. Everything that had to do with love always did. Trying to save his mother, telling Valentino the truth. Everything he’d tried to do in the wake of the terrible secret of his parentage had only ever ended in hurting.
She had now put herself in a place that allowed him to hurt her, and he could not forgive her for this. He had been clear what he wanted, what he needed, and she had instead gone after what she wanted with little concern to what he did.
And if they were to have a child because he had not thought beyond her please...
That had not been part of the deal. It had not been discussed, planned. It should not be allowed.
Something had to be done. Something more than a line drawn in the sand because he was weak and she was determined.
Sometimes, destroying the pretty thing before it bloomed was the only possible answer. And enemies had to be slaughtered before they could do the slaughtering.
Because he was nothing to be worshipped. He was nothing but a mere mortal.
What a pity.