Chapter Two #2
‘Because you didn’t hate it?’ he pushed. ‘Because you have fantasised about this? Because…’ He swallowed, daring her, daring himself to go as far as this would take them. ‘Because you do want this?’
She nodded her head slowly, not once taking her eyes off him. As if she were as bound to this madness as he was. And in that moment, he wasn’t sure who had just won the battle, because it might have required his own surrender.
Maria stared at the man who had just bared her deepest secret to the light of day. That no matter how much she hated him, for leaving her, for walking away as if she were nothing, as if what they had shared was nothing, she still wanted him. Needed him like an addiction that wouldn’t quit.
‘Yes,’ she said, the confession wrenched from her lips. ‘Are you happy now?’ she demanded, breath heaving in her chest, lust clashing with injustice, with the near ache of misery.
But when she looked into his eyes, the rich swirls of a bitter chocolate that had once danced with laughter—so long ago she thought she might have made it up—she didn’t see happiness. She didn’t see victory. She saw the same frustrated need that she felt.
‘Not at all, cara,’ he said, finally answering her question.
Frantic energy sparked and hissed in the air between them as they edged closer and closer to a line that had been drawn between them years before. As if they both knew that once they crossed it, there would be no going back. And there would be no going forward either.
But she couldn’t take it any more. She couldn’t live like this—in this half-life, stuck in the middle of what had been and what could never be.
‘You understand? What you’re doing?’ she asked, lips trembling, from desire or fear she didn’t know. Not fear of him. No matter what had passed between them, no matter how angry they had been with each other, she had never feared him.
But he was pushing them. Though, she had—she admitted to herself—started it by coming here.
Perhaps she’d known that all along. Perhaps, in fact, that was what had brought her here.
The truth of what had brought her here. Maybe all along she’d hoped that he would push her, that she would rile him enough to finally call her on it, in a way he’d never have dared to do while her grandfather was alive.
‘Do you?’ he asked her in return.
She nodded.
‘I need to hear it, mi amor.’
The affectionate endearment made her want to growl, anger heating her cheeks with a flush, her antagonistic response enflaming his own.
‘Yes,’ she bit out from between clenched teeth.
‘Undo your shirt,’ he commanded, his voice guttural, the jump from hypothetical to real, to happening, lightning fast, dumping adrenaline and dopamine into her system, landing in the pulse points across her body.
He stepped back from her as if giving her space to do his bidding, his eyes heated and heavy on her body, waiting, impatient for her to reveal herself to him.
His voyeurism spiked her pulse as she fought the natural inclination to refuse, to deny him.
But to deny him would be to deny herself, and to deny the truth of what they had just agreed on.
Because he was right. She did want this.
She wanted this more than anything else in the world right now.
With one hand, she undid the button of the oyster silk shirt between her breasts. Micha’s eyes were glued to every single move she made, making her feel the lie. Making her feel like she was precious to him, wanted beyond reason. The latter, she could just about believe.
She thought she might have rebelled under his scrutiny, but instead, she delighted in it. One by one, she freed the buttons, the heavy silk material slipping open, revealing skin barely covered only by the thin lace of the ivory basque she’d worn.
Her breasts felt heavy, aching from where his gaze lingered, desperate for his touch, but he didn’t move an inch. Was he holding himself back or was he that impervious to her?
No. He couldn’t be. Everything in her roared in denial and the sudden need for proof that he wasn’t.
She rolled her shoulders back, the loose silk that had been barely hanging on top of her body finally falling down her arms, pooling at her wrists.
Not satisfied by the flush on the cut of his cheekbones, her fingers went to release the button of her trousers, before stepping out of them and shaking the shirt free.
Her pulse raced, her heart thudding in her chest as she stood there in her Louboutins and basque, needing him to react, needing to push him, just so that she could feel him push back.
In the reflection of the glass behind Micha, she caught a glimpse of herself, standing there—proud, powerful and determined.
And more aroused than she had ever been in her life.
Oh god, she needed him to ease this want in her. She couldn’t bear it any more. But if this was his plan…to get her to undress, and to not follow through, she might never recover. The thought needled into her brain, getting stuck, but just when she might have buckled under the fear of it, he moved.
He closed the distance between them in a blink of an eye. His lips took hers—there was no other way to describe it—took them, possessed them. His tongue plunged deep, filling her mouth, tangling with her own, and it was magnificent.
He swallowed her pleasure-drenched gasp, as his hands grasped her shoulders and drew her powerfully against him. With just the basque and his shirt, there was nothing to stop her from feeling the contours of his chest, of the muscles he hid beneath well-cut suits and layers of false sophistication.
Moans turned into whimpers and she was all but begging by the time he had finished the kiss.
‘What is it you want, Maria? Tell me.’
‘You,’ she confessed.
And his hands roamed from her shoulders.
One to her breast and one shockingly, over her backside, his palm caressing the curve of one cheek, fingers grabbing at her flesh.
Damp wet heat pooled between her thighs and she bit her lip to stop the pleading, begging words that would have fallen if they’d been allowed.
She looked to him and saw one brow raised in knowing, knowing what she wanted and what she wouldn’t admit to.
He shaped her thigh with the palm of his hand and hooked her leg over his hip, pressing her back against the wall and inserting himself between her legs in a way that left no further room for doubt.
She bit her lip and moaned when she felt the ridge of his arousal at the juncture of her thighs, unable to regret the slip when he pushed against her, rubbing the aching bundle of nerves until she was shivering with want.
Maria’s gasp was the most erotic thing Micha Rufina had ever heard and he couldn’t hold himself back any more.
He slipped a hand between them, his hand covering her core, the heel of his palm pressing against her clitoris in slow lazy circles that were the direct opposite of the way his pulse was raging beyond his control.
She shifted under her pleasure as if torn between wanting it and wanting to escape it, unaware that the tease was as much for himself as it was for her.
Unable to resist any longer, he slipped a finger beneath the clasp of her basque, beneath the line of the dampened silk panties into hot slick flesh.
This time it was he who groaned out loud.
A shudder rolled between them and he was uncaring where it started from, who it started from.
Cazzo.
He shook his head, giving up the internal argument he’d been having with himself, and dropped to his knees. His hands swept around her trembling thighs, and he could hardly believe that was where he found himself. After so many years, so much denial…
But just the scent of her need for him drove all thought from his head.
‘Micha.’ His name on her tongue was a plea, a prayer.
He tore apart the clasps of the basque and inch by inch revealed the perfection of her as he pulled her panties down her legs.
His heart thundered, punching at his ribcage.
He was a ravaging beast hell-bent only on her pleasure.
He parted her with one hand and reached to palm her breast with the other, as he took her core in an open-mouthed kiss, sinking into heaven.
He growled into her hot wet heat and she bucked against his mouth, as his tongue probed, plunged, filled and teased. Maria panted for air, as his palms claimed her backside, holding her to him as he devoured her with licks and sucks and nips and…
‘Micha.’ This time his name was a warning that he didn’t need.
He knew how close to orgasm she was. In part, because he was shockingly close to orgasm, and she hadn’t even touched him.
Her body, shaking and restless, her breath harsh and short, her hands clutching and grasping at his shoulders and his hair.
She was on the edge and he damn near loved it. Loved that she was as driven to the brink by him as she was. That she too was drowning under whatever this was.
‘Micha, please,’ she begged.
‘No,’ he said, against her clitoris, refusing to give her a quick release from this no matter how she whimpered, caught on the edge of an orgasm as sharp as it was sublime. He punished them by drawing out the painful pleasure that was killing them both.
‘Micha,’ she pleaded.
‘No,’ he said again, pressing his tongue against the small bundle of nerves and shaking his head as she shivered almost frantically now.
‘Oh god,’ she whispered, ‘oh god.’
He lost count of her prayers, and instead indulged in the way her body readied itself for pleasure, the increase in heat, the dampness welling beneath his tongue, the way her legs tightened around him, the way that her cries became screams, and her breath got faster and faster, as he licked and nipped, and pressed and sucked, harder and harder, until everything stopped in a moment of shocked, tension-locked stillness…
And then she collapsed against him in the ultimate surrender.