Chapter Three #2
And that was all he needed before he walked them back towards the desk, placing her on the edge, and pushing everything from it onto the floor with a single sweep of his arm.
She squeaked, starting in surprise, but he didn’t care.
He hungered for her. He always had. It had been too long and he knew that for as long as he lived, there would never be anyone like her for him.
Never. She was it. She always had been. No matter how impossible it was and would always be.
And if he was going to drown, then he would make sure that it would—for both of them—be spectacular.
Her hands reached for him before he could even take a breath, and he plucked his wallet from his pocket, retrieving the condom before tossing the wallet over his shoulder.
He tore the foil packet open, her gaze hot and heavy on his every move, Maria biting her lip as he removed the condom and rolled the latex over his hardened length.
Her fingers shooed his hands away and she drew him to the cross-hatch of curls at the juncture of her legs, slowly guiding him between her folds, moaning in delight as she teased her clitoris with the head of his cock.
His fists flexed on the toned muscles of her thighs, spreading them wider, making more space for him.
Her eyes opened straight onto his as she held him at her entrance.
This was it. It was the furthest they had ever gone, back when they’d fooled around as teenagers barely understanding themselves, let alone another’s body.
But things were different now. So very different, and without another thought, he slowly pushed into the hot wet welcoming heat of her, and dio mio, there were not enough words in the dictionary to describe this moment.
His head fell back, utterly surrendering to all that was sensation, that was Maria, that was what they could do together. Her shocked gasp expressed perfectly how stunned he was by this shared moment.
Micha swallowed. ‘Should I—’ He tried to engage his brain to offer to stop when Maria told him absolutely not to stop if he wanted to survive the night.
Micha wasn’t sure he would survive either way at this point.
Her heels pressed him deeper into her from where they were braced against the backs of his thighs.
Her internal muscles seized his erection and if he wasn’t careful, he’d start shaking very soon.
Slowly, inch by glorious inch, he pushed deeper and deeper, her breathy little moans all the encouragement he needed, until she had taken him to the hilt.
And he had to move, or she’d know. She’d know how at her mercy he truly was, and he couldn’t have that. So, he pulled back halfway before thrusting powerfully back into her, her nails gouging his back, and the cry of pleasure in his ear all that he needed to do it again and again.
‘Oh god,’ she whimpered as she spread her legs wider to accommodate him and he couldn’t not look, his heart thumping powerfully when he saw how they were joined, how she took him, how much she wanted him. Sweat beaded his brow and tension coiled in his balls and in the base of his spine.
Madonna mia, she drove him insane with want.
With what felt like one fist squeezing his erection and another a vice around his heart, all he could do was make it so that she’d never forget him, make it so incredible that she’d never think of another man again without comparing them to him.
If she was going to be written on his heart for the rest of his life, then she deserved the same.
Maria had never, could never, have imagined it would be like this.
And while he drowned her in a pleasure so sensual, so generous, he could never know that it was her first time.
That he was her one and only and always had been.
She couldn’t ever let him know that. Because if he did, he’d know the power he had over her.
The lengths that she’d gone to, to preserve whatever dignity and power she had, would be all but destroyed.
And she couldn’t have that. But also, she couldn’t not have this. Because this was…
He moved again, slowly pushing deeper into her, and the moan that fell from her lips was nothing short of erotic. Her head fell back and one hand palmed her breast as the other was around her backside, pulling her to the edge of the table, pulling her onto him.
On to him. Oh god. Her internal muscles flexed around the hardened length of his arousal.
There had been a moment at the very beginning where it had hurt, the sting of his intrusion, the unfamiliarity of it, that had locked her breath in her lungs and silenced her words.
But so quickly it had transformed into something else, something softer, hotter, building into pleasure, to passion, building to a craving that she couldn’t imagine, yet instinctively knew.
Her body reacted purely on instinct, her nails digging and grasping for him, for more, with him so deep within her, she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began.
And while a part of her thought that it shouldn’t be like this with him, it shouldn’t be this magical with a man who had all but broken her heart so long ago, a silent, more primal, more intuitive part of her had always known it would be like this.
He reached between them, his thumb pressing against her clitoris, pushed into applying pressure by the thrusts of his hips, the tilt of her pelvis, her body greedy for all that she could take from this one and only time she’d ever have with him.
If she had to fit a lifetime of pleasure into this one moment, then damn it, she would.
‘Lie back for me,’ he ordered and, cheeks flushing at the command in his voice, the only one she’d allow him to give, she did.
Her body shifted into the new position as he hooked one of her legs over his shoulder, the way that her heart pounded in time with each thrust of his hips as he slid even deeper into her reaching a part of her that simply imploded.
Out of nowhere, she was hit by an avalanche of pleasure.
It slid over her, burying her, muting the world in a thick, hot blanket in the single space between heartbeats.
Her body bucked and twisted as Micha found his release at the same time, the pulsing and clenching of their joined bodies prolonging a pleasure so intense it was near torturous.
She wanted to laugh, to cry, as if the pleasure had burst through all the barriers that had been holding back her emotions for months, for years.
But she didn’t want any of that. She didn’t want to feel those things.
She just wanted… Oh, she didn’t know any more.
She bit her lip, trying to pull everything back before Micha could see.
He was braced over her, his head bent over her heaving chest, his own breaths powerful punches that she felt all over her body.
The only thing that made this, any of this, okay was that he seemed as affected as her.
That they had at least, finally, been equals, brought low by themselves, rather than each other.
His body heated hers as her skin began to cool, as realisation began to dawn and as doubts crept in. She needed to get away. She needed to regroup. She needed to get dressed, deeply discomforted by her vulnerability in her present state.
Micha leaned back up, away from her, his dark gaze searching hers, his eyes containing as many questions and as much confusion as she felt in that moment.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he took one final advantage of her and claimed her mouth with his.
He didn’t need to. They’d already shared what they were going to.
But for some reason the kiss soothed just a little of the ragged hurt beginning to build.
That he still wanted her, after everything. That he needed what she needed.
The kiss was raw, guttural, a tangle of teeth and tongue, of fisted hands and grasping fingers, and over far, far too soon.
‘Stay there,’ he said, as he gently left her body, pulling his trousers up over his hips and stalking over to a door at the back of the room.
Maria waited until he was gone, before lurching up off the table, and searching for her clothes.
No way would she stay there waiting for him like one of his Parisian girls.
She grasped her shirt from where she’d thrown it over a chair, found her trousers on the opposite side of the room.
She was just about to put them on when Micha re-emerged into the room holding a small cloth in his hands.
‘I should have known you wouldn’t listen.’
Maria clenched her jaw, her gaze flicking to the cloth he’d brought for her. The touch, the care, the thought all more than she wanted to consider right now.
‘Why would I start now?’ she bit back, realising that the small room he’d been in must have been a bathroom. She clutched her clothes to her chest and passing him, she plucked the cloth from his hands, taking herself into the small en suite, ignoring what she thought might have been a growl.
Micha flexed and released his fists, frustrated that she wouldn’t even let him care for her after what they’d shared.
They didn’t have to like each other for that, but she wouldn’t even let him do that.
Cristo, he’d taken her like an animal. He’d been as lost to Maria as his mother had been to the addiction that she’d spent her entire life fighting.
That’s what made Maria such a risk. That she had, and always would, be the one thing that he could lose himself to. But Gio had been right. She wasn’t meant for him. Not then. And certainly not now.
He stalked over to where his shirt had lain beneath hers and shrugged into it, doing up the buttons, one by one, reclaiming the cool, near icy-cold detachment he was known for.
No one would have believed him capable of the kind of loss of control he’d just experienced with the granddaughter of his mentor and guide. But he’d always known, hadn’t he?
He just wished to god he hadn’t been so right.
Maria emerged from the bathroom behind him, not even a hair out of place. She looked as if she’d just conducted the most boring audit in the world, and he felt…
Wrecked.
‘Maria—’
‘This changes nothing. I still expect you to be out of here by the time the ink dries on my marriage certificate.’
Micha bit back a string of invectives that would have burned the entire building down, instead simply saying, ‘Of course.’
There was so much he wanted to say, but nothing emerged from the steel band clamped around his heart. She didn’t want to hear it and he didn’t have the ability to say it.
She nodded once, more to herself, and brushed past him with barely a second glance, the ice-cold breeze rolling off her making him shiver. He tucked his shirt in to the waist of his trousers and pulled up the zip, turning to her, half outraged, half furious and beyond unimpressed.
‘You’re going to leave? Just like that?’ he said, shocked enough to finally speak.
‘Why not? You did,’ she accused, and for the barest of moments, he thought he saw it. The sheer incandescent hurt that he sometimes thought she might be hiding. But then she blinked and it was gone, part of his imagination, a hangover from the young girl he’d once known.
‘You know it wasn’t that simple,’ he replied.
‘Seemed pretty cut and dry to me,’ she said, reaching for the purse that had ended up by the door to the office. ‘Which suited me just fine,’ she said, adjusting the strap of her purse over her shoulder, near eviscerating him with her carelessness.
‘What was this?’ he asked. ‘Really? Was it you just getting what you wanted?’ he forced himself to ask, hating that weakness in him that needed to know.
‘I got the only thing you were ever good for, Micha,’ she bit out and stalked from his life leaving burn marks across his skin and soul.
Maria held it together, all the way down the corridor, in the lift she knew was covered by CCTV, and out onto the streets of Paris.
She held it together while the chauffeur-driven car took her back to the private airfield where the Gallo Group’s jet was ready for take-off.
She waited until they were forty-one thousand feet in the air before going to the bathroom where no one could see or hear her, and shattering into a million pieces, knowing that she would never, not ever, be the same again.