Chapter Six #2
Raz dealt her a slanting grin, green eyes glittering with irreverent amusement as he pictured her sitting with a time sheet and carefully slotting him in for his one allowed joyful moment. He only hoped he could live up to her expectations. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘I’ve told my maid I’m having an early night,’ she whispered again, rising from her seat and saying like a very well-trained little girl, ‘Goodnight, Your Majesty.’
‘Goodnight, Your Highness,’ Orazio murmured gravely, watching her bright eyes dance with secretive merriment. ‘Sneaking around’, in her terminology, clearly gave her a buzz.
It was only half past nine but they had an early start and a long drive in the morning to reach the capital, Acossia.
They could’ve flown in direct but more people would see them if they passed by in a car, and she appreciated that Raz could have left her to visit the house and make that drive alone, joining her only for the highlights of her trip.
But both governments wanted to use the symbolism of them as a couple even if it was solely a show of a unity that wouldn’t ever become real.
Orazio knocked on the door between their interconnecting bedrooms, those being the principal bedrooms in the house, and smiled at her naivety.
He assumed there was a lock on her side of the door and, a moment later, he laughed as a lock turned and the door swung open and she looked up at him in astonishment, her diminutive figure clad in shorts and tee shirt, her face scrubbed clean. ‘Our rooms are joined?’
‘Sì, piccola mia. Us getting cosy is what the powers that be want,’ he pointed out gently. ‘Why do you think I’m along for this trip?’
Zia winced and set her teeth together. ‘Those hopes make me very uncomfortable—’
‘Why should they? We are still free to make our own choices.’ Entirely at his ease, Orazio closed a hand over hers and led her into his bedroom, which was rather more grand, with its canopied four-poster bed, and less frilly then her own although it was still a little antiquated.
She glanced at him, ridiculously self-conscious now that she actually had him in a bedroom and within close reach of a bed.
Good grief, he was drop-dead gorgeous half naked, she savoured, her mouth running dry, her breathing speeding up.
Bare-chested, he wore only a pair of loose pyjama pants.
He was all lean, honed muscle, a sprinkle of golden chest hair accentuating the well-developed pecs below his broad shoulders, a V-shaped band of muscle disappearing below his waistband.
Her skin heating, she glanced away, awkward about the arrangement she had made.
It felt too cut and dried, too organised.
And then, without any warning, Raz swept her gently up into his arms and deposited her on the big bed, where she gazed up at him with startled violet-blue eyes.
He eased up next to her, faint challenge in his narrowed emerald-green eyes.
‘I want to see you naked,’ he admitted thickly.
‘I’ve wanted to see you naked from the first moment I saw you on the deck of my yacht. ’
Shock and surprise hurtled through Zia. She had never been willingly naked in front of anyone since childhood. An unfortunate experience in the teenaged years had made her very cautious and she sat up, glancing warily around her. ‘Are there any cameras in here?’ she asked tautly.
Raz blinked in bewilderment and studied her. ‘Are you joking? My security team check every room I occupy before I enter it. They’re always alert to that sort of threat.’
Her rigid spine loosened a little and she breathed again. ‘I had a bad experience once…’
‘You’ll have to tell me about that,’ Orazio drawled with a frown, slipping off the bed to doff his pyjama pants without the slightest hint of inhibition.
It was a challenge. She could feel her skin warming as she saw his arousal, in effect, as it happened, her first proper glimpse of an aroused male.
In an abrupt movement, she grasped the hem of her pyjama top and whipped it off over her head, determined not to act like a shy little girl.
Of course, there were no cameras, nothing that could be a threat to her or her reputation because, naturally, Raz couldn’t run that risk either.
Momentarily, she wondered if what had happened to her had almost happened to him, but perhaps his wealth and security protection had kept him cocooned and safe from those keen to take sleazy advantage of his status.
‘I’m sure you know it already, but you have the most beautiful breasts,’ Orazio said half under his breath.
Zia sat up straighter, resolute in her goal to be strong, calm and confident, which she had never learned to be in the bedroom.
As she met his black long-lashed green eyes, her body hummed as if an engine had suddenly switched on.
The sheer heat of his appreciative gaze on her bare breasts made her nipples pebble into tight, straining points that tingled.
Raz moved closer, drawn like a magnet to the allure of those pale, perfect mounds crowned with erect brown nipples.
He was in a high state of excitement absolutely new to him.
This was no normal slaking of lust for him, a one-night stand, meaningless, forgettable.
This was Zia and the sheer magnificent opulence of her curvaceous body.
He came down over her and covered her mouth with his own, long fingers winding into her silky, lustrous hair.
‘You’re a great kisser,’ Zia told him a few minutes later, pausing to snatch in a breath, violet eyes brilliant with desire.
‘A lot of practice,’ Raz quipped, gazing down at her with a sizzling smile. ‘How many guys have you kissed?’
‘Not as many as there should’ve been. I didn’t have the opportunities,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘It was only guys I met at the hotel when I was working.’
‘You were deprived of so much.’
‘I bet that you got to go to adolescent parties that were unbelievably sophisticated,’ she guessed.
‘Guilty as charged,’ he admitted, working a sizzling path down the slope of her neck to her breasts, hands rising to shape the firm, soft flesh with a rumble of pleasure. ‘I was totally spoiled. I lost my innocence at thirteen.’
‘Wow,’ she sighed, her spine straightening as his mouth followed his caressing hands and sensation began to rise. ‘I was almost eighteen…through lack of opportunity.’
‘And the lucky guy was…?’
‘None of your business, but he was the wrong guy,’ she admitted, her delicate features freezing at the recollection.
‘I’m incurably curious,’ Orazio confided, dabbing featherlight kisses over her troubled face in an affectionate move that surprised her and she took comfort from it, even though she told herself that she shouldn’t.
He returned his attention to her breasts, closing his lips round a pouting peak, crossing between that point and the other, stoking an ever-growing heat lower down in her body.
He peeled off her shorts. She began to squirm, her slim length reacting to the stimulation as he slowly, carefully worked his attention down her body.
And without the faintest hint of what was ahead, he bent his head, parted her thighs and ran his tongue along her cleft where she was hottest and wettest. Her spine arched and she panted out loud in surprise.
He knew the exact pressure, the perfect hot spot, and as she writhed and a long finger slid into her tight sheath, increasing the aching sensitivity at her core, she flung her head back in bliss and decided to go with the flow.
Her thighs trembled, her heart pounded. Her hands sank into tousled caramel hair and clasped, fingers digging deep, her body rising and reaching higher than ever before.
And then the world turned white below her lowered eyelids and she was flying into space, crying out in a blissful climax that shattered her.
Raz leant over her and crushed her parted lips fierily under his. ‘We’re good together,’ he told her fiercely.
Zia dealt him a dazed look and lowered her lashes again, self-protection moving in to take over fast, marshalling her brain cells back into working order. As he sat up, she lifted her hands and pressed him back against the pillows. ‘My turn,’ she stressed.
Orazio wasn’t used to anyone, aside from himself, taking charge in the bedroom.
He tensed as she pressed light kisses across his torso, ran a seeking hand down over his flexing stomach to trace his thick length, marvelling at the size of him and the velvety smooth skin before she lowered her head, her little pink tongue flicking across his crown, exciting a disconcerted groan from his parted lips.
And in his head, he was picturing for every second the very first time that he saw her and, although it wasn’t cool and not at all in tune with his image of himself, she was blowing his mind.
His hips flexed and he arched away from her.
‘I want to finish inside you,’ he husked, long fingers smoothing her hair where it lay rumpled on her shoulder.
And she went red as fire and flipped over onto her back like a woman preparing herself to be a sacrifice. Once again, Zia confounded him. He didn’t know what to expect, what to think because she was bold one moment but almost timid and submissive the next.
‘Do you want me?’ Orazio prompted with a frown a moment later, sliding over her but making no further move.
‘Why would you ask me that?’ Zia snapped almost angrily.
‘Because you give me mixed signals and I need to be sure that you want more,’ he breathed in a raw undertone. ‘You don’t exactly look as if you’re expecting to enjoy this.’
‘Well, I didn’t the first time,’ she told him waspishly. ‘But give me the credit to hope that you can do better!’
His brilliant green eyes widened and glittered with possessiveness and he bent his head and kissed her breathless. ‘So, you tell me anything you don’t like…immediately…’