Chapter Six #3
A little of Zia’s tension evaporated at that encouraging instruction and the liquid heat in her belly dissolved her growing tension. ‘I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,’ she admitted grudgingly.
‘But then, by the sound of it, you didn’t get too many choices,’ he reminded her wryly. ‘Am I only the latest best candidate?’
‘No…’ Her hand stole up without her volition to trace his strong jawline, that hint of vulnerability absolute catnip for her in a male so rawly awash with confidence. Her heart squeezed tight at the warmth of his expression.
‘No, there hasn’t been anyone who grabbed my interest since the wrong guy,’ she confessed, because he deserved that level of honesty.
Lifted by that assurance, Raz covered her parted lips with his own again, claiming her in the most basic way possible, attuned to her every reaction, feeling the loosening of her tense muscles, the renewed melting of her slight body under his.
She had been burned as he had been when he was much younger.
Zia was in heaven, her body reawakening to warm sensation, the hunger sliding back in like a greedy roar deep down inside her.
She didn’t know how Raz did it but he chased away her fears, made her feel safe, turned what they were sharing into a time-out-of-time encounter that required no further judgement or worry.
And she needed that, she really, really needed that to relax, to let her body just follow the messages in anticipation of his.
Until that moment, she hadn’t realised she had been so traumatised by that first crushing betrayal of trust.
Orazio shifted over her, desperate to know exactly what had made her so apprehensive but knowing that it wasn’t the right time to press her.
Zia had her secrets as he had his and he respected that limit.
He looked down at her, at the blown pupils that revealed her arousal in her lovely face, and she was breathtaking.
He could not imagine a male stupid enough to risk harming or hurting her. And yet there had clearly been one.
Zia stretched up and connected with Orazio’s mesmerising mouth for herself.
Every time, he hit her like an illegal drug and she loved that, loved that he could take her out of her tight, judgemental self.
He stilled the anxiety, soothed the still stinging wounds edging down her spine like a frightening storm warning.
He was the closest she had got to a guy in five years and that bothered her because she felt she should’ve been stronger than that, should’ve moved on from that frightening first time to other, more normal men…
only it hadn’t happened. Opportunity and her distrust had been the barriers.
As Raz surged against her burning core, she arched her back, wanting, needing for the first time in so long.
She had not felt that same burning desperation the first time.
It had been a momentary need, nothing deeper or more lasting.
But Raz turned her inside out with longing.
She met those glittering green eyes of his and she turned liquid.
She had reacted the same way the first time she’d met him in the flesh and she would never tell him that she had retained the double-page spread of him in his coronation robes a few years earlier.
Back then, it had seemed harmless, a little bit of Mandovian history, nothing personal.
Only now it felt to her as though things were getting very, very personal and that worried her…
Orazio surged into her with a feverish groan of satisfaction and pleasure seized her immediately, her body adjusting in the most sensual manner to his invasion, stretching to send a shock wave of sensation through her lower body.
She liked. There was none of the pain or discomfiture that had distinguished her first encounter, no putting her in what had, with hindsight, obviously been the preferred porn position of the day.
And not to put it mildly, it had hurt and that was when she had twisted round, intending to tell her partner, and instead had glimpsed the camera flickering a light out of the ajar wardrobe door.
Orazio, however, sank into her as though he had always belonged there, only she hadn’t known it.
Her body, damp and liquid with desire, accommodated him and the shot of intense sensation and excitement took her entirely by surprise.
He moved, lean hips flexing forward, and she saw stars and constellations.
It was nothing like she had ever imagined and a hundred times better than the hottest fantasy.
Her body liquefied and she melted and it only got better after that as the force of his movements jolted and shifted her into full, unashamed partnership.
Her body sang with wild pleasure, her heart pounded, her temperature rocketing as his fierce, urgent thrusts drove her into a shattering orgasm.
In the aftermath, she lay shell-shocked in a sublime state of relaxation, finally understanding what sex could be all about.
Raz reached completion with a groan, his lean, powerful length shuddering over hers and then slumping briefly before he shifted his weight off her and pulled her back into the shelter of his big, powerful body.
His lazy affection afterwards made her want to curl into him even closer and she was bothered by that, perceiving clinging vibes from herself and instantly rebelling against that chilling idea to pull away.
No, she was finally having her first ever one-night stand and she wasn’t attaching strings or expectations to the experience, she told herself, pulling away even though she wanted to wrap herself in him as though he were a warm rug on a cold night.
Those promptings unnerved her. Attachment, she had always assumed, didn’t come into such encounters.
Orazio had never been pushed away before, but Zia snaked back from him as though bodily contact were toxic in the aftermath of intimacy.
Anger in the face of that outright rejection stirred in his chest but he tamped it down, not wishing to come on too strong with a woman who valued her freedom to such an extent.
He jumped out of bed to dispose of the protection he had used and climbed back in thirty seconds later.
Zia was a novel experience for him and, in a weird way, he was enjoying the uniqueness of having to chase rather than being pursued.
She didn’t want strings but he would have happily handcuffed and chained her stubborn, independent self to his bed in the royal palace.
But that was where the subtlety came in, he reminded himself.
He would wait until she appreciated what they had…
Zia disconcerted him at that point in his measured reflections by slipping out of bed with the fluidity of an eel. ‘Well, that was very nice,’ she told him in an upbeat tone. ‘Thanks, and now that we’ve got all that out of the way, we’ll be fine together and perfect as friends.’
Raz sat up in the bed in an abrupt movement. Powerful muscles rippled and tightened across his taut torso as he stared at her in undisguised wonderment while she slid agilely back into her shortie pyjamas. Nice? Thanks?
‘I couldn’t do friends,’ he declared in a raw undertone. ‘I don’t have sex with friends.’