Chapter Seven #3
Zia nodded frantically, registering that he was asking her permission, which felt ridiculous to her in that moment when her every skin cell craved a closer connection with him.
It was as though an electrical storm broke out when her eyes collided with his.
It wiped out her thoughts, sent her body into pure reaction, was almost more than she could bear with any equanimity because all of it encompassed what she had sworn never to feel again around a male: that heady, utterly intoxicating pull of wild attraction.
And Orazio hit every button in her body and her brain with terrifying accuracy.
He pulled her close and lifted her up to him and virtually devoured her mouth with a passion that lit her up inside like a burning torch.
It was as though he had lit a touch paper to a stick of dynamite because suddenly she was fully on board, hands rising to dig into that luxuriant caramel-blond hair, to hold him close, to touch him when she had feared that she would never have that chance again.
And all her plans to stage a serious discussion simply fell apart at that point.
Orazio swept her up fully into his arms and said thickly, ‘We’ll go upstairs… more private.’
‘We were supposed to talk,’ she reminded him rebelliously as he carried her bodily up the winding staircase.
‘It’s been almost a month… I’m dying for you,’ he growled in objection half under his breath.
And something visceral in her thrilled to that sensual declaration. After all, she had spent most of that same month wondering and worrying what other women could be in his life, what other woman could be in his bed, pleasing him after she had walked away.
‘What were we to talk about?’ Orazio asked as he sloughed off his jacket and dropped it in a heap before embarking on his shirt buttons as if getting naked was the only thing on his mind.
‘Why I walked away…stuff I need to explain—’
‘I just want you, on any terms,’ Orazio specified in a raw undertone, smouldering emerald-green eyes capturing her across the width of his canopied bed. ‘I don’t want anyone else. I only want you.’
And that was enough in that instant to soothe Zia’s insecurity because she didn’t believe that she had ever been wanted simply for herself.
Her title, her heritage, meant very little to Orazio, born royal as he had been, the golden child and heir from birth of a hereditary monarchy.
He had never needed to question who he was, what he was, whether he even mattered.
Nobody had ever made Orazio Arcangeli feel less and, odd as it sometimes felt, she adored that scorching confidence of his, which was such a contrast to her own constant inner anxieties.
She began to peel her dress off over her head but he forestalled her, stalking round the bed to catch her to his lean, powerful body and say, ‘Let me do it, piccola mia.’
The straps on her dress also fastened on the shoulders, which she had not noticed but which he had spotted, and her dress dropped to her ankles, leaving her feeling abruptly very exposed in her lacy, fancy lingerie, the sort of garments she had never owned in her life before coming to Mandovia.
‘You are so beautiful,’ Raz growled, dropping down on his knees to skim her panties down and push straight into the kind of intimacy she was disconcerted by as his lean fingers parted her thighs and he zoomed in on the tender space between.
Her legs trembled under her as he homed in on the most sensitive spot of all. Only halfway out of his shirt, which still hung unbuttoned, Orazio was on his knees in front of her, lean hands parting her thighs, long fingers occasionally stroking.
‘We were supposed to talk…and yet here we are,’ Zia framed, shaking now like a leaf in the storm, fierce sensation darting through her with every circle of his lips near her aching bud, every invasive probe from his fingers.
Orazio flicked a glance up at her, barely pausing in his sensual ministrations to her yearning body. ‘This is how we should be. We can talk any time.’
And she wanted to argue but sensation was piling on sensation in a fiery lava flow of hunger.
Before she knew where she was or what she was doing, she was soaring up the scale and off the planet, white flashing behind her lowered eyelids, cries she couldn’t silence breaking open her lips as a shattering climax claimed her brain and her body.
In the aftermath, she rested back against the wall simply to stay upright.
He plucked her off the wall as if she weighed no more than a small child and shifted her to the bed, standing over her then as he removed what remained of his clothes.
‘I missed you so much,’ he bit out fiercely.
Zia tried and failed to regain control of her thoughts and then surrendered. ‘Yes, me too,’ she gasped unevenly, still struggling to catch her breath while she studied him. He was a literal vision of her ideal fantasy male, all bronzed rippling muscle and intense passion.
‘Don’t ever cut me out like that again,’ he urged.
‘Thought I was doing what I needed to do…but I was wrong,’ Zia admitted tautly as he tugged her to him and kissed her with feverish urgency.
‘We can all get stuff stuck in our heads that makes us act crazy,’ Orazio told her with assurance. ‘I was scared of the sheer strength of my attraction to you because lust was, I suspect, all my parents ever had.’
He could be so much more open than she was, found it so much easier to talk about such things, that she was almost unnerved because she had made such a production out of her need to talk to him and was still holding back.
And then here was Orazio, giving away private stuff for free and without fuss.
His firm, sensual mouth caressed hers and his tongue delved and an inadvertent whimper escaped somewhere low in her throat as desire reignited.
He tugged away her bra, moulded her breasts, toyed with the prominent tips, sucking, nibbling, stoking the slow burn of arousal starting to rise again in her pelvis.
Somewhere deep down in her brain she thought about him telling her that it wasn’t only sex for him with her and the physical pleasure he was giving her seemed to steadily multiply.
He made her feel safe, so much safer than she had ever dared to feel with anyone.
As her hands roamed over every part of him that she could reach, he shuddered over her, his big, powerful body pressing her down into the mattress until, with a growl, he tipped her back, tipping her legs over his shoulders, and rose over her.
He drove into her sensitive channel in one urgent thrust and her body jackknifed up under him on the rushing tide of pleasure seizing hold of her.
It was even better than the last time because their bodies knew each other and he had the truly stunning gift of seeming to know exactly what she needed.
The urgent pace he set made the bed creak and he laughed at the noise, grinning down at her with amusement, lancing appreciation firing his green eyes. ‘So we’ll put a new modern bed in here—’
‘Before you break this one?’ she teased breathlessly.
And then he withdrew and flipped her over to place her on her knees and she suppressed the dangerous rip tide of bad memories and decided to let him make new ones for her.
She closed her eyes and luxuriated in the sensual delight of his body possessing hers with vigour.
A long finger teased her clit and, faster than she could have believed, she erupted into orgasm again, every muscle convulsing, every nerve cell tingling as he too reached satisfaction.