Chapter Seven #2
“What if it had been hot soup or that ginger chai you drink in the mornings?”
How was she not supposed to feel flattered by the fact that he didn’t miss a single thing about her? “It wasn’t.”
“She could have seriously hurt you.”
“She scared me, yes, but she didn’t hurt me. What she wanted more than anything was to make herself feel better.”
Eyes wide, he looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Sam was thinking the same. But for other reasons. “How would you know this?”
“I have a cousin like her, a total diva. And I’ve seen the lingering panic in Angelina’s eyes. She’s scared that she’ll lose Matteo. To something worse than me. I’m the option she can control. If you’d given me a moment with her, I could—”
His scowl deepened. “You’re not going near her.”
“And who are you to order me around?”
“Per piacere, Sam. Do not push me around right now.”
“You called me Sam,” she whispered, beaming wide. Her foot hurt, her heart was getting entangled in this man, but that he called her Sam was enough to send her on a fizzy trip.
He looked at her, finally. Properly looked into her eyes. And the hook was back in her lower belly tugging and pulling her into those gray depths.
“I don’t want to fight with you about her,” she said in a low whisper.
A soft, breathtaking smile lifted the edge of his mouth. It was like standing in a patch of sunshine created just for her. “And here I thought you loved nothing more than to put me in my place.”
Lifting her hand, Sam almost touched the groove the smile dug in one cheek. “I miss you,” she said, her fingers hovering over his jaw.
Every inch of her wanted to touch him, to mark him.
To claim every small part of him as her own.
Beginning with that smile. If it were up to her, she’d make sure everyone knew they belonged to her.
The ones where his gray eyes turned warm and one corner of his mouth tugged up… they came out for her, only her.
He tensed. “You miss me?” he said slowly, as if he couldn’t quite get the texture of the words on his lips.
Embarrassment flooded her. But she couldn’t do coy or smooth or flirty. She’d missed all the stages where she’d have liked simple, easy boys. Instead, life had made her skip them all and brought her here to this man.
This remote, ruthless, yet inherently kind man who was determined to keep her at arm’s length. Whose gray eyes betrayed his longing. Who said so much with his actions and nothing with his words.
“I do, yes.” She clasped her hands back in her lap. “Between Mom and your aunt, I’m struggling to keep the lies straight. But you know I’m just floating around, half-scared that I’ll be untethered any moment but desperately wanting to anyway.”
“You want to fly, cara?”
“Like you couldn’t imagine. Nothing worse than fear that keeps you still.”
He watched her for a long beat. Then, as if all her raw vulnerability meant nothing, he grabbed a cold washcloth and pressed it against her face.
His fingers were so refreshingly gentle as he wiped away the sticky remnants of the orange juice from her temples and her hair.
Sam closed her eyes and let the sensations take hold. In a delicious contrast, his warm breath coasted over her skin.
Her spine felt like it was made of those chocolate straws her mom used to buy for Sam to drink her milk with—melting and bendy at his fingers.
With an efficiency that made her smile, he wiped down her cheek and neck. Suddenly, his fingers were at the buttons of her shirt dress. Her eyes flying open, he gripped his wrist.
Jaw tight, he said, “There’s more on your neck.”
Sam did feel the stickiness between her breasts. “I’ll just shower—”
The first button on the shirt popped off. Two more buttons and he would see the scar that was a reminder of how she’d spent her teens. He’d already been avoiding her for the past week. Panic gripped her. “Stop unbuttoning my dress.”
He arched a brow, his fingers lingering over the third button. “Why am I not surprised that you’re a prude, bella?”
“Of course I’m not,” she said with a forced laugh. “Just because I don’t want to get half-naked in the kitchen.”
“Let me carry you to the bedroom, then.”
“I can walk—”
“I feel responsible for—”
Sam clasped his jaw. “Alessandro, I don’t need your fucking pity.”
His fingers lingered on the third button of her shirt. The patch of her bare skin where he touched her burned. “The last thing I feel when I look at you is pity, tesoro.”
“And yet I’m so easy to avoid, so forgettable, sì?”
His gaze met hers and held, his fury slowly cycling out and replaced with something else.
Long fingers touched her jaw, his grip tender.
“You’re the least forgettable woman I’ve ever met.
Ever since you…” His exhale was long. The thrust of his fingers through his hair rough, his words gravelly. “What do you want of me, Sam?”
Sam leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his cheek. Her heart beat so rapidly in her chest that it should’ve scared her, but sitting in the warm cocoon of his body, she felt so vibrantly alive that there was no place for fear.
Hands gripping her shoulders, he went utterly rigid.
“One kiss,” she said, the stubble on his chin scraping her lips in an abrasive whisper. “So that I know how you taste. So that I know you want me. One kiss, Alessandro, so that I can live it a million times in my head.” Her breath left her in a shuddering exhale as she waited.
All her life, she’d waited for others to make life-changing, sometimes life-threatening decisions for her. From doctors to her parents to the universe, her will nothing but a swaying leaf in a storm. But this waiting…there was pleasure in this.
This was a battle. Her will against his, her need against his control. Ordinary, dull, unexciting Sam against remote, ruthless, strikingly beautiful Alessandro Ricci.
This was a waiting she’d plunge herself into again and again. A choice she would make a thousand times.
If all of her entire being weren’t tuned in to him, Sam wouldn’t have sensed it. But he moved, and his mouth shifted until it sat flush against hers. A dam of longing, never too far beneath surface, broke through her.
His mouth—oh, his mouth!—was soft and firm as she moved her lips.
The man was full of contradictions, and she liked every bit of him.
Up and down, messy and damp and a little rough, she rubbed her lips against his, every minuscule motion sending a shocking jolt of molten heat to her sex.
Then she licked his lower lip and nipped it.
She stretched her thighs wider so that she could scoot closer, so that she could feel of all him against her. And he let her. Not for a second was Sam unaware that he was granting her this. That his own control was hanging by a thread, that she desperately needed to snap it.
A long, shuddering sigh left her as her chest grazed his, as her belly pressed against his hard one and their hips flushed.
She couldn’t help but thrust her hips, a soft gasp escaping her.
Slowly, every cell in her came awake with a blistering heat as his arousal took shape and form against her core, as it lengthened.
The very thought of that hard length inside her made her sex clench greedily.
His curse punctured the silence as loudly as if the bright chandelier overhead had crashed into a million pieces around them. But all Sam cared about was the warmth unspooling in her lower belly, untethering her.
She had done this to him—na?ve, unsophisticated, unexciting Sam. Confidence and desire whipped through her, an explosive cocktail. Tightening her fingers at the nape of his neck, she kissed him again.
She traced the shape of those thin lips with the tip of her tongue, nipped at the lower lip with her teeth, licked at him like a lazy cat until he opened to her with a guttural groan that set off vibrations through her.
Greedy for more, she licked into his mouth, stroking, tasting, teasing, taunting, stealing his breath for herself.
A rough growl escaped him as his hand wrapped around the nape of her neck. Sam groaned as he bent her back over his arm, and then his mouth devoured her. She finally understood what those flashes of consuming hunger in his eyes meant. There was no sweet exploration, no soft learning.
Alessandro ravished her. He took from her as if she were the last breath of air. Drank from her lips as if she were the last sip of water.
Pleasure flew through her in rivulets, pooling at her sex into damp readiness. The kiss was all him—the licking fire of hard nips, the cooling ice of soothing licks—a spectrum of pain and pleasure in between.
No safety, no soft whispers, only sheer hunger. Within moments, he taught her how to deepen the pleasure blooming between them, when to pull away and when to cling.
His hands moved all over her hips and back and spine and neck and butt, coasting, kneading, touching, learning.
Provoking and soothing. Owning. His touch was full of a possessive intent that made her want to submit to everything he did.
For every hurt he caused with those teeth, he gave back pleasure that resonated a thousand times more deeply.
Sam groaned into his mouth, the thrust of his hips making his erection hit her exactly where she needed. She locked her legs around his hips, brazenly thrusting against him. Hands fisted in his shirt, she was sobbing, begging for more, begging him for relief.
When he trailed a path over her jaw and neck, she buried her hands in his hair, her body a mass of sensations she couldn’t catalog fast enough. But it was her heart that felt full to bursting. Her heart’s unfathomable desire for more that terrified her.
“Is this enough to prove I want you, tesoro? That I lose control when anyone could walk in?”
If he’d mocked her, maybe Sam could have pulled her senses out of the miasma of longing. But there was no humor in his words. Nothing but a deep hunger for more that she recognized in herself.