Chapter Eleven
DOMENICO UNDRESSED SLOWLY, keeping his eyes fixed on Marnie’s as he unbuttoned his shirt and unzipped his trousers. He experienced only fleeting relief when he freed his arousal from the confines of his underwear.
Not a word was exchanged. Not a word was needed. Their locked eyes did all the talking for them.
Naked, he stretched out beside her and propped himself on an elbow to gaze down at her. His chest felt so full with his love for her that anything but shallow breaths was impossible.
Closing his eyes, he brought his face down to hers to capture her mouth in a lingering, featherlight kiss. And then he kissed her again.
Slowly, their lips fused and began to move. Delicate fingers reached into his hair as their lips parted. The tips of their tongues flicked together, electrifying him with sensation.
Mouths and tongues entwined; the kiss deepened.
If the kiss they’d shared after their child had moved had been the kiss of Marnie’s dreams, then this was the kiss of her life.
With the glorious taste and scent of Domenico filling her senses, she slipped away from the world.
Her lips and tongue didn’t just follow his lead but made demands of their own, kissing and being kissed with such passion that she wanted to cry from the emotion of it all, and she moaned into his mouth at the exquisite sensation of his finger circling her ear and trailing down her neck…
Oh, but it was nothing on the sensation that filled her when his fingers skimmed to her breasts and he cupped one in his palm. Caressingly, he kneaded the sensitive flesh, and when he ran his thumb over her hardened nipple, a bolt of sensation flew directly to the flame burning in her pelvis.
His mouth moving away from hers, he draped a thigh between her legs, and then his lips were following the trail made by his fingers.
The shock of pleasure when he took a breast whole in his mouth and sucked was so acute that she cried out, the cry deepening into low, throaty moans as he slowly encircled her hardened peaks with languorous strokes of his tongue and teasing bites of his teeth. Oh, but this was heavenly…
While his mouth continued pleasuring her breasts, his hand roamed her body in a tender, unhurried exploration, as if he were touching her for the very first time.
It felt like he was touching her for the very first time.
Her fingers burrowed in his hair, Marnie closed her eyes and sank into the thrills cascading through her.
How, Domenico wondered dimly as his teeth gently bit the underside of Marnie’s breast, had he never before acknowledged the soft perfection of her skin? The soft perfection of her?
Dio del Cielo, how had he closed himself off so fully that his reaction to her virginity had been to want to slam a door on their marriage?
He’d made it good for her, he knew that, but he’d deliberately done the bare basics. Selfish, selfish bastard.
Dio, he would give anything to turn back time and do that night again. Do their marriage again. Rewind even further, back to their proposal. Get down on one knee and promise to love and cherish her forever.
Snaking his way down the belly in which their child was safely thriving, he kissed every inch of her flesh, a need even stronger than the arousal burning through him to make this the night he should have given her on their wedding night.
His arrogance in thinking he’d been the catch when all along this soft, gentle woman had been loving him and wanting only his love in return.
Marnie had given her body and heart to him, and he’d used her body and trampled on her heart.
He could never take back what he’d done, but he would do his damnedest to make it up to her and worship her as he should always have done.
Dipping his tongue into her navel, Domenico kissed his way down to her pubis, an act he’d only performed the night they’d conceived their child.
Dio, she smelt so damned good, and anticipation throbbed to know he was about to taste her again.
As he lay flat on the bed between her trembling legs and gently clasped her thighs to raise and part them, he dimly wondered for the first time if he’d resisted this particular intimacy for the whole of their marriage because he’d known the effect it would have on him.
How many times had his nostrils twitched when she’d passed him in the office at the divine scent that followed in her wake… ?
Inhaling the divine scent of her sex deep into his lungs, he groaned to find her already swollen.
She’d always been so damned responsive to him.
And he’d always been so damned responsive to her. More responsive than he’d ever wanted to be.
He was done hiding and fighting. Marnie deserved the world. Tonight, he would give it to her. He would give her the love he’d always denied her. Denied them both.
Closing his eyes, he dipped lower and probed his tongue right in the heart of her femininity.
With barely tempered darts of his tongue, he explored her most intimate, secret flesh, thrilling at her soft moans of pleasure, soft moans that deepened when he danced his tongue back up to the swollen pulse.
Marnie’s eyes flew open at the dose of untrammelled pleasure that had just shot through her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe for the anticipation of what he was about to do to her and the pleasure that would be unleashed.
Her flesh was on fire, her blood lava, the heat stoking her coming not just from the wonderous things Domenico was doing to her but the way he was doing them. The emotion driving them.
Oh, God, she wanted to cry again from the beauty of it all, but then there were no more thoughts of tears because his tongue pressed against her nub again and stayed there, and in the beat of a heart, Marnie had tumbled head first into a world of the most heavenly sensation.
As the pressure of Domenico’s tongue slowly increased, Marnie lost all sense of herself.
She had no sense of the moans coming from her mouth or awareness of her back and neck arching as she writhed into him.
She was chasing the pleasure, and then she was riding it, riding the waves taking her higher and higher until she reached the crescendo and shattered into a kaleidoscope of pulsating ecstasy.
Time slipped away as she slowly floated back down to a world that contained only Domenico.
She opened her eyes and locked gazes with him. Her heart was racing so hard she couldn’t feel the individual beats.
He lifted himself up and carefully enveloped her with his body.
Their eyes locked back together. She palmed his cheek. Her heart felt fit for bursting to see the emotion emanating from his stare. Oh, but it felt like she’d waited her whole life to see that. Felt like she’d waited her whole life for this.
Jaw tightening, nostrils flaring, he lowered his head and fused his mouth to hers.
Fresh sensation bloomed into life.
Domenico had never felt anything close to what he was feeling now. Hot blood was pumping relentlessly through him, his arousal a fever burning through his veins. Dio, the way Marnie had come apart for him…
He’d never experienced anything like it, not in the whole of his life, and now, with her tongue entwined with his and her nails scratching through his hair…
Ti prego Dio, don’t let me hurt her.
Breaking the kiss, perspiration broke out on his skin as he lifted what little of his weight he had on her so only the tips of her breasts were brushed against his chest. He reached down to grip hold of his erection.
Don’t let me hurt her.
Eyes locked together, he guided his arousal to her opening and kept tight hold of it as he slowly inched his way inside her.
Mio Dio, he could feel everything.
He drove a little further into the tightness of her velvet heat.
He could feel the lids of his eyes getting heavy, his features tightening, his breaths deepening, but he refused to break the fuse of their stares, not even when he finally released his hold on his erection and rested his forearms either side of her and used his hips to drive the last few inches of his length inside her.
Their groins locked together. He had no control of the shudder his body made at the sensations pulsating through him.
Mio Dio…
Swallowing hard to keep himself in check, Domenico could hardly open his throat to drag out, ‘Are you okay?’
It was all Marnie could do to move her head in assent.
She was incapable of speaking. She could feel every inch of his length tight inside her.
He wasn’t just filling her; he was a part of her in a way she had never felt before.
And she could feel his restraint, too, not just see it in the tautness of his jaw and the hardness shining in the molten of his eyes.
Her pounding heart melted for him, thrills of an intensity she’d never felt before uncoiling inside her, and, suddenly desperate to get even closer to him, she wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her head to kiss him.
He groaned into her mouth, the groan deepening when she dragged her fingers down the long length of his muscular back and groped his tight buttock.
‘Marnie…’
She broke his hoarse protest with another kiss before palming his cheek. Gazing deep into the hooded, molten eyes, she whispered, ‘Make me yours, Domenico.’
After a long, spellbinding moment, he breathed deeply and then, with an expression of the utmost pain, he began to move.
His thrusts were short and tempered, the lock of their groins never breaking, but even as sensation built back up and began to saturate her and the flame in her pelvis stoked back into a furnace, all she could see was his gorgeous features taut with concentration.
Her heart melting all over again for him, Marie lifted her head for another kiss, and as their lips locked together, she tilted her hips.
His groan was barely perceptible.
Lips fastened, she wrapped her limbs tightly around him and closed her eyes.