Chapter Seven
BY THE TIME they entered the elevator to his penthouse, Mira was barely capable of speech.
They hadn’t eaten much. They had danced several times, swaying as they embraced. It had been an excuse for him to lazily run his hands over her back while the press of his arousal had brushed against her stomach. They had kissed.
The man loved to kiss and he was good at it, making her feel like she was made of warm honey.
On the drive home, he’d played his fingers against her knee, keeping the heat within her stoked so that she looked to him in the elevator, eager for him to be more aggressive. To quit teasing and touch her.
“Soon, angelo,” he murmured, cradling her in his arms, but only pressing his lips to her forehead.
“You’re mean,” she said plaintively, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck.
“I am not the one who walked away every other time we were near one another, cara mio. This is how you left me every single time.”
“You’re punishing me?”
“Not at all. I’m savoring every moment because tonight we will finish this. No?”
He released her as the elevator dinged, watching her closely.
“Yes,” she said because she couldn’t imagine not continuing to touch him and kiss him. Because she had spent years wondering how it would feel to be naked with him. To feel their bodies joined.
Her knees were weak as he led her into his penthouse. She was so filled with anticipation, she didn’t know how to bear it, but she was anxious, too. Should she tell him she’d never actually done this?
He pressed the door closed then crowded her into it.
“This dress,” he growled as he skated his lips across her jaw. “I want to tear it off you, but I want to save it so you can wear it months from now and remind me of tonight. Can you be careful with it, cara mio?”
As he spoke, he drew back enough to pick up the ribbons that fell down the front of her legs and wound them around her wrists, lightly binding them together.
She could easily pull herself free and, if she did, she could easily tear the delicate silk.
“I am asking you to be very still, tesoro mio.” He left the tail of silk around her wrists and used both hands to sweep the straps off her shoulders, then reached behind her to lower the zipper so the front of her bodice relaxed.
“Ah.” His sigh was more groan, wafting heat across the swells of her breasts as he bared them.
“I have waited a long time to see these beauties.”
His dark eyes glowed and his tone was so gravelly, he made her toes curl.
He lifted her breasts, making them ache as he weighed the small swells in his heavy palms, gently, but she still felt blistered by his touch.
Her breasts felt so swollen, she thought her skin would split.
She tried to reach for his arms to steady herself and discovered her wrists were tangled in silk.
He made a noise of mock pity and shifted his grip so her distended nipples were in the vee of his finger and thumb. With slow care, he pinched lightly, then bent and licked each one, making lightning shoot into the notch of her thighs.
She twitched and gasped and he sent her a look that warned he had no mercy. He did it again, inciting those electric stabs from nipple to loins.
“Rocco,” she begged.
“Let me have this,” he commanded and sank to his knees. “Let me have you.”
He rolled her high-cut panties down, but left them across the tops of her thighs, just enough to expose her to his gaze. His thumbs swept a caress over her swollen outer lips, then delicately pressed. Parted.
She moaned in an agony of exposure and anticipation.
He dipped his head and pleasure lashed her with the first lick of his tongue.
He growled a noise of gratification while she thought her knees would collapse.
Her eyes might have been closed. She had no idea.
All she could see was white. She felt his hair against her palm so she must have set her bound hands on his head.
Her hips were thrusting toward the scorching press of his mouth.
Glorious tension began coiling in her with the speed of a tornado pulling inward, upward.
“Rocco!” she cried, falling apart in seconds.
He clamped an arm around her hips, holding her up as he continued to play his tongue against her pulsing clit, drawing her impossibly into an even more aroused state despite the sudden peak of climax.
When she began to approach another crisis, and her fist clenched in his hair, he slowly stood, catching her up into the cradle of his arms as he did.
She cried out, startled. Dazed.
He stared down at her the way a conquering warrior might, cheeks flushed, gaze triumphant and hazed with lust. Her wrists were still bound, her underwear cutting across the tops of her thighs. Her chest was bare, her legs exposed by the falling ribbons of her skirt.
The sleeves of his tuxedo jacket were crisp against her bare back and bare thighs. His arms tightened, while his head lowered and his mouth engulfed her nipple, pulling strongly enough to sting in the most erotic way, making fresh need flood into her loins. She squirmed.
“La mia,” he said in what had to be the most proprietary, barbaric language possible.
She was exhilarated to be his. Eager.
As he carried her to his bedroom, she was his captured mate, utterly at his mercy and excited to be so.
She had an impression of dark blues and silver, a soft light illuminating a desk and a massive bed with an abundance of pillows against the tufted leather of a dark brown headboard.
When he set her on her feet, she tried to carefully pull her wrists free of the silk, but he said, “Leave it. Let me enjoy this a little longer.”
His hot gaze stayed on her as he began to undress, throwing off his jacket, stepping out of his shoes while his hands swept his shirt buttons open.
“You’re kinky,” she accused, trying to ease her underwear back into place.
“And you are going along with it, tesoro mio. What does that make you?” His belt was gone, his fly open so he could yank his shirt free and expose his wide chest.
He was so beautiful with his firm pecs and the disks of his brown nipples, small and tight with arousal. A light pattern of hair decorated the stacked muscles of his abdomen.
“Those hungry eyes.” He made a noise of gratification as he came close enough to cradle her jaw and skim his thumb against her cheekbone. “You have haunted me.”
She bit her lip, too self-conscious to hold his gaze, but her attention only wound up back on the powerful muscles of his shoulders and torso. She lifted her hands, wanting to touch him, and found herself still bound.
“Dio, I want to keep you like this,” he said gruffly as he carefully unwound the ribbons from her wrists. “I want to tie you to that bed. I think you might like that, hmm, Mirabella?” He turned her and finished lowering the zip on her gown.
“I don’t kn—oh!”
As her gown fell to the floor, he pulled her back to his front, one hand wrapping around her to cup her breast. The other slid into the front of her knickers, cupping.
Reacquainting. Gently rocking before reigniting her with a slow drag of his fingertip against the seam of her sex, delving for moisture. Spreading it around.
She shuddered in renewed arousal.
“You want this as badly as I do, don’t you?” he whispered against her ear.
“I do,” she moaned, holding still for his caress. Wanting it to never end.
“Take these off, then.” He pulled his hand free of her underwear and finished skimming his own clothes away.
She had never been naked in front of anyone. Nerves accosted her, especially when she caught sight of the bobbing thickness of his erection. His finger had been inside her. Once. Never anything with that sort of girth.
Flutters of concern rippled through her middle, tangling with intrigue. With years of yearning to know.
He opened the drawer in the night table, then yanked the blankets away and waved for her to get on the bed.
She shyly settled on the mattress, sitting with her knees tucked to the side, her feet under the edge of the rumpled sheet.
“I need to tell you something,” she said as she watched him tear open the packet and apply the condom in one smooth, practiced motion.
“What’s that?” He reached to grasp her ankle and pulled, dragging her down the mattress even as he loomed over her, pressing her onto her back beneath him.
“I, um…” She set her fluttering hands at his shoulders, urging him to slow down even as he pushed her thighs apart with his own, his superior strength very casual. “I’ve never actually…done this.”
His hand was on the back of her thigh, already guiding it to his waist while he shifted his weight onto one elbow. He froze.
“Are you teasing me?” he asked, gaze penetrating hers.
“No.” Her voice wavered with uncertainty. “Are you mad?”
“No.” His intent expression clenched into one of pain.
The hand on her thigh was gripping hard enough to leave fingerprints.
“Does this mean you’re having second thoughts?
Because I do not have it in me to be heroic.
I won’t walk away unless you tell me to.
And now would be a very good time to say that. ”
“I don’t want you to walk away. I just thought you should know.”
“So that I will be gentle?” He cupped the side of her face. “Were you put on this earth to kill me, cara? Feel me.” He dragged her hand to his erection. “I have been hard for you for three years. I want to pound you through this mattress.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He scraped his teeth against the edge of her jaw. “But let me feel…” He groaned as his finger easily penetrated her slick, welcoming flesh.
She drew a breath of exquisite joy. Gasping. Twisting at the tendrils of need that swept through her.
“Don’t come until I tell you. Can you do that, bella?” He stroked slowly, provoking another flush of needy wetness.
“I don’t know. It feels so good,” she said on a sob. “I never want this to stop.”
“It will feel very good when I’m inside you. I promise. Can you take two?”