Chapter Nine #2
She caught her breath at how handsome he was. The angles in his face were tight with lust, but there was something close to tenderness in his eyes. That warm light went straight into her chest.
He will break my heart, she realized. He already had the power to hurt her and, the closer she allowed him to get, the more damage he could do.
She didn’t even know how it felt to fall in love with someone.
She wasn’t even falling. She was leaping into whatever this was, filled with a hope, but also fear.
Even so, she said, “Yes,” because she couldn’t make herself say anything else.
He carried her into the nearest bedroom and set her onto the mattress, then crawled over her and tucked her firmly beneath him. She met his mouth with her own, then speared her fingers into his hair and moaned with joy at being back where she belonged.
He groaned as though some unnamed need had been met within him, too. His knee crooked and he guided her leg to his waist. They rolled into each other, so she was sealed against him as they kissed. Long, unhurried kisses that made her wriggle to be closer and closer still.
“Cara, you’ll kill me,” he said against her cheek. “I’ve just remembered I don’t have a condom.”
“Oh.” She didn’t want to lose the moment. “Is there a health concern? I could take a pill later?”
“What are you trying to do to me?” he asked with a small shudder and a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “I’ll pull out,” he promised and set a suctioning kiss on her throat that made her nipples sting.
They kissed more passionately and he fell onto his back, pulling her atop him so he could run his hands over her, soothing the aches of misunderstanding and uncertainty, exploring as though discovering something precious that required care while igniting fires of passion and desire.
She sat up, straddling his thighs, gasping, “I’m too hot.” She peeled off her top, exposing her demi-cup bra.
“Pretty,” he growled and sat up to drag his own shirt over his head. He pulled her hips tighter into his lap while his busy mouth began tasting all the skin he could reach. He danced nuzzling caresses across her upper chest and down to the swells of her breasts, sending a sting into her nipples.
She reached back to release the bra’s clasp and he brushed it aside, hands tightening on her backside to bring her nipple closer to his mouth.
A small cry escaped her as he captured that tender part of her. She filtered her fingers through his hair, moaning with pleasure as he anointed both breasts, pulling forth exquisite, electric sensations that speared straight into her dampening loins.
“Rocco.” She tilted his head up so she could kiss him while she pressed deeper, seeking the hardness against the molten softness that ached with emptiness. With a need to remove any barrier between them: clothes, anger, other people who didn’t matter…
He tumbled her onto her back and the rest of their clothes were kicked away between more urgent kisses, more intimate caresses. He worked his way down her center and scorched her with lavish pleasure, driving her over the edge so easily, she nearly wept with her defeat.
“I wanted to feel you inside me when I did that,” she said breathlessly when he had kissed his way back to her mouth.
“I don’t know how long I’ll last. I’ve never been naked with anyone.” A lascivious noise left Rocco as he rubbed his tip against her slick folds, seeking her entrance, pressing.
She tilted her hips, inviting. Arching with a sense of exaltation as he slid deep, filling her with that new, glorious sensation of being so close to him, they were, in fact, one.
Rocco had never had sex without a condom. It was transcendental.
Maybe it was Mira herself, transfixing him with her hazed, half-lidded stare and shiny lips swollen from his kisses. Her soft curves beneath him provoked a desire to take great care while thrilling him in an atavistic way as he gathered her beneath him. Mine. All mine.
When he began to move, she responded with a moan and a sweet tension that ratcheted up the coil of arousal already tight within him.
For long minutes, he kept it slow, enjoying every millimeter of sensation as he withdrew and returned, utterly lost to the rhythm. To the way he felt each stroke with his whole body. With the way her breath caught and she dug her nails into his skin and lifted her hips to meet his.
For the rest of his life, this was all he would ever need. That was the only coherent thought he had. This. Her. I need her.
“Oh, Rocco. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” She was close, but he was closer.
He knotted his fist into the blankets, vibrating with acute pleasure, concentrating on her so he could cling to his control.
Her noises were musical and anguished, her cheeks and breasts bright pink with arousal, her teeth cutting across her bottom lip.
“I need you to come for me, bella.” He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on, not when she was so hot and slick and alluring.
He shifted and got his hand between them, caressing where they were joined, nearly losing everything at the feel of her plump flesh. At the way she responded to his caress with a tight clasp of her inner muscles, redoubling his pleasure as he sank into her and retreated again. Harder. Faster.
“Come now. Now.” He circled his thumb, then pressed.
Her eyelashes fluttered and she began to sob and gasp and contract around him.
He moved his hand and thrust with more power, riding her through one orgasm, then another that caught them both by surprise. It was magnificent. She was.
But his body demanded release, screaming at him to bury himself deep and let go.
Somehow, he held back until she was melting and shivering and sighing with gratification.
His spine tingled, and his tongue pressed the roof of his mouth, and he pulled out, erupting against her still-quivering stomach.
Thoroughly depleted, it was all he could do not to collapse atop her.
As he rolled away, he managed to reach the box of tissues from the nightstand and handed them to her, but he couldn’t even keep his eyes open. His lungs were still clawing for air, his skin damp, his heart pounding. Dio, that had been magnificent.
He should tell her that, but he was too weak to lick his lips, let alone make them form words.
After a few minutes, she curled into his side with a purring sound, warm and soft.
He dragged his weighted arm around her, snugging her tighter into him without opening his eyes.
“Do you really want to keep doing this?” Her murmuring lips brushed his skin and her hair slid to tickle his shoulder. “Because I could go on the pill. The real one. Then we wouldn’t have to worry.”
I’m not worried was his nascent thought.
He snapped his eyes open. Maybe he stiffened in reaction because she whispered, “Were you sleeping? I’m sorry.”
“No.” He scooped her closer and kissed her hairline, inhaling the fading fragrance of her shampoo while he stared at the ceiling and saw a future for himself that was utterly foreign, one he’d never imagined.
“I might doze off,” she said with a lilt of humor, warm arm belting his waist. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Neither had he, but while she relaxed against him and her breaths evened out, his mind was tentatively walking onto the thin ice of potential parenthood.
He’d never seen himself becoming a husband and father.
Maybe it was a result of his upbringing and years in foster care, but he’d mentally labeled family life as something for other people, not for him.
He had always existed within those spaces as an interloper.
He had just taken a risk with Mira, though. Not a big one, but the idea of having a child with her didn’t strike alarm bells in him. In fact, it held a strange appeal.
Did he have the capacity for the kind of love a child needed, though?
The kind that a woman had every right to expect if she was having a family with him?
Families were love. That’s what he’d observed when he’d stood on the outskirts of them.
It was the reason he’d fought so hard to get back to his aunt and felt so adrift when he lost her.
Silvio had done his best to provide an approximation of family to Rocco, but he’d always held himself apart, not trusting that it was something he could have.
Mira had her own issues. Her father figure hadn’t loved her. How would she react when she learned she did have a father? Would Silvio ever tell her? How could Rocco consider a deeper relationship with her if he was keeping a secret that was so intrinsic to who she was?
How could he not when she deserved to have someone in her life who cared about her? When, together, they were pure magic?
The questions stayed with him over the next few days as they split their time between the hotel in Naples and the villa.
She saw a doctor and he brought in a crew to tidy up the trees and empty the villa of furniture. She was giving him free rein, and had said, “If I don’t like what you do, you said you’d buy it, so I know you’ll do a good job rather than stick yourself with a lemon.”
It was excellent logic, if circular. He intended to include her in all of the decisions, anyway, so it would be very much hers when all was said and done.
They caught up with the Viscontis for lunch on Friday, dining in the roof-garden restaurant of the hotel in Naples.
On the surface, it was a casual get-together, but it was an integral step toward knocking Otto’s legs out from under him.
Rocco wanted the contracts after the Visconti merger with WBE so Jackson needed to see him, not Vorstoben, as the sure bet.
When the women excused themselves to the powder room toward the end of the meal, Jackson turned to Rocco.
“I don’t want to pry,” he began.
“Mira’s reasons for leaving Vorstoben are personal,” Rocco interjected. “But it’s having a tremendous impact.”