Chapter 10
Vivi
LUCA AND I flirted with the forbidden for another week.
Over the course of that time, I learned something important—vow or no vow, I wanted him.
I wanted all of him in the carnal way a woman wants a man, the birth of a cardinal sin that Father Zanetti would make me pay dearly for in the confessional.
I didn’t care. Every evening at nine, Luca stared into my soul as if his and mine were on speaking terms. Very close, intimate, speaking terms. Blood pulsed in my ears while I watched his lips move.
Then his thumb brushed over his mouth, and I wanted them both on me.
Touching me. Making me crazier than this pent-up hunger.
This craving that pounded through my veins for more.
More. More. He did that with the intense, possessive way he studied me.
But he only ever looked as though it pained him to do so, like he was now.
Luca was close, so close that his sleeve brushed against my arm while he lifted the bottle for a long drag.
So close, the soft musky scent of the sun and his sweat consumed me.
Any closer, and he’d hear my heart song and the stumbling melody when his dark eyes met mine under the haze of a cloudy sky.
The crickets were silent tonight. My pulse was not.
It thumped and hammered so hard that his vision slid down my throat to find the symphony.
I liked it there, but I also wanted it to flick lower and lower still, and then I wanted to feel him. Feel him everywhere. An abrupt thought shot from my mouth, bypassing my brain and common decency. “Why won’t you touch me?”
I had to know because he never did unless he was forced into the matter.
Unless I pushed him, and he lost control.
Like at the mission when his thumb found my neck, and he pressed until I was delirious with need.
A need so strong, I saw stars and him. I watched and waited for more contact.
Then he left, and all I had were the memories.
Luca and his darkness.
Luca and his shadows.
Luca. Luca. Luca.
For a week, I’ve been lost in my imagination. Seven days of skirting the attraction. Seven days of flirting with the obvious. One hundred and sixty-eight hours of pent-up frustration flooded my veins, leaving that edgy, unsatisfied hunger in its wake.
His gaze swung to mine, his jaw hardening. “Is that what you think about, Vivienne? My hands on you?”
“I think about a lot more than hands.” Mouth. Teeth. Skin against skin. “I think about your voice and your gruff, dirty words.”
The world stood still. Nature ceased to exist. It was Luca and me, with his eyes dropping to the deep line of my cleavage, then back to stare into my soul. “Tell me.”
I shook my head, no.
He growled, “Yes.”
The rough command left no room for anything but acquiescence, and still the only thing lighting me on fire was the gentle breeze. “I can’t.”
Not out loud.
“You will.”
Then you’ll know.
“Viviieennne.”
He captivated my mind and mesmerized my body, and the aching, empty space at the apex of my thighs. With his dark, heavy gaze on me, I couldn’t help but imagine his hand grazing my bare hip.
“So soft.” I paused, breathing through the wind as though it were a caress, and I shuddered as if it were from him.
“More,” he commanded in that coarse whisper, liquefying my insides into molten lava.
Light contact, a feather of connection, then searching, finding the place where my pulse throbbed the strongest. The place for his palm to cup my mound and rub over my suit until I shivered and spread my legs, leaving room for him to pull the Lycra away and sink a long finger deep inside.
Where he’d find that it wasn’t just the ocean making me wet.
“So tight,” I moaned as if he said the words himself.
“And?”
“And good. And greedy.”
“My good girl, with such a greedy, tight, little cunt.”
“Yes.” I nodded, nodded, nodded. “Yes, like that.”
A ragged breath left my parted lips, drawing his attention to my tongue as it slipped out to ease the tension, then my teeth to stop the trembling.
His nostrils flared, his knuckles going white as he clutched that stupid beer instead of me.
But I could pretend, and I did as he tossed it to the ground.
Heat flooded my cheeks, burning into the blood rushing my clit.
I was so worked up, my hips rotated all on their own, without a thought, or without a command from my brain.
“What else. What would you say?” he demanded.
“I want,” I whispered into the night—another instinctive reflex.
His groan rumbled so deep that the vibration furled my nipples, tender, raw, and swollen, scraping against fabric. Somehow he pressed into me without touching, backing me up with his growls until the house met my shoulders, and all I could do was look up at the fire dancing in his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You.”
“What part of me?”
“Luca,” I said, breathing out.
“Say it so I know you can take it, piccolo uccello.”
“Little bird.”
“That’s right, so strong you can take flight. Fly for me. Tell me—what do you say?”
“I want you inside of me.”
He tsked, his hand landing on the brick next to my cheek, and he peered down with frustrated amusement. But I didn’t want to entertain him. I wanted him wild and needy and shaking, just as I was.
“Dick,” I clarified, like I said it every day—every minute of every day. “I want your thick, long dick filling me up. Filling my pussy. Making me whole. Making the ache disappear.”
A tremble rolled through him, his breath as jagged as the scar on his face. He leaned down so his words pressed into my neck beneath my ear. “I’d have to squeeze inside that virgin cunt, wouldn’t I, Vivienne? Isn’t that true?”
There went my hips, rolling and wanting what he wouldn’t give. “Yes.”
“Because no one has touched you. Not that fucking ginger, no one, because you’re waiting—”
“For you.” I focused on the riot pulsing in his throat, and his Adam’s apple bobbing as my imagination took flight. But I wanted him to finish what my mind had started.
“So goddamn tight,” he said, and I closed my eyes so I could see the flex of his hips as they punched forward to find out. “So tight and wet—”
“And full of you. There’d be a pinch—”
“Pain,” he groaned again. “Your blood would stain my shaft and paint your thighs red, but I wouldn’t stop.”
“No, don’t stop.”
“I couldn’t because you make me crazy.”
“So crazy.” I shivered, my chest heaving, my palms flattening against the house even as my clit throbbed. “You’d drive into me until I felt you everywhere.”
His teeth clenched; I could hear it when he hissed out the words, “With your hair wrapped around my fist and your head back, exposing your neck and your tits. Those big fucking tits.”
“You’d bite them, suck, and pull my nipples.”
“And I’d fill you.”
“Again and again.”
“Fuck you with the madness you can’t tame.”
“No, never.”
“And you’d take it.”
I whimpered. I would. I’d take everything he could give and more. More. More. “Your weight—”
“Pressing on you, spreading your legs open wide.”
His breath punched out in heavy pants—so intense, so powerful, I could feel it all happen. I couldn’t find any air, but it skirted over my body, sparking an ember and lighting a fire. I gasped. And he kept going with those dirty, filthy words.
“So fucking wet. So tight and wet and begging. You’d beg.”
“Please. Please give it to me.”
“Take it. All of it. Take me whole.”
“I am. Oh, God.”
“Not him, just your monster.”
“Luca, please. I need.”
But the only thing he gave me was his voice, deep and rough, and all I had was my imagination and my hand when the wind wasn’t enough.
“Yes, Vivienne. That’s right. Get there. Right there.”
He watched with the intensity that always consumed him. The silent anger. The unspoken rage. Possessive hunger. My fingers trembled on my stomach, tap-dancing down, down, when I wanted it to be him. “Why won’t you touch me?”
“I am. It’s me slicking through your pink lips, circling that swollen, fucking clit. It’s hard, isn’t it, Vivienne? It is. Hard and throbbing, and my cock is so deep inside, so deep I can feel your walls clutching against my dick, pulling me in.”
“Harder,” I insisted.
“Faster.”
“And grinding against my clit every time you push inside.”
I touched myself out of desperation, outside of my suit, pressing and rolling with the sway of my hips until the flames exploded and my breath hitched.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
But how could I? How could I when I was so desperate for him and all I had were his words and my need, his gasp and my hand?
“Fucking look at me, uccello.”
Fire. Blinding and dangerous. With his eyes holding me prisoner, I pressed harder and rolled faster, and I felt him everywhere.
Everywhere. The orgasm hit, a violent shudder shaking my shoulders and thighs, curling my toes into the damp grass.
Liquid heat pulsed through me, wave after wave, dousing the flames until flickers and flares sparked and shook into aftershocks.
When I could hear again, it was his moan and the rumble tumbling from his chest.
I waited for the telling warmth in my cheeks and the sudden shyness, but I only found a comforting blanket of serenity under the weight of his stare.
My lids fluttered as I sank, boneless and satisfied, against the house and not into him—where I wanted to be so desperately, my heart ached.
The brick cooled my overheated skin instead.
A minute passed. I caught my breath, and he watched me, his own chest slowing to a normal pattern. Enough time lapsed to find my words again and the question that he never answered. “Why won’t you touch me?”