50. Ariana
50
ARIANA
As soon as the door shuts behind us, nerves rake down my body. They’re following his gaze’s exact route as it sweeps over me where I’ve come to a standstill a meter from the bed. I’ve been so bold just a minute ago, but now my heart beats with more than anticipation. Every beat is laced with fear that has so many layers, I can’t count them. They range from the fear of rejection to the fear of physical pain and everything in between.
When he doesn’t close in on me, I turn away so I don’t need to face him, panic rising.
“Easy, sweetheart. Just breathe.”
I hear him step up to me, my stomach clenching with nerves. Then he’s right here, his body flush with mine as he gathers my hair away from my neck.
“I know what you need,” he murmurs as he presses his lips to my ear and his hands settle on my hips. I lean into him, into this pillar of a man and his body’s strength. “Just take a deep breath, Ariana.”
I drag in a deep inhale, and on a slow exhale, unclench my fists. “Dominic…”
He gently turns me around, and I look up at him. “Do you trust me?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “Yes.”
“And are you sure you want to do this? With me?” he asks softly.
“Don’t you want to?”
He gives me a half-smile as he caresses my cheek with his thumb. “That’s not the answer I’m looking for, sweetheart.”
Heat pools in my core at his soft touch. “Okay. Do we…do we need paperwork?”
“We’re way beyond paperwork, sweetheart.”
He brushes a slow, gentle caress over my lips with his thumb, his fingertips points of heat resting on my cheek, but burning a path right to my sex. The very promise of each fingertip, the magic of his touch, fires up such a deep-seated yearning in me, I have to shift on my feet.
“But I need you to understand this isn’t about me. Not in the traditional sense people have of sex. My needs are being met by me meeting yours, and I don’t—” He sighs. “I just need you to trust me and relax, okay?”
“Okay.” I take another deep breath, not sure how relaxing comes into the picture because I’m wound up so tight, my whole body strains with the pressure, begging for release.
Ever since this morning…ever since… Ever since he first touched me in that warehouse, it’s as if he’s been untying the myriad of knots I’ve tied in my body since that night with Franco, wrapping myself in a hopeless tangle nobody wants to deal with, myself included.
Now I’ve been sitting on this need that just seems to build and build. What happened in the shower was only a prologue to tease me. Now I need the whole book, chase to this chapter where I can drown myself in the words he’ll write on my skin with his fingertips, erasing that night, that one encounter, while rewriting over every tear and scratch that monster made on my blank, virginal pages. He’ll make me whole again as I lose and find myself over and over in him.
He drops his hand away, and I immediately miss the warmth of his touch. He shrugs off his jacket and tosses it to the side, never looking away, our gazes locked.
“I have a laundry list of things I want to do with you, sweetheart, and none of them involves penetrative sex. We can work towards that. See where you’re at and take it slowly.”
I blink away from his intense stare that seems to reach into my soul. Once in Italy, this is going to be over. I’m still not sure how I’m going to do it as I have no idea about the level of security he has arranged, but I need to get away from Il Consiglio, from Dominic, and this flight might be the only chance I’ll ever get to be with him. And I want to be with him.
When I say nothing, too overwhelmed to respond coherently, he touches me again, this time tugging at my bottom lip. His touch is so sensual, so tender, that tingles rush from this one connection point down to my sex where the tension is only building. I want more…I want it all with him, tonight.
“It’s yes, sweetheart. The word I’m looking for is yes. But no is an option, too. Let me ask you again, are you sure you want to do this with me?”
“Yes,” I whisper without hesitation.
“Good girl. I have a few other words you might want to use. Repeat after me: more.”
I bite my lip as his thumb slides to my jawline and lower, to trace down the column of my neck. “More.”
I already sound like I’m begging, my voice betraying my body’s needs.
“Good girl. Now say stop.”
“Stop. But please don’t.”
He smiles, and by now his hand has reached my shoulder, and he gives it a warm squeeze. “Repeat after me: not yet.”
“Not yet.”
“We’re going to keep it simple today, okay?” he murmurs as he slides his hand down to my hip and tugs me into him. “There’s only one more: again.”
“Again.”
I’m flush against his body, his erection pressing into my belly as his other hand comes up and tilts my head so I’m forced to look up at him.
“Now, sweetheart,” he murmurs as he takes in my face, my lips which are practically begging for him to kiss me. “I want you to close off all those open doors in your mind, Ariana. All I want is for you to be in this room, and not wander off to all those other rooms in your mind, okay?” He dips his head to brush his nose along my temple. “All I want you to think about is that you are a beautiful woman, with a body worthy of worship, who deserves to be loved.”
At these words, I choke up as emotion floods me. So many things. Gratitude for this man who came into my life, who gets me, who cares on a level I’ve never experienced before. I’m already leaning into him, but now, my knees are weak.
“Okay,” I say, but so softly, it’s hardly a whisper as I try to hide my tears.
Then he’s there, kissing my temples, my eyes, my cheeks, catching my tears before they run out of control. The reverence in those fleeting brushes of his lips uncoil something in me. With him, yes, I’m a beautiful woman, worthy of love. I’ll never be broken in this man’s eyes, and he’ll always treat me right. It’s more than I knew I wanted or needed, but his words are everything.
His hands are on my hips, on my sides, stroking rhythmically for me to calm down. It does calm my nerves, but it also stokes this fire in me, as the embers of lust have long since burst back into flame. I need him, in any and every way he’ll give himself to me.
I inch my hands up his chest, clinging to him, to his strength, and when he teases his lips over mine in question, asking permission, I shudder at the pleasure of it.
“This is the first thing I wanted to do with you, almost from the moment I laid eyes on you,” he whispers as his lips caress the corner of my mouth, and then they are on mine, open, soft, in a kiss that’s slow and seductive, yet so profoundly deep, it’s like a drug seeping into my veins.
He cradles my head as he kisses me ever deeper, and now there’s nothing sweet or innocent about this kiss anymore. As his tongue sweeps into my mouth, so slow and languid, it becomes the most tender invasion, turning the kiss erotic and somehow so deliciously dirty, opening up a whole new world, the floor bottoming out from under me. I moan into him, only wanting to go with him, down into the beckoning abyss. If this is how he kisses, I’m not going to be able to hold back. Already, my panties are damp, my body begging for friction.
Dominic hums as he closes off the kiss and smiles down at me. “So fucking sweet,” he murmurs. “So fucking addictive.”
His hands are at the hem of my T-shirt, the one I put on this morning, tugging it off. Next, he’s eased off my bra. He’s just as gentle as the first night he dressed me in his wash-worn T-shirt, but this feels like I’m shedding all these layers that have always held me back.
When I reach for his shirt’s buttons, he stalls me. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
He drops to his haunches, hands at my jean’s button as I kick my ballerina flats off. Knuckles skim my lower belly, over the scars I never think of when he’s around. He drags my jeans down, and I hold on to him to step out of them and keep my balance which suddenly seems very unstable. Everything is tilting—my world, my sanity, my very being is ready to fall into him.
There’s so much reverence on his face, I still. I’m only in these simple white cotton panties that came in a bulk pack, my nipples hard, jutting out, begging for him to kiss them as his gaze skates up my body. I’d love to dress for him, let him unwrap me from silk and lace, gift myself to him again and again.
As he straightens, he runs featherlight fingertips along my legs, over my hips, up the sides of my breasts but never touching me where I’m a hot mess already and pulsating with need for him.
He guides me to the bed. “Lie down, sweetheart, in the middle.”
God… he did tell me he was going to take his time.
I do as he says and wait for him to tell me what to do next as he glances around the room. My gaze drops to his groin, where that erection I got a full view of in the shower bulges up and to the side in the constraints of his trousers. My mouth wets with a need I don’t understand yet, and I lick my lips.
Not yet. How apt.
“Seems I’m a bit challenged in the prop department,” he says as he takes his time to remove his watch and put it on the bedside table. He leans onto the bed with one knee and bends over me. “Stay right here in this room, sweetheart. I’m going to raid the bathroom.”
He caresses my cheek with a fingertip, so softly it’s hardly a touch, and then lower, down the side of my neck, and it doesn’t tickle—it only sparks desire down my chest, ever lower where it adds to the build-up in my sex.
I bet he likes a challenge like this, and the memories of his silk ties slipping over my wrists flare up in my mind. Every sensation of those silk ties on my arms is imprinted on my mind, my body, and what it felt like to be so safe with him. Whatever he comes up with, he’ll look after me.
“So soft,” he murmurs, drawing a circle around my breast, slowly making ever smaller concentric circles as he draws on me with that fingertip.
Goosebumps flood my skin, my nipples hard, and I arch into him as the current races straight down to my sex, arousal flooding my panties again. Even I can smell my desire in these closed confines.
“Dominic,” I moan, reaching for his hand to push it between my legs already.
He clasps my fingers in his. “No, sweetheart. When I told you I take my time, I meant what I said.” He raises my hand to his lips and plants kisses on each fingertip. “I thought we might get away without tying you up, but clearly that isn’t going to work.”
Tied up, by him, with him, for him. No, for my pleasure. That’s what he said.
I stare up at him, breathless as he lowers my hand, reaches for the other, and traps both wrists in his bigger palm against the mattress. “Keep them there, sweetheart. Push into the headboard if you have to.”
I nod, and he lets go as he shifts lower to where he can trace my panty line. Shivers erupt all along the trail of his touch. My chest is heaving as he dips his fingers underneath the waistband and pulls them down slowly, breath stilted and ragged in my throat.
I close my eyes, sinking in the sensation of his touch as he shifts down my legs and slowly peels my panties off in the process. When I lift my hips to accommodate him, I get rewarded with a kiss to a hipbone and a soft murmured good girl that basically squeezes wet heat from my pussy onto the bed covers. God, what is he doing to me?
When I open my eyes, he’s getting off the bed, my panties pressed to his nose where he stands at the end of the bed.
“So fucking addictive,” he murmurs. “I’m not going to get enough of the taste of you, am I?”
Only one way to find out… and I’m squirming already with anticipation, wanting to reach out for him.
“No, sweetheart. Keep your hands where they are.”
I comply, but it’s a battle of wills. He waits for me to calm down, and I see the pattern here. He is going to take his time, give me space to adjust and find my own equilibrium each step of the way as we walk this tightrope over the canyon of my past experience together. And he’s going to hold my hand all the way.
“Spread your legs, sweetheart.”
The command sends a bolt of pleasure down my body, but I hesitate. If I do, he’ll see everything from where he stands. I inch them a bit apart, wanting to please him, but heat flushes my face.
“Wider, sweetheart.”
I comply, with each inch revealing more, his gaze drinking me in as desire pools in my core.
“Such a good girl,” he murmurs from where he hasn’t shifted, gaze hazy as he watches me. “Almost there, Ariana, just a bit more.”
He is undoing me, with ease leading me to do things I never thought I’d be able do with a man, for a man…for him .
Dominic .
Now he’s ghosting his hands over my inner thighs, not touching me, but promising and withholding everything I crave at the same time. Instead of going to my sex, he glides his hands up, and I open as wide as I can go as he guides me to bend my knees. “There.”
I’m flayed opened and have never felt this exposed before, except it’s liberating in a way I hadn’t expected, because Dominic looks so turned on. It’s obvious in the way he stares at me, licking his bottom lip. There’s no fear here, just eager anticipation to satisfy him, to follow his command.
“Stay exactly like that, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a minute.”
As he walks off, a rogue thought rushes through my mind. He’s controlling me even though he isn’t even touching me. With his words, his soft voice, his gentle commands.
Dominic Scalera doesn’t steer away from what he’s been trained to do in Il Consiglio. This is going to be torture, but of the sweetest kind.