Chapter 8 Lucia
LUCIA
Iwake slowly, surfacing from sleep the way you do from deep water, disoriented and heavy and strangely warm in places that should not be warm at all.
And almost immediately, I’m hit with the dense, unfamiliar awareness of another body pressed intimately along my back, solid and unmoving, radiating heat into me like a living wall.
For one hazy, treacherous heartbeat, I think I’m still dreaming, still caught in that furnace-hot fever dream filled with writhing bodies and endless panting… well… two specific bodies, one with the face and body of a falling angel, and the other one? Me.
The kind of dream that, if not interrupted, usually ended up waking me with my hand wedged firmly between my thighs, massaging myself in—
No. I drag my mind from the sex dungeon just as memories of the night before come rushing back, an unstoppable torrent.
Attempting not to alert the pillar of masculinity behind me that I’m awake, I tentatively ease away.
I feel pressure shift on my wrist.
Memory crashes harder into me in a single, merciless wave as the silk tightens.
The jetty. The water. The chase, then the shower. And God, the tie. The memory of that last act of his conjures up erotic images I don’t want to contemplate.
Absolutely should not contemplate.
Giovanni.
My breath catches as my chest tightens.
He’s awake. I know it instantly even though he doesn’t move, hasn’t spoken. He doesn’t need to. The air around us has subtly changed, as though his awareness itself has weight, gravity and intention.
“Buongiorno, cara. I’m happy to see you slept well,” he states quietly, his voice close to my ear, low and rough with morning.
I go very still as if that will stop him speaking, breathing. Doing whatever it is he’s intending on doing to me this morning.
Images attempt to smash through again but I shake my head, irritated by my inability to suppress them. By my inability to outthink this man, especially when he’s this close, where I can feel the blazing column of his body pressed against mine.
“I didn’t,” I lie, because pride is the last thing I have left that feels remotely intact.
His chest lifts behind me with a silent laugh, and the way the sound echoes then tunnels warmly through me makes me clamp my eyes shut and absorb every cadence of it.
“Bugia,” he murmurs. “You drooled on my arm for almost an hour.”
Heat floods my face as I groan and bury my face into the pillow. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you,” he says mildly, flexing his wrist as it rubs sizzlingly with that nerve-tingling abrasiveness against mine, “are still a terrible liar.”
I try to shift again, to create distance, to reclaim even an inch of autonomy, but his free arm tightens around my waist with slow, lazy possession that feels far too deliberate to be accidental.
The movement drags my arse back into him.
And I feel him then.
He’s hard.
Unapologetically hard. The imprint of him burns one arse cheek, so dangerously, erotically close to my clenching pussy. To the place I’ve craved him but somehow never had him.
The place I could have now if—
No.
My breath stutters, catching painfully in my throat. “Untie me.”
“Eager to make another futile run for it?” he croons mockingly in my ear. “Let me give you the alternative. Stay right here, where it’s nice and warm.”
“Said the spider to the fly,” I attempt to snap, but it comes out more like a rusty whisper dropped into a rustier bucket.
“Hmm. I already have you tied in my web.” His free hand circles my unbound wrist. “Say the word, cara mia, and I’ll make surrender feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”
I barely manage to swallow a moan and kick myself again for my weakening resolve as the air thickens instantly, the room going quiet in that charged, electric way it only ever does when Giovanni is like this, fully awake, fully present, fully aware of exactly what my body is doing in response to his.
“Giovanni,” I whisper, my voice already compromised, the protest I’m furiously yanking at remaining irritatingly elusive. “This is—”
“Yes,” he replies softly. “You feel it too.”
“Not what I was going to say,” I protest, again so feebly I wonder why I’m bothering. I close my eyes, because this is cruel and unfair and my own body is betraying me at precisely the worst possible moment.
“You’re right. I should untie you,” he murmurs thoughtfully, his lips brushing my hair as though he’s genuinely considering it.
My pulse jumps violently.
“But then I wouldn’t enjoy how tense you are right now. How valiantly you fight everything you’re feeling without stopping to examine if it might be just what you need. What we both need to put all this nonsense in perspective.”
I swallow. “Fuck you.”
His mouth curves against my hair in a slow, knowing smile.
“There’s the spirit,” he replies lightly, but his voice is rough as sandpaper. “But I think I prefer, fuck me, please, Gio.”
I twist in his arms until I’m half on my back, half trapped against his side, our bound wrists stretched awkwardly between us, my breath coming shallow and fast.
His gaze drops to my mouth. Then my throat.
Then my pebble-tipped breasts beneath his black T-shirt. Then back to my eyes. The look there makes my toes curl in helpless anticipation.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
“No, cara mia, we both know you don’t. No matter how much you try to. Your delightful body point-blank refuses, and I’m guessing your mind is very exercised with the amount of resistance you’re attempting to exert?”
“Is this a joke to you?”
“After everything I’ve told you, what do you think, my clever mugghieri?”
I’m struggling for a rebuttal that simply refuses to come when he bends, slowly, inexorably, displaying my utter lack of willpower to stop him, and he kisses me.
It starts as a single butterfly-soft brush of his lips over mine. And then it immediately turns feral.
His fingers tunnel into my hair and his mouth slants over mine, a man reclaiming something he never accepted losing.
My lips part with a sound I don’t recognise as mine, and suddenly he’s everywhere, his mouth devouring mine, his tongue stroking deep, his teeth catching my lower lip in a way that makes my whole body arch into him without permission.
My bound hand clenches helplessly between us as his free hand slides up my thigh, under the hem of the T-shirt, palm hot, fingers sure and ruthless in their precision.
“Oh God,” I gasp, the words breaking loose from my throat.
He swallows the sound.
“You see how futile this is for you? You ran,” he murmurs against my mouth. “And you still come undone for me like this.”
“Fuck you,” I pant again, because I don’t have anything else that isn’t a moan.
His answer to that is to use his clever fingers, slide them between my thighs to boldly cup my heated centre in a way that leaves very little room for argument.
Because I’m already soaked.
Already trembling.
All but ruined.
His jaw tightens visibly, and his eyes darken to savage, hungry pools I want to dive headfirst into. “Madonna mia,” he mutters. “You’re killing me.”
His thumb strokes my core once, grunts when I shudder wildly. Then again.
Slow and cruel. Then fast…faster…his nostrils flaring as the scent of my arousal rises to engulf us both, shaming me into clenching my fingers into one shoulder.
“God…Gio!”
With one, two…three expert strums of my engorged clit, I shatter.
My cry breaks loose into his mouth as my back arches violently, my body convulsing helplessly against his hand, my climax tearing through me so hard my vision whites out.
He doesn’t stop touching me until I’m shaking, until I’m gasping and frantically attempting to catch my breath as my body sags bonelessly against his chest.
Only then does he still, breathing just as hard as I am, drag his fingers from my sopping centre, and his eyes fused to mine, brings his fingers to his lips.
My jaw sags in shock and some weirdly electric thrill as I watch Giovanni lick my release off his fingers, a guttural groan shaking from his torso as he brazenly tastes my essence. As his very rigid cock surges urgently against my stomach.
I’m not sure whether I’m more disappointed or vastly impressed by his willpower when he doesn’t move to impale me with his steel shaft, doesn’t simply take what he so obviously wants.
Consummate this marriage that’s been failing almost since the second we said I do.
Instead, he tucks wild strands of hair behind my ear, kisses my forehead, then my cheek.
Then my mouth again, slow this time, devastatingly tender.
“We will consummate our marriage,” he says quietly, as if he’s privy to every single thought whirling in my head. “In our marriage bed. As we should’ve done on our wedding night.”
My eyes flutter open, and my heart begins to pound again, and no, I’m not at all willing to admit it’s because he’s just announced he hasn’t given up.
“Call me traditional if you wish.”
A weak laugh escapes me. “You’re a sadist.”
“Yes,” he agrees easily. “But I’m also your husband.”
I have no argument left.
A knock sounds at the door and I jolt violently. “Oh my God, untie me,” I hiss.
“No.”
“Giovanni.”
The door opens at his low-voiced prompt and Caterina enters, wheeling in a trolley heavy with silver domes, fresh flowers, and the scent of coffee so rich it makes my stomach turn.
My face goes up in flames.
“Good morning,” she says warmly, as though nothing about this situation is remotely unhinged.
I refuse to look at her.
Giovanni doesn’t even pretend this is awkward.
“Breakfast, cara,” he murmurs.
We eat in bed. Still bound together. I want to dissolve into the mattress and never re-emerge.
Finally, when half of the mouthwatering feast has been polished off, he sets down his coffee cup with quiet finality. “It’s time.”
My stomach drops.
Two hours later, I’m strapped into a private jet seat beside him, wrists mercifully free now, my body sore in places I refuse to catalogue too closely.