Chapter Eight
FROM THE MOMENT she slipped into the back of his limousine, her nerves were stretched on tenterhooks, her insides turning to electric shocks and jelly. She didn’t even realise she was fidgeting with her fingers until he reached out and put his hand over hers.
‘There is no need to be nervous.’
She turned to face him, blinking, shaking her head.
She wasn’t nervous. That was a far too one-dimensional way to describe what she was feeling.
It was an explosion of noise and feeling, an immersion of excitement, anxiety, adrenaline, disbelief and regret.
What if this was a mistake? What if sleeping with him made everything complicated, or was just a total let-down? What if…what if…what if…?
‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want,’ he added.
She shook her head again. ‘It’s not that.’ And it wasn’t. The moment he said those words, every cell in her body fought against them, rebelling against the idea of him removing the possibility of this. ‘I want to do it. I just want it to be over.’
His lips quirked in an expression of cynicism. ‘That is not something I’ve ever heard.’
She flushed to the roots of her scalp, mortified by the gauche comment. ‘You know what I mean. I just don’t want to be a virgin any more. I’m ready to do this, and be…me, on the other side.’
‘You’ll be the same person.’
‘Yes, and no.’
He reached over then, brushing his thumb over her cheek, eyes hooked to hers. ‘Have you never been tempted, Contessina, by a man’s touch?’
‘I told you,’ she said, voice wobbly. ‘I just didn’t have the time for dating.’
His expression shifted infinitesimally. ‘That’s not what I asked.’
Her brow furrowed.
‘Have you never looked at a man and wanted more? Have you never felt that spark of heat that is your body’s way of telling you there’s something more here? That it should be explored and enjoyed?’
Her mouth went dry at the sensual question, at the heat he so easily invoked. ‘Sex has been the last thing on my mind.’ Her words sounded defensive, cold, even, when she was anything but.
‘And you are sure you would not rather wait, until you meet someone who can offer you something other than this?’
She frowned. ‘I don’t want to wait. This is just sex.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But is that really what you want?’
‘Are you trying to get me to change my mind?’
‘I’m letting you know it’s okay if you do.’
‘I’m fully aware of that, Massimiliano. This is my choice; it’s what I want.’
He sat back in his seat, his eyes focused on the back of the seat in front. ‘Okay,’ he said, tone of his voice giving little away. ‘If you are sure, then so be it.’
She was not in the headspace to take in the details of his luxurious penthouse, so she was glad he didn’t give her a full tour.
There would be time to familiarise herself with her temporary new home later.
Time to absorb the space this man lived in.
For now, she was practically trembling from head to toe with anticipation.
‘So,’ she said, standing in the middle of an enormous living room, with white leather sofas, polished timber floors and a fireplace suspended from the ceiling, hanging right in the centre of the sofas.
The afternoon light sliced through the space with a golden intensity, making it look like a film set, rather than a home. ‘Where’s your bedroom?’
His brows shot up and his smile was slow to unfurl. Except it wasn’t really a smile so much as a wolfish grin that made her shiver with something better than anticipation: darkness. Warning. A feeling that she was in way over her head and loved that fact.
‘You are impatient.’
‘You know why.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured, walking across the room to the bar and pouring two measures of Scotch—one significantly smaller than the other.
‘You want it to be over,’ he said with a hint of mockery.
He carried the cut-crystal glasses across with him, until they were standing toe to toe, then handed the smaller portion to her.
She took it on autopilot, shivering when their hands brushed for even a moment.
‘You asked me to be your first lover,’ he said, swirling his drink in the glass a little, obsidian gaze holding hers.
‘For this to happen, you have to accept that it will be my way. Do you trust me?’
Something flared in the centre of her chest. Adrenaline and excitement. ‘I barely know you,’ she pointed out, glad she’d muted her first reaction of agreement. Because in some weird way, she did trust him. How could that be, when they’d only just met?
‘Is that a no?’ he pushed.
She lifted her drink to her lips, breathed in the fragrance then pulled a face. It was so strong and masculine. ‘Fine, I trust you. I trust you to do what you said, and not to hurt me.’
His eyes flared. ‘Only, I’m not going to do what I said.’
Something stammered in her chest and her hand gripped the glass tighter. ‘What? You can’t back out. I married you on the basis—’
And then his finger was pressing to her lips, to silence her at first. It worked. She clamped them together, staring up at him, breath jammed in her throat.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you tonight.’
Her mouth parted as she processed that. ‘But we—’
His finger began to trace the outline of her lips, so goosebumps lifted over her entire body. ‘You have no experience with men.’
She was only capable of making a garbled sound of agreement.
‘No experience with sex.’
She closed her eyes as his finger stopped tracing and the tip of it pressed against the middle of her mouth, breaching the interior and feeling the moistness of her inner lip. Her heart turned over in her chest and her stomach tightened almost painfully.
‘The first thing you need to know is that there’s so much more to sex than just sex.’
‘That makes no sense,’ she groaned as he slid his finger further into her mouth, brushing it along her tongue before withdrawing it, so when she blinked up at him and their eyes met, she felt a surge of something powerful and raw.
‘It will.’ His smile was arrogant confidence personified.
‘The second thing you need to know is that you must use your voice. If you are in pain, if I do something you do not like, or are not comfortable with, you need only say and I will stop. Communication is important, okay?’
She nodded, barely conscious of what she was saying.
‘We’ll start slow.’
‘No,’ she whispered, tormented by the strength of feelings that were rioting inside her as, for the first time in her life, waves of sensuality threatened to devour her. ‘Not slow.’
‘Slow,’ he said, leaning forward then and taking her earlobe in his mouth, the combination of his lips and warm breath sending her blood pressure skyrocketing, ‘can be very satisfying, believe me.’ He pulled back to look at her, then lifted his Scotch and drained it in one motion, before moving away to place his glass on a pale timber coffee table.
Her eyes followed the gesture, her body barely able to support its own weight. Which it didn’t need to, because he was back a moment later, eyes appraising her.
His hands moved slowly, to the soft silk of her dress, catching it at her hips and lifting it incrementally, so with each shift her skin seemed to catch fire. By the time he had it lifted to reveal her delicate lace thong and naked midriff, she was almost panting with a need to be completely naked.
She wondered if he realised how torturous it was, for him to be moving so slowly. The fabric rustled over her breasts, her nipples tingled in a way she had never known, and then, finally, he glided the dress over her head and dropped it to the floor.
She lifted the Scotch glass to her lips again, needing a burst of grounding reality, and took a single taste.
It hit the back of her throat and then flamed all the way down, but she didn’t hate it.
If anything, it added yet another dimension to this—standing naked in the middle of a room with a man she’d known for only a week, and had just married.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked, eyes raking her face then dropping lower to her breasts with unmistakably possessive heat.
She nodded, not even sure what she was agreeing to now, knowing only that she would do whatever he asked of her in that moment, if it meant being able to revel in the spark that was bursting between them.
With that single shift of her head, though, he closed the distance between them, his hand sliding into the lace of her thong, so she almost jumped out of her skin when his touch connected with her sex. His eyes held hers. Was that mockery she saw in their depths? Amusement?
She glanced away, embarrassed.
His other hand gripped her chin, drawing her gaze back to his. ‘Do not hide from me. Sex is raw and honest—it has to be. Don’t resist that.’
Her breath burned in her lungs with each inhalation.
His finger shifted, and began to move, quickly, finding her most sensitive cluster of nerves and brushing it until she was on the brink of something mind-blowingly intense.
Then, before she could surrender to it entirely, his fingers shifted again, this time sliding inside her moist core, breaching a space no man had ever touched, so she cried out at the feeling, the invasion, the welcome presence.
He was not gentle, and she was glad. The last thing she wanted was to be treated with kid gloves.
Besides, he’d told her he would stop if she asked him to—and no way was she going to do that.
Right when she felt as if her world were imploding all over again, he moved both hands to her exposed bottom and massaged her cheeks, fingers pressing hard into her flesh as his mouth dropped to her breast and sucked a nipple deep inside, so the assault on her senses was more overwhelming than she expected.
Warm heat was pooling between her legs, the pressure of pleasure almost overtaking her.