Chapter Eight
IT WAS THE library at Fellcrop all over again, where Jade teetered between being certain there would be regrets later and yearning to give in to her own desires.
Desire won. Her feet moved as though she was drawn by a magnet. A rope. A golden chain that cast a spell, pulling her inexorably.
When she arrived before him, she saw his pupils had expanded in atavistic excitement. A thrill shot into her loins and exploded heat throughout her body.
To hide how instantly he affected her, she turned her back on him, gathered her hair and exposed the zip at her spine.
He slowly released it, then, as she dropped her hair, he closed his fist in the mass of curls, gripping near her scalp, and drew her head back.
His other arm caught her around the waist, pulling her shoulder into the wall of his chest. The column of his hard flesh pressed the side of her butt cheek.
It wasn’t violent, but happened so fast, she gasped, eyes rolling to look up into his glittering gaze.
“Hurt?”
“No.” Not if she didn’t move, but her body was trembling. Her hands clutched at his arm in instinctual wariness.
“What you need to know, bella, is that you are always safe when you let me take control. Don’t be afraid of it.
Don’t be afraid of me.” The hand at her waist climbed to her throat.
He traced one fingertip along the pulse there, making it thump so hard she felt it in her nipples and between her thighs.
“I only want to give you what you want.” His touch strayed to the loosened bodice, dipping beneath the edge to tickle across the tops of her breasts, making them grow achingly heavy.
“Do exactly as I say and I will give you everything you want.”
His gaze swept across her upturned face and down to her chest, admiring and hungry. Seductive.
“Are you wearing a bra? Take your dress down. Let me see.”
Her hands flailed jerkily a moment as she warred between inner dictates. Between doing as she was told and clinging to what little agency she had.
“I will never hurt you, tesoro,” he chided softly. “All you have to say is ‘no.’”
“Then what? We won’t…” The thought of not making love with him filled her with such a sense of loss, her eyes stung.
“Ah, gioia mia.” He lightly pinched her bottom lip where she had unconsciously pouted in disappointment. “Can you not see that fighting me is fighting yourself? We want the same thing. For you to give yourself to me.”
Her scalp tingled. She swallowed, so frightened of trusting in anyone, it made her throat ache. But she wanted his touch. She wanted pleasure. She wanted him.
Nervous now, she brought her hands up and pushed the structure of her bodice off her breasts, revealing the naked globes.
“Bellissima,” he breathed. His hand left her throat and slid to gather the weight of one. “Look how beautiful you are.”
“I can’t,” she said in a shaky attempt at a joke and a bid for freedom, tugging slightly at his grip in her hair.
“No, you cannot, can you?” He didn’t release her hair, but his grip changed to support her head while his splayed fingers remained tangled in the tresses. There was no strain, only the painful sense of exposure as his gaze continued to caress her breasts.
“Kiss me,” she urged, then watched satisfaction dig into the corners of his mouth.
Very lazily, his gaze came back to hers. “Soon. When you stop fighting to take control. Show me how you like to be touched. Are your nipples sensitive?”
He pressed a fingertip to one and it was enough to make her catch her breath.
With a crooning noise, he circled it, lips nuzzling her temple and cheekbone.
“I will be very careful when I suck them,” he promised, voice like velvet. The flick of his tongue tagged her ear and fire raced into that point so quickly, he might as well have painted a line down to her nipple with a lick.
“Luca,” she groaned, and reached for his shoulders, trying to turn herself into him.
“Be still, cara.” His arms tightened on her, keeping her half turned away from him.
He released her hair only to turn her another degree away from him while holding her in place with that possessive hand on her breast. “So impatient. I think about you all the time, you know. All the ways I wished I’d touched you that night.
Settle yourself to the idea I’m going to fulfill my fantasies tonight. ”
His warm hand moved into the back of her gown, loosening it away from her waist as he drew circles on her sensitive lower back and shaped her rib cage.
When pleasure was fluttering through her and she was shivering in excitement, he swept her hair to the front of her shoulder, exposing the top of her spine.
With her nipple caught in the vee of his fingers, he bent to set damp, lingering kisses against her nape and shoulders and the expanse of her back.
His free hand continued its exploration of her waist and hips, making her wriggle and catch her breath in response.
She pressed closer, clutching his arm and turning her face toward his shoulder, feeling as though she was falling.
Losing herself. But he was so strong, she also felt safe.
She opened her mouth on his upper arm, finding the skin at the edge of his T-shirt sleeve and tasting.
Then she arched her back, inviting his touch on her buttocks.
In a move as smooth as when they’d been dancing, he pressed her tailbone to straighten her and released her breast to cup her neck.
Now he kissed her. He angled his mouth over hers and consumed her.
Licked and sucked at her top and bottom lips in turn.
He plunged his tongue in a blatant foreshadowing of the thrusts his body would deliver and she moaned in acquiescence. In eagerness to be ravished.
In fact, she dug her nails through the cotton of his T-shirt and tried to draw him toward the bed. To insist he take her there.
His wide hands splayed on either side of her head as he lifted his mouth from hers.
“Not yet, tesoro. Lift your skirt.”
Her heart lurched at how collected he seemed. Her inner bricks tried to scramble themselves into place, but they were too widely strewn. Too heavy.
She only wanted this, the light kiss on her chin and his caress against her taut nipple, strumming every nerve ending in her body with one negligent touch.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked on a sob of helplessness.
“It is up to you if you obey, dolce mia.” The backs of his fingers slid along her cheek and tucked under her jaw. “I can lie down on the bed and you can take whatever you need from me if that’s what you really want. I would enjoy that, too. Or you can trust me.”
Her chin was the only place he was touching her now.
She felt as though that tiny contact was all that held her up.
Her heart pounded so hard, it was a rushing thud in her ears.
Her skin was too tight, her throat filled with a ball of need.
She was disheveled and so blatantly aroused, she thought she would die of it.
He would be disappointed in her if she didn’t let him lead. Worse, she would be disappointed in herself. The fighter inside her was asking, Why? Why must it always be on me?
So she did it. She gathered the silk of her skirt, revealing the bikini-cut knickers in coral pink that sat across her hips.
The rumbled noise in his chest was distant thunder and masculine gratification. He drew a line over the damp silk, making her mons burn with need. Then he eased the knickers down to cut across the tops of her thighs, revealing her swollen sex and her red-gold thatch.
“Touch yourself.” His voice was so gritty it rasped her ears. “Show me what you like.”
It was too flagrant a thing to ask of her, but he was tenting his joggers and she was barely staying upright, she was so lost to need.
She pinned her skirt to her waist with one arm, needing the relief of running her touch into her slick cleft and rolling her fingertip against the knot of nerves that was so taut and swollen, she thought she would shatter under the first gliding caress.
He watched, his face so hard, his gaze so intent, she nearly broke from that alone.
When her eyes fluttered and her breath hitched and she quickened her caress, he caught her hand.
She snapped her eyes open, letting out a whimper of loss as he forced her hand to his mouth to suck her finger. At the same time, his other hand took possession of her mound, offering a brief clench that shot fireworks through her before he took up the same slow rhythm between her thighs.
Except he didn’t tarry at the top of her sex. He slid his touch to penetrate the soaked channel that yearned for the thrust of his thickness. She remembered, oh she remembered how well he was built.
“Luca,” she groaned, and brought her hands to his waistband, stymied by the hidden drawstring. She caressed him through the soft jersey fabric. “Please.”
“You don’t have to beg, bella.” He was being very thorough, delicately parting the petals of her sex, offering that brief claiming before retreating to tease the spot that stole every thought from her head. “I will give you what you need. Be still and accept it.”
She didn’t know how, but she fisted her hands against his shoulders and closed her eyes against his narrowed, watchful gaze and succumbed to his unhurried, skillful touch. It became all that she knew, that easy, inciting caress.
She was in the palm of his hand and ceased to care. Nothing mattered except the way he was touching her. A distant voice warned that he was toying with her, that he would turn this against her eventually. Her weakness would always become someone else’s strength.
But his touch reached a fraction deeper inside her, brushing a spot that made her arch and clasp at him in mindless need.
He said something in Sicilian and continued stroking until she arrived at the pinnacle and shook. Shattered. Everything in her broke. She cried out, falling, but she was held tight by the arm that caught her, holding her upright against the searing, tensile strength of his body.