Chapter Three #2
A tremor shuddered right through him. How he craved those nails on skin.
Digging in. They could flay him alive for all he cared.
The physical pain making him forget the emotional pain of the last months when everything in his life had changed.
It was why he’d come to Venice, to lose himself.
To escape. What a better way than with a beautiful woman?
He’d found one. He’d found her.
Or had she found him?
He shook off the thoughts. They went nowhere. All he wanted was to immerse himself in her lush, warm body. The feel of her on his fingers as she came, hot and slick. That was how she’d feel when he entered her, heavenly. Mind-numbing.
Perfection.
‘I need you naked now,’ he said, his voice rough and unrecognisable.
Rocco reluctantly stood from the bed. His arousal straining against the fine fabric of his trousers.
He held out his hand and Lily placed hers in it as he helped her up.
Rocco turned her around. Easing the bodice from her shoulders, he dropped it to the floor, undoing the button and ties at the back of her voluminous skirt as it fell from her body.
Masses of magnificent fabric deflated around her.
He stroked his fingertips over the smooth pale skin of her shoulders.
Goosebumps teased at his fingertips. Her auburn hair cascaded down her back.
The white satin corset cinched in her waist. She was every fantasy Rocco hadn’t known he’d had, brought to life.
He’d spent his thirty-two years preferring savoury things.
Now all he craved was sweet. Lily was that.
She may have tried to hide it, but there was a kind of innocence about her.
Not virginity. She was a woman who clearly knew what she wanted, meaning she’d had some experience.
It was a sense that she’d been untouched by the cynicism of the world.
It had Rocco wanting to undo her slowly, when his whole existence to date had been about hard and fast. Make her gasp once more. Sigh. Cry out his name again and again.
A heavy dullness settled in his chest. Lily would never know his real name. That was not where this evening was leading. Tomorrow would come and they’d both walk away. Tonight, he needed to start doing something rather than fantasising about impossibilities.
She was close to naked in front of him. In exquisite underwear which would inflame most men’s fantasies. Garter straps hung loose, teasing the beautiful round curves of her smooth, creamy backside.
Rocco reached out, sweeping her glorious mane of hair over her shoulder. Traced his fingers gently down the back of her spine. She shivered, and he kissed the nape of her neck. Lily moaned.
‘So perfect. So responsive,’ he said.
‘It’s easy when your hands and lips are magic.’
A surge of heat ignited in his belly. ‘Wait till you experience the rest of me.’
‘Ego. I like it.’ She laughed, as soft and musical as a shower of rain on a roof. ‘You’d better get started with “the rest of you”.’
‘Patience is a virtue.’
She cast a seductive glance over her shoulder.
‘I’m not feeling very virtuous.’
Those words shot through him in an arrow of lust. Her voice was low and husky, temptation incarnate. Eve with the apple dangling within reach. The cure for everything that ailed him.
Muse. The word surged through his consciousness again.
This time, it clung. In these heated moments, what was wrong with the fantasy that he’d found what he’d never truly been looking for, and never believed in?
His inspiration in all things? It was an alluring daydream.
One he could allow himself right now, before morning broke and reality intruded.
Tonight was all about the forgetting.
‘Let’s see what I can do to enable that lack of virtue,’ he said as he pulled the bow of her corset. Tugging at the laces to loosen them.
‘Keen, I see,’ she said. A smile sounded in her voice.
‘An enthusiastic proponent. You’re undone.’
‘Not yet I’m not.’
‘Then turn and let me finish the job.’
She turned on the spot, the corset now slumped a little on her body. He reached out and began to unclip the corset hooks. Lily’s eyes were hooded as she watched his fingers work them, one after the other till the corset fell free to the floor.
She stood there now, gloriously naked. Her breasts a perfect handful tipped with dusky pink nipples.
If he’d had to describe her, she embodied the definition of English rose.
Milky skin, long, silken hair. Rainwater blue eyes.
A vision standing in the remains of her clothes like Venus rising from the clamshell.
‘I seem to be at a disadvantage,’ she said. ‘I’m naked yet you’re overdressed.’
‘You have all the advantages, Lily.’
He kicked out of his shoes. Shrugged out of his waistcoat. Pulled off his shirt. His trousers and underwear came next till he was blissfully naked. Relieved to no longer be constrained by the tightness of his clothes. The air of the room cool against his skin.
Lily’s eyes dropped to his groin. Widened. He didn’t think that he could have become any harder yet the look on her face, the way she raked her bottom lip with her teeth, made him ache.
‘I think I’m going to enjoy the rest of you.’
He grinned. ‘I intend making it my night’s mission to ensure you do.’
‘And I don’t even know your name.’
She looked up at him, the slightest hint of uncertainty on her face. The merest frown between her eyes. He’d had many pleasures in his life although never anything anonymous like this. What would it matter if he said, Call me Rocco …?
No.
‘It’s about pleasure for the night. No attachments or consequences. Only enjoyment and desire.’
‘Forgetting,’ she said.
‘Sì.’
Her lips curved into an alluring smile. ‘Then make love to me.’