Chapter 9 #3
I look up to find his eyes sharpening. He sets his glass on my counter. "There is no clause thirteen."
I smile. "Exactly." I set the contract down. "There's nothing in here about what happens if one of us catches feelings."
The kitchen goes quiet.
"Feelings," he repeats.
"Yes, Massimo. Feelings. Emotions. The inconvenient human experience of wanting someone for reasons that have nothing to do with clause four and everything to do with the fact that you're looking at me right now like you want to eat me alive and I'm standing here letting you because my self-preservation instinct has apparently gone on vacation. "
His jaw tightens. His hands flex against my countertop, the tendons in his forearms standing taut. He doesn't move but the energy in the room shifts, the air between us thickening with heat until I can feel it against my bare arms.
"If I wanted to eat you alive, tesoro, you'd know." A wicked flicker of unholy lust shines in his eyes. "You'd be on this counter."
I stand a little straighter and run my eyes up and down his body, stopping on the bulge in his pants. "Touché and it seems I'm not wrong?"
My thighs clench. Pulses of heat flood my system.
"That sounds like a threat, Mr. Santoro."
"It's a promise." He straightens, picks up the pen from inside the folio, and holds it out to me across the counter. "Sign the contract, Sloane."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I walk out that door. You go back to your couch and wait for Lorenzo Ferraro to come collect you." His voice drops to a dangerous husk. "Or you sign. And you find out exactly how broad clause four really is."
I pick up the pen. His fingers brush mine during the transfer, rough calluses against my fingertips, and the contact sends electricity straight to my heating core.
I’m not saying I’m thinking with my pussy, but she’s definitely got stock in what I am about to do.
But so does my heart and a ton of common sense.
"You should know," I say, clicking the pen, "that I'm a terrible cook, I steal the covers, and I talk in my sleep."
"I know."
"You know I talk in my sleep?"
"I know you steal the covers." His eyes burn. "You stole mine the first night. Or you pulled them off me to watch me sleep. Either way I woke to find myself uncovered and alone."
The memory of our night floods through me, hot and sharp. He’s right. I pulled them low so I could appreciate all the glorious deliciousness of his full, naked body. I swallow hard and put the pen to the paper.
"One more thing."
"Name it."
"The real clause thirteen." I look up at him. "No lying. Not to me. Not about the danger, not about Lorenzo, not about anything. If I'm signing my body over to you, I need to know you'll give me the one thing no man in my life has ever given me."
"Which is?"
"The truth. Even when it's ugly. Especially when it's ugly."
Something moves across his face. A fracture in the mask. For one second I see the man underneath, the one who held my face in both hands and told me to tell him if anything hurt, and my chest aches with what I'm about to do.
"You have my word," he says. And he means it. I can see he means it in the way his eyes hold mine without flinching and the way his breath catches when I uncap the pen, but before I can sign anything he takes it from me.
He writes Clause thirteen out and places his promise on paper.
I sign my name on the dotted line. Sloane Whitmore. The ink gleams wet on the cream-colored paper, dark against the pale surface.
I pass the paper over to him and he places his name on the other dotted line.
He puts the pen down and turns toward me.
Every clause in that contract becomes irrelevant because the only terms that matter now are written in the way his hands cup my face and tilt my mouth to his.
His palms are warm against my jaw, his thumbs resting beneath my ears, and when his lips meet mine the taste of whiskey and want floods my mouth.
"Tesoro," he murmurs against my lips, "you should have added a clause about what happens when I make you scream."
His hands grip my waist and lift me onto the counter before I can take my next breath.
The marble is cool against the backs of my thighs and the edge presses into my skin as he eases me back. He moves my gown up in one smooth push, the fabric easily obeying his will.
Exposed, he steps between my knees. The heat of his body between my bare legs contrasts with the cold counter beneath me and every nerve ending fires at once.
My nipples drag against the fine material of his shirt, a delicious combination of friction and heat.
"Massimo," I say breathlessly. "I don't scream."
He looks down at me spread across my kitchen counter, my hair fanning over the countertop, the signed contract crumpling beneath my shoulder blade.
His eyes go dark. "You will."
He kneels on my hardwood floor. His hands grip my thighs, fingers pressing into the soft flesh hard enough to leave marks, and he pulls me to the edge of the counter, spreading me open.
He removes the warm silk of my panties in one pull and this time I know I hear a hungry growl of appreciation.
His stubble scrapes against my inner thighs, rough and electric, and his breath hits me first, warm and close, and then his mouth finds me.
The first stroke of his tongue is so deliberate, so precise, that my back arches and my hands slam down on the counter. My elbow catches the whiskey glass and it rolls off the edge and shatters on the floor, glass and amber scattering across the hardwood, and neither of us stops.
His tongue works me slow and thorough, reading every sound I make, adjusting when my hips buck, building the pressure in tight, devastating circles that have my thighs shaking against his shoulders.
My fingers drive into his hair and grip hard, the dark strands thick between my fingers, and I feel him groan against me, the vibration rolling through my core.
His hands pin my hips to the counter and he holds me still while his mouth takes everything, his lips and tongue and the scrape of his beard working me until the pleasure coils so tight my vision blurs and my toes curl and I can't feel the counter beneath me anymore.
He knows exactly how to make my core clench.
"Oh God." My voice breaks and my heels dig into his back and the pleasure winds tighter and tighter. "Massimo, I can't—"
I'm spread wide around him, and he takes full advantage. He pushes in and out, stretching, teasing and finger fucking me as he sucks on my clit.
"You can," he murmurs against me, the vibration of his voice running through my clit.
He rolls my clit with just the right pressure and speed to have hot liquid spilling from my core.
I shatter. My mouth opens and the sound that tears out of me fills my apartment, raw and loud and completely involuntary, bouncing off the crown molding and the old plaster walls.
My body convulses against his mouth, my thighs clamping around his head, my fingers yanking his hair so hard it must hurt, and he doesn't stop until the last wave rolls through me and I'm left trembling on my counter with the signed contract crumpled under my shoulder blade and ink smudged across my forearm where my skin pressed into the wet signature.
He rises from his knees. Presses his forehead against my exposed midriff. His breathing is ragged, his lips wet and swollen. The whiskey of his eyes darkens with lust. I can taste myself on him when he pulls me to sit and presses his lips to mine.
"Mm-mm. The sound of your scream, tesoro, was as sweet as your juices," he groans hungrily against my mouth. And then the smug bastard smiles.
I can't help it. I laugh. It comes out breathless and wrecked and edged with something that might be tears. "Clause fourteen. The screaming clause. We're adding it."
He lifts me off the counter, wraps my legs around his waist, and carries me down the hallway to my bedroom. My arms circle his neck and I bury my face against his throat, breathing in cologne and the warm scent of his skin.
He lays me down on my white linens and follows me down, his body covering mine, his weight pressing me into the mattress.
His mouth finds mine and he kisses me slow and deep, and I taste myself on his lips.
His hand cradles my jaw and his thumb strokes my cheekbone and he pulls back just far enough to look at me, his face inches from mine, close enough that I can count the flecks of gold in his brown eyes and see the tiny scar at the corner of his left eyebrow.
"Sloane Whitmore." He says my whole name, quiet, like he's trying it on for size. A hand moves up my body until he’s cupping my face and his touch feels reverent. "I should have paid attention sooner."
My heart breaks open. "You're paying attention now."
He holds my gaze. Nods once. Pulls me into his chest and wraps both arms around me so tight I feel his heartbeat in time with mine.
I just signed myself over to a man who doesn't know I chose him long before he chose me. He thinks this started with a wrong number on my birthday. He doesn't know it started eleven years ago.
Someday I'll tell him.
Not tonight.
Tonight I close my eyes and let myself be held by the only man whose hands I trust and pretend, for a few perfect hours, that this contract is real and I get to keep him forever.