Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynne Graham

She tested the give of his muscle with her teeth, and an animalistic grunt escaped his mouth when she gently bit his pectorals. She busied her hands with, first his belt, and then the clasp of his trousers. And still she was aware that he was letting her. His control, she had no doubt, was on a short leash tonight. Almost at the end. But then, she had given him her surrender, unconditional surrender, and she had known from the first moment she’d met him, that Vincenzo would gift her with the entire universe in return for that surrender. She shivered now, even as his warm skin somehow diffused its heat into her skin.

  All thoughts fled her brain when she pushed his trousers off his hips and instinctively reached for the hardness that she wanted. Again, that guttural grunt, that sharp hiss of an inhale, when she touched the thick length of him.

  Steel coated in velvet, he lengthened and hardened further even as she wrapped her fingers around him. As a man, he was just the same, she realized. Smooth words, gorgeous smile, and at the core of him, he was unshakable in his resolve, in his quest toward revenge.

  If destruction was what he wanted, then she would give it to him.

  She turned her fingers into a fist and moved it up and down that hard length, as she’d done in those first few days when they’d been busy discovering each other’s bodies like explorers on some new land. But there had been no challenge between them then.

  Only an intrinsic need for each to discover what gave the other the most pleasure. She rubbed the soft head with her thumb in movements that mimicked the gentle torture he’d rained over her. Head thrown back, eyes closed, that lean, hard chest breathing deep, he groaned out loud.

  But she wanted even more. She was determined to wrest the last of his control from him. Until he too stood in the wake of this thing between them, stripped and vulnerable.

  “Tell me your deepest fantasy,” she coaxed, the very thought of that steely length inside her making her sex ache with want.

  “This,” he said, his face bathed in moonlight from the French windows. He clasped her jaw, his thumb tracing her lower lip. His other hand tightened in her hair, tugging, raising her face up. “You…like this. All mine.”

  “Me…doing what?” she demanded, scooting to the edge of the bed. She pulled her legs up and under her, and propped herself up on her elbows, bringing her face to the height of that hard evidence of his arousal. Leaning down, she blew on it.

  He tensed. “Do it,” he whispered after what felt like an eternity.

  “Do what?” she threw back, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “Ask me nicely.”

  “Take me in your mouth now,” he commanded, but there was a desperation to it.

  Falling onto her knees, she obeyed.

  Another loud groan ripped through the air around them. Digging her nails into his hard thighs for purchase, Alex licked the entire length of him, up and down. A filthy curse came next, filling her with power and arousal, a cocktail that vibrated through her.

  Then she took him in her mouth and his fingers plunged into her hair, giving her instructions in a hoarse voice that rumbled right through her.

  She had no idea how long he gave her free rein of his body, but she loved having him like this. Had no sense of time or the world around them as she played with the evidence of what she did to him. For a few minutes, or it could have been hours, he was putty in her hands.

  Every thrust and jerk of his hips as she licked the length of him with her hands at the base, every curse gritted out through a tense jaw, every tug of his fingers in her hair urging her to go faster and harder, was music to Alex’s ears.

  “Enough, bella!” he declared, and within moments, Alex was lying back on the bed, her dress rucked up to her hips, and Vincenzo eyeing her as if he meant to consume her.

  With her golden-brown hair spread out on pristine white sheets, her eyes glittering in her flushed face, Alessandra was the most beautiful thing Vincenzo had ever seen.

  Her bare breasts with those plump brown nipples, the taut flat belly with the white bridal dress rucked up to her waist, and the long, toned legs, the strip of hair covering the wet warmth he desperately wanted to bury himself in… And that mouth, that gloriously pink, pouty mouth that had licked and stroked him right to the edge of heaven…

  If she’d asked him for something tonight, he wouldn’t deny her. Yet even that warning thought couldn’t clear the fog of desire claiming his senses.

  But nothing could compare to the expression in her eyes as she looked at him now. As if he were her safe harbor in the midst of a storm. As if he were the only thing that could save her. As if he were as necessary to her as air.

  He stepped out of his trousers and filled his hands with her butt cheeks and pulled her close. A light coating of sweat shone on her body. He ran his hands from the sleekly soft skin of her inner thighs to the toned muscle of her midriff, up, up, to the perfect globes of her breasts. Followed that with his mouth, licking and nipping as he went.

  Every time, he pulled the skin between his teeth, she jerked and thrust up with her hips. And he got a little harder. When he finally reached her mouth, he thrust his tongue into hers and she clung to him, panting, sobbing.

  And then he began the journey back down, drinking in the silky softness of every inch of her. He pinched the plump nipples between his fingers and tugged, just as he knew she liked.

  She bowed off the bed, her body arcing like she’d been hit by lightning. He bent his head and flicked his tongue over one tight bud and teased her. Her hips, her breasts, everything jerked up toward him as if she wanted to burrow into his skin and remain there. He wanted to tell her that she was already there. That she had gotten under the skin of a man whom nothing had ever touched before.

  That he didn’t know how to dislodge her. That already he was seeing things differently, seeing a future for himself that jarred violently with his present path.

  “Please… Vincenzo, please. I need your mouth there,” she said, not in supplication though. But with demand, with fierce need. He had loved that about her. She demanded pleasure as fiercely as she gave it. She demanded it as if it were her due.

  “With pleasure, cara mia,” he said, and closed his lips over her sensitive nipples.

  Tremors took over her entire body. Holding her lower body tight against his own, he alternated between both breasts, kissing and licking, sucking and blowing air on the wet tips, until they were swollen and glistening in the moonlight. Slowly, he brought her down to the bed and tilted her hips up toward him.

  “Keep your eyes open, bella,” he instructed, wanting her to see what she did to him.

  He rubbed himself in her wetness, the erotic glide sending long moans out of their mouths. A shudder racked his entire body when he entered her in a deep thrust that took him home. Alessandra cried out and he stilled inside her, holding her to him.

  “Damn it! Did I hurt you—”

  “No.” Her lithe body stretched under him, as if she wanted to feel him everywhere. “I just…” She locked those beautiful eyes on him, and Vincenzo knew this was the home he’d been chasing for most of his life. “I just forgot how…achy this feels. How thoroughly you fill me up. How well you know what I like.”

  And then she smiled and raised her hips in an experimental thrust and an arrow of pleasure shot up the base of his spine. But it wasn’t just pleasure as he started moving in short, fast thrusts. He had no words for what it felt like when her gaze moved over him, her fingers tracing each feature.

  It had felt like home that first time too. It had felt like nothing he’d ever known before. Excitement and arousal, pleasure and warmth, satisfaction and peace—all the things he’d never had in his life, he’d found in her embrace. Only he hadn’t seen it then.

  And now it was too late.

  There was no sense of him when he was inside her—his goal, his ambition, his cause, his revenge—everything disappeared. When she clasped h
is face in her hands and kissed his mouth. When her hips thrust up in a desperate need to be closer to him. When she was pulling him irrevocably into the fabric of her own life. Her loved ones, her family, her goals, her generous heart.

  She made him drown; she pulled the ground away from under him.

  “More, please. Everything you have, V,” she demanded, her core contracting and releasing him, her thighs slapping against his hips with every damp slide of his body against her.

  Every tiny pulse of her body hit him as he pulled out and then thrust back in again. Every muscle in his body curled against the next, bracing for the surfeit of pleasure.

  But he knew Alessandra’s surrender did not come without a price.

  Even if she didn’t ask it, even if she didn’t demand her due, Vincenzo knew there would soon be a day when he would not be able to pay it.

  * * *

  How had Alex forgotten how transformative sex was between Vincenzo and her? The magic that seemed to be created when they came together? The rightness of it?

  It was what had driven her to marry a man who’d been a complete stranger.

  Alex whimpered at the emptiness as he pulled out completely but was rewarded not a moment later, when he climbed up onto the bed, on all fours, a primal need etched onto his stunning features. A drop of sweat dripped from his forehead and plopped onto the swell of her breast and his hungry eyes followed it. As if she were prey, and he meant to consume her.

  And then he was back on her again, over her, inside her, around her. His weight on top of hers both a safe haven and a vortex of thrill at the same time.

  He yanked her closer and thrust inside her, a deep growl rumbling out of him. Alex cried out at the welcoming hardness, at the incredible friction. She was lifted off the bed, hands on her buttocks pulling her up until she was astride his lap. The bare economy with which he arranged her to his liking, the strength in his lean corded limbs only amplified the thrall he had her under.

  Alex wrapped her arms around his damp back, feeling him everywhere inside her in this position. The rub of her breasts against his chest, the intimacy of locking gazes with him deepened her pleasure to an unbearable level.

  He was so hard and pulsing inside her, his breath warming every inch of her neck, his scent—a sweaty, masculine combination that filled her very senses. Their mouths locked again in a devastatingly hungry communion that she knew now would never be enough. She held on to him as if she could hold his heart to hers this way. She wanted to stay like that forever, in his arms, surrounded by him, and let time stretch from this moment to the next and the next.

  Alex buried her face in his shoulder. Damp, soft, warm, he was an explosive taste on her tongue.

  “Look at me, bella.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed tighter, afraid of what he would see in them. Afraid of the wide chasm of need that opened up inside her when he held her like this, when he moved inside her.

  “Please, V. Finish me off, won’t you? I want to come so desperately I feel like I’ll die if I don’t,” she said, imbuing every inch of want that thrummed through her into her words.

  “I won’t move inside you while you hide away from me, bella,” he growled, a vein of tension in his voice. Every inch of him was taut under her fingers. He strummed a line of music on her bare back, his mouth at her temple. “I have become used to seeing myself in your eyes, Alessandra. I have become used to drowning in your gaze.”

  Her head jerked up at the pure need in those words.

  So she let their mouths tangle, their tongues lap at each other, their teeth nip at each other until it was hard to tell where she ended and where he began. His heart was a violent drum against her breast, his body a damp, sleek fortress of demand as he thrust up.

  With each grunt of his, Alex moved up and down while need corkscrewed in her belly.

  She let the sounds and scents that their bodies created together lead her on and on until no rational thought was possible. Vincenzo murmured, “That’s it, Alex. Stay with me.”

  And then he was pressing her back into the bed, and holding her down with the thrust of his hips. Alex gave herself over to it as he rode her body hard, chasing his pleasure.

  Alex opened her mouth against his bicep and dug her teeth in, knowing what he liked. Wanting him lost to this madness like her. “Faster, please, V,” she sobbed, her release an ephemeral breath away.

  Her legs draped over his shoulders, his pelvis rubbed sinuously against her in exactly the right place every time he thrust.

  “Touch yourself, bella. Come with me,” he commanded, and Alex moved her hand down from his chest to the apex of her thighs.

  Eyes wide-open, she held Vincenzo’s gaze, and the emotion she saw there pushed her over the edge. “Oh,” she whispered, on and on, again and again, into his damp skin as her release flung her open wide.

  There was nothing like the magic of her climax when he was inside her, something he made them both work for every time. Nothing like being swept up by the storm of pleasure that drove him toward his own.

  Her release continued in short pulses. Vincenzo deepened his thrusts—once, twice, thrice—and fell onto her with a fierce growl. Her name on his lips was a crooning whisper that settled like a blanket of contentment over her naked skin. Alex wrapped her arms around him and held on, as if the physical act somehow guaranteed more than that. As if…

  No, she wasn’t going there. This was all she needed. She’d chosen this path, she’d chosen him, and she’d stick to it come what may.

  He stayed on top of her like that, for long, perfect moments. “You okay?” he asked finally.

  Alex turned toward him and smiled. “More than okay,” she whispered, and he took her mouth in a rough, snarly kiss that warmed her all the way to her cold toes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  VINCENZO CAME AWAKE with a start.

  Falling asleep anytime before predawn was such an unusual thing for him that he felt disoriented for several minutes after opening his eyes.

  Restful sleep had always been impossible for him. For the longest time, he had forced himself to stay awake to keep an eye on his mother, afraid that she might do some irreparable damage to herself if he fell asleep.

  Once he had achieved a measure of financial freedom to hire a round-the-clock nurse to ensure his mother’s care, it had been too late. His insomnia by then had been entrenched, a by-product of the numerous nights he’d spent through relentless years, building his fortune.

  After that, he had a financial empire to rule.

  But now, after only a few nights here in the villa, he was so used to the warm, languorous weight of Alessandra’s limbs vined around him that sleep came easily. To go to bed without her now seemed like a dreary prospect, even temporarily.

  The thought disquieted him enough to rouse him completely. With slow movements, he disengaged her long limbs from his.

  He swept a lock of hair away from her face and ran his fingers lightly over those blade-like cheekbones, his heart a strangely weighty thing in his chest. She moaned and rolled and the duvet slipped, offering glimpses of a smooth silky shoulder and the upper curve of a breast.

  Instantly, he felt the answering tightness of his own body. Cristo, it had been six days since he’d found her in that conservatory, and they’d spent most of those six days burning through the heat between them.

  It showed no signs of abating. He had been insatiable, and she’d been there with him every step of the way. Wrenching himself away from the temptation she offered, he pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt, made his way out of the bedroom.

  The long corridors were quiet, the marble cold against his feet. He was not surprised when he arrived at the huge study, the seat of Leonardo’s power, the seat from where centuries of the masters of this revered dynasty had used their power.

  To this day, Vincenzo still hadn’t figured
out the older Brunetti, the true heir to all this. Massimo was more open, full of a caustic wit that made even Vincenzo smile. But in Leonardo… He could see shades of himself.

  “Imagining yourself here?” came a voice behind him.

  He turned to find Greta Brunetti standing just inside the door, her shoulders stiff.

  “Imagination is for dreams out of your reach. This chair, this study, this house…it’s all within my grasp already. If you must know,” he said, surprised at his own rancor spewing into his words, but continuing anyway, “I was wondering what I would wreck first. This study, or the tall towers of BFI.”

  She paled, and he felt a glimmer of regret. Only a glimmer.

  “What do you want, Mr. Cavalli?”

  Her formal address raked at something inside him, but he refused to show it. “The time for action is long past for you,” he said, leaning against the massive dark oak table and crossing his ankles.

  Her claw-like hands folded tightly against her midriff. “It’s never too late to realize one is wrong. Never too late to make amends.”

  Shock drenched him, stealing away his anger. “Ah…it’s your fear of destruction speaking.”

  “No, it’s not. Whatever you’re planning, it has little effect on me at this stage in life. But Alessandra, if I could do anything to—”

  “She’s mine. I won’t give her up for anything in this world. She made her choice again not six days ago. She makes the choice to be mine every night,” he threw at the old woman shamelessly.

  “I know that. I’ve already lost her respect, and that’s worse than anything you can do to me. But I ask you to remember that she’s an innocent in all this.”

  “My mother was an innocent too.”

  “I did what I thought was right at that time for my family. For years, I put up with my son’s antics. Tried to patch up his actions, dealt with the consequences. I had become hardened to everything else—I had no mercy or kindness or even love left in me, because he drained it all away.

  “I only did my duty by Leo and Massimo. I…starved them of affection—”