by Dani Collins
Pia smiled weakly. “It’s been a long day. Tell Rico I’ll call tomorrow, after Angelo and I have had time to make a few decisions.” She signed off.
“I like her,” Angelo commented.
“I would challenge anyone not to,” Pia said mildly, hiding the stab of jealousy that struck like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere.
They finished their meal and Angelo noted it was still early enough in California to call his lawyer there.
Pia closed her eyes, wishing she had been able to ask Poppy if she still thought telling her baby’s father was the right thing to do. She wanted to ask how to cope with the conflict of being happy about the baby, but overwhelmed by how it was changing her life at a pace she couldn’t adapt to. How to make things work with the father when she didn’t know what sort of person he was or what he wanted from her.
Was she a fool to put any trust in him at all?
She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until she woke at the sound of her name.
A warm, blanketing sensation of well-being surrounded her as she dragged herself back to consciousness. She only realized as she picked up her head that she was tucked beneath Angelo’s arm, her head pillowed in the hollow of his shoulder.
His other hand fell away from caressing her cheek to wake her.
“We can sleep in the stateroom if you’re too tired to go to the house, but it’s only ten minutes from here.”
She nodded dumbly and gathered herself, asking as they disembarked, “This is your island?”
“It’s often reported that I bought the whole island, but that’s inaccurate. I own the largest property and I purchased several of the more modest homes for my staff because I often prefer to be alone in the house. But there are many holiday homes here. There’s a busy village in the harbor and a variety of tourist accommodation.”
A handful of staff welcomed them into the massive villa—maids and security, a butler and one of Angelo’s personal assistants. The butler showed her around a modern mansion decorated in bone white and natural stone. The lounge was sunken off the dining area and the exterior walls were glass panels that opened onto the pool surround. The water glowed pale blue in the night and the pool was so big, there was a bridge to an island within its shallows. Three potted palm trees and a bistro table with tall stools sat upon it.
Beyond that, the wide stretch of white sand glowed in the moonlight. The shape of a cabana, a boathouse and a private dock were outlined in fairy lights.
“This is beautiful.”
“One of my business partners, a security specialist, told me about it. He and his wife live on the other end of the island. You’ll meet her tomorrow. I asked her to take our photo for the press release.”
“You have a rooftop patio like Rico’s,” she noted as she turned to study the side of the house that faced the water. It was all flowing lines, elegantly placed lanterns and recessed stairways.
“Would you like to see it?”
It was dark and the wind off the water chilly. She hugged herself, mouth dry as she considered what had happened on the last rooftop. What was wrong with her that she wanted to do that again? She didn’t know him much better at all.
At her silence, he let a slow smile form on his face until he was so wickedly beautiful, her stomach wobbled. He took her hand and she didn’t balk as he led her through the house.
When they reached the top of the stairs, he motioned at an open door to a spare bedroom. “What do you need for your research lab? Concrete walls or just an office space?”
“I—” She was so surprised, her tongue tangled. One way or another, pursuing science had always been an uphill battle. Her father set high standards; her mother thought it a distraction. Sexism was rampant and her studies often took her to remote places that were a challenge in themselves.
She didn’t know how to compute that Angelo would simply take her at her word that she wanted to continue to work and try to facilitate that for her. “I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Let me know,” he said, and led her into the stadium that was the master bedroom—which further disconcerted her.
She tugged to free her hand.
“The lady knows what she wants.” He spun to face her.
“I really don’t.” She folded her arms, taking in the cool blues of the bedding in the soft light cast by the two lamps on the nightstands.
“The access to the rooftop patio is off this balcony.” The humor in his eyes told her he was teasing her. “Stay here or go up, either way we’re in trouble.” He held out his hand.
She didn’t move, only glanced toward an archway into what looked to be a master bath of epic proportions. There was a cozy conversation area in the nook and a desk near the door to the balcony. Her laptop bag had been left on the rolling chair.
“Do you really expect me to sleep with you here tonight?” she asked with disbelief. “We’ve known each other two days.”
He sent a pointed glance to the clock that read twelve-oh-seven.
“Technically three.” He pushed his hands in his pockets, seeming all the more imposing in the intimate golden light. He angled his head to regard her. “I don’t ‘expect’ sex. I anticipate it.”
How did he send all these swirls and eddies into her middle with just a few words and a sexy smile?
“It doesn’t have to be tonight.” He stepped closer and slowly swept his fingers down her hair, the caress so startling and so powerful that she caught her breath. He left his fist resting on her shoulder clutching a swathe. His thumb grazed the edge of her jaw. “Why so nervous? We’ve done it before.”
“Not with the lights on.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “We’ll start with only one.” He nodded at the night table. “Work up to it.”
She hated that he mocked her, made her feel so inept. She knew she wasn’t the best at interpersonal relationships. Her upbringing had been a wasteland, her shyness crippling. In the last few years, while most people her age had been clubbing, she’d been immersed in school, partly as self-defense, partly for the sense of accomplishment before she devoted herself to motherhood.
The one time she had acted her age with an impulsive hookup, she’d blown her life to smithereens.
While he remained completely self-possessed.
“I don’t know who I was that night,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “I wasn’t me. I believed that you didn’t know who I was and that I would never have to face you again. I didn’t expect to reckon with the way I behaved. Now I’m forced to and it’s not comfortable.”
His hand shifted to gently pick up her chin and coax her to look into his sobered expression.
“There was nothing wrong with the way we behaved. Yes, we could have been more responsible, but sex is normal. Actually, our sex was exceptional in the best possible way,” he allowed. “I don’t feel embarrassed by it.”
She doubted he was ever embarrassed, he was so confident.
“You don’t understand,” she murmured. How could he? He hadn’t been raised to believe that corporeal yearnings were to be ignored and overcome in favor of rational decision-making.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t want to make love to you. I do.” He set his hands on her hips, his touch heavy and possessive and stirring her without even trying. “If you don’t want to, I’ll survive.” His thumbs pressed with tension into her pelvic bones while his mouth curled into a wry smile. “But you’re right that we need to get to know one another. That won’t happen living in separate quarters of the house. I want to share a room and a bed, if not our bodies.”
What about talking? She didn’t have much skill or practice at expressing her feelings verbally, though. She had never been allowed to acknowledge them and work through them.
As for the physical... He had held her closer when they had danced tha
t night, but she was experiencing the same pull now as she had experienced then, without the magic of moonlight and music and disguises. She was baffled by her reaction. She set her hand on his chest, maybe distantly thinking to give herself some space to think, but her fingers splayed to take in as much firm muscle as she could. She could feel his heartbeat and it chipped away at any attempt at rational thought.
He moved his hands to her waist, his touch a caress. An invitation to move closer. She stiffened slightly as tingles of pleasure wafted through her.
He lifted his hands off her so only the heat radiating from his palms touched her. “No?”
She wavered. She had spent her life drowning in a dry sea and his touch was a lifeline so compelling and welcome, so powerful, that she yearned for him, but she didn’t know how to tell him she wanted him to touch her. It felt like a weakness to need it so badly.
Her body spoke for her, flowing without conscious volition. Her hand slid up behind his neck while her other arm reached to encircle his waist. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see how he reacted, only pressed herself to his front and lifted her mouth in offering.
His mouth landed on hers, sending a ball of heat into her middle while his arms closed across her back, pressing the air from her lungs. Maybe she forgot to breathe. She didn’t care. She only wanted this. The uncivilized taste of him and the way her muscles quivered in response.
When he dragged his head up, she whimpered in protest.
“Open your eyes.” His hand cradled her jaw, oddly tender when he was holding her in such a hard clasp, but maybe he was holding her up.
She blinked her eyes open, watched him slowly smile at whatever dazed sensuality was clouding her gaze. It was so intimate that her eyes grew wet. She could barely stand it, but couldn’t look away. Her blood pounded in a primal, painful beat.
“I wanted to see that,” he whispered. “What I do to you.”
“It’s too much.”
“But you’ll come to my bed anyway.”
“I will,” she capitulated, and gasped as he swept her up. Two steps later, he set her on the mattress.
He came down with her, his mouth swooping to possess hers again, ravenous. She tried to keep up, unable to pull apart the sensations that bombarded her. A whisking touch, a tender nibble and the abrasion of his cheek as he went after her neck. The sudden skim of his fingers against her thigh would have been more shocking if she hadn’t somehow pulled his shirt free and was mindlessly brushing her palms across his bare back.
His muscular body, hard as iron, half pinned her, and his eyes filled with shifts and flashes when he pulled back enough to look at her again.
Fascinated, she watched his face as he lifted and found the catch that belted her jacket. Slowly he worked the buckle free and opened the front, settling beside her as he revealed her bronze camisole with its matching bra beneath.
“This is what I wanted time for that night.” He flattened his hand on her stomach, shifting hot-cool silk across her torso, bending to nuzzle where lace met quivering skin. “To undress you.”
He tugged at a sleeve and she pulled her arm free, then draped it across his shoulders, fingertips seeking the heat beneath his collar at the back of his neck.
She learned the difference between expecting and anticipating as she offered her other sleeve only to have him kiss the inside of her wrist, settle his mouth over hers in a way that drugged her into a mindless state and then, when she was trembling, he finally pulled her other arm free.
Hardly anyone had ever seen her this naked and only her jacket was gone. It wasn’t just the lack of clothing that was revealing so much as the way her stomach quivered and her nipples pressed against the cups of her bra, and how her hips angled into him the way leaves of a plant sought the sun. Her desire rose so fiercely that she dampened silk he couldn’t see and bit her lip against a groan of erotic suffering.
He was killing her, looking at her, biting against lace, slipping a strap down her shoulder, lifting to watch the slither of silk as he drew it up and away.
The way he ate up every inch of skin he exposed bolstered yet destroyed her. And the way he roamed his hand across her, from hip to the underwire of her bra, back down to her navel, then up to trace the swell of her breast against the edge of the cup, turned her inside out.
He began to devour her, stubble scuffing her chest while he teasingly bit at her nipples through the bra before he trailed his tongue where his fingertips had been and delved behind the cup to flick at her nipple.
She made a keening noise and his hand hardened on her hip, urging her to withstand his teasing until he finally took pity on her and released her bra, helping her remove it. He returned to lave and nuzzle and suck, driving her so mad that she hitched her ankle around his and tried to insinuate herself beneath him.
He growled and scraped his mouth down her center, making her abs jump at the flick of his tongue into her navel. He groaned in pleasured satisfaction as he reached the waistband of her skirt and discovered it stretched easily to slide down her hips.
He set kisses on one hip then the other, and kept sliding down with a whisper of his body moving against the covers. As he revealed her panties, he trailed kisses down her thigh, making her melt. Making her burn.
“Angelo,” she gasped, shaking with arousal.
“I want you naked this time.” The skirt was tossed to the floor. “Completely naked. So all you feel is me.” He began inching the lace down her thighs.
She pressed her legs together, trying to ease the aching between them, then met his gaze as he patiently waited for her to bite her lip, then relax to let him peel off the lace panties.
He rose onto his knees and tossed them away. Then he dragged at his own clothing, movements efficient, gaze traveling over her as he stood to remove his pants.
The wanting in her was back to being that wild, reckless thing that had gripped her the night of the ball. Voices of caution and shyness were drowned out by imperatives of an earthier nature. She wanted his weight. His hard heat moving inside her. His firm hands steadying her. His mouth ravaging hers.
She held up her arms, inviting him back.
He set one knee on the mattress, one hand on the inside of her thigh, asking her to make space for him. But as she hesitantly opened her legs, he pressed for a wide space and settled low between her thighs, like a lazy jungle cat. He made a noise somewhere between a growl and purr as he warmed her intimate flesh with a hot breath that made her sob. Then he leisurely tasted her.
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process this much pleasure delivered in such an intimate fashion. Couldn’t understand how he made her feel fragile and feral at once. Greedy and flagrant and willing to give herself up to him completely. But the pleasure he wrenched from her was magnificent. Unstoppable.
“Angelo!” she cried as her climax lashed her, devastating her so she was nothing but panting ash.
He peeled her fist from his hair and bit the inside of her thigh, shocking her buzzing nerve endings back to life.
The animal craving to mate had her fully in its grip now. Her mate had her fully in his grip as he rose over her and thrust deeply, pressing a keening cry from her. She closed her legs around him, clinging on in a small battle of strength as he thrust with muted power.
The act grew wild as he scraped his teeth against her neck and she dug her fingernails into his buttocks, urging him to shed what control he retained. She wanted all of him. All of his heat and greedy hunger. All his strength. All his craving and all of the roaring beast within him.
Her vision paled and her breaths were nothing but jagged, helpless soughs, pleading for the crisis. They crested in the same moment, the world making one glorious, silent rotation as they were held on that beautiful precipice. Then the universe exploded into colors and streaks of joy and every molecule in her body caught fire as she slowly fell back to earth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ANGELO HAD THOUGHT he knew what he wanted—to burn past Pia’s layer of reserve and remind her how they had ended up in this situation. Along the way, he expected her to quit acting like she was better than him. Then he would issue a press release announcing he was hitching his common bag of bones to one of the aristocracy’s privileged princesses, dragging all of them down a peg. The photo of Pia wearing some of the stolen jewelry would be an especially insolent nose-thumbing to his brothers.
He hadn’t expected his hunger for Pia to be outright insatiable. They had made love three times through the night, the third time when she woke him at dawn by sliding languorously against him. Her sleepy mouth had painted a path across his chest to tease his nipple. How was he supposed to resist that? As they’d rolled into each other and twined their limbs, he’d been hard and she’d been slick and ready. Their joining had been natural and lazy and so sweet his teeth still ached.
He wanted to be smug, he really did. Physically, she was an easy conquest, but damned if he wasn’t easier. He had taken her apart and she had destroyed him right back, then managed to look very wan and delicate over breakfast, stirring protective instincts he hadn’t known he possessed. She was avoiding eye contact and blushing and obviously so self-conscious about losing her inhibitions, he couldn’t help but caress a knee here and kiss the inside of her wrist there and reach across to slide a tendril of hair behind her ear.
“Is that your journal?” he teased, not sure if he should be flattered or worried that she might be recording her thoughts and impressions of his performance last night.
“It’s a data log of my pregnancy.” She frowned as if that ought to be obvious.
No casual food diary for Dr. Pia Montero. She proceeded to show him how she ruthlessly recorded caloric intake and nutrition, her morning weight and hours of sleep, physical measurements, the supplements she was taking, type and duration of exercise, and general notes on symptoms, physical and mental, including what time they occurred.