by Abby Green
Everything was pristine, neat and tidy. Bookshelves set up against one wall, but he could see that they were temporary and didn’t like how that made something protective rise up within him.
He found himself being drawn to one of the watercolours on the wall. It featured a stunning wild landscape/seascape in greens and blues. He sensed Orla’s presence beside him, her unique scent, mirroring that of the room.
Her voice was husky, tugging on his nerve endings. Making them sensitive. ‘That’s Slea Head in Kerry, near where we come from. In the west of Ireland.’
Antonio didn’t like to admit how something in the picture called to the wildness he’d felt inside him for a long time.
Something was shifting. Things weren’t so cut and dried. Yes, he wanted to seduce this woman and get her to comply with his demands for his sister’s benefit, and apart from that he wanted her with a hunger like no other. But now … it was as if he was getting a glimpse into her soul. And it made him feel disorientated.
Orla felt like screaming into the deafening silence as Antonio gazed intently at the painting as if he were at a gallery and not standing in her very private rooms. Say something! She berated herself for letting him come in. She was normally fanatical about her privacy, but when he’d been lounging in her doorway looking so big and sexy … something inside her had weakened. Something wild and wanton had risen. Like the other night.
She never even allowed the hotel staff to come into this suite of rooms, cleaning them herself—she had that phobia of someone rearranging things while she was out.
The conversation they’d just had over dinner had made something indefinable change within her though. Some defence she’d been clinging to was shakier, weaker. Pathetically, she’d gone from coldly declaring, No, to standing aside to let him in within seconds. This man who threatened her on so many levels.
Orla felt completely exposed and vulnerable now. She folded her arms across her chest. Her voice was tight. ‘I think we can assume I’m safe now.’
Antonio’s big body went still. He slowly turned around to face her, gazed down at her. Orla stopped breathing and went hot all over. He was so big.
He was also the epitome of elegant masculinity in his dark suit and light grey open-necked shirt. On the surface. But just below that, Orla sensed the danger oozing from every gorgeous pore. He really looked about as urbane as a wild panther prowling the city streets.
She went distinctly wobbly as he closed the distance between them. He lifted his hands and she only realised what he was doing when she felt her hair fall down around her shoulders. Pinprick needles of sensations exploded all over her body.
Ineffectually she put up her hands. ‘Wait, what are you doing?’
Antonio’s eyes glittered darkly. Orla saw him casually throw the pin that had been holding her hair up onto a nearby chair.
‘What I want to do,’ he said in that deep rough voice, ‘is make love to you. Because you’ve been torturing me for days. Because I don’t think I can walk out that door again without touching you first….’
His face tightened. ‘But if you don’t want this, say it now, Orla, because this is the only chance you have to say no.’
Orla gulped. Her whole body resonated with his words, humming with anticipation, but some remnant of her defensive shield was still in place. Not yet smashed to pieces by this man. If she said yes to this … it was huge. The other night had been an aberration, a moment out of time. They’d been strangers. But this decision would be taken in all consciousness, knowing exactly who he was. She could barely contemplate the significance or the potential fallout. She shook her head even though it felt like the hardest thing in the world.
‘No,’ she whispered with little conviction, ‘I don’t want this.’
Antonio’s face went even tighter. He was shutting down, closing off. Orla had a vision of seeing him tomorrow after the inevitable sleepless night she was about to endure. She could already feel the frustration clawing at her insides, her body rejecting her words. And once again all other concerns were fading fast into the background.
Antonio was stepping back and already she felt even that distance like a gulf of gigantic proportions. He turned around and something in Orla rose up, something wild and visceral and feral. That rejection of her own words, so strong now that she couldn’t ignore it. Still, he was almost at the door before she could let it out and it emerged like a raw cry. ‘Stop!’
CHAPTER SIX
ANTONIO STOPPED AND relief was sweet and treacherous through Orla. But he didn’t turn. She knew this moment was huge. She was throwing caution to the wind. Grabbing at pleasure. Stepping into danger, into the unknown. But the necessary. She needed this man like she needed to breathe, right now.
‘Stop,’ she said, stronger this time, firmer. ‘I don’t want you to go. Stay.’
Antonio turned and something clicked into place inside Orla. An assertion. That this was right.
He looked fierce and elemental in the soft lights which threw his face into sharp relief. Something quivered through her: recognition of a mate. But before that could freak her out, he uttered a guttural-sounding ‘Come here.’
And without a conscious thought in her head, because it had been replaced with sheer blind instinct, Orla went to him.
It felt like they melted into each other. Her arms were around his neck; one of his hands was in her hair, cupping her head, the other across her back like a steel bar, welding her to his hard body.
It was a spontaneous combustion. They kissed and it was desperately passionate. Mouths open, tongues duelling, as if they’d never get enough of kissing like this. Somewhere deep inside Orla something melted but she was too hot to think about it now.
Antonio drew back and said roughly, ‘Bedroom.’
Orla sucked in deep breaths, slightly shocked at how fast her heart was beating already.
‘The door on the left.’
As soon as the words left her lips she was being lifted up into Antonio’s arms and he was carrying her through her living room to the bedroom. Just like the first time, a part of her thrilled at this display of cavemanlike masculinity in spite of her very feminist principles. Unable not to, Orla reached up to touch his jaw and felt the growth of stubble. Her body tightened with need.
He shouldered his way into the room where one lamp sent out a soft glow casting everything into shadow. He stopped by the bed and slowly, provocatively, slid Orla down the length of his body until she was standing in front of him.
Without taking her eyes off his, she kicked off her shoes, dropping a couple of inches in height. His hands went to the tiny buttons at the front of her dress and she could feel his frustration build when they proved too delicate for him.
She swatted his hands away. ‘Let me.’ Her own hands weren’t much better though, shaking. She bit her lip and Antonio put out a hand, cupping her jaw, a thumb freeing her lower lip.
And then, interrupting her button undoing, he uttered something guttural in French and tipped up her head so that he could claim her mouth again as if he couldn’t help himself. Orla’s hands went to his arms to try and remain upright. She hadn’t even undone all the buttons yet but the flames of desire were licking up around them and then her own hands were searching frantically for his shirt, undoing his buttons now.
His jacket had already disappeared and Orla revelled in smoothing her hands across his bare chest when his shirt fell open. Damp heat moistened between her legs and she could feel Antonio’s hands go to her dress, pulling it up, one of his hands finding her panties and delving under the silk fabric. Had she worn silk because all along she’d hoped this would happen?—the insidious voice in her head resounded but Orla blocked it out.
His hand was cupping her butt cheek now, making her groan softly, pressing closer to Antonio, hips circling against him. When his hand explored deeper, fingers searching along the seam of her body, finding and releasing her wetness, she groaned in earnest.
Their mouths h
adn’t parted and now their breaths were suspended as Antonio’s wicked fingers stroked Orla intimately. She broke away, looking up into that dark, dark gaze. Shocked all over again at how visceral this desire between them was.
‘I need you. Now.’
Orla’s body responded to his words as if she’d been set on fire from the inside out. Shirt hanging open, Antonio took his hands off her body to open his belt and undo his trousers, pushing them and his underwear to the floor in one movement.
Orla couldn’t stop her gaze dropping and the anticipation in her body almost shot off the Richter scale when she saw him so aroused and ready. He’d been big before, but now he looked even bigger than she remembered.
He was bending, reaching under her dress for her underwear, tugging it down her hips and legs. Unsteady on her feet, Orla fell back onto the bed, and Antonio threw her panties to the side. With his big hands, he pushed up the dress until it pooled in a silken mass around her belly.
Orla knew she should be feeling wanton, or wicked or something. But she couldn’t drum it up over the intense need. Antonio straightened up, tall. Proud. A warrior. Then he went and sat down in the armchair beside her bed. She came up awkwardly on her elbows to see him looking dark and brooding. He was ripping the foil off a condom and smoothing the rubber over his erection.
‘Come here, Orla.’
Orla somehow managed to get up from the bed, her dress falling down over her legs, and gaping open at the front where she’d had to leave her buttons because it had proved too much of a challenge to undo them. She walked over to him and he reached for her, hands spanning her waist, pulling her onto him so that she had to straddle him, knees locked tight by his thighs and hips.
She gasped when he brought her down, her body rubbing against his arousal, caught between them. He brought up his hands and she thought he was going to attempt the buttons again but with a feral sound he put his hands to the delicate material and pulled it apart, making buttons pop and the silk rip.
To her shock, Orla found that instead of being angry, she felt excited by his impatience.
He looked at her. ‘I’ll buy you a new one.’
His hands were already busy at her back, undoing her bra so that it loosened and fell forward. Orla’s arms were still slightly constrained by the dress which Antonio hadn’t pulled off completely. It heightened the sensations building in her body, between her legs where she could feel him.
He pulled the lace cups of her bra down, making her breasts pop free, and cupped them with his hands, thumbs moving back and forth over the hard tips.
Orla’s head went back and she squeezed her eyes shut against the delicious friction. Without even realising it she was already moving against him, up and down, seeking a deeper connection between their bodies. His erection slid tantalisingly close to where she wanted him to slip inside her and she could almost imagine his clenched jaw.
He shifted slightly so that the head of his penis rested at her entrance properly, no more teasing. Orla hovered now, suspended, her thigh muscles screaming with tension. She lifted her head up, eyes opening to look down at that harshly drawn dark face. Antonio had taken his hands off her breasts and put them on her waist, holding her still, poised over him, ready to sink down and take him into her.
Her body seemed to weep with desire, inner muscles already clenching with greedy anticipation. And then in the same moment as he brought her down onto his steel-hard arousal, he bent forward and put his mouth to one breast, encompassing the entirety of her aureole and nipple, and suckled her fiercely.
Orla’s hands went to his head. She bit back a scream to feel him surging up into her body, so thick and hard. Filling her completely, more than her wildest fantasies since she’d been with him last.
His mouth on her breast, his body embedded in hers … she could feel herself starting to splinter already but Antonio had other ideas. He took his mouth off her and looked into her eyes and slowly, masterfully, brought her up and back down, making the tremors recede a bit … but drawing out the torture.
Orla’s hips wanted to move of their own volition, following the urges of her body, and there was an intense battle of wills between them. Both their faces flushed, breathing heavy. She put a hand to the high back of the chair behind Antonio’s head, hanging on to anything she could.
She was rising and falling now, in perfect synchronicity with him. The glide of his body in and out of hers more exquisite than anything she’d ever known on this earth.
Antonio leant forward again and put that hot mouth to her other breast, teeth nipping gently at the hard tip, making Orla want to scream. Her movements got more desperate, frenzied, as she rode him hard. Her hand was in a white-knuckle grip on the back of the chair and then Antonio’s head reared back, leaving her breast as he brought her down onto his shaft with such force that Orla could swear he touched her heart. He was so deep, so hard.
She couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think. Everything was tightening, spiralling, coiling inside her. She couldn’t hold on any more. She was already having mini-orgasms around his length as he drove in and out, ruthlessly.
Orla was almost sobbing now. Antonio cupped her breast possessively, fingers trapping a nipple. Pinching.
‘Come for me.’
A tear leaked from Orla’s eye as she gasped and finally tipped over the edge into the dizzying, sweeping rush of pleasure and heat and oblivion. Her body convulsed around Antonio’s as he still thrust up powerfully and rhythmically … finally surging into her clasping body one last time before shuddering his own release underneath her.
Orla was still in the aftermath. Dazed. Her body was still clenching rhythmically around Antonio’s. Milking him. A part of her ached in that moment to know what it would feel like to have him spill inside her, anointing her with his seed. She resented the barrier. But she couldn’t wrap her head around that rogue thought now. Her brain felt melted.
Finally, as if she’d been held suspended by some greater force, she collapsed forward, her head going between Antonio’s neck and shoulder, breathing roughly against his hot damp skin. The smell of musk and heat and sex in the air.
His arms wrapped around her, holding her there, against him. Their bodies were still intimately joined and Orla, who would have shunned such intimacy with anyone else, burrowed even deeper into Antonio’s embrace. She’d never felt so protected—as if it was just them and this room and this amazing feeling of satisfaction curling through her blood and bones.
At some point Orla felt Antonio move but was too lethargic to help, as he stood up and took her with him. She winced when their bodies were no longer joined and felt him put her down on the bed.
He was disrobing her, pulling her ruined dress down her arms, lifting her slightly so that he could pull it free and down completely. And her bra.
She opened slumberous eyes to see him looming over her and felt pole-axed all over again when her body tingled with fresh awareness. She’d never known it could be like this.
Antonio came down beside her on the soft king-size bed, resting a hand on her belly which quivered. Then he moved that big hand up until it cupped her breast, rousing her again, making her eyes widen and her breath hitch.
When he bent his head to kiss her, she wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself along his length, moving sinuously against his fast-recovering erection. She wanted him again. As much if not more than she just had.
Antonio pulled his head back for a second and said roughly, ‘What is it you do to me?’
She didn’t know because she could ask him the same question. To drown out the voice of her conscience in her head, Orla furrowed her fingers into his hair, clasping his head. She answered far more lightly than she felt, ‘No talking, Chatsfield.’
And she pulled his head back down and drowned everything out by focusing on this heady rush.
Hours later, Orla woke and found herself draped across Antonio’s broad chest, arms wrapped around him. Mortified, she tried to extrica
te herself but to her surprise Antonio’s arm, which was around her, tightened and he growled softly, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Orla’s heart thumped, hard. ‘Nowhere,’ she whispered, and tried to relax again even though all she could think about was how it felt to have every inch of her body pressed to Antonio’s. His hand started to move lazily up and down her back, fingers barely touching her skin, but setting off tiny explosions of sensations just the same.
She put her cheek back down on his chest and had to close her eyes for a second at the pang of emotion that coursed through her. The light outside the windows was changing ever so subtly. Not quite dawn but the end of the night had come. It made Orla feel absurdly as if they were cocooned from everything.
Something was shifting inside her and she couldn’t stop it. Something very fundamental had changed during that dinner, and afterwards. As if she could deny it or tell herself it was just post-coital bliss, Orla broke the silence. ‘You weren’t sleeping?’ she asked.
He must have shook his head because she felt a little movement and then he said, ‘I haven’t slept properly for years….’
Their voices were low, soft. Adding to this feeling of being out of the world slightly.
‘The Legion?’ Orla asked, just saying the two words.
Again she felt that movement that must have been Antonio nodding. Her body was heavy against his, heavy with a kind of satisfaction and peace she’d never known before.
Giving into curiosity, she asked him softly, ‘What was it like?’
Antonio’s hand stilled in its hypnotic motion up and down Orla’s back. Her voice had been so low that she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard … but she felt the tension in his body. She started to say, ‘It’s OK—’
But then he was talking and she closed her mouth again.
‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was also intensely exciting and liberating.’