He let go of her hand and reached for her, wrapping his hands around her waist and lifting her out of her seat and over his lap. He heard her breath desert her as he settled her against him, her legs to one side. Then he simply bent his head and took her mouth with his.
Once again, that maddening fire. Once again, that swift shock, lust and need, greed and hunger, burning him alive.
As hot and as wild as if they were still in her bed. As if they’d never left, never stopped.
And she didn’t fight him. She didn’t pretend. He felt her give in to this thing that pounded between them, felt the heady rush of her surrender.
She hooked her arms around his neck as if she couldn’t control herself any more than he could, then she opened her mouth to him and kissed him back.
And Luca lost track of everything.
That he was trying to make a point. That they were in the back of a moving car. That she was the last woman on earth he should be touching at all, much less like this. That he absolutely should not be doing this.
He simply lost himself in the perfection of her mouth. The sweet heat of the way she kissed him and tangled her fingers in his hair. The weight of her slender body against his and the sheer desperation in the way they came together.
Again and again.
But it wasn’t enough.
He groaned against her mouth, and she shifted against him as if he’d lit her on fire, the curve of her hip coming up hard against his aching sex.
And Luca stopped pretending he had any control where this woman was concerned. Or at all.
He shifted her on top of him, swinging her around to straddle him. He shoved the dress she wore up and out of his way, settling her down astride his lap, and he almost lost it when she gasped into his mouth as the softest part of her came up flush against his hardness.
He could feel her shudder all around him, or maybe that was him, as lost in this insanity as she was.
There was no control. There was no hint of it. And the truly scary part of that was how little Luca cared that it was gone.
There was nothing but his hands buried in her hair again and his mouth against hers, feasting on her. Ravishing her. He could feel her wet heat against him and rolled himself into it, aware that only the fabric of his trousers and the insubstantial panties she wore separated them. He let the slick, hot glory of it build.
There was nothing but her taste, an addictive wildness against his tongue. She surrounded him, more beautiful with her dress at her waist and her hair half– falling down from its elegant little knot than any other woman he’d ever seen.
Than anything at all.
And Luca found himself muttering things he knew better than to say out loud, even if he was speaking in Italian.
“Tu sei mia,” he told her. You are mine. He didn’t know where that had come from, what the hell he was doing. Why he meant such things down deep in his bones, when he shouldn’t. When he couldn’t.
But he found he didn’t much care then. He filled his hands with the taut curves of her bottom and guided her against him in an unapologetically carnal rhythm, until she tilted her head back and moaned.
So he did it even harder, watching her face go slack as she rocked against him, driving him crazy, making him so hard and ready for her it bordered on pain. He moved his hand from her gorgeous bottom, sliding it around to find the heat of her with his fingers through the barrier of those soft panties.
“Look at me, Kathryn,” he ordered her, his voice little more than a growl.
She obeyed. And her eyes were wide and gray. Slicked hot with desire. Her lips were parted, and her cheeks were flushed. Luca felt something shift inside him, a sharp and uncompromising tilt. He couldn’t name it, though there was no pretending he didn’t feel it. He only knew that he was no longer the same man he’d been even five minutes before.
There was only Kathryn, arched above him, straining against him, her beautiful eyes locked on to his.
And there is this, he thought, sliding his hands into her panties and slicking his way through the molten wildfire of her sweet core to find the neediest part of her. Then he pressed down, hard and sure, and watched her hurtle over the side of the world.
She bucked against him as her pleasure tumbled through her, making greedy little noises that were almost his undoing, her fingers digging hard into his shoulders, her head thrown back and her lovely back arched like a bow.
And everything shifted again, but this time, all the hunger and greed and sense in his body surged straight to his sex.
Luca needed to be inside her. Right now.
She was still shaking, still astride him. She was still panting as she tipped forward until she could rest her forehead against his shoulder. And now he could feel her harsh little breaths as well as hear them, and somehow, that made everything hotter.
Closer. Crazier. Better.
He reached between them, amazed to find his hand was unsteady as he pulled himself from his trousers at last, so aching and so hard. Kathryn was limp now, still shuddering and gasping, and he simply pulled her panties to one side and lined himself up with her entrance, the scalding heat of her nearly enough to make him lose it right there.
He thought he swore in Italian, or perhaps it was a prayer. She was slick and hot, and he didn’t care where else she’d been or with whom. He didn’t care why. He didn’t care about anything but the way she fit in his arms, his lap.
He didn’t care about anything but this.
It had been two years of sheer torment with this woman; he could admit that now, when the truth seemed so obvious at last. He’d wanted her from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Perhaps he would always want her. But that wasn’t something Luca wanted to think about. Not now when she was everything he’d ever wanted, poised there above him, hot and wet and nearly his.
Nearly.
He moved his hands to her hips to hold her right where he wanted her. He tucked his mouth against her neck, where he could taste her, salt and need.
And then finally, finally, he thrust his way home.
* * *
It hurt.
God, did it hurt.
Kathryn felt something tear, felt a shriek of agony sear through her like a burn, and then there was nothing but the hugeness of him. Deep, deep inside her. So deep she found she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but freeze there over him, that harsh thrust of his possession like a throbbing brand within her.
Luca swore.
Then again, in both Italian and English, and she scrunched up her face so she wouldn’t cry and kept it buried in the crook of his shoulder as if she could hide from this. As if that might make the shuddering, aching heaviness go away.
But it didn’t work.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Kathryn. Sit up.”
“I don’t want to.”
He was still buried deep inside her, though he didn’t move. Then the car bumped over a dip in the road and thrust him deeper into her, and she felt the way he braced himself. Heard the small exhalation he made, as if this was no easier for him than it was for her. And that heavy sharpness radiated out from where the length of him was still inside her, making even her breasts feel stung with it.
As if the whole of her body was one giant ache.
“Sit up, cucciola mia,” he said, in a voice she’d never heard him use before, something far warmer and indulgent than any she associated with him. He nudged her with his jaw. “Now, please.”
And it seemed the hardest thing she’d ever done, to ease herself back, knowing he could see the panic and the pain and the leftover heat all over her face. To feel him lodged inside her as she carefully shifted position. To look into his dark eyes, so close to hers, aware that he knew things about her now she hadn’t wanted to
share.
Too many things.
It had all happened too fast. She’d been lost in another bone-deep, impossible shattering, torn apart into a million little pieces and unable to breathe, and then it had been too late.
Too late, she thought again.
She wasn’t sure what that thing was that crept over her, deep in her chest and her gut, a raw sort of hollow. She was terribly afraid it might be a sob.
Luca reached up and smoothed her hair back from her still-flushed face. She squirmed against that thick, hard intrusion that connected them so intimately, and he only watched her do it. He didn’t move—though she thought that steel line of his jaw hardened.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice the quietest she’d ever heard it, and she didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t know how to feel.
She moved her hips and didn’t understand how people did this, or why, when there was no comfortable position and too much of that heavy, aching heat. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Kathryn,” he said, that low voice at odds, somehow, with the very nearly tender way his thumbs brushed over her temples, and her name in his mouth a kind of poetry that made that hollow thing inside her seem to hum. “You went from pleasure to pain in an instant. How could I not notice that?”
She shifted again, still trying to find a way to sit on his lap when he was inside her, and this time his eyes darkened. She caught her breath.
The car bumped again and this time, the sensations that spun out from that involuntary thrust were more of a deep spark than anything sharp or painful. The ache inside her...changed. The spark seemed to light it up, infusing it with something else besides the pain. She shifted experimentally, then tugged her bottom lip between her teeth when that something else bloomed into something better, and watched that slow hunger burn in his dark eyes.
She felt an answering echo of it in her, as if the heaviness and the stretched ache were connected to all that delicious heat she thought of as his, that she could feel easing back into her the longer they sat like this.
“I wasn’t aware that it would matter to you whether or not you hurt me,” she said, without meaning to speak.
Luca’s hands moved to cup her cheeks, and his dark eyes met hers, nearly grim in the shadows of this car slipping through the California night.
“It matters,” he said gruffly. “You should have told me.”
And that hollow thing inside her swelled, crashing over her like a terrible tide. She didn’t know what it was. She only felt the sting of tears in her eyes and the throb of something far heavier in her chest.
And Luca deep inside her, hot and still.
“Tell you?” she whispered, because her voice had deserted her. “How could I tell you? You don’t just think I’m a whore, Luca. You know it. You’ve never had the slightest doubt.”
“Kathryn.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me.” She only realized that her tears had spilled out when he wiped them away with his thumbs, more gentle with her than made any sense. “You would have laughed in my face.”
He didn’t deny that, though his gaze darkened even further.
He pulled her face to his and kissed her, and it was almost too much. The thrust of him deep inside her body and the impossible sweetness of his lips on hers. It made her brain short out. It made that great rawness inside her glow.
“Ah, cucciola mia,” he murmured, pulling back from her mouth, still holding her face in his hands—almost as if he found her somehow precious. “I’m not laughing now.”
And then he began to move.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KATHRYN TENSED, BUT Luca only pulled out slowly and then pressed back in, far more gently this time.
It didn’t hurt. It felt...strange, but that was better than the pain.
“Breathe,” he told her, in that bossy way of his that shouldn’t have made something ignite inside her. But she did it anyway.
She pulled in a deep breath and let it out, and still he moved inside her. Lazy. Relaxed. An easy sort of rocking.
Slowly, almost despite herself, Kathryn began to anticipate him. She met him when he thrust in, moving her hips in a way that made a low, shimmering thing dance inside her.
His mouth curved, and she thought that later—much later—she would have to examine why it was that it made her flush with so much pleasure.
He maintained that same lazy pace, and let his hands wander where they pleased. He smoothed his way up her back. He tested the thrust of her breasts through the dress that was still bunched around her waist. He reached beneath it and drew patterns on the soft skin of her belly, on the outsides of her thighs.
Kathryn found herself moving more, rolling her hips and testing the depth of his stroke. This dragged the center of her against him, and it made everything inside her wind up tight. That made a sweet shudder work its way up her spine. She tried different movements, wriggling against him and rocking into him, and he let her, only that heavy-lidded heat in his dark eyes and the faint flush high on his cheekbones a hint that he felt the same fire she did.
And slowly, surely, inevitably, she forgot that anything had ever hurt her. There was nothing but the glide, the pull. The bright heat that expanded the deeper he went into her and the more she met each thrust.
There was a coiling thing inside her, huge and terrifying, and Kathryn didn’t know which she wanted more—to hide from it or throw herself straight into its center. And in any case, it didn’t matter. Because Luca let out a delicious little laugh as if he knew exactly what she felt, and took control.
He pulled her hips flush with his. He took her mouth in a deep, dark, endless kiss. And he began to move within her in earnest, each slick thrust making that coil wind tighter, making it bigger and wilder and that much more intense.
And she couldn’t. She couldn’t—
“You can,” he said against her mouth, and she realized she’d said that out loud. “You will.”
And he shifted beneath her, then ran his clever fingers down to the place they were joined, and rubbed.
The next time he thrust inside her, she imploded. A brilliant, impossible shattering that rolled out from the place where he maintained that demanding pace, tearing her soul from her body and her limbs apart.
She heard him groan out her name, his mouth against her neck, and then he toppled right over that same cliff beside her.
And for a very long time, that was all there was.
When Kathryn came back to herself, she was still slumped against him and still astride him, and the car was slowing to make its final turn into the Castelli vineyard.
She pushed herself back up to a sitting position and climbed off Luca at the same time, feeling the loss of that length of him inside her like a blow. It made her feel even more awkward as she struggled to wriggle her dress back into place. Even more...off center.
He didn’t speak. She didn’t dare look at him. She heard him zip himself up, and then there was the long drive up from the road to the château to endure in the same heavy silence. Kathryn felt too many things, thought too many things, all of them battering at her like a thousand desperate winds, but she couldn’t let herself do that here. Not while he was still beside her, so male and so hard, and now something entirely different than what he’d been even an hour before.
She didn’t want to change. She didn’t want the shift. She didn’t understand how she’d simply...surrendered to him when she was twenty-five years old and hadn’t felt the slightest urge to give herself to anyone in all her years.
“You’re much too pretty,” her mother had told her when she was barely thirteen, with a frown that told Kathryn that this was not a positive thing. “Mind you don’t let it make you lazy. Pretty is nothing more than a prison sentence. Best you remember that befor
e you let it turn your head.”
And she’d tried. She’d buried herself in her studies. She’d run from the slightest hint of male interest or even friendships with girls who had any kind of active social lives, lest she be tempted into joining in. She’d done everything she could think of to prove to her mother that her looks weren’t a weakness, that she could take advantage of the gifts Rose had given her with all her scrimping and saving and hard work.
But Rose had never been convinced.
“They’ll trap you if they can,” she’d told Kathryn again and again throughout her teenage years. “Tell you it’s love. There’s no such thing, my girl. There are only men who will leave you and babies who need raising once they’re gone. A pretty thing like you will be easy pickings.”
And Kathryn had resolved that whatever else she was, she wouldn’t be that.
Even at university she’d been good at holding herself apart, keeping herself safe. She didn’t want boyfriends or even supposed male friends who might think they could get to her that way, when her defenses were down. She avoided any scenario that might lead to lowered inhibitions or the slightest hint of danger. No pubs with her classmates. No parties. She’d kept herself in her own little tower, locked safely away, where nothing and no one could ever touch her or ruin her or make her a disappointment to her mother, who had given up so much to make her life possible.
All this time, she thought now, as the limo pulled up to the château’s grand entrance, and Rose had been right. It really was a slippery slope, and Kathryn had plummeted straight down it and crashed at the bottom. One single car ride with a man who despised her, and she’d lost a lifetime of her moral high ground, her entire self-definition. She’d become exactly what Luca had always accused her of being, what Rose had always darkly intimated she’d become one day whether she liked it or not.
The whole world was different. She was different. And she didn’t have the slightest idea how to come to terms with any of it, or what it meant.
The driver opened the door, and Kathryn climbed out too quickly, shocked when she felt twinges in all sorts of unfamiliar places. She might have toppled to the ground, but Luca was there, taking her arm as if he’d anticipated this. Holding her steady.
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