There were large bay windows covered in sheer drapes through which I could see the Forum, but it registered as only an afterthought in my mind. The only piece of art I wanted to see that night was the sculpted body I’d felt beneath that Armani suit of his earlier.
And of course there was the bed, an enormous, decadent thing loaded with pillows and thousand-thread count sheets. He took me over to the bed but didn’t throw me down onto it like I so desperately wanted him to.
But then his hands grabbed me, pulled me close. There were no more judging eyes anymore, just the two of us.
No one to see him take a handful of my hair and make a fist in it, the pressure it made it my scalp delicious. No one to see the way he canted my head back in his grip and kissed me on the mouth.
It was light at first, exploring. His stubble prickled me again, those prickles working their way down the front of my stomach, adding to the heat blossoming between my thighs.
The kiss deepened, our lips writhing together. God, his mouth was so hot on me. I groaned when he slid it down my neck, kissing my bare shoulder as he pulled the strap down my arm.
His fingers brushed back across my clavicle, dipping so achingly close to my chest, evoking an erotic response by avoiding the erotic areas of my body. For a few moments, anyway, while he could control himself.
How long that control of his impulses would last, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want him to control himself. I wanted him to lose himself in me just as badly as I wanted to lose myself in him.
His kisses became more desperate, then, as though he picked up on my desire.
“I need you,” he said.
“Then take me,” I breathed back. My breaths burned up through my throat. I didn’t know my body could get this hot. But he’d stoked my fire so well back on that dance floor.
The barest hint of a smile touched his flushed lips at my response. He spun me around so that I faced away from him and pulled me against him, my shoulders touching his chest and my hips touching his.
His mouth kissed a line of fire along my shoulder, then up the side of my neck. I tilted my head, giving my body to him while his hands smoothed the front of my dress over my stomach again and again.
“Liam…” I said, reaching back with one hand, running my fingers up into his hair. It was as soft as I’d thought it might be, and he let out a low groan when I made a fist in that hair.
I heard the slithery sound of my zipper going down. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he smoothed the straps down my arms, leaving my biceps and forearms sprinkled with goosebumps.
My breaths came quick and hot when he slipped my dress down to the waist. Sensitive skin crinkled when the cool air touched my bared body. After several aching moments, his hands moved up the smooth skin of my stomach, sliding up to better cup and appreciate me.
His lips slid down my neck, down my shoulder blade, down the curve of my spine as he sank to his knees behind me.
And then he gripped my dress, pushing his fingers down between the fabric and my skin. He bared me slowly, drawing the dress down until the silky material pooled around my ankles.
I thanked God at this point that I’d chosen not to wear my sensible underwear, choosing instead a much more barebones pair with lines and seams that wouldn’t show through my dress.
And also that I’d showered and ran my razor over my calves and thighs. Calves and thighs which Liam proceeded to knead and massage with those strong, hot hands of his. They worked up first one, then the other, stopping for a few agonizing moments before drawing closer and closer to my heat.
My heart quickened the nearer he drew. I gasped when he began following his hands with his lips.
The muscles low in my stomach, in my bottom, in the back of my thighs, began tightening.
The heat of his breaths against my inner thighs was almost too much to bear, my body responding in an instinctual, primal manner to his advances, his two steps forward, one back manner of teasing me up to incredible heights.
He almost finished me when he pushed his fingers down into the waistband of my panties and began drawing them down. He followed the waistband with his lips, too.
“Not yet,” he said, “I’m not finished with you yet… I haven’t even started yet.” There was a promise in his deep voice that electrified me, that had saliva squirting into my mouth as the hunger built within me. And then he lifted up my feet one at a time to slip my panties all the way off, his fingers like hot shackles around my ankles.
“When?” I replied, my voice husky with desire.
“When I say so. I’ve been wondering something about you since we danced,” he said, in between kissing up the back of my thighs.
“What’s that?”
“How you taste,” he said.
He gave me no time to reply, pushing me down onto the bed and flipping me over onto my back. He moved to sate his desire right away, finding the source of my heat, tasting me.
Liam really did know his way around a woman’s body. Knew just where to kiss. How to put his tongue to good use. When to go faster and when to slow down.
He was also merciless, and it wasn’t long before I had all my fingers threaded into his hair, my body bucking against the mattress while my climax tore through me, hot and unstoppable, every muscle in me tensing to the point of snapping before relaxing.
He wrung out every ounce of pleasure that I had in me and more besides. Like I said, merciless.
And he still wasn’t done. He’d shrugged his jacket off quickly when we’d come into the suite, but still wore everything else. Standing from the foot of the bed, he grabbed his shirt and tore it open, the buttons pinging off. The sudden, savage jerking motion left my heart pounding. That, and what I saw beneath the shirt.
Liam kept himself in shape. Abs everywhere, the shadows filling the little clefts between each individual muscle. A chest and a pair of shoulders that begged for me to touch and scratch them.
I couldn’t resist sitting up and running my hands down those abs. Running them right down to his belt. He watched as I tugged the end out and then ripped the length of leather through its loops.
And then it was his turn for his clothes to pool around his ankles, the expensive fabrics not deserving of such indignity but neither of us caring.
He produced a condom from the nightstand, taking only a moment, building my need to desperate levels again through impatience.
Both of us on the bed, he urged my thighs apart and settled himself between them. When he sank into me, I gasped, my aching body not used to the touch of a man but needing it so badly.
He saw my expression and kissed my bottom lip, sucking it between his teeth and biting down on it gently before letting it slide out. We kissed again then, fiercely, as our two bodies joined into one.
He took control, took charge of my pleasure and his. Soon, beads of perspiration formed on our writhing bodies.
Effortlessly, he transitioned smoothly from one position to another. Working each angle, he found the positions that made me moan the most for him. Then, as he took me full force, I rode the waves of my climaxes higher and higher.
He took me every way I’d ever been taken before and more. Over me, beside me, behind me. In our embraces we kicked the bed sheets down off the bed.
The whole while, his curious hands explored me, sliding up and down my stomach, down between my thighs, turning my face to kiss him.
We both sank fully into that moment, becoming timeless, feeling nothing but each other for those endless minutes.
And then came the point where he kissed me roughly, my name escaping through his clenched teeth over and over, his hands catching mine up and squeezing them, both of us locked in our shared bliss.
“Stay the night with me,” he said as we recovered, both of us naked and spent on the bed. My whole body felt like a pile of limp elastic bands. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“If you insist,” I said, managing a smile. Already, I could feel the soreness building inside of me.
It had been well-earned and, I think, well-deserved.
He kissed me again, smoothing some sweat-stuck strands of curly blonde hair off my forehead.
In the darkness of his five-star suite, I curled up next to Liam’s warm body, leaning my cheek against his chest, listening to the thump of his heart and smelling his clean sweat.
I went to sleep knowing that this was a one-night affair, but wishing that it could have been so much more. Especially after that performance, after the way he’d coaxed things from my body I’d never thought I’d feel. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, though.
But did that mean everything was downhill from here?
Chapter 3
“I really just wish I’d gotten his email or phone number,” I said. I stirred the foam of my latte with the piece of biscotti that sat beside the mug on the saucer.
The biscuit absorbed some of the hot liquid, softening it enough for me to take a bite. It was sweet, and it reminded me of the taste of Liam’s kisses. I don’t think I’d ever had such an erotic bite of food in my life.
Across the small, circular bistro table from me Isabella smiled at my unintentional display.
She was pretty in that traditional Italian way, with glossy black ringlets of hair falling to her olive-skinned shoulders and framing a lovely face with dark, sultry eyes. A true beauty. The type of woman I would have pictured a guy like Liam with.
“Didn’t you say it was a… What is it you call these? A one night stand?” Isabella’s dark eyes glinted with mischief. She and I had become fast friends after I arrived in Rome. She’d given me the tour of the university campus, and was herself a graduate student in classical studies.
While not an art history major like myself, she knew more than enough to hold her own in various conversations we had about Greco-Roman art. Behind those beautiful eyes lay a sharp mind. One more than a match to deal with any man who thought she was just another pretty face. It was a quality I’d come to appreciate in my friend.
“Yeah,” I said, “It was.”
“What something is supposed to be and what something actually is are often not the same,” Isabella replied before picking up her own tiny espresso mug, blowing the steam off the top, and taking a sip of the scalding black liquid.
“Sure,” I shrugged. It really was supposed to have been just a one night thing. Something to finally let loose, something to shake me out of this rut I couldn’t seem to escape.
And it had, I needed to admit. Being with him had awakened my mind and senses in ways I hadn’t felt for a long time. I took another bite of the hard biscotti, savoring the texture of it this time. When was the last time I’d thought about the texture of my food?
I sat back against the bistro chair, letting the warm light of the Roman sun hit my cheeks.
We were at an old café a five minute walk from the campus that we visited usually at least twice a week. However, it might as well have been my first time there. I studied the row of buildings crammed together across the street, the way little alleys cut in between them, branching off from the main road like vessels from an artery.
Somewhere down the street a young boy laughed as he ran through a flock of pigeons, the birds winging away in all directions with annoyed squawks.
I noticed our waiter as he shuffled between the tables on the patio. He was an older man with a horseshoe of wispy white hair clinging to his scalp. He was the same waiter we dealt with on every visit.
But this time, I noticed how, despite his age, he walked quickly and confidently, his polished shoes clicking off the pavement. He knelt to deposit a mug of espresso in front of a woman wearing an enormous pair of sunglasses, smiling as he did. I remembered that he always smiled, and that when his mouth smiled, his eyes did, too.
Liam’s smiles went to his eyes, too. I remembered that. A person’s eyes don’t lie, my dad used to say to me. Well, I definitely saw a certain truth in Liam’s eyes that night. And it was a truth that left the front of my stomach tingly and tight.
“Be careful. If Giancarlo sees you looking at him like that, he is likely to flirt with you,” Isabella said.
Heat rose to my cheeks while my eyes dropped to my latte. How strange I must look, I realized. Staring about like a tourist who’d just gotten off the plane.
“It’s nothing,” I said, “It’s just that everything reminds me of him.”
“Him? This Liam?” I liked the way his name sounded in her accent. Exotic, yet somehow familiar. “I think this was not just a one night stand, no?”
I shrugged, a sudden burst of frustration twisting my lips. “No, that’s all it can be. I’m just not in the right place for something like that… something like him in my life right now.”
“There is no place in your life for joy and happiness right now? Is that what you are saying? Because that is what I am hearing,” Isabella said, tracing the rim of her espresso cup with one long and lacquered fingertip.
I balked at that, hitching my shoulders higher, “Hey, come on, I’m happy.” I could taste the lie as it rolled across my tongue and then out through my lips. It was bitter. Not at all like Liam’s kisses.
“You aren’t a very good liar, Emma. Why do you resist the idea so much?”
I shrugged while shaking my head, getting the sudden urge to throw my hands up as well. Maybe Italy was rubbing off on me, after all. “I just can’t deal with it. Not on top of school.”
That made Isabella’s dark eyebrows climb her forehead, as though to say, “You don’t believe that. Why should I?”
And she was right, I knew. If it was just supposed to be a one night stand, why could I think of nothing but those lovely lips of his, of the way his eyes smiled with those lips?
Another tingle ran down my body, terminating in a place that had me shifting in my seat and swallowing heavily.
“Tell me,” Isabella said.
I blew my cheeks out. “I guess things just didn’t go like I thought they would. With him. Liam, I mean.”
“How so?”
“He was still there.”
Isabella raised her upturned palms above the level of the table and shook her head.
I sighed, knowing that I’d have to provide more details. Slipping back into that memory of him was like pulling on my favorite jacket, so easy I didn’t even have to think about it.
Liam had still been there, in the morning, when I woke up. My first feeling upon awakening had been how sore I felt, followed quickly by what had caused the soreness.
And then my hand slid across the smooth, now slightly rumpled sheets and found nothing beside me. My heart jerked up into my throat even as I thought that he had left. I opened my eyes expecting maybe a note on the pillow thanking my for the previous evening’s activities and to please show myself out.
Except there was no note. Only a pattern of wrinkles on the sheet and a slight depression on the pillow where it had cradled Liam’s head.
I remember feeling sick, disappointed. As though this wasn’t the way it was supposed to have gone. Then stupid, for thinking it should have been any other way.
But then I heard him. Humming an aimless tune while other things clattered and tinkled. Curious, I sat up, wrapping the silky sheet around my still-naked body, holding the slack in one hand.
“What was he doing?” Isabella said. She’d stopped drinking her espresso, and she leaned over the table, fascinated by every detail. Her question had interrupted my own pleasant memory, so I shushed her and tried to fall back into it.
I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering the feel of the sheet against my shoulders and the way it whisked against the floor as I shuffled my feet forward.
I left the bedroom, following the sound of his voice and the clatter of dishes. I found him in the small, if well appointed kitchen, whisking something in a large stainless mixing bowl, a Teflon-coated skillet waiting on the range.
Isabella’s eyes widened, showing the whites. She licked those full lips of hers. Lips that normally made m
e jealous, but now couldn’t budge me from my memory.
“No, he didn’t?” Isabella said, obviously shocked.
“He did,” I nodded, “He cooked me breakfast.”
I remembered standing in the doorway, watching him in those few moments before he saw me. If anything, he looked even sexier in the morning light. His bed-head was tousled just right. The white housecoat he wore terminated at his calves, showing the way he curled his bare toes against the tile floor while he concentrated on cooking. It was adorable.
I could have melted right then and there.
Then he poured the contents of the mixing bowl into the skillet. It was egg. Next, he sprinkled in some small bits of meat and veggies, followed by some shredded cheese. I’d been in Italy long enough to recognize a frittata. My heart seemed to expand to fill my whole torso. I could hardly breathe. Except I forced myself to inhale, the dish smelled so good.
Liam heard the sound, glancing over his shoulder at me. He flashed a smile that made me want to take him right back to bed. “Hey, sleepy. Give me just one second…”
He finished getting all the ingredients in before fiddling with the fancy digital settings on the range.
When he turned around I saw how his housecoat had fallen open slightly, exposing a sexy V of flesh that definitely left me hungry in a way that frittata didn’t. He held out his hand and I took it. He pulled me close, me putting my hands on that bared skin of his, feeling his strong chest with one hand while my other palm went down to run over the washboard of his abdominals.
“Hey, yourself,” I said.
He looked at me wearing his bed sheet. “You know, I think that look went out of style in these parts about 1500 years ago.”
“Really? I thought it suited me,” I breathed. I couldn’t help myself, he looked simply too delicious to ignore. I kissed the cleft of his chin, loving the tickle of his stubble against my lips. He put one finger beneath my chin and then lifted my face so that he could look into my eyes. Behind him, the egg started sizzling in the skillet.
“Everything suits you,” he said, and then he kissed me.
“He sounds like a good kisser,” Isabella said, licking her lips again. I could see the slight flush to her swarthy complexion and I knew just where her imagination took her.
Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story Page 3