Her need – contained for days and long, lonely nights – was now bursting from her. She dragged hungry kisses along his collarbone, her teeth nipping at his flesh, tasting him, her tongue trailing lightly over him so he moaned and she felt the reverberations in his throat.
His hands on her body were insistent, stroking her arms first, finding her waist, holding her still so he could do his own inspection, his mouth homing in on her breasts first, his tongue tracing her nipples, swirling the flesh that surrounded her nipples before his teeth teased each point, and she moaned, low in her throat, because the pleasure was so excruciating and she was drowning on a tide of awareness.
“Please,” she whimpered, digging her nails into his shoulders. Only he wasn’t finished with his exploration of her body. He ran his tongue lower, over her flat belly, and at the caesarean scar, he traced the line with his tongue, so she felt as though he was worshiping her with his mouth.
His hands on her thighs were insistent but she parted her legs with the slightest urging, placing her feet flat on the bed, her knees bent towards the ceiling. His tongue flicked the silky flesh at the top of her thighs and she writhed against the bed, twisting as pleasure exploded inside of her. But his hands held her still, and completely captive, as his mouth moved to her sex, his tongue running the length of her seam, teasing her with the lightness of his touch before moving deeper, pleasuring her in a way that was almost unbearable. When she couldn’t take it any longer, he thrust a finger inside of her and she bucked her hips, crying his name again and again, wanting so much more. She was so close, riding high on a wave of utter, desperate delight, but relief was still so far away.
She whimpered and he growled something she couldn’t understand. It took her a moment to realise he was speaking in his native tongue, but he was breathing the words over her body, his lips claiming her flesh once more as he pulled his hand away. A second later, she knew why – the tell tale crinkling of foil, and gratitude and impatience zipped through her. She reached for him as he came over her, his body weight a blissful memory. His mouth returned to her breasts as his erection moved between her legs.
He flicked her nipple with his tongue and then, at the same time he nipped her flesh with his teeth, he thrust into her so the sensations that stirred inside of her were utterly overwhelming.
It was too much, and not enough. She arched her back and he thrust deeper and now she was full of him and satisfaction was humming on the periphery of her mind, so she cried his name and dragged her nails down his back, curving her hands over his butt, holding him buried deep inside of her, wondering why she’d ever tried to fight this, why she’d ever thought this wasn’t essential?
I can make you only one promise: it is, and always will be, just sex.
His words came to her from nowhere; she pushed them away. They weren’t welcome, not when euphoria and closeness was forcibly contradicting that assertion. He said one thing but in his arms, she felt another. She felt the complete opposite.
His fingers laced through hers, pinning her hands above her head – she was his in every way, his possession absolute, and she was drowning in the heady feelings of delight, the wave cresting higher, sparking a tsunami that wouldn’t end.
There was such rightness to this. The first night they’d slept together, she’d felt it then, too. She’d known nothing about him, really, but she’d felt perfection deep in her soul. Completely alone on this earth, an orphan, friendless and jobless, she’d met Fiero and it hadn’t mattered that she didn’t know his surname or his occupation.
Nothing had mattered except the promises his heart made to hers, promises he was making now. Promises she was hearing and returning. She moved her head, needing his kiss, and he gave it to her, his tongue duelling with hers in time with each thrust of his body so she was marching to his beat, his tempo, her pulse firing, her needs exploding until she was shouting his name into his mouth, pulling at her hands until they were free to roam his body once more.
The wave gave way to the heavens and she was flying amongst them, shooting in between stars and galaxies, his breathing, his Italian words, his body the only constants she cared for.
* * *
She was silk beneath his fingertips, soft and smooth and his body craved hers despite the way they’d spent the whole night, wrapped together, limbs entwined, mouths seeking, he was hungry in a way that wouldn’t abate.
It wasn’t the first time he’d felt like this. Those exact same words had pummelled his brain that night in London, the night they’d met. He’d wanted her in a way that had terrified him and made him alive all at once.
She dozed in the soft light of dawn, her lips parted, her flesh perfection. He stared at her, the marks on her body made by him, their passion demanding his roughness, his urgency. His stubbled jaw had grazed her sensitive flesh, leaving pale pink patches across her décolletage, and her breasts had been marked by his mouth, little red circles showing where he’d been carried away by the strength of his needs.
A surge of animalistic pride burst through him at this, proof of what they were to each other, proof of how completely she surrendered to this need, proof of how well they fitted together. His eyes dropped to his own arms which bore the same type of physical proof. Scratches driven over his skin as she’d exploded, her orgasms always so intense, and this one particularly so. Her legs had wrapped around him, her ankles hooking at his back, and her hands had shredded him desperately, perhaps as she tried to make sense of this.
She couldn’t.
Nor could he.
Despite what they both knew to be right and sensible, they were powerless to resist this, powerless to resist each other. Whatever passions had stirred them three years ago, they were as fervent now as ever.
It was the last thought Fiero had before sleep snatched him, right before dawn. He fell asleep with an arm curved possessively over Elodie’s hip and a smile lifting his lips. He fell asleep uncaring for the sense of what they’d just done, nor with a single worry about the future. There’d be time for that later. In that moment he felt good, and he wanted to cherish it. Life was too short, just as she’d said.
Twelve
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Elodie’s cheeks flushed bright pink. She’d slept in that morning and when she’d awoken – in Fiero’s bed! – he was nowhere to be seen. The house was almost completely silent.
A quick conversation with his housekeeper explained. Fiero had gone to work and Emilia had taken Master Montebello, as he was referred to by the staff, to the zoo.
Completely on her own, Elodie had kept herself busy. She’d cooked for pleasure for the first time in a long time. No longer the sole provider of meals for a fussy two year old, she let herself enjoy the experience of being in the kitchen, and powerful memories began to wash over her. Memories of cooking alongside her mother, all the recipes she’d learned as part of her traditions. Anzac biscuits, pavlova, the family’s traditional pudding recipe, profiteroles just like Elodie’s grand-mère had apparently made. She didn’t attempt anything fancy – just a big pasta sauce, but it was nice to stand and chop vegetables, to lose herself in the rhythm of the preparation, to do something physical and useful.
The only problem with a repetitive task was that it freed her mind up to think so her mind wandered to the night before, and thinking about last night was dangerous and distracting, and so incredibly confusing.
So when Fiero appeared in the doorjamb looking good enough to eat, heat flushed her body and she found she could barely hold his gaze. “I thought you were at work?” She prompted, turning back to the courgette.
“I was.”
She added the rounds to the saucepan, stirring it without looking at Fiero.
“It occurs to me that if you’re going to live here, you’ll need a car.”
That had Elodie jerking her face towards his, her expression showing confusion. “But why?”
“You can’t walk everywhere you want to go,” he said with a shrug, as though it we
re the most sensible thing in the world.
“Oh,” she nodded a little unevenly. “But there are busses. Trains.”
“Si, and I have a driver. But you should still have the option of driving, of stepping into your own car and heading out without needing to coordinate it with staff or consulting the public transportation timetable.”
“Right,” she frowned. So many questions flooded her mind and she wasn’t in enough command of herself to hold any of them back. “You want me to stay here?”
Now it was Fiero who frowned. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Elodie’s heart was racing. She turned the temperature on the saucepan down to a simmer and put the lid in place, then leaned back against the kitchen bench, glad for the extra support.
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
Fiero’s expression shifted and suddenly, he was impossible to read. There was a look on his face of both ruthlessness and disinterest – how he could achieve each simultaneously was something to be admired.
“I thought we discussed this on the day you left hospital.”
She bit down on her lip. “Right. That you wanted Jack to live here,” she nodded slowly, lifting her fingers to her pulse points in her forehead and rubbing them in a light circular motion. “I just hadn’t worked all the details out yet.”
She felt his eyes on her, felt the intensity of his gaze, and despite the seriousness and importance of this conversation, desire sparked in her gut.
This time, though, she didn’t give in to it.
“What is there to work out?” His shrug was nonchalant bordering on arrogant. He moved deeper into the kitchen. “You will stay here, as you are now. Jack will learn the language and start school here next year. You will integrate – start to learn the language as he does, continue working if you wish, doing your consulting. I presumed this had all been decided.”
“Did you?” Her heart was thumping hard against her rib cage and she couldn’t say why, when he was offering so many ways to make this work, she felt as though she was drowning.
“So you will need a car, and a tutor. In the language,” he prompted, moving closer, “though I am willing to give you all the after hours tutoring you require.” He pulled her body to his, buzzing his lips over the sensitive flesh near her earlobe so she trembled automatically. He began to whisper words to her in Italian, words she couldn’t understand but that evinced the desired response from her nonetheless.
How easy it would have been to succumb to this again, to give her body what it had wanted since she’d woken up that same morning and reached for him, craving him anew, only to find him gone.
It had hurt, and not just because it was an echo of the morning in London when he’d done the exact same thing.
No, it hurt because she felt her vulnerability where he was concerned, and she knew the danger that stalked her.
What she wanted went so far beyond sex. It was so much more than just a physical relationship. She pulled back a little so she could see his face and groaned without intending to, because she looked at Fiero and saw the future she wanted.
And it wasn’t a sensible, pragmatic future arrived at in an effort to give Jack everything he deserved. This was the life she actively, passionately wanted.
And he was the man she wanted in it.
“Until one day you wake up and you no longer desire me?”
His smile was light, as though he didn’t sense the change in her mood, the shift in her thoughts. “I cannot say for certain that would happen.”
“Of course it would,” she whispered. “You’ve made it clear to me again and again that this is just sex for you.” She paused, and saw the moment his expression shifted, the moment he realised she wasn’t smiling back at him. “That’s how you feel, right?”
Consternation flashed in his eyes. “What do you want from me? What would you want me to say?”
Hurt bubbled in her veins, exploding just beneath her skin. “More than I think you can give.”
He frowned. “What else do you want?” His eyes flashed with something like realisation. “Money? You want to know what kind of trust fund I would set up for you?”
She swore softly and jerked out of his arms. “God, no! Fiero, not for one second have I thought about the fact you could make my life financially easier. I don’t need money. I’m comfortable enough.”
His expression was perfectly banal once more, only his eyes betrayed a hint of wariness. “You are Jack’s mother and I am his father. I happen to be worth a fortune, which Jack will one day inherit. Naturally I intend to support you as well.”
Her stomach filled with acid. “I don’t want you to support me.”
“No?” His eyes narrowed. “Then tell me what you do want.”
Her swollen heart threatened to break. “I want you to want me.”
Passion stirred in the depths of his gaze. “You think I don’t?”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean physically. I know that we’re in the same boat there. I want you, Fiero, to want me, Elodie, to be here in your life. Not because I’m Jack’s mother and not because we have insane chemistry. I want you to want me because you can’t bear to not have me in your life. I want you to want me to stay because…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Because?” He prompted, after several seconds had passed.
She sucked in a breath, reminding herself to be brave, to chase what she wanted in life. It was the promise she’d made to herself after her parents had died: she’d stop wasting time being who she thought she should be and start following her gut. Well, her gut was telling her what she truly wanted, and it was standing right in front of her.
The realisation had been opening up in her heart for days, for weeks, but now it shone brighter than the sun, it was impossible to ignore.
“I think I’m in love with you.” The words landed in the room like rocks being thrown into an iced-over lake. There was the shatter as they connected and then the never-ending sinking thud, as well as the sharp shattering of ice into the room.
He stared at her as though she’d begun to speak in ancient Greek.
“You’re not.”
His instantaneous denial made her laugh, but it was a deranged noise, without humour. Because with every second that passed, the more she realised that she was in fact in love with him, completely and utterly.
Having offered that explanation for her confused feelings, everything began to make sense. The more time that passed, the more certain she became. She loved him. “I beg to differ.”
He closed his eyes, wiping a hand over his face. So far as gestures went, it was hardly encouraging.
“I think I probably fell in love with you that night,” she was frowning now too, her expression a bookend to his, her mind running over the sequence of events as she considered them in the light of this realisation. “Why else would I do something so out of character? Why else would you?” Her eyes were huge in her face. “It was never just sex between us. It’s not now, no matter what you say.”
His throat jerked as he swallowed hard and his expression was one of steel. “It’s all it can be.”
“No.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re wrong. I’m sure of it.”
He expelled a long, slow breath. “You are unlike anyone I have ever known. And the way you make me feel is…but Elodie? I just don’t think I can move past this.” He spoke slowly, his accent thicker as he formed the sentence, pushing it into the room like tiny bullets that dug into her chest.
“For more than two years you raised my son, while I had no idea he existed. I’m trying to move forward from that, to find a way to have you in my life, for his sake, but it’s not love. It can’t be. Not when I also feel an answering degree of…” he didn’t finish the sentence.
“Of hate?” She whispered stonily, her heart aching.
“I didn’t say that.” He moved across the room, grabbing her hands and lifting them between them, holding them to his chest. “I don’t
want to hate you. But I also cannot give you what you’re asking of me. I can’t. And you shouldn’t expect that.”
She swallowed but her throat was so sore, as though razor blades had been made to line it.
“It’s too much.”
“It’s what I need.”
“It’s not possible.”
She nodded, an awkward movement, as she pulled her hands away. “This is such a mess.” She pierced him with her gaze, moving away from him, turning to look out of the window, out into the beautiful Roman streets.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“No?”
“When I married Alison, I wasn’t clear. I let her believe there was a fairy tale between us, by omission. I’m trying so hard not to make that mistake with you, Elodie. I hurt one woman I cared for; I won’t hurt you. I won’t do it. Why do you think I have been so crystal clear with you all along?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Yes, you do. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never make the mistake of allowing a woman to believe I can give her more than this.”
“You’re lying to yourself though,” she said, bravely.
He didn’t answer. Emboldened, she continued.
“You think this is just sex? Really?”
Something shifted on his face, a look of surprise and then a small nod. “It has to be.”
“Because you can’t forgive me?”
“Because there’s too much on both sides to forgive,” he said gruffly. “We’re both responsible for this, Elodie. You kept my son from me, and I threatened to take Jack away from you. We bring out the worst in each other, not the best.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” His eyes bore into hers. “Am I really?”
Billionaire Baby Daddies: A five-book anthology Page 31