The thought of marriage to the charismatic tycoon she’d adored from afar for as long as she could remember had scared the heck out of her—mainly because she’d known she’d find it impossible not to fall head over heels in lust with the confirmed bachelor.
And love? Would sleeping with him blur the lines of what they were, just as he’d said? And was she brave enough to reject him when he was offering something she wanted so badly?
She blinked up at him, doubt making her voice quiet. ‘I’m not tired.’
He expelled a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
‘Thank God for that.’
And now his patience deserted him.
He balled a hand into her hair, tilting her head back to allow him access, and kissed her as she’d never been kissed before. His tongue duelled with hers, lashing her with his need, and his body was hard and erect as he pushed her backwards onto the bed. She fell and he went with her, lying on top of her as his kiss pressed her head into the mattress and her body writhed beneath him.
A fever of need was spinning from her womanhood through her whole body, making her pant with desperate hunger. And he understood it. It burned in him, too.
‘This is so beautiful,’ she gasped, watching the candlelight flickering against the wall, casting shadows that did something to her insides.
‘Si.’
His hands pushed at the fabric of her dress, lifting it higher, moving it up her body, exposing her long legs to him so that he groaned into her mouth as he felt the expanse of her thigh.
‘You are beautiful,’ he added, dragging his mouth lower, teasing the flesh at the base of her neck.
After a lifetime of not wanting to be beautiful it was strange for her to find those words so seductive, so pleasing. She swallowed.
He flicked the pulse point in her neck that was pounding hard and fast, his tongue a call to arms she couldn’t ignore. Her hands pushed at his jacket and he groaned low in his throat as she arched her back at the same time, needing more, so much more, wanting her to touch him, to feel him.
Despite her complete inexperience she was driven by an ancient feminine dance, the power of which had been implanted into her soul at birth.
She rolled her hips, cursing the fabric between them. But his length was hard and it pressed against the sensitive flesh of her need. He thrust it towards her as though they were naked. He ground it against her and heat rose inside her. Her eyes had stars dancing in front of them and her breasts were tight, her nipples straining against the fabric of her dress, desperate for attention.
He ran his palms over her flesh and she cried out at the unexpected touch. As he ground his arousal tighter, harder, faster, his hands moved over her breasts and an orgasm split through her, its intensity almost ripping her apart.
She arched her back, moaning, crying out, her hands pushing at his shirt as the strength of the feelings he’d stirred made breathing, speaking, anything almost impossible.
But Pietro wasn’t close to finishing. He was going to make this a night Emmeline Morelli would never forget. A night worthy of her first time.
As her breath softened and her cheeks glowed pink he crawled down her body, his hands worshipping her through the dress, his mouth running over the soft folds of fabric until they connected with her underpants. They were simple white cotton, and that brought a smile to his face. He liked to imagine her in them. That alone would fuel his fantasies for years to come. But for now they served no purpose.
He slid them down her body, over the shoes she still wore, discarding them at the foot of the bed. She was writhing, her body still on fire. He traced circles along her legs with his fingers, moving towards her thighs.
She gasped, and the sound made him smile.
‘You want me to touch you here?’ he said softly, padding a thumb over the sensitive cluster of nerve-endings.
‘I want everything,’ she moaned.
His erection jerked hard in his pants. As hard as it could, anyway, when it was already taking up more room than was left inside the fabric.
‘You are going to get it,’ he promised darkly.
His hands were gently insistent as they separated her legs, pushing them wide apart to reveal her whole self to him. Before she could guess what he intended to do he ran his tongue across her seam.
She cried out into the room as new pleasures began to swirl around her, but he held her legs still, keeping her open to him. Keeping her right where he wanted her.
It was both an invasion and a sensual adventure. The intimacy of the act should have embarrassed her, or shamed her, but it did neither. She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling as his tongue lashed her sensitive nerve-endings and euphoric delight careened over her body. She was at the top of a rollercoaster and the ride was only just getting started.
Emmeline didn’t try to control herself as cry after hoarse cry came from her mouth. She couldn’t. She was completely subjected to the pleasure he was creating. He was her master.
‘I want you to come,’ he said against her body, and the words were a command that started a fever inside her.
She reached up and grabbed the duvet in her fingers, wrapping her hands around it and arching her back as his tongue moved faster, deeper, harder. Finally the muscles deep inside her squeezed hard, wet and desperate, and then, overjoyed, she felt pleasure fill her. It rioted through her, ricocheting off her body.
‘God...’ she whimpered at the candles in the room, shivering and yet covered in perspiration at the same time. ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’
His laugh was slightly unsteady as he dragged his mouth higher, over her flat stomach to her gently rounded breasts. He flicked one nipple with his tongue and then moved his mouth to the other, clamping his teeth over it just hard enough to make her cry out with renewed awareness.
‘Why can you not believe it?’ he prompted, his smile lazily indolent, his eyes hooded as his head came level with hers.
‘I just... You kissed me...down there.’
‘Down here, you mean?’
He curved a hand possessively over her womanhood and she sucked her lip between her teeth, nodding slowly.
‘I want to do that again and again,’ he promised, the heel of his hand pressing on her flesh just hard enough to keep the tremors of sensation going.
‘Okay.’ She smiled up at him, her body strangely lethargic in the midst of the passion he’d stirred up.
His laugh was a rumble...a coarse sound. He stood up, and for a moment she was assailed by loneliness and concern. Was he stopping?
But his fingers flicked at his buttons, loosening his shirt, pushing it off his body to reveal the full expanse of his tanned naked chest. She’d seen him like this before—in the pool—and the memory of that had burned itself into her fantasies.
But this was different.
He was undressing for her now. Undressing with his eyes hooked to her body, his fingers moving with determined speed as he slid the clothes from his body until he was in just a pair of black briefs. His arousal was evident through the fabric, straining against it, pushing outwards so her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to it.
‘Am I right in thinking you have not seen a man before, Emmeline?’
The question was asked impassively, with no judgement, but Emmeline’s face flushed with blood. Embarrassment made her look away and swallow.
‘Of course I’ve seen a man,’ she said quietly.
‘Naked?’ he prompted.
She shook her head, still unable to meet his eyes.
‘Come here.’
Her heart thundered inside her body but she stood, closing the small distance between the bed and him. Even her own nakedness didn’t shame her, though she’d never been this way before.
As if instinctively understanding her thoughts, he caught her around the waist. There was something in his expression—a confusion, a newness—that made her breath hitch in her throat. He drew her against the hard planes of his bo
dy and she made a soft sound of anticipation as his arousal pressed against her.
‘I didn’t want to marry you,’ he said thickly. ‘But now I can’t think of anything I want more than what we are about to do. You are...uniquely beautiful.’
The words made her heart flutter; it felt weightless, without gravity, and she felt it might lift out of her body altogether.
‘I’m not.’ She shook her head.
‘You try to disguise your beauty,’ he corrected. ‘And I cannot understand why, when most women do everything they can to enhance what they have.’
For a moment pain lanced her. A pain so deep, so embedded, that it had always been a part of her.
‘It’s who I am,’ she said quietly.
‘I want to get to know who you are,’ he murmured. ‘I didn’t want to marry you, but you’re my wife. And I’m glad.’
Her stomach churned and emotions ransacked her body, filling her heart with something new.
A sense of belonging.
He caught her hands and lifted them to his underpants. ‘Undress me.’
Her eyes flew to his; doubt and uncertainty warring with temptation. ‘I’ve never done this...’ she babbled.
He laughed softly. ‘I’m aware of that.’
She drew her brows together, her face a mask of doubt. ‘I thought educating virgins wasn’t your thing?’
‘Not just any virgin,’ he said in a gravelled tone. ‘You, Mrs Morelli.’
‘What if I’m not...? What if this isn’t...?’ She closed her eyes, forcing herself to think clearly and speak what was on her mind. ‘You told me you’re used to experienced lovers. What if I’m terrible in bed?’
That unfamiliar stroke of guilt slashed through him anew. He’d said that. In fact he’d said words to that effect several times. Why had he been such a bastard to her?
‘Tonight I want to show you what your body is capable of,’ he said thickly, pulling her closer and making her gasp when his arousal throbbed hard against her body.
He felt her knees tremble. Her eyes were huge in her face, all honey and caramel, awash with far too many thoughts and doubts. Doubts he’d put there. Doubts he wanted to remove one by one, kiss by kiss.
‘I’m scared,’ she said, with such simple honesty it broke his heart.
‘I know.’ He kissed the tip of her nose.
His tenderness made her heart swell. Her fingers moved of their own accord, pushing at his underwear, lowering it over the hard line of his erection and then down, over his thighs. He stepped back, moving out of his underwear as he guided her to the bed.
She fell backwards, but he didn’t immediately join her. Instead he reached into the drawer beside the bed and pulled out a foiled square.
‘Protection,’ he said with a half-smile.
‘Ah. No grandkids.’
She nodded, her wink reminding him of the first day they’d discussed this marriage. When she’d been so sure of herself. Sure that she was getting a convenient husband, a ticket to her university studies and to...freedom. The word lodged in his mind as incongruous, as it had done back then.
‘Not tonight.’ He grinned.
Their eyes met and the air sparked with something neither had ever felt before. Though Pietro had slept with more women than he could easily remember, he’d never taken a woman’s virginity. Even as a young man he had gravitated towards experienced lovers. This was new ground for them both.
How could he reassure her? Drive that doubt from her mind properly?
A strange sense of uncertainty ached in his gut. But she pushed up on her elbows and stared at him.
‘I want this,’ she said with soft confidence. ‘I don’t care what happens next. I want to feel this.’
He nodded and lowered himself onto the bed, kissing her slowly, sensually, marvelling at the feeling of flesh on flesh. Her naked breasts were flattened by his hair-roughened torso. His arousal was close to her—so close he could take her. The way she was trembling beneath him was a reaction to the newness of this, even as her eyes looked at him as though he was the air she needed to sustain life.
He dragged his mouth lower, rolling one of her nipples with his tongue while his hand slid down and splayed her legs wide, giving him more room, more access.
‘You tell me if you need time,’ he said thickly, not even sure the command made sense.
But she understood. She understood as though he’d spoken in a language made just for them.
She nodded and he lifted his head, one hand cupping her cheek as he kissed her hard. His tongue was passion and flame and she writhed beneath him, lifting her hips, searching for him, welcoming his invasion.
And God knew he wanted that too.
He pushed into her gently, gliding only his tip into her warm, tight core, giving her time to adjust to each incremental sensation as he filled her anew.
She moaned into his mouth as he moved, and all his control was required to stop himself taking her as he wanted to—hard and fast. He pulled out slowly, then pushed in deeper, before removing himself again. As he did so each time he took more and more of her and her muscles relaxed, welcoming him deeper, without restraint, without reserve, until he was pressing against the barrier of her innocence.
He kissed her, holding her tight as he thrust past it, removing it forever, imprinting himself on her as the first lover of her life. The first man who’d touched her like this.
Finally his whole length was sheathed by her, wrapped up in her, squeezed by her, and he paused, giving them both a moment to adjust to how it felt. He pushed his face higher so he could see her properly, could read her face. He saw wetness in her eyes and something turned in his gut.
‘You’re in pain.’
He moved to pull out of her but she shook her head and wrapped her legs around his waist.
‘No, no, it’s...’ She shook her head and her smile was tight. Self-conscious. ‘It’s fine.’
Perfect, she amended inwardly. Everything about the moment was more perfect than she could ever have fantasised or hoped. It was sublime.
‘“Fine” is a good starting point,’ he said darkly. ‘But it requires improvement.’
And then he moved quickly, his body thrusting into her and pulling out, each movement sparking an electrical current beneath her skin until she was almost out of breath. The assault on her senses was unlike anything she’d expected. Even when he’d touched her and brought her to orgasm it had been different from this. Now every nerve-ending in her body was twitching, as though he was stirring her from the inside out.
And he was, she realised, arching her back as the feelings began to overtake everything.
The galaxy was bright and hot and she was intimately aware of her part in it: like flotsam, bright and floating, powerless and yet powerful. A contradiction in her heart.
She dug her nails into his shoulders as wave after wave of pleasure swallowed her, devoured her, making her eyes leak hot tears she didn’t even feel. Only when he caught one with his tongue and traced it up her cheek did she realise she was crying—but she couldn’t stop.
She was incandescent, the explosion of her pleasure like a fire in her blood. He held her as she came, held her tight, reassured her, whispered to her in Italian, his words stirring her up more, hotter, faster. She clung to him as the tornado swirled around her, held him as though he alone could save her, and then she cried out, sweat beading on her brow as the storm broke.
Pleasure saturated the room, thickened her breath. She clung to him until the craziness slowed and she was once more herself.
But she was not herself. She’d never be herself again. She had shaved off pieces of her being and handed them to him, bound them into his soul and his flesh, uniting herself with him even if he didn’t want that.
She fell back onto the bed. The beauty of what they’d shared was incredible. Yet it was almost immediately eclipsed by a sense of guilt. Of self-doubt.
She’d just experienced the most unimaginable delight and he...h
e’d simply had a good workout.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, turning her face away and staring at one of the flickering candles. ‘I told you I wouldn’t be any good at this.’
‘Hey.’
He caught her face in his hand and turned her back to look at him, even though she couldn’t bear to see the pity and disappointment in his eyes.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing,’ she muttered.
It was impossible to give voice to the embarrassment that was quickly usurping her delight. Uncertainty and inexperience were horrible accomplices, and they dogged her every thought.
‘Cara...’ He spoke quietly, bringing his mouth to her earlobe and pulling it between his teeth, wobbling the flesh and breathing warm air over her delicate pulse-points so that she shivered anew. ‘Do you feel this?’
He thrust into her again, deeper, harder, his body like a rock.
‘Yes, but you didn’t—’ She bit down on her lip.
His laugh was soft recrimination. ‘I did not finish because I didn’t want this to be over. Believe me, it is taking every ounce of my willpower not to.’
Her eyes clashed with his, trying to read truth in his statement.
‘You answer my needs perfectly,’ he promised.
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but then he began to move once more and she was lost to thought. She arched her back, her body held by his, and this time as he rocked her to new heights of awareness and fulfilment his mouth tormented her breasts, so there were fires raging in every part of her body.
She ran her fingers over him, wanting to touch and feel every inch of him, to enjoy his body as he was hers. And as she began to fall apart at the seams, a tumbling mess of sensation and feeling, a tangle of emotions, he kissed her, his mouth holding hers as he made her world shift once more.
Only this time he came with her.
Feeling him throb inside her, feeling his body racked by a pleasure he couldn’t control and knowing it was being with her that was doing that to him made an ancient feminine power rock her. She held him tight and kissed him back, her mouth moving over his as he lost control of himself, as though she felt he needed some kind of reassurance.
Her Wedding Night Surrender (Harlequin Presents) Page 9