Was it? she asked herself. Was jumping in the deep end when she barely knew how to swim what she really wanted to do? No, not really. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘This is what I want.’
‘Then why the sudden look of anxiety?’ he prompted.
‘You told me to hold the thought,’ she wryly pointed out.
‘That belonged to a different thought,’ he returned. ‘I am now discussing the one that denies me your eyes.’
Lifting her lashes, she looked directly into his dark and sombre eyes and smiled a wry smile at his even needing to ask that question. ‘I’ve known you for less than a week, and you wonder why I am anxious about this?’
‘Would a few more days make any difference?’ He put the question to her with genuine interest, she was sure, but it was mocking all the same, because he knew just as she knew that this had been written on the wall from the first second of their first glance at each other.
‘No,’ she ruefully replied.
‘Then keep those beautiful eyes on me,’ he softly commanded. ‘I like to make love with all the senses, and your eyes make love to me more than any other pair of eyes I’ve known.’
‘Known many?’ she asked in a lightly mocking attempt to sound clever and witty and sophisticated.
His smile reappeared, teasing and warm. ‘No, this is my first time,’ he said.
And she laughed. It was such an outrageous thing to say—and she felt some of her awkwardness seep away. I love you, she wanted to say, but those words were banned to her every which way she looked at them, so she did the next best thing and reached up on tiptoe to brush her mouth against his.
‘A lady has a right to be unsure of herself at moments like this,’ she murmured as she drew away again.
‘So does a man,’ he countered. ‘Now—take a sip of your champagne again and hold it in your mouth.’
Intrigued by the instruction, she did as he bade, her eyes still fixed on his as he did the same thing with his champagne. Champagne bubbles began to fizz on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and the air between them stirred as a new level of awareness took precedence.
Lost in the warmth of his eyes and the awakening of her own desires, she therefore didn’t see what was coming until it was too late. With a smooth, slick move he slid a hand around her waist—then swooped on her mouth with no warning whatsoever.
The result was an explosion on the senses when his champagne-moistened tongue made contact with hers. It was the most erotic thing she had ever experienced. In a single moment she seemed to shoot from gentle awareness into full arousal with no gap in between. Her hand shot up, instinctively searching for support as pure sensation went racing through her on the flow of champagne bubbles that had entered her blood.
Her hand found a tightly muscled shoulder, and gripped. Breathing had gone haywire, mouth hot on mouth. Nervous barriers fell, uncertainties disappeared. The kiss deepened and became something else entirely—seduction at its most intense.
She heard the light tap of glass on stone but didn’t recognise the sound for what it was until she felt her own glass being taken from her and placed on the marble table. Freedom to use both hands had her moving closer to him with her fingers sliding up the front of his shirt. She felt the warmth of living flesh, the hardness of well-honed muscle, and the slight prickle of chest hair, all of which sent a pleasurable little sigh whispering from her mouth into his mouth.
Why the champagne kiss should have caused this to happen, she didn’t understand. All she knew was that it had happened—and that he’d known it was going to happen, which automatically said he had done this before.
‘You’re too good at this,’ she murmured unsteadily when he eventually let their mouths separate.
‘I get even better,’ was his conceited reply. Then, with only that mocking remark to accompany them, he caught her hand and began leading her up the steps towards the waiting bedroom. As they passed by the wall switch he paused to dim the sitting-room lights. In the bedroom he did the same, shrouding them in a more intimate atmosphere, then taking her back into his arms.
She went without a murmur, her mouth welcoming him as if they were already lovers. The bed was several yards away, but neither seemed in any rush to get there, so it was reached in easy stages, the first stage being the caressing way he began to remove her dress. His hands skimmed her body, lighting fires as they went, then fed the flames on their way back up again. Long fingers slid beneath the silken weight of her hair swinging gently away from her back because of the passionate tilt of her head. He found her nape, used his fingers to lightly measure its slenderness, then was moving again, finding the zip to her dress and drawing it downwards, while she merely clung to him, needing his strength when her limbs began to shimmer with a sultry kind of heat.
Then he was diverting her attention again by peeling her dress down her arms and her body until she stood in front of him in nothing but what she was wearing beneath. So now he knew his provocative guess earlier had been absolutely right, she realised as she watched his dark gaze skim over her white silk underwear with a look of triumph he did nothing to disguise.
‘Homework?’ he taunted softly, and she began blushing like crazy.
He just laughed huskily, and proceeded to make her feel utterly wanton standing there with her dress pooled around her feet as he explored every silk-smooth inch of her while retaining both his clothes and his dignity.
Not for long though, not for long. For it didn’t take many seconds for her fingers to release the rest of the buttons on his shirt. He lost her mouth as the two pieces of fine white linen parted and a need to look at him overrode her need to feel his mouth seducing hers…
The last thing he expected her to do was to stroke him as he had been stroking her. The feel of her fingers against his flesh had his chest expanding on a fierce intake of air. The fingers paused, her eyes flickered upward to catch the intense pleasure reflected in his, then, with a sensuality that knocked him sideways, she moistened her softly pulsing mouth with the tip of her tongue, then lowered her gaze again and leaned forward to begin stringing clinging kisses from one tight male nipple to the other.
‘Dio, cara,’ he breathed in shaken reaction. And closed his eyes as her mouth, her tongue and her caressing fingers locked him into his own world of burgeoning pleasure…
She’d been wanting to touch him like this for so long now it felt like for ever, Natalia was thinking hazily. And he was so wonderful to touch. She could feel his response in each ripple of flesh she so carefully explored. His breathing was tight, his heart thumping against his solid ribcage, and her fingertips felt enlivened by the rasping sensation of crisp body hair and satin tight flesh.
She wanted more. And more came with her lips joining in the banquet. At the first moist touch of her tongue on his skin he opened his eyes again, looked deeply into hers, then muttered something in his own language as she shook his hands free of the shirt so he could reach for her…
Mouths joined again, hotly, hungrily, her arms looped around his neck. Finding her slender hips, he eased her up against him, then leaned back against the wall behind to simply sink himself into the rousing heat permeating his body as she began to move against him in an erotic rhythm no man with blood in his veins could resist.
She was a born sensualist, and he couldn’t believe his luck in finding someone like her. Inhibition seemed like a foreign word to her. She wanted him and was doing absolutely nothing to disguise that want. Did Edward know her like this?
No! his mind blasted angrily back at him. You fool, don’t bring him in here!
‘What—what’s wrong?’ Feeling the violent change in him sent her jerking back from him in confused reaction.
‘Niente,’ he rasped, didn’t even know he had spoken in Italian, but saw her beautiful eyes darken into wariness and, on a grim act of black fury aimed entirely at himself for ruining the moment, he bent to scoop her up into his arms. ‘I want you, that is what is wrong,’ he growled. ‘Have you
any idea what you are doing to me?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and it shut down his anger like a plug being pulled on something destructive.
Because there it was—the look in her eyes he had first seen long days ago and had been searching for ever since. It was warm, it was soft, it was steamy and sultry and reminded him of the goal he had set himself to learn what happened to her eyes when he was deep inside her and she was toppling over the edge…
‘Yes…’ he agreed on a sensual hiss that made her tremble because she knew he was turning the answer right back on herself.
For he knew what he was doing to her, and as she gazed up into his velvet dark eyes, with their fires of desire burning inside, she knew she was about to be drawn into the flame.
He was taking over. He had been playing it passively for a while but now he became the man she’d expected, dark and demanding, holding her eyes by sheer strength of will as he reached for the hand she still had linked around his neck, and, being very deliberate about it, he drew the hand down between their two bodies and placed it on the clasp to his trousers.
It was a command to finish undressing him, and heat prickled along her skin. If he saw her uncertainty he wasn’t letting her keep it. ‘Do it,’ he urged her and lifted his own hands to her shoulders, where long fingers hooked beneath narrow bra straps and with an agonising slowness he began drawing them down the curve of her arms.
It was a mutual undressing which heightened the tension to its nth degree. Tiny lace cups folded away from two high, firm, perfect breasts that clearly didn’t need the support anyway. She released a sharp gasp when he first touched her there, running feather-like caresses over newly exposed flesh that responded by swelling and tightening with pleasure…
‘Do it,’ he repeated, keeping her mind focused on her own task, even if she didn’t want it to be. ‘Undress me,’ he urged. ‘Touch me. I want to feel what you feel…’
He could see what she was feeling because her head had tipped back and her mouth had parted and she was barely functioning on a conscious level. So when her fingers began to move against his waist, it felt like a small victory to be able to command her even while she was lost like this.
But it was a brief victory, he realised, feeling the muscles around his waist contract forcefully when her nails inadvertently rasped against his flesh. Sensation went raking through him, hot enough and tight enough to clench muscles all over him. Dio, he thought, and she hasn’t even touched me where it matters yet…
It was all so erotic. While her fingers fumbled with the catch on his trousers, he was running tormenting forays across her acutely taut nipples with his fingertips. And her breathing was hectic; she couldn’t think beyond the crazy notion that if this was making love the Sicilian way, then how did any woman survive it?
You don’t know if you will yet, a little voice inside her head dryly taunted. This is only the beginning; wait until he decides to move to the really heavy stuff.
Stuff like lowering his dark head to kiss her hotly as she began to draw his zip down and felt the backs of her fingers make contact with a hard male erection covered by only the thin fabric of his undershorts. The experience made the centre of her sex begin to pulse to a beat of its own making, or maybe it was his beat, she was no longer sure of anything worth a damn. The whole affair was beginning to grow very steamy, his mouth hot and demanding on her mouth, his fingers tormenting her breasts and his manhood playing havoc with any preconceptions she might have had about his prowess in that area of his physical make-up.
She failed the major test though, because for the life of her she couldn’t get herself to peel down those shorts. Or maybe he was the one that relented, she thought dazedly when, on a sudden decision that seemed to come from nowhere, he unclipped her bra, discarded it to the floor, then lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. Carefully lowering her onto it, he stood back to begin removing the rest of his clothes himself while she curled onto her side and lay there watching the deliberate strip-show taking place.
His shoes left his feet, the trousers were stripped away along with undershorts and socks in a few swift economical moves that quite simply took her breath away. But not as the sight of his body did, its leanness and its strength and the arrogance with which he displayed it all culminating in turning the excitement she was experiencing up another notch…
He saw it happen, saw the flame light her eyes and felt suddenly charged with sheer masculine pride in what she was seeing. But then, the feeling was mutual. She was lying here on his bed at last, and as he came down beside her his heart was thundering because she was the one who was reaching for him.
Everything merged into one long glorious coming-together after that. Her hands moved on his body, and his lips sought her breasts and the delicate round of her navel so exquisitely sensitive to the lap of his tongue. And she was anxiously kneading his shoulders when he began to slide the last flimsy scrap of silk down her hips.
‘Kiss me,’ she groaned.
It was such a desperate little command that he stretched up to take her mouth with a hungry passion that she simply sank herself into while he continued caressing each new section of flesh he was exposing. When his finger finally made contact with the soft mound of curls at the apex of her sex, he felt the fine, tight shudder of pleasure ripple through her, and was overawed by how good it made him feel.
And it wasn’t all one-sided because her hands were moving over his body, tracing restlessly the length of his back, the lean tightness of his buttocks, his hair-roughened thighs, and he found himself willing her to put him out of his agony and take him in hand. It became a kind of battle, while their mouths clung and their bodies writhed, and their fingers hovered just beyond the goal both of them desperately craved.
Who surrendered the battle first it was difficult to say; maybe it was a joint surrender, because as he felt the tip of his finger slide that extra inch into sheer, sweet luxury her fingers closed around him with a delicate tenderness that rocked him to the core.
Her few scraps of clothing were an irritant now. With a rough sound of impatience he pushed himself up and completely rid her of her white panties. The stockings came next, sliding off silken legs which aided him by lifting and flexing in a way that almost sent him over the edge. He caught one long, slender calf in his hand and bowed his mouth to it, hungrily, sucking and biting his way upwards—until she stopped him by the simple act of pulling him by his hair back down beside her.
And in that one urgent movement, everything changed yet again. They looked deep into each other’s eyes and it acted like a gentle calming, everything slowed to a long, lazy touch, feel, teasing medley. She kissed his eyelids, his cheeks, his arrogant nose, and smiled softly when he returned the honour.
‘Beautiful,’ he whispered, stroking his fingers through the silken spread of her hair. ‘You take my breath away.’
‘So do you,’ she softly confided.
He laughed, softly. Then suddenly he wasn’t laughing, he was kissing her hot and deep, and the whole thing became charged again, but with serious intent this time. Caresses became bold, more intimate, until they were touching each other with an urgency that could only be assuaged one way.
He came over her, she welcomed him, he settled his lean hips between her clinging thighs, and as he prepared to join them she seemed to know that he wanted her to open her eyes, and to keep on looking at him as that joining became real with the single deep thrust of his hips.
His eyes were black, glittering down at her, his features taut with desire. He began to move, slowly, deeply, watched the telling darkening of her own eyes as he built the pulsing pleasure at his own rich pace. Her legs had locked themselves around his body, her slender arms clinging to his back. And as the urgency grew in both of them still their eyes did not break contact; it was part of the loving, a necessary part, another point of total communication where they spoke to each other with every sense but without words.
Her eyes held no blue
any more, only smoky swirls of grey and black, and even the grey was losing ground the closer she came to that final leap. And her mouth was open, the tense little gasps of pleasure growing thicker, more arousing when he’d thought he could never be more aroused.
But Natalia Deyton could make him feel things he had never felt before. She was warm and she was generous, and she held nothing in reserve. When his breathing grew tense and the rhythm became stronger, she simply came with him—all the way—stroke for stroke, shudder for exquisite shudder. Her hands shot up, grasped his face, her eyes spiralling out that final hint of grey as her body quickened. Then, ‘Giancarlo,’ she breathed.
That was all. Just his name in that soul-stripping way, then she leapt—Dio, she leapt, on a convulsion of muscle that completely shattered him—and shot him into the same wild place still echoing with his name as if she was pulling him with her into the kind of climax that took him way beyond anything he had ever experienced.
The woman was a witch. His witch, was the final fiercely possessive thought he had before he lost himself in the hot, dark bounty of their shared release…
Lying there beneath him with his face now pressed into the side of her throat and her body still pulsing gently around his possession, Natalia closed her eyes and just let herself float on a lazy sea of satiation. His weight was heavy on her but she didn’t mind—she felt wonderfully invaded by his heat and his scent and an awareness that both of them were lying stretched out without a single bone between them that hadn’t gone weak.
A smile touched her mouth, though she tried to stop it.
‘Shh,’ he breathed against her throat as if he was afraid she was about to speak and spoil the moment.
But that was her very last intention; she felt too good, too at peace, too at one with this lover of hers who had given as much as he had taken. It was a beautiful knowledge. And just as beautiful to know from that lazy ‘shh’ that he was feeling the same way about it.
A Sicilian Seduction Page 10