by Olivia Gates
As only you will ever do, she almost blurted out. She bit it back.
It felt as if he were the first and only man she’d ever been with. Really been with. No man had ever taken her like that. She’d never accepted a man inside her like that. Beside his phenomenal size, stamina and rebound time, the things he’d done to her had been undreamed of. The way she’d responded, the way she’d opened herself to whatever he wished to do, had been something she hadn’t imagined herself capable of.
But that was probably more info than he’d want to know. She’d better keep it light.
“You’re in a league of your own, bellissima.”
“Look who’s talking. You weren’t kidding. Or bragging.”
He chuckled, consumed her in a leisurely mating of mouths, smiling into the warmth and intimacy of the meld, soothing the soreness he’d inflicted, before moving down her body and performing the same healing ritual to the nipples she’d begged him to devour in the throes of ecstasy.
“Far from kidding or bragging, I actually downplayed things. I didn’t want you to think you’d fallen into the clutches of a sex maniac and run off screaming.”
“So you misled me about the nature of what awaited me, conned me onto my back, uh—among other positions—and made me scream there instead?”
“And how you scream. Every scream was like an intravenous shot of aphrodisiac, shooting through my system to deluge my brain. I almost blew an artery.”
“Good thing you have a safety valve.”
“And it’s going to come to my rescue constantly. Like now.”
He pressed between the thighs that trembled apart for him, unable to bear those last moments as desire became pain before his hardness and heat filled her again, stretching her into mindlessness, thrusting her to oblivion.
Pangs started to throb, dragging Gabrielle back from the void. She didn’t want to float up from the realm of bliss, wanted to remain suspended there forever.
But the ache mounted, pushed against the lethargy, advancing awareness through her body, until she realized.
Durante. She was wrapped up in him, virility made solid gold muscles, power and hunger and satisfaction made man. Her head was resting on his biceps; her lips were buried in his chiseled chest. Every inch of her was imprinted with his sleek, slightly hair-roughened silk-over-steel body.
The ache rose, changed texture to something she hadn’t felt the many times she’d woken up to more lovemaking. This time it was different. This was the morning after the transfiguring night.
She had nothing to compare to what she’d shared with him. She hadn’t even had morning-afters with her disappointments.
She couldn’t leave this time. And it wasn’t because she was in the middle of the ocean with no way to go home unless he took her. She wanted to stay, for as long as it was possible to stay, wanted to experience everything again, and more, with him.
He rumbled something deep and unbearably sexy as he threw one leg over both of hers, his arms sliding into the deep curve of her waist to her buttocks, hauling her against him, his erection, intact as ever. She was so ready again, or rather, still, it was embarrassing.
He took her mouth, took her breath and will away.
When he relinquished her lips to nibble his way down her face, her neck, she gasped, “Buon giorno to you, too.”
His fingers probed her, slipped into her, circled her bud. She thrust her hips into his pleasuring, needing, desperate, just like that.
“It isn’t a good morning, Gabriella mia. It’s a magnifico giorno, the most magnificent morning in history.” He turned her onto her back, looked at her as if he couldn’t decide which part of her to ravish first. “And do you know what your magnificence did to me, besides the loud and obvious? I dreamed all night. And I remember each second of every dream.” He quickened his fondling. “Now I’m going to reenact each and every one.”
She gasped as he drove her over the edge. And she knew. Her anxiety had no root in reality. There could never be a letdown with Durante. Only soaring.
And if a voice rasped that a fall from such heights could be far more devastating, she stifled it as she gave all of herself up to the wonder of him, of what they’d found together.
Eleven
Gabrielle watched Giancarlo close the door behind him, a smile hovering on her lips.
>For the past two weeks it had become a ritual. She’d arrive at Durante’s penthouse, he’d open the door for her and disappear.
>She’d torn through her work like she’d been doing every day, the work for which she’d found her passion and enthusiasm miraculously resurrected, to hurtle back to Durante.
>The day after they’d returned from his yacht, she’d left the next morning, returned eight hours later. She hadn’t stayed the night since. Durante hadn’t asked her to. But they spent their afternoons and evenings together, making love and every other thing under the sun before he escorted her to her apartment.
>She couldn’t believe she’d thought herself frigid. Evidence said she was bordering on nymphomania. A condition with a specific activator by the name of Durante D’Agostino.
>Now she had only to think of him for her body to gnaw at her with the need for him. He had only to touch her, sometimes just suckle or caress or blow his breath on any of her triggers, and those were many and increasing, to unleash her first release. But the shattering climaxes he gave her when he took her boggled her mind.
>Not that it was all about or even mainly about sex between them. They reveled in each other in every other way. Every day brought ever-expanding harmony and deepening involvement in each other’s lives. This evening was another milestone. He was introducing her to his friends. Or as he’d said, “producing them for her inspection and approval.”
>“Stay.”
>Durante’s gruff whisper forked through her.
>Not from surprise. She’d felt his approach. She’d probably felt it when it was still an intention forming in his mind. She’d waited for him to initiate the reconnection, set the pace and tone of this encounter as he had every other so far.
>She had no idea what this one word could mean. She’d just come in.
>Could he…? She didn’t dare think what he meant. So she quipped, “Again with the canine references. But then you already got me to roll over and beg.”
>His eyes crinkled as he pulled her to him, tenderness mixing with rough sensuality and possession into a mind-melting concoction. “You got me to beg, too. I can even do back flips and walk on my hands, at your order.”
>He bent, opened his mouth over the pulse in her neck, suckled her in long pulls as if he were drinking her. Fireworks exploded inside her, followed by a gush of readiness and the need for him to fill her again.
>But his friends were coming in minutes.
>That was logic’s voice. Her body’s said take all you can, while you can.
>She obeyed it, moaned, “Take me, Durante bello, take me…”
>He raised his head, instant ferocity taking over his face, thinning his lips. He snatched her skirt up to her waist, took her by the buttocks and spread her around his hips. He staggered with her to the nearest erect surface as she clung to him, disintegrating with the firebomb of hunger he’d detonated inside her. He set her against something that rattled as he freed himself, tore her panties out of the way, slid her up her support to scale his length. She felt the head of his erection at her moist entrance, keened. He let her crash down on him, just as he thrust up, piercing her. It took no more than feeling him forging through her to shatter her. She shrieked with the sledgehammer of orgasm, convulsing around his shaft as if she were imploding.
>He growled into her mouth. “Sì, Gabriella, sì, take all of me, take your pleasure of me, come all over me.”
>The orgasm raged on and on until he roared and slammed her against the rattling support, his release so powerful that she writhed, trembled, sobbed with the sensations. She went nerveless and he tightened his hold around her, still hard an
d twitching inside her. Her flesh quivered around him with the aftershocks of the profound release.
>He took her slack mouth in carnal possession, blowing air into her breathless lungs, growling all the while, rocking gently again and again inside her, satisfying her to her last tremor. “Siete magici, mi’ bellezza…magici…”
>Her head flopped on his shoulder as she tried to get her nerves to spark. She needed to hold him, to revel in his existence, his magic. “It’s you…you who are, bello mio…”
>The bell rang.
>Durante jerked. “Maledizione. I should have told Giancarlo to entertain them somewhere else until…” He swore again. “I should have known I wouldn’t be able to last until they left to make love to you. I yearned for you all day, Gabriella mia.”
>She moaned. “And I for you.”
>He took her lips, strode with her wrapped around him to his bathroom. He put her down gently on the huge platform of marble flanking the sink. Then he reluctantly, and so slowly, withdrew from her depths. She moaned at the ache of separation.
>She groaned again at the sight of herself in the mirror behind him, at his brutal beauty and caring as he kneeled in front of her, intimately taking care of the evidence of their lovemaking, so her skirt wouldn’t be stained. Then he rose to his feet and towered over her, his muscles rippling under his shirt as he struggled to straighten and smooth his pants.
>“Take your time getting ready.” He took her face in his hands, urgency rippling in the passion in his grip, his eyes. “But answer me first. Will you stay, bellissima?”
>“Tonight, you mean?”
>“I mean every night.”
>Gabrielle gazed across the room at Durante. He was putting on some music, laughing with his younger cousin, Eduardo. Her heart quivered. She’d said yes.
>But…he’d said stay. Not live. Was there a difference?
>“So how long have you known Durante, Gabrielle?”
>She turned to the mahogany-haired, green-eyed woman so aptly named Jade. A few years younger than her, she judged, Jade glowed with that special vitality healthy pregnant women had. She and Eduardo were both floating on air. Their love for each other was almost visible, tangible.
>Jade was also curious in the most innocuous way Gabrielle had ever experienced.
>“Not long. We met three weeks ago.”
>“Bet it feels like three years.”
>Now, how did she know that?
>Jade answered her unvoiced question, “It was like that with me and Eduardo. Did you have a tempestuous beginning, too?”
>Gabrielle laughed. “So there is a pattern with the D’Agostino princes.”
>As she laughed, she felt rather than saw Durante stiffen. Her eyes flew to his, locked, mingled, mated across the huge space until the room flooded with tension so carnal, so predatory and proprietary, she felt as if he were inside her again, occupying her, dominating her, dissolving her in satiation.
>The volcanic exchange lasted only a couple of seconds before Eduardo drew his focus away again as Jade caught hers.
>Jade sighed. “But they’re worth every heartache. At least I know Eduardo is literally worth dying for. How’s your Durante?”
>Gabrielle spluttered with laughter. “You say that as if you’re asking me ‘How’s your steak.’”
>Jade grinned, her beauty blazing a few notches higher with the unbridled expression. “They are far more edible than the juiciest steak, aren’t they? Not that I think Durante could be anywhere near Eduardo in tastiness. Eduardo is pure ambrosia.”
>Gabrielle laughed again. “Fair enough. To me Durante is on a celestial menu of his own.”
>“You love him.”
>The statement hit Gabrielle between the eyes.
>She struggled not to lurch with its power, its certainty, murmured, “It’s too early for anything like that.”
>“Uh-uh, it isn’t. Not with these men.”
>And “these men” were heading toward them now. Eduardo was a gorgeous male, Gabrielle acknowledged, but in her eyes, Durante was far beyond that. He was above comparison.
>“Durante seems…younger,” Jade said as the men progressed slowly across the room, still talking but with their eyes on the women. “I haven’t seen him laughing—hell, I haven’t even seen him smile—since I first met him six months ago. And because of Eduardo’s friendship and business with him, I’ve seen him a lot. I didn’t know he could laugh. I thought he came without the laughter software.” She turned to Gabrielle. “But you reformatted him.”
>Gabrielle chuckled again. Almost everything Jade said tickled her. “Ah, Jade, isn’t reformatting reserved for the hard drive?”
>“What’s this about reformatting and hard drives?” Durante came to Gabrielle’s side, sat on the couch’s armrest, pulled her to him, kissed the top of her head, her temple, her jaw. Then he murmured in her ear so softly he almost didn’t produce sound. “Look at me like that and I’ll haul you to bed and hard drive your software and to hell with them.”
>She looked up at him. Yes, like that. She pulled him down, whispered in his mouth. “You didn’t need a bed, or much time, for that in extremely fresh memory. I’m sure you can manage with them here and not in hell.”
>He bit down on one of her tormenting lips. “When we serve dessert, you’ll skip it. You’re having me.”
>Eduardo had mirrored Durante’s actions with Jade, as if they’d agreed to. After he let her up from a clinging kiss he belatedly answered Durante’s question. “That’s mia bella Giada, always talking computers. Watch that you don’t get her started on programming, though.”
>“You’re the only one who makes me blurt out code, amore.” She beamed at him, then turned to Durante. “We were talking about you.”
>Gabrielle held her breath. Jade was clearly even more outspoken than Durante had complained. Would she blurt out that she believed Gabrielle loved him?
>She almost deflated to the floor when Jade related only the part about his missing laughter software and the subsequent comments.
>Durante laughed, demonstrating his newly restored sense of humor. “That’s one of many things Gabrielle reformatted about me.”
>Jade’s grin grew devilish. “I saw her reformatting your arrogance, in public. On YouTube.”
>Eduardo grinned at his bride conspiratorially. “Sì, and from the marks on your cheek, I’d say that in a previous scene, she reformatted it, too.”
>Durante looked at Gabrielle. After a moment of stunned silence, they burst into howls of laughter.
>Raucous ribbing was exchanged in the aftermath of their fit, and from then on, the evening flowed with the harmony of the men’s deep friendship and the women’s instant rapport.
>All through, each man pampered his woman with every gesture and word and touch. Jade reciprocated her demonstrative husband’s affection with gusto. Gabrielle, feeling the odd man out, the one who didn’t share the same status as them, reciprocated Durante’s doting but wasn’t as spontaneous. Not as she longed to be.
>For Jade had been right.
>She might not have let herself say the words, even to herself, but she’d fallen flat on her face in love with him from that first night. She’d been stumbling deeper with each breath ever since. She didn’t see an end to her plummet.
>But she’d effectively been lying to him.
>She didn’t know how to come clean about how this had started without implicating his father per her promise.
>It was so unfair. Why should she risk spoiling what they had now, when it had never been her fault, this inadvertent deception? It didn’t matter how it had all started, as he’d said. It had ceased to be a mission on his father’s behalf, or on her company’s, the moment she’d laid eyes on him.
>At the evening’s end, something disturbing nagged at her.
>The difference. Between “stay” and “live.”
>“Stay” might mean that he didn’t feel the same about her as she did for him. That he’d sooner or
later have enough of her. And there would be no point in confessing anything, anyway.
>She tried not to hear the voices that said if he ended it, she’d be far worse off than she’d been before she’d met him. That this time, there would be no hope of finding a point to anything ever again.
Twelve
Gabrielle was balancing on the edge of the springboard.
She flashed Durante a grin that turned the night into day, one all but yelling “Look, look.”
As if he could do anything else. His gaze clung to her every move, as it always did, his heart in a state of constant expansion.
Once she was certain she had his full attention, she looked ahead, concentration settling over her face, showing him another side of her, the determined woman who could and did succeed in anything she endeavored. She tensed her body so that every muscle in her toned firmness was on alert, stood on her tiptoes, raised her arms. Then she dipped her weight, jumped once, twice, launching higher in the air with the elastic recoil of the board, then on the third launch, she catapulted into a backward somersault, tucking her whole body in a ball, revolving in two full turns before unfolding fully, her whole body stretched and straight like a human missile, entered the water fingertips first, cutting the surface like a laser beam. She didn’t splash a drop.
He sprang to his feet the second she was submerged, ran to the edge of the pool, clapping and hooting, elation tumbling in his blood. She broke the surface with a smile as huge as his, swept around and around in the water like a giddy mermaid, reveling in his adulation, taking her bows.
Unable to wait, he plunged after her, surfaced with her wrapped around him. He squeezed her, ravaged her with clinging, smiling kisses, which she reciprocated with ardor enough to make him steam the pool. He slid his lips up to her ear. “So you’re an Olympic diver and you never told me.”