Then he was back over her, pressing into her. She felt a brief, searing pain as he pushed inside of her, her body stretching to accommodate him.
He paused for a moment, his dark eyes blazing, his expression pained.
She shook her head. And he didn’t speak. Instead, he thrust into her to the hilt, his body coming up hard against hers, making contact right where she needed it, pleasure erasing the pain, slowly, but oh so perfectly.
He retreated, thrusting home again, establishing a steady rhythm that built up tension inside of her again. It was deeper this time, reaching farther inside of her, calling up the need from somewhere new. It was shared desperation, shared need.
She met each thrust, working with him, moving with him, toward completion. Everything blurred, blending together, the room beyond Dante turning fuzzy, insubstantial.
His movements became erratic, evidence of his fraying control, and hers began to shred, too. Her grip on the world loosening. When they fell, they fell together, raw sounds of completion filling the room as they reached the peak.
She held on to him tightly, trying to keep from getting lost in it all. Anchoring him to her.
When his muscles stopped trembling, he let out a long, slow breath and pressed his forehead against her chest. She wrapped her arms around him and held him there. Held his body against hers, skin to skin, every inch of him against every inch of her.
She didn’t want to speak. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to face reality.
But she knew that they would have to.
But not yet.
DANTE cursed himself. To hell. To any level of hell. He’d heard every reference about his name in connection with the place of suffering and damnation that the media could possibly create, and this time, he found it appropriate.
He belonged there for this.
He had let her lead, but what he hadn’t realized was that she hadn’t known the dance.
A virgin. A damn virgin.
He should have known. He should have seen it in every wide-eyed glance, in every sweet, perfect blush. In the way she didn’t seem to know the sort of power her body could wield.
But he hadn’t, or worse, he’d ignored it. That black part of his soul rising up to choke out the control, choke out the small seed of human decency that had still rested inside of him.
He avoided women who didn’t know the game. Who didn’t understand that with him sex was only about one thing: release. Even if the woman had had a hundred partners, he had to be sure she understood that.
But a woman who had no experience with sex? She was not the kind of player he picked for the game. Ever.
The voice in his head whispering that Paige was different was silenced completely.
“Dammit, Paige,” he said, his voice rough.
“Oh, no. Don’t do that please.”
She scooted away from him and burrowed under his covers. In his bed. Like she was planning on staying the night, which he was sure she was. Women didn’t stay the night with him. They never had. Not once.
They met in hotels. They got the itch scratched. They left. A long encounter lasted a couple of hours. Never more.
“Don’t get upset about you not telling me you were a virgin?” he growled.
“Yes!” She threw her arms up and brought her hands back down on the covers. “It’s stupid. You’re not a mustache-twirling villain who just ripped away my maidenhead. I knew what I was doing.”
He moved into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and forked his fingers through his hair, his heart pounding heavily. Too quickly. He hadn’t gotten his control back yet. “I cannot even wrap my head around that sentence.”
“I wanted it. I told you I wanted it. You asked me to say it, and I did. I wanted to sleep with you. I wanted you to be my first. No, you know, that’s not even it. It wasn’t about first. It was about wanting you. End of story.”
“Paige, I don’t … I can’t offer you anything.”
“Oh, you mean you can’t offer me anything other than a temporary marriage to help me keep custody of my daughter? You can’t offer me anything more than that and multiple orgasms? Is that what you mean?”
“Paige,” he growled.
“Get into bed, Dante.”
“I don’t …” He was about to tell her. To tell her that his lovers did not share his bed. His lovers didn’t usually enter his home.
But the words stuck in his throat. He should tell her, tell her that if she wanted sex, she could have it, but if she wanted to make love she would have to look somewhere else. But for the first time in his memory, the blunt words, the true words, stuck in his throat.
He stood. “I need to go and take care of things.”
She nodded, her hands clutching the covers like talons, as if proving to him that she was well and truly rooted to the spot.
He walked into the bathroom and disposed of the condom, then for the second time in only a few days, he gripped the edge of the sink and regarded the man in the mirror.
He released his hold and straightened, turning away from his reflection. And he weighed which sin would be greater. To give her what she asked for, with no intention, no ability, to offer emotion. Or to show her now, that with him, there would be no softness.
He walked back into the bedroom, his chest tightening when he saw Paige, deep in the blankets, rolled onto her side, her eyes open.
“You did come back,” she said.
“I did,” he said.
His stomach tightened, painfully, a raw, intense tremor of terror working its way beneath his skin and straight into his heart. The closer he got to the bed, the sharper the feeling became.
He stopped, trying to catch his breath. She looked … angelic. Her lips swollen and flushed pink, her skin still flushed, too. Her blue eyes filled with an innocent expectancy, a need that he knew he could never meet.
And still, the desire to slide beneath the sheets and tug her bare body against his was strong. The need to feast on her beauty, to sate himself on that need, so great, so powerful, it threatened to take over.
He took a step backward. “You are welcome to stay in here for the night, Paige,” he said, his words stilted. “But I have work to do.”
He bent and retrieved his pants from the floor, tugged them on, then did the same with his shirt. And without looking back, he walked out of the room and closed the door firmly behind him.
Paige opened her eyes slowly, squinting against the light coming through the curtains. Her first thought was that it was strange that Ana hadn’t woken up.
Her next thought was about how strange it was that she was naked. She never slept naked. She wore her pajamas. But she hadn’t last night.
Oh, yes, and now she remembered, very, very clearly why she hadn’t worn pajamas.
Dante. His hands. His mouth. His body. He was … everything a man should be. No wonder she’d been so fascinated with him for so long. Somehow, some part of her, must have known, instinctively, that that man was capable of giving pleasure