He trailed fire over her belly, then moved over that bright red thong at last. He pulled her long legs over his shoulders, then used his own width to keep her thighs apart. He liked the way she trembled, the way her breath sawed in and out of her and how she came up on her elbows to watch him.
Dario caught her gaze for a moment. If he didn’t know better, he’d have believed that sheen of vulnerability in her dark eyes, that faint hint of emotion in her full lower lip. If he was still the fool he’d been, that might have ripped him apart. He could feel something hollow inside of him, as if it had.
But that was nothing more than another ghost, and there was no place here for that.
There was only tonight. There was only this.
Sex, he told himself harshly. Nothing more.
And then he pressed his mouth to the V between her legs, covered in that red lace, and made her call out his name.
She shook beneath him, the sharp heels of the high shoes digging at his back, and only when she made that high-pitched sound he liked too much did he tug the bright red thong aside, and lick his way into her heat at last.
* * *
He was like a storm.
Anais couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t recover. Couldn’t do a single thing in all the world but lose herself in the tumult and fire of Dario’s wicked, masterful mouth against the part of her that ached so hot and needy she worried it might actually kill her. Or he would, and she doubted she’d mind.
He built up that fire, using his lips and tongue and the scrape of the jaw he still hadn’t shaved. It was as if he’d plugged her into an electrical outlet. She hummed. She burned. She burst into flame again and again.
She dug her hands into his hair and held on while he licked her straight over the edge and into oblivion.
She’d almost forgotten the shattering. The sweet splintering. The monstrous ache that only Dario could ease, and the terrible need that only he brought out in her and only he ever assuaged.
And when she came back to herself he was already moving, tugging her thong from her legs and pulling her shoes from her feet, throwing one and then the next aside. She thought she heard them thunk against the hardwood floor, but then again, perhaps it was only her poor heart as it beat hard against the cage of her ribs and left her feeling a delicious sort of helpless as she tried to slow her breathing.
She couldn’t seem to move. Or think. Or care too much about her inability to do either. One tremor chased another, leaving her boneless in the center of his bed. She heard the crinkle of foil that told her he was sheathing himself and then Dario was crawling over her, hauling her with him into the center of the bed before he propped himself above her on his elbows.
And for a searing moment, all he did was gaze down at her.
His face was drawn and his blue eyes glittered dark with the same passion she could feel sweeping through her, as bright as if she’d never broken apart beneath his talented mouth. As if he’d never thrown her over that cliff once already.
She moved then, lifting the hand that had once worn his ring so proudly and placing it against his beautiful face. She didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she could. She didn’t know what on earth she’d say even if she could find the words.
Dario reached between them and positioned himself at her entrance, never shifting that intense blue gaze from hers. And then slowly, so slowly, he pushed himself inside her. Inch by glorious, impossible inch.
At last, she thought, at last...
Still he continued to slide himself into her as if he had all the time in the world to let her body accommodate him, for her channel to stretch to fit him. She couldn’t help but remember their first time, when she’d been so scared and overwhelmed and in love with him. And he’d taken his time then, too. He’d built that wildfire between them higher and higher, thrown her into bliss twice, before he’d moved to claim her completely.
Just like now, he’d gone slow. So slow. So that his possession had felt inevitable. So that she’d shook beneath him, craving him, desperate to feel him sheathed inside her as far as he could go.
She didn’t think she was the only one remembering that faraway night, the two of them wrapped up in each other in his Manhattan bedroom with the whole great city a glittering flame outside his window. Anais had clung to him and welcomed him and found herself in him, and nothing had ever been the same after that.
So, too, would nothing be the same after this. But at least she knew that now. She wasn’t that overawed virgin anymore. She knew exactly what she was doing.
If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would eventually be true.
Dario settled himself completely against her, stretching her. Anais could see the tension that corded his neck and made his arms like granite. She could see the mad glitter in his eyes that reminded her of the whole of Manhattan outside that window in his old apartment, and she could feel him, bold and male and uncompromising, so deep inside her it was hard to tell which one of them was which.
As if it was her first time all over again, she felt moisture gather in the corners of her eyes. And the way she had then, she moved her hips experimentally, to see if it made him blow out a breath the way it had before.
When it did, that mouth of his crooked up in the corner.
“This is no time for games, Anais,” he told her in that gorgeously dark voice of his that swept through her like a new caress, setting her alight.
And only then did he begin to move.
He set a hard pace, and she met him. He dropped down to take her mouth again, slipping his hands beneath her bottom to lift her and hold her precisely where he wanted her as he thrust into her.
She clung to his shoulders and she wrapped her legs around his hips and she knew this dance. She knew precisely how they fit together, exactly how they moved. As if they’d been made for this. As if no time had passed.
And it took no time at all, or it took a lifetime, before Anais was strung out on that same high cliff all over again. She heard her own voice calling out wordless prayers into the dark, and she heard his low laugh, and then she was shattering all around him all over again.
And this time, he followed her over the edge—and she was sure she heard him shout her name as he fell.
ANAIS WOKE TO find the sun streaming across her face and the sound of the surf in her ears. She blinked in all the brightness and then sat up too quickly, taking in the vast room, the sleek furnishings, the astonishing softness of the dizzyingly high-thread-count sheets against her skin.
She wasn’t particularly surprised to find herself alone. She wasn’t necessarily happy about it, of course, but she couldn’t claim she was surprised. No matter the places they could take each other in bed, out of it she and Dario seemed destined to do nothing but hurt each other.
Over and over again.
Anais moved very slowly, very carefully, to the edge of the bed and was faintly disappointed that nothing sang out in pain as she did. No twinges or tugs to remind her in that raw, physical way of how she’d spent most of the previous night, or with whom. Nothing that would last.
She told herself that was better. Memories were bad enough. They could lurk about for years, as she knew all too well. They snuck into the corners of things and blended into the shadows. They could ruin a woman without her even realizing it, popping up in dreams whenever she closed her eyes and making her unwilling to even consider moving on the way she should. No matter that he had, and years before.
But this was neither the place nor the time to worry about