‘Will you let me help chase the bad dream away?’
‘I thought you’d changed your mind again … that you weren’t going to come …’
‘I am sorry about that, mi ángel.’ His rueful sigh feathered over her. ‘Consuela knocked on my door and wanted to talk. She is overwhelmed by the knowledge that her grandchild is here with her at last, and was feeling somewhat emotional. Naturally she wanted to discuss Ramón too. I did not want to hurry her away.’
‘Of course not!’
‘But at the same time I could barely contain my frustration at not being with you! I want you so much!’
Thrilled to hear him say it, Dominique was about to tell Cristiano she felt the same—but found her declaration shockingly silenced by the hungry press of his warm, tantalising lips against hers. At the first inflammable touch of that erotic satin mouth heat poured through her body like liquid fire. Actual tremors rippled through her.
It was as she feverishly pushed the satin quilt aside to let Cristiano join her that Dominique realised he was naked to the waist and that the only clothing he wore was a pair of silk mulberry-coloured boxer shorts. As far as male bodies went, his definitely had the ‘wow’ factor—in spades. She saw for herself the strongly delineated collarbone and the wide, powerful shoulders above a hard-muscled bronzed torso and stomach where not a single ounce of spare flesh found a home. No wonder his clothes looked so good on him!
Helplessly transfixed, Dominique noticed too the erotic coating of silky dark hair dusting his nipples, and as her feverish gaze dared lower, past taut, lean hips, she saw the way another fine smattering led a provocative trail into the waistband of his boxers.
But there was little time for her appreciative perusal of his mouthwatering masculinity when, with a harsh groan of need, Cristiano suddenly took command of her mouth like a man presented with his first proper meal after being released from solitary confinement. He devoured her as if he would never get enough, and never be satisfied … And with his ravishing velvet tongue he introduced Dominique to a wild eroticism she hadn’t even known existed until then. There wasn’t a corner or crevice of her mouth that he didn’t plunder with destroying command and brand with his addictive masculine flavours.
Lying beneath Cristiano’s hard, lean and muscular body, she felt like butter left out in the sun, inexorably melting.
All of a sudden he levered himself away from her and sat back on his haunches. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her mouth going dry at the thought that he had changed his mind and was going to leave.
‘I want to look at you,’ he replied, and ran his gaze hotly over the feminine curves that she knew were easily revealed by the thin cotton fabric of her nightdress.
She’d put on a little weight since having Matilde, but she knew it suited her … made her more womanly, somehow. Dominique scarcely took a breath as Cristiano hooked his thumbs under the flimsy shoestring straps and skimmed them hungrily down over her breasts. Exposure to the air hardened her aching, tingling nipples almost to the point of pain, and she was so turned on by the ravenous glance he gave her that she could swear she was suddenly on fire with a fever. Her thighs trembled and her nipples puckered tighter still, as though he had drawn ice cubes across them. Everything in her was almost unbearably sensitive to every glance, every touch, and she wanted him so much she almost cried.
‘Undo your hair for me,’ he commanded, his voice sounding as if it rolled over gravel.
With shaking fingers, Dominique slipped off the band from the end of her plait and with long practice deftly released the entwined silken skeins of honeyed brown so that they spilled across her shoulders like a river of tarnished gold. Catching her hair in his hand, Cristiano turned it over again and again to examine it, as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing. Then he raised his glance to meet hers, and in that moment Dominique truly felt as though she was the most beautiful and desired woman on earth—because his dark smouldering gaze told her that she was.
Bending his head, he touched his lips to every exposed inch of flesh on her body, then employed his fingers to seductively caress the place where Dominique longed for him the most. Just before he took her to the very cliff-edge of her resistance he peeled off his boxers and used the protection he had brought to sheath himself.
Clinging on to the hard bunched muscles at the tops of his arms as Cristiano inched inside her, Dominique realised her own muscles were almost rigid with tension at the idea of accepting his full, impressive length into her body. She feverishly wondered if her post-baby condition would give him enough of the pleasure she wished for him.
Sensing her anxiety, he went still for a moment as he regarded her. ‘Try to relax, mi ángel … I realise it has probably been a long time, and that you might be sensitive, but if you relax it will be easier … sí?’
Hearing the genuine concern in his voice, Dominique sighed and stroked her hand down over his chest, the tips of her fingers lingering for a moment on one of his hard, flat nipples.
‘I’m only afraid I won’t be able to—that because of the baby I might not be so—’
Even now, in the most intimately vulnerable situation she could find herself in, she still managed to blush. Leaning forward, Cristiano touched her face, his dark gaze brooding and possessive.
‘Everything about you is already giving me the most unbelievable satisfaction and pleasure, mi ángel … Nothing about your incredible body could possibly disappoint me. Now, let me return the compliment …’
His hard-trained muscles quivering with the effort of not letting his desire overcome him, Cristiano finally thrust inside Dominique to the hilt, and sensed her hot, silky muscles enfold him like the most exquisite tight glove. His heart all but unravelled at how good it felt being with her like this, and his doubts—for now at least—were jettisoned firmly away.
Tussling with his conscience all evening—even after his revelation about Martina to Dominique in the library—he had been plagued by many guilt-ridden thoughts. Thoughts that he would be ‘betraying’ his cousin’s memory or letting his family down in some way should he be with Dominique the way he longed to. But most of all Cristiano had worried that by succumbing to the physical attraction that flared so hotly between them Dominique might ultimately believe he was just using her. After all … what could he offer her but uncertainty? What had happened to Martina and their baby had scarred him irreversibly, and he was hardly in a position to promise Dominique anything relationship-wise.
However, in the end, wild horses could not have kept him away from her. His desire for her was simply beyond all reason.
Dominique moaned low, her incredible blue eyes glazed with uninhibited sensuality as Cristiano drove himself into her again and again with increasing need and passion—certain he could not hold out against this almost unbearable barrage of the senses for much longer without reaching the destination his whole body was primed for. Sensing the sudden rapid constriction of the soft velvet enclave that held him, Cristiano saw Dominique squeeze her eyes shut tight, and passionately he went deeper as she climaxed, causing her to clutch his hips tight and release his name in one of the sexiest-sounding sighs he had ever heard.
Unable to hold back any longer, his will-power and desire finally sent him hurtling upwards into a vortex of pleasure so profound that Cristiano sensed himself unravelling as though he might never stop. The sensation was like the most heart-pounding ride through dizzying white water rapids that he could ever imagine.
‘Madre mia!’
‘Are you all right?’
The ravishing girl in his arms was looking slightly concerned, and Cristiano smiled at her wryly, thinking whimsically that she resembled a beautiful fairy princess from tales of myth and legend with her long rippling hair and bewitching eyes. She had certainly woven a spell around him … There could not be many men alive who would resist such shimmering and innocent beauty