Postcards From Rome: The Italian's Pregnant Virgin / A Proposal from the Italian Count / A Ring for Vincenzo's Heir. Lucy Gordon

asked him to.

      Yes, of course he would. He was a man, not a monster. Even if he was a man she could scarcely recognize now. There was an intensity to him that she had never witnessed before. A desperation, a hunger. It mirrored her own and stoked the flames inside her so that they burned brighter, hotter.

      He didn’t touch her during the elevator ride up to the penthouse. She was afraid, for a moment, that it might give her too much time to think. That it might allow the heated passion inside her to begin to cool.

      But once the doors closed behind them and they were ensconced in the tight space, she found it to be entirely the opposite. She could scarcely breathe for wanting him. For needing him.

      The seconds in the elevator stretched between them tight and thick, wrapping around her neck, constricting her throat. By the time the doors opened into the hall, she let out a great gasp, a sigh of relief that she knew he had heard.

      He still didn’t touch her as they approached the door and he used the key card to undo the lock. But then he placed his palm on her lower back, ushering her in, the contact burning through the thin fabric of her dress.

      And when he closed the door behind them, she was the one who closed the remaining distance between them. She was the one to kiss him. Because she didn’t want him to change his mind. Didn’t want whatever madness he was beholden to to fade. She kissed him with all of that desperation. That need for satisfaction.

      She began to frantically work at the knot on his tie, clumsy fingers then moving to the buttons on his shirt.

      “Slow down,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly command.

      “No,” she said, between kisses, between desperate grabs for his shirt fabric. “No,” she said again, “I can’t.”

      He reached up, taking hold of her wrists, his hold on her like irons. “There is no rush,” he said, leaning in slowly, brushing his cheek against hers. It was much more innocuous contact than the kiss from before, and yet it affected her no less profoundly. “Some things are best when they’re taken slowly.”

      Taken slowly? She felt like there was a wild creature inside her trying to break out, desperate for release, and he wanted to talk about taking it slowly? She had waited twenty-three years for this moment. To be with a man. To want a man like this. And now, with satisfaction so close, he wanted to take it slowly.

      She wanted it done now.

      That certainty surprised her, especially after the small attack of nerves that she’d had right before coming into the hotel. There were no nerves now, not in here.

      What she said to him out on the dance floor, it had been true. His strength, the way that he kept it leashed, all the while with her totally conscious of how easily he could overpower her, was a powerful aphrodisiac.

      “I don’t want slow,” she said, leaning back into him.

      And now, he used that strength against her, holding her fast, not allowing her to kiss him again. “Wait,” he said, his tone firm.

      He shifted his hold, gathering both of her wrists into one hand, then lowering his free hand to her back, grabbing hold of her dress’s zipper tab and pulling it down slowly. The filmy fabric fell away from her curves, leaving her standing there in nothing more than a pair of lace panties.

      It was similar to what had happened that day he’d come to her fitting. But also, like something completely different. She had been facing away from him then, and though she had been able to feel his eyes on her, she had not seen the expression on his face. She could see it now.

      All of that lean hunger directed at her, the intensity of a predator gleaming in those dark eyes. He looked her over slowly, making no effort to hide his appreciation for her breasts as he allowed himself a long moment to stare openly at them.

      They felt heavier all of a sudden. Her nipples tightening beneath his close inspection. An answering ache started between her thighs, and she felt herself getting slicker, felt her need ratcheting up several notches without him putting a hand on her.

      “See?” he asked, the knowing look in his eye borderline humiliating. “Slow is good. It will be better for you. I don’t know what kind of experiences you’ve had before, but I can guess at the sort of men a woman traveling alone and staying in hostels meets. I can guess the sort of sex those kinds of semipublic quarters necessitate. But we have all night, and we have this room, we have a very big bed. And you have me. I am not a man who rushes his vices, cara. Rather, I prefer to linger over them.”

      “Am I a vice?” she asked, her voice trembling.

      “The very best kind.”

      He leaned in, scraping his teeth across her chin before moving upward, kissing her mouth lightly before catching her lip in a sharp bite. The sensation hit her low and deep, unexpected and sharp, and not unpleasant at all.