“Dio,” he breathed.
“Does it hurt?”
“Most definitely.”
She jerked her hand away from the hot, velvety length of him. “I’m sorry.”
“You can touch me again, cara. It hurts in the best way possible, believe me.”
She tried again, growing bolder when he closed his eyes and didn’t watch. His skin was soft, hot, and yet this part of him was so rigid. She wrapped her fingers around him. What had she expected it to feel like?
She wasn’t certain. The intake of his breath brought her attention upward. He hadn’t opened his eyes, and he didn’t appear to be in pain—
She squeezed him. Was rewarded with a groan. A moment later, he’d pushed her back again, fused his mouth to hers and kissed her until she lost her mind. Then he lifted away again and started to pull her dress up.
“This needs to come off, Antonella.”
She didn’t protest. Instead, she sat up and helped him pull the jade material over her head. Her hair fell in long waves around her, helped to cover the lacy aqua bra she’d chosen this morning. Her panties, while not especially sexy in any way, at least matched the bra in style and color.
Cristiano’s gaze devoured her. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel shy about it. The way he looked at her made her feel sexy, beautiful. Special.
Had he looked at his wife this way?
No. She couldn’t think like that, couldn’t allow herself to go there. He’d loved his wife. This was just sex. She knew it, she’d chosen it, and she could deal with it.
He reached up and gently swept her hair back, revealing her breasts. When she would have covered herself, he gave her that sinfully sexy smile of his. “You are everything a man could want, cara. Never doubt that.”
She wanted to weep at the tenderness of his comment, but he gave her no chance as he eased her back on the carpet once more.
“And now I wish to show you how beautiful this can be,” he said, his mouth tracing kisses along her shoulder, up her neck, until he captured her lips once more.
Her body was hot and cold all at once, her nerves singing and snapping with every stroke of his tongue against hers. And then he broke the kiss, slid his gorgeous mouth down her body. When he pushed one of the lacy cups aside to bare her breast, her breath squeezed tight in her chest.
“So lovely,” he murmured before his mouth closed over her nipple.
Antonella’s back arched as her breath left her in a shocked gasp. An unbelievably pleasurable gasp. She’d never known it could feel so good. She clutched his shoulders, her hands kneading his skin as his tongue teased first one nipple and then the other. Before she realized what he was doing, he unsnapped her bra and shoved it up and out of the way.
Pressing her breasts together, he spent what seemed like hours—but was in reality only minutes—sucking each nipple into a hard peak. Again and again until she thought she would explode from the exquisite pleasure.
“Cristiano,” she gasped. “Please!”
And then he was pressing kisses to her belly, sliding down her body until—
Once more, she couldn’t breathe. Was he really about to do what she imagined? She wasn’t stupid; she knew the kinds of things people did when making love, but she hadn’t considered this would happen to her.
He traced his tongue along her panty line. When he pressed a kiss over the silk, she couldn’t stop the groan that escaped her.
“You like this?” he asked, his voice rough around the edges.
“I feel so strange,” she replied. “Like I’m about to dissolve into a million pieces.”
His chuckle was completely masculine. Supremely satisfied.
“Let’s fix that, cara mia.”
When he slipped her panties down her thighs, she didn’t protest. He pulled them from her legs and tossed them aside. And then he was pushing her thighs apart, kneeling between them…
The first touch of his tongue against her slick flesh made her cry out. But he didn’t stop there. He continued the sweet torture, his lips and tongue doing things she’d never imagined. Vaguely, she recognized she was panting.
Recognized that some feeling was gathering inside her, pressing into a tight, hard knot, compressing again into something so concentrated—
When the knot exploded, she was shocked. Stunned. Gasping. Her back arched as waves of sensation rolled through her limbs, sizzling hot. After it was over, she felt drained of all energy. Exhausted. Ready to sleep for a million years.
Until Cristiano began the sweet torture again.
Twice more she gasped his name into the candlelit air, her body shivering and melting and reforming in the aftermath of stunning climaxes.
“Do you still wish to go forward?” he asked a few moments later.
She opened her eyes to look at him. At his handsome face, his concerned expression. She had the feeling that if she said no, he would stop right now.
And he’d be in agony, she was certain. Because she would have been, had she not reached her peak three times already.
“Show me more, Cristiano.”
“Grazie a Dio,” he said. “With pleasure.”
He stretched out beside her, used his fingers to stoke her passions again. She was no longer surprised at how quickly he was able to push her toward completion.
Just when she was ready to come for a fourth time, he stopped and retrieved a condom from a pocket in his suitcase. She tried not to imagine why he carried condoms with him. And yet he was irresistible to women, as she’d heard more than once. No doubt it was wise to always be prepared. But it took a little of the joy out of it for her, knowing this wasn’t his first time and wasn’t in any way special to him.
It was just sex.
And isn’t that what you wanted?
It was. She had no right to get upset because this was a casual encounter to him.
“Antonella,” he said, the sexy timbre of his voice stroking into her razor-sharp senses. “You are thinking too hard again.”
She blinked up at him. How did he always know? “It’s nothing.”
“Do you want to stop?”
“No,” she replied honestly. She really didn’t. Her body, while satisfied, was still keyed up in a very elemental way that she knew would never be fully appeased until he was inside her.
He leaned forward and kissed her again. “I was hoping you would say that. But if you change your mind…”
“I won’t,” she said, winding her arms around his neck to kiss him back.
Very quickly, the heat and need fanned higher until all she wanted was him. The past didn’t matter. The future wasn’t a guarantee. Now, right now, was all they had.
“Cristiano, please…” Her body was achy, ready. She reached between them, grasped that hot, hard part of him she wanted.
He gasped. “Cara, you will undo me before we begin—”
“Then we need to begin.”
Cristiano swore, but he rolled the condom into place in a quick, smooth motion. And then he settled between her thighs. The weight of him, the hot press of his skin against hers, the blunt tip of his manhood sliding into her wet heat—
It