Craved him.
Tina didn’t want to let him go, as if she would wake up and find it had all been a dream if she did. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her body bending into him as he began to move. Their tongues tangled as he stroked into her with such skill she wanted to weep.
She knew he tried to be gentle, but it wasn’t really possible.
For either of them. They were joined together with no barriers between them this time—and they’d waited for two long months to be in this place again, though they did not know it was what they’d been waiting for.
Nico pushed her back until she was supporting herself on her hands, her back arching, her breasts thrusting into the air for his pleasure. His lips closed over an aroused nipple, spiking the pleasure within her until she wasn’t certain she could hold out another second.
“Nico,” she gasped, her senses filled with him.
Deep within her, the explosion began to build. His lovemaking was raw, powerful, almost desperate, as if he’d held back for far too long and even now perched on the edge of his control. His fingers dug into her hips as he held her hard and drove into her.
Tina dragged her eyes open to look at him, to look at the picture they made. He bent over her body, the ruins of his shirt clinging to his broad shoulders. His skin glistened with moisture and she lifted a hand to rake it through his hair. He dragged his mouth across her breasts then, his lips closing around her other nipple. Tina clasped his head to her with a soft moan, loving the sharp, sweet spike of pleasure that tugged at her. Her breasts were so much more sensitive than they’d been only a few weeks ago, and she cried out as his tongue swirled and teased and tormented.
He drove her relentlessly, almost savagely, until she shattered with a sharp cry, her entire body clenching with the force of her orgasm. Her legs tightened around him, as if she was afraid he might try to leave her.
But he didn’t leave. And he didn’t stop, gripping her buttocks in his hands and lifting her to him until the new angle made her breath catch once more.
“Again,” he said, the muscles in his neck and chest and abdomen corded tight as he held her up and drove into her.
Tina lay back on the table, her arms over her head in helpless surrender, her eyes closed as she pushed her hips up to meet him. She was a creature of pleasure now, a being who existed for this alone. He came down on top of her, the fabric of her dress rustling, no doubt wrinkling hopelessly.
She didn’t care.
He dominated her with the strength of his body, and she wrapped her legs high around his back, tears squeezing from her closed eyes to leak down her temples and into her hair.
It was too beautiful, too perfect to be with him like this. He destroyed her. And she was far happier than she should be.
“Tina,” he groaned. “Dio, don’t cry.”
He threaded his fingers through hers, his mouth seeking hers once more. He kissed her far more sweetly than she’d thought he was capable of at that moment. Fear swirled in her belly then. Everything about being with him felt right—but did he feel it, too, or was this simply the consummate ladies’ man doing what he did best?
Tina squeezed her eyes tighter. She couldn’t think like that. She simply couldn’t. They were married now and they had a child on the way. He was hers.
And, oh, God, that’s just what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? She wanted him to belong to her—had from the first moment he’d walked into their tiny kitchen with Renzo and smiled at her. He’d been so strong and handsome and perfect—and she’d been shy, awkward and unworthy of ever getting such a man, even in her wildest dreams.
He raised his head, as if he sensed the turmoil in her heart. “You’re thinking too much,” he said gruffly. “Stop thinking.”
And then he made it impossible for her to think as he thrust into her again and again, harder and harder, until she caught fire, until her body shattered in a million bright shards of color and her breath tore from her in a long, broken cry.
She was still gasping and reeling when he followed her into oblivion, holding her tightly to him, his hips grinding into her one last time as a deep shudder racked him.
Her heart throbbed in the silence, filling her ears with the sound of her blood rushing through her sensitized body. Tina put her hand in his hair, held him to her as he buried his face against her neck. His hair was damp, hot, and his breath ghosted over her heated skin, cooling her.
She gazed up at the ceiling, dazed by what had just happened between them. She was still in her wedding gown—her very crumpled wedding gown—and lying on a long table. A console table, she realized. They hadn’t even made it out of the living room.
She’d married someone her family hated and now she was having wild sex with him on a table. She ought to be ashamed—and yet she wasn’t. She was thrilled at the illicitness of their encounter.
He wasn’t a bad man, she told herself. He wanted what was best for the baby, the same as she did, and he’d flown wedding dresses in for her so she wouldn’t have to get married in something that she’d worn to lunch or shopping with Mama and Lucia. He’d tried to make sure she had something special. That didn’t make him good by a long shot, but it made him human at least.
She was still breathing hard when he pushed off her and turned to tuck himself away. A frisson of alarm crept through her then. They’d had sex and he was done. He would leave her while he went to work on his laptop, or maybe he’d leave the apartment and go into the city and not come back until she’d fallen asleep waiting for him to return.
He caught her gaze then and quirked an eyebrow. “I’m not leaving, Tina.”
She hated that he knew what she was thinking simply from looking at her—and yet she was relieved, too.
“I hope not,” she told him, pushing herself up on her elbows. “I was quite enjoying that.”
Nico’s gaze was sharp and hot as he smoothed her gown down before he helped her to stand. Her legs were wobbly and she swayed into him. He caught her close, his fingers burning into the exposed skin of her back.
His smile scorched her. “We definitely aren’t finished yet,” he told her, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “That was merely a prelude.”
Tina’s heart was still racing. “Some prelude.”
He kissed her. In spite of everything that had just happened, in spite of the fact she was spent, excitement blossomed in her belly, kindling like a flash fire.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he promised.
Nico lay in the dark and listened to the breathing of the woman beside him. She’d fallen into an exhausted sleep hours ago, but his mind wouldn’t quiet enough to let him do the same. His body was replete, drunk on sex and high on the endorphins a good release could bring—and yet, if she turned to him now and ran a soft hand over his thigh, he’d harden in an instant.
And that was what he didn’t quite understand. What was this nearly insatiable need for her?
Oh, he loved sex and women, and he’d been known to spend long nights making love to whichever woman had caught his fancy. That was not unusual in the least. Nor was the fact she was beside him in the bed. He didn’t mistake sex and sleeping for love, and he made sure the women he was with knew that.
He knew that some men left in the middle of the night, or made the woman leave, but what was the sense in that? If he woke up aroused, he wanted a soft female body in which to spend himself.
No, he didn’t leave in the middle of the night like a vampire, and he didn’t kick a woman out of bed until he tired of her.