Her arms were still up in the air when he put his mouth back on her, and he felt as well as heard the way she shuddered into him with a ragged sound. Her small, perfectly formed breasts were as exquisite as he remembered them, and he was delighted to find she still didn’t bother with a bra. That meant it was as easy as a memory to hold her where he wanted her with his hands curved over her shoulder blades, and then to get his mouth on one dark-tipped breast.
Then he sucked. Hard.
Anais made a tiny noise that Dario hadn’t realized had haunted him for years, that small sound of greed and yearning. And the taste of her was impossibly addicting, sweet musk and a hint of salt against his tongue. He moved his mouth to her other breast to be sure, using his tongue and the hint of his teeth until she was moaning out loud with her head thrown back, her hands gripping his biceps as if she wanted to leave her fingerprints behind on his skin.
He stepped back, then spun her around, so she was braced against the foot of the bed with her bottom in the air. She was still as beautifully formed as he remembered her, and he told himself that wasn’t a stab of something like pain he felt. It wasn’t loss. He focused on the silken line of her back, the indentation of her spine and the flare of her hips. He couldn’t stand the obstacle of her skirt and reached over to unzip it, pulling it from her until it pooled at her feet and she was left in nothing but those wicked, cherry red shoes and a thong in the same bright color.
Dario thought he might explode right there.
Instead, he shrugged out of his shirt and kicked off his trousers, then moved behind her, reveling in the harsh sounds of her uneven breaths in the quiet room.
“What about my shoes?” she whispered when he smoothed his hands over her hips, as if he was trying to memorize them anew, imprint them into his palms.
“Leave them on,” he muttered.
And he lost himself in her. He threw the past out of his head and he simply drowned in her the way he wanted to do. The feel of her warm, soft skin beneath his hands. The noises she made, tiny gasps and sweet moans, all leading to that critical point where her breathing became panting instead.
He flipped her over, then tossed her farther up the wide mattress and followed her down. He kissed her again. Deeper, wilder. And this time it didn’t matter where they were. This time, he didn’t have to stop.
Dario couldn’t imagine there would ever be another night with her, not after what he planned to do tomorrow. And this wasn’t like the last night he’d spent with her six years ago when he’d had no idea that she was betraying him or that it would be the last time he’d get to touch her. This time he was ready.
This time, he knew exactly what he’d be missing and how much it would hurt, loath as he was to admit it to himself.
So he kissed her like a drowning man, and when he couldn’t take any more of it, he moved to lavish attention on her breasts again. And when she was writhing beneath him, her arms thrown over her head in abandon and her back arched high, he moved even lower.
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