“It’s become far too hot in here for either of us to freeze, Grace.” He lowered the white lace until he had bared her bottom completely, revealing smooth flesh with the noticeable imprints left by his hand as he spanked her. “God, that’s so fucking sexy!” he groaned as he released her nape to fall to his knees on the carpeted floor behind her.
Grace drew in a hissing breath when she felt Matteo’s hands cup the painfully sensitive globes he had just spanked and then bared. That hiss became a surprised squeak when she felt cool lips, and then a moist tongue, gently laving that hot flesh.
Matteo Zalotti is kissing and licking my bare bottom!
In broad daylight.
In her office.
In the bookstore.
Admittedly, the office door was locked, but that didn’t mean—
“Matteo?” Grace gasped. Not in protest this time, but in want, arousal, as she felt the heat of his tongue, once he had nudged her legs apart, lapping up the juices from her swollen pussy lips and along the perineum. She ceased breathing altogether when Matteo’s hands parted her bottom cheeks and she felt that probing tongue licking her there. “If this is your idea of an apology…”
He chuckled, the heat of his breath against her skin causing a shiver to run the length of her spine. “Then I could apologize all day and night,” he murmured appreciatively. “You taste wonderful.”
Grace’s groans now were ones of pleasure. She had never— She didn’t— Having his lips and tongue there was— Oh God… “Matteo, you have to stop!” she cried out.
“Why do I?”
“Because I’m going to come!”
“God, yes,” he encouraged throatily, that wicked mouth moving back to her pussy. “Come for me, Grace.” His tongue licked and probed between those swollen lips into her channel. “Give it to me. Give me all of your release!”
She couldn’t— It wouldn’t—
“I want it now, Grace.” His tongue roughly licked the throb of her clit.
Again and again, remorseless in its demand, until—
Grace let out a keening wail, her fingers tightly gripping the edge of the desk in front of her as her climax ripped through her with the force of a tidal wave.
She rode out the tempest of that release for long, shattering minutes, until she was too weak to do anything more than collapse over the desktop. Her breathing was ragged and shallow, the beat of her heart loud in the otherwise silent room.
Reality came back slowly. Where she was. Who she was with. What Matteo had done to and with her. Not once but twice now.
Grace had never thought of herself as a sensual person, but Matteo only had to look at her for her senses to be aroused and her defenses start to crumble.
Crumble!
This man demolished each and every barrier Grace had spent years building up to protect herself from men like him. Dangerous men. Men who wanted to rule and control the life of others.
Grace was having none of it.
She straightened abruptly, pulling up her panties and trousers as she did so, and forcing Matteo back on his heels. Taking advantage of that brief respite, Grace quickly moved to the side and then round behind her desk.
Heat suffused her body from her head to her toes when she looked at Matteo, still on his knees, and saw the heavy sensuality in those dark blue eyes and the slickness on his full and sensual lips. Her slickness. The same slickness that now dampened the gusset of the panties pressing against her oversensitive clit.
“Get out,” Grace instructed through gritted teeth. “Leave now, and never come back.”
Matteo continued to look at her through narrowed lids as he sat back comfortably on the heels of his shoes.
He’d gone too far too quickly again.
Because he couldn’t seem to keep his fucking hands or mouth to himself where Grace was concerned!
This had never happened to him before. Never. Ten years ago, he’d been one of the biggest players in Europe, a selfish one too, taking all that women were willing to give him but giving nothing back. Since his parents died, he’d had the occasional hookup, but only with women who knew that’s exactly what it was, and he never repeated the encounter with the same woman twice. It was better that way, when there had been no room for anything or anyone else in his life, with his blackmailer pulling the strings.
That was over now, the blackmailer’s body burned to ashes and scattered somewhere out in the countryside.
Matteo’s arousal died a death with those thoughts.
His blackmailer might no longer exist, but it was because of him, the destruction and fear he had wrought on the people of London during his despotic rule, that Matteo had now agreed to marry Leonardo Brunelli’s daughter. The older man would be here in three days so they could settle the details of that agreement.
This thing with Grace could only exist for now, because once Leon arrived on Friday, Matteo would never be able to see her again.
Even the thought of that made his chest tighten.
He rose agilely to his feet. “Are you sure that’s what you really want?”
What Grace really wanted to do was to sit down and cry. To lament and scream over the things she couldn’t have. Especially with a man like Matteo Zalotti. He represented everything she’d been running away from when she came to England five years ago. During those years, she had made a life for herself here, one of calm and of a sameness that had previously been missing from her life.
The desire she felt for Matteo would pass.
It had to.
Her chin rose. “Yes, it’s what I really want.”
A nerve pulsed in Matteo’s tightly clenched jaw. “Very well. I… We might have crushed the roses.” He winced as he looked at the squashed blooms on the desk top. “But the apology they represent was genuine.”
Her eyes widened. “How can you say that after what just happened?”
He drew in
