“I want to touch you first,” she demanded in a husky voice, knowing that once he got his hands on her flesh, her all too willing flesh, she was going to be cast into a vortex of sensations. Of need and pleasure.
If she wanted to take a little of him, wanted to ensure he was as far gone as she in this, she needed to do it now. She needed to touch, caress, kiss, every inch of him before he took over.
“You haven’t tormented me enough, bella?” he said, his thumb tracing her collarbone, while the other dipped into her wetness, and out, in a mesmerizing rhythm that threatened to steal her resolve.
Fingers on his wrist, she stilled his hand. “I want to be more than a participant in this. I want to take something from you too.”
He dipped his head in a sudden movement and took her mouth in a rough kiss that mocked his control. “You think I haven’t given myself to this…to you?” he whispered against her mouth, his breath melded with her own.
“But whatever you give,” she said, pressing her face into his throat, tasting his skin, “it’s not…”
He didn’t let her finish. As if he knew she was about to say. That whatever he gave, it wasn’t enough until she had his heart.
She couldn’t bear to look at him, to see the answer in his eyes.
And he… For the first time since she’d known him, Vincenzo didn’t meet her gaze. He capitulated. Lost the battle, she knew, instead of the war.
Long lashes hiding the expression in his eyes, he brought her hands to his shirt. “Then do what you will with me, Princess.”
Alex blinked away at the hotness that threatened behind her eyes. She was going to live for what she did have.
Him.
This.
She was going to build the family she’d never had. She was going to give it her all, regardless.
She didn’t hesitate as she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers. Almost frantic with the need to touch, she pushed the shirt off his shoulders and ran her hands, palms down, from the tight muscles in his shoulder to his jutting collarbone and then down, tracing the ridges of his chest to the rock-hard muscles of his abdomen.
Up and down, left and right, she zigzagged her hands, her cold hands, over his warm, taut skin. Though he stayed still, she didn’t miss the way his breathing became shallow, even harsh, with each path she traced on his skin. Pushing herself up, up, she followed the path her hands traced on his chest and abdomen with her mouth.
He tasted of sweat and salt and something so gloriously masculine that she whimpered. This close to him, each breath he inhaled and exhaled hit the upper curves of her breasts in a tantalizing rhythm that had her nipples tauten, begging for more.
She tested the give of his muscle with her teeth, and an animalistic grunt escaped his mouth when she gently bit his pectorals. She busied her hands with, first his belt, and then the clasp of his trousers. And still she was aware that he was letting her. His control, she had no doubt, was on a short leash tonight. Almost at the end. But then, she had given him her surrender, unconditional surrender, and she had known from the first moment she’d met him, that Vincenzo would gift her with the entire universe in return for that surrender. She shivered now, even as his warm skin somehow diffused its heat into her skin.
All thoughts fled her brain when she pushed his trousers off his hips and instinctively reached for the hardness that she wanted. Again, that guttural grunt, that sharp hiss of an inhale, when she touched the thick length of him.
Steel coated in velvet, he lengthened and hardened further even as she wrapped her fingers around him. As a man, he was just the same, she realized. Smooth words, gorgeous smile, and at the core of him, he was unshakable in his resolve, in his quest toward revenge.
If destruction was what he wanted, then she would give it to him.
She turned her fingers into a fist and moved it up and down that hard length, as she’d done in those first few days when they’d been busy discovering each other’s bodies like explorers on some new land. But there had been no challenge between them then.
Only an intrinsic need for each to discover what gave the other the most pleasure. She rubbed the soft head with her thumb in movements that mimicked the gentle torture he’d rained over her. Head thrown back, eyes closed, that lean, hard chest breathing deep, he groaned out loud.
But she wanted even more. She was determined to wrest the last of his control from him. Until he too stood in the wake of this thing between them, stripped and vulnerable.
“Tell me your deepest fantasy,” she coaxed, the very thought of that steely length inside her making her sex ache with want.
“This,” he said, his face bathed in moonlight from the French windows. He clasped her jaw, his thumb tracing her lower lip. His other hand tightened in her hair, tugging, raising her face up. “You…like this. All mine.”
“Me…doing what?” she demanded, scooting to the edge of the bed. She pulled her legs up and under her, and propped herself up on her elbows, bringing her face to the height of that hard evidence of his arousal. Leaning down, she blew on it.
He tensed. “Do it,” he whispered after what felt like an eternity.
“Do what?” she threw back, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “Ask me nicely.”
“Take me in your mouth now,” he commanded, but there was a desperation to it.
Falling onto her knees, she obeyed.
Another loud groan ripped through the air around them. Digging her nails into
