But Benedetto naked was something else. Something better. He looked as if he’d been fashioned by a sculptor obsessed with male beauty, but she knew that he would be hot to the touch. And more, unlike all the marble statues she’d ever seen—many of them here—there was dark hair on his chest. A fascinatingly male trail that led to a part of him she’d felt against her leg, but had never seen.
“What big eyes you have,” he said, sounding dark and mocking.
Angelina jerked her gaze up over the acres and acres of his fine male chest, all those ridges and planes that made her fingers itch. To touch. To taste. To make hers, in some way, the way he had already taken such fierce possession of her.
“I understand the mechanics,” she confessed. “But still…”
“Your body knows what to do.” He came down over her again, and she hissed out a breath because it was so much different, now. Bare flesh against bare flesh. Her softness against all the places where he was so impossibly hard. Everything in her hummed. “And so do I.”
And then, once again, she felt as if she was the piano.
Because he played her like one, wringing symphonies out of her with every touch, every brush of his mouth over parts of her body she would have said were better ignored.
He flipped her over onto her stomach, right when she thought that she might simply explode out of her own skin—
And he laughed in that dark, stirring way of his, there against the nape of her neck. Then he started all over again.
Angelina…lost track.
Of herself. Of him. Of what, exactly, he was doing.
All she could seem to do was feel.
He slipped his fingers between her legs and stroked her until she shattered and fell apart, but he didn’t stop. There was no ending, no beginning. There was only the rise and fall. The fire that burned in both of them and between them, flickering one moment, then roaring to life the next.
And all the while Angelina couldn’t seem to get past the feeling that all of this was exactly how it was supposed to be. All of this was right.
It was full dark outside when Benedetto turned her over again. He stretched her arms up over her head and finally, finally, settled himself between her thighs. She could feel him, a hard ridge of perfect male arousal where she was nothing but a soft melting.
She was shuddering. She thought maybe there was moisture on her face. But all Angelina could care about was the blunt head of his masculinity that she could feel pressing into her.
Not exactly gently. And yet not roughly, either.
It was a pinch she forgot about almost as soon as it happened followed by a relentless, masterful thrust, and then Benedetto was seated fully inside her.
And that time, when Angelina burst into flame and shattered into a million new pieces, each more ragged than the last, she screamed herself hoarse.
Benedetto was laughing again, dark and delirious and too beautiful to bear, as he finally began to move.
And all her notions about piano music and symphonies shattered.
Because this was far more physical than she could possibly have imagined. Her body gripped him. He worked himself into her, then out. His chest was a delicious abrasion against hers, she could feel the press of his hipbones with every thrust, and there was heat and breath and so much more than the things she’d read in books.
He dropped his hard, huge body against hers and Angelina thought that should smother her, surely. But instead she bloomed.
As if her body was made to be a cradle, to hold him between her thighs. Just like this.
He bent his head to hers and took her mouth again, so that she was being taken with the same sheer mastery in two places at once.
And she understood that there was no place he did not claim her.
Inside and out, she was his.
She could feel that ring of his on her finger and that hard male part of him thrust deep inside her body.
And it seemed to her that her pulse became a chant. His. His.
His.
And then, finally, Angelina tore her mouth from his. She gripped the fierce cords of his neck with her hands, and found herself staring deep into his dark, ferocious gaze.
Into eternity, she was sure of it.
His.
And when she exploded into fire and fury, claimed and reborn, he cried out a word that could have been her name, and followed.
* * *
Angelina was hardly aware of it when he moved. She came back to herself, disoriented and gloriously replete, as he lifted her up into his arms.
She was aware of it as he carried her down the tower’s narrow stair, high against his chest with only her hair trailing behind them. As naked as the day they were born.
Maybe she should have been embarrassed, she thought idly. For she knew full well that just because a staff was unseen did not mean they were not witnessing the goings-on of the house.
But how could she care if there were eyes on them when she felt like this? More beautiful than she ever had been. Perfect in his arms.
Right, straight through.
And so she looped her arms around his neck, rested her head against his shoulder, and said nothing as he took her back to that master suite. She did nothing but feel as he carried her into that room she’d seen before that contained only a massive, luxurious tub with a view straight on to forever.
Benedetto put her down carefully beside it so she could hold on if her knees gave way. They did, and he smiled, and then he set about drawing the bath himself. Soon enough, the water was steaming. And the salts he threw in it give
