The speeches were brilliant, the whole night was perfect, but it felt as though she might faint with desire as she said farewell to the guests.
‘We should go for a drink in the bar,’ Nicki said.
‘It will be closed.’
‘I meant the bar in your room.’ Nicki smiled, but Ariana shook her head. ‘I’m exhausted, Nicki.’
It was a lie.
Ariana felt as alive as an exposed wire as she slipped away and took the private elevator to his floor and let herself in.
It was not the view that she craved, or the stunning surroundings; it was the glimpses of him.
There were paintings, the sketches of Fiordelise he had told her about, his history and lineage all there on the walls.
The older Dukes and Duchesses too, and it went right down to his parents, his brother...
But where was Gian?
Her eyes scanned the walls.
Where was the man she adored?
Then she found him, in a suit, at the desk in Reception, and she frowned at the one single image of him, but her thoughts faded as she heard the whir of the elevator. And her heart moved to her throat as he stepped through the door.
It had been agony not to touch him, but both were relieved of that agony now.
As they reached for each other, almost ran to each other, it was like falling into another dimension.
He was undoing her gown so it fell like a black puddle on the floor. His tongue was cool and his kisses hot as she impatiently pushed down the sleeves of his jacket, and they were so desperate for each other, for more than this.
He picked her up, dressed only in her underwear, and deposited her onto a vast gold bed.
His eyes never left her face as Ariana removed her bra and lay on her back, propped up by her elbows and watching him undress.
He threw off the tie as though it was choking him and she gave a satisfied smile when the cufflinks dropped silently to the carpet for he was as desperate as she.
He slowed down to take off her strappy high heels. First the right, and he was so annoyingly slow with the strap that she took her other high heel and pressed it into his toned stomach.
Gian caught her calf.
She could see his erection, the one that had been pressed against her on the dance floor, and she almost writhed in frustration as he took off her left high heel. Now the soles of her feet were on his stomach as he slowly pulled her silk knickers down, revealing her to him. Finally, he buried his face in her.
‘Gian!’ She was shocked at the delicious roughness of him, at the sounds of him, at her own reaction to him, for she was coming as quickly as that.
Suddenly she was pulsing as he devoured her and then she was falling where she lay, but with him atop her.
‘We need condoms...’ she said frantically, for she had cursed herself after the last time.
‘There’s been no one since.’
Those words made her too weak for reason.
He was holding her naked as she tumbled through space, and for all the terrible decisions she had made in her lifetime, this, Ariana knew, was not one of them.
He kissed her mouth and her face, the shells of her ears, and the tender skin of her neck as he took her.
He devoured her and rained kisses and words on her that should not be said to someone you were not prepared to love the next day.
‘You make me crazy,’ he told her.
And that made her heart sing.
He told her how he had wanted her all night, how he had wanted her for weeks, in fact, all this as he moved within her and stared right into her eyes. The prolonged intensity astounded her, the focus, the climb, the ache of want and the desire to give. Her hips moved involuntarily with his and they were wild for each other, rolling and tumbling across the bed. He took in her flushed features and brushed the damp hair back from her face as he drove into her and gazed at her.
Help, Ariana thought, for she had never seen Gian so tender before.
There was passion and there was desire, but there was something else too.
He was also aware of it, this slip into a deeper caring, this moment, when he rolled her onto her back again, and one lesson in tenderness moved to the next.
He was up on his forearms, his body sliding over hers, each intimate stroke of him winding her tighter and tighter. His pace built and built and she wrapped her legs around his hips and simply clung on as he took her to wherever he chose.
He took her to bliss, pounding her senses, making her more his with each thrust.
For Gian it was a dangerous space. He knew that as he looked down at her, her black hair splayed on his pillow, her body tight around his. He would regret this later, Gian knew, but at that moment he didn’t care.
Especially as he swelled that delicious final time and filled her. Completely.
And this time it was Gian shouting out her name.
He dragged her into an orgasm so deep and intense that for a moment she existed there with him.
It was dizzying...too much...never enough, and she was crying as it was fading.
And he kissed her back to consciousness.
‘I loved my ice cream,’ she told him, and then stopped, because there was another thing that Ariana knew she loved too.
Don’t say it, she told herself as he turned off the lights with a single bedside switch and Ariana curled into him, loving the feel of being utterly spent yet curiously awake in her lover’s arms.
Ariana usually hated the dark and the night, but not this night. The thud-thud-thud of his heart and the sound of Gian collecting his breath brought Ariana a sense of contentment
