Both sensations were equally dismaying enough to loosen my grip on his waist. To attempt to uncoil myself from?—
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he grated.
My breath hitched at the flare of temper in his eyes, but my own anger built.
‘This is why you brought me here, isn’t it? Now you have your answer. I had no hand in this and I don’t have a fucking clue who does.’ I slammed my hands against his rock-hard chest. He didn’t budge. ‘Let me go.’ I hated the hitch in my voice, the bigger one in my chest.
I’d allowed him to seduce me into mindlessness so he could pump me for information. He was leaving me high and dry when I wanted a very different sort of pumping. Even if it was heinously forbidden. Even if it could trigger a fucking war. For a dizzying moment I wondered if this was how past illicit lovershad felt, standing on the precipice, staring danger in the face. Unwilling to turn back.
Juliet Capulet. Anna Karenina. Isolde.
‘Cesare.’
His nostrils flared and I recalled how much he enjoyed me using his name.
‘No fucking chance. Especially not now.’
Before I could ask what he meant, he was kissing me again.
His vigour was intense as the hand on my waist rose to close over my breast. He groaned, moulding me with rough caresses before, with a grunt, he yanked down the top of my bustier.
Heated eyes dropped. ‘Fuck, you’re even more luscious than I remember,’ he slurred. He flicked his thumb over my budded nipple, sending shudders of delight through me.
‘Legs, Maddelena,’ he prompted, biting my lower lip in wicked punishment.
I tightened my legs around his waist, happy with the realisation that he wasn’t stopping after all, relief and need tearing through me in equal measure when I felt him where I wanted him most.
‘You know how long I’ve waited for this?’ He licked the sting from my lips, then nipped them again. ‘Now every time we fuck, I’m going to take you up against a wall at least once, until the madness you stoked is gone.’
I thrilled at the ‘every time we fuck’ but chose to remain silent on the subject. It was now a blatant and undeniable fact that I was weak when it came to Cesare Salvatore. That I was circling the depths of an unfathomable kind of hell if this came out. But already I was priming myself for the next time. And the next.
And if Bonafacio was truly plotting to marry me off despite my flaws, then I intended to gorge myself on?—
I yelped at the not-so-gentle pinch of my nipples.
‘Duci.’ It was a snapped endearment that shut off my unwanted train of thought.
I blinked.
‘I’m going to give you one guess on how I feel about you being distracted by anything besides what’s happening between us right now.’ Without waiting for an answer, he stepped back, disentangling us so my feet dropped to the floor. ‘Strip.’
The growled command went straight to my pussy. My hands shook as I attacked my pants, nearly ripping the zipper. When they pooled at my feet, I kicked them away.
Cesare devoured every exposed inch, his breathing a little erratic when he lingered longest on the stretch of silk and lace framing my hips and cupping my damp centre.
He licked his lips and dragged his eyes upward as I reached beneath my left arm and lowered the zipper. The stiff, boned bustier parted and fell away.
And for the first time in my life, at the grand old age of thirty-one, I was caught beneath the naked hunger of a breathtaking man.
It was almost as if fate had planned things this way.
My first was a disastrous fumble in the backseat of Ciara’s boyfriend’s borrowed Toyota after an even worse double date. It’d left me never wanting to repeat the experience.
Then, after the harrowing night of bloody carnage that had left devastation in its wake, sex had been an ineffectual way to cope that had left both parties deeply disappointed. Unfortunately, I’d re-boarded that broken wagon and repeated the cringe-worthy experience a few more times before finally throwing in the towel and accepting that the kind of sex I saw in movies and read in books was a complete hoax.
So, right here and now, basking in the fiery focus of a very aroused Cesare Salvatore, the most breathtaking man I’d ever known, felt like dancing in pure sunshine after a cleansing rain.And if there was more pleasure in store – please, God – then I was about to have my mind blownin the best way.
‘Finish, baby.’ He jerked his head at my panties.
