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She did. And something broke apart deep inside her.
Her whole body tautened against his, nerves stretched to screaming point. Luca moved his hand between them, his fingers finding the engorged centre of her desire, and he touched her with a precision that left her nowhere to hide or hang on to. She imploded. Her control was shattered—the control she’d clung to all her life. Since her world had fallen apart as a child, when being out of control had become her control.
In one instant it was decimated, and Serena soared high on a wave of bliss that was spectacular. The definition of an orgasm being a petit mort, a small death, had never felt so apt. She knew that a part of her had just died and something else incredibly fragile and nebulous was taking its place.
She floated back down to reality, aware of her body milking Luca’s own release as he shuddered and buried his head in her shoulder, his body embedded deep within hers. Her legs wrapped around him, and the pulsations of their mutual climaxes took long minutes to die away.
* * *
Luca was in the kitchen the following morning, making breakfast, before he realised that he’d never in his life made breakfast for a lover. In general he liked being in a situation where he could extricate himself rather than have to deal with the aftermath and unwelcome romantic projections.
But here he was, cooking breakfast for Serena without half a second’s hesitation or any desire to put as much space between them as possible. His head was still fuzzy from an overload of sensual pleasure and the revelations she’d made.
He couldn’t help thinking of her: a little girl, traumatised by the violent death of her mother, with a sadistic and mercurial father who tried to discredit her as soon as he could. Somehow it wasn’t that fantastical to believe her father capable of such things.
He thought back to that night when he’d watched Siena come to bail Serena out of jail. The way she had tended to Serena like a mother to her cub...the way Serena had leant on her as if it was a familiar pattern. Both had been manipulated by their father’s machinations. Both had been acting out their parts. The good girl and the bad girl.
It all made a sick kind of sense now, because Luca knew he hadn’t imagined the vulnerability he’d sensed about her that night he’d first met her...
A sound from behind him made him tense and he turned around to see Serena, tousle-haired and dressed in the robe, standing in the doorway. She looked hesitant, shy, and Luca was falling, losing his grip. Everything he thought he’d known about her...wasn’t.
His hands gripped the bowl he was using to whisk eggs. ‘Hungry?’
‘Starving.’
Serena’s voice was husky, and it fired up Luca’s blood, reminding him of how she’d shouted out his name in the throes of passion just short hours before. How she’d begged and pleaded with him. How she’d felt around him.
Deus.
* * *
Serena came into the kitchen feeling ridiculously shy. Luca looked stern, intense.
‘I didn’t know you cooked.’
Luca grimaced in a half-smile, some of the intensity in his expression diminishing slightly as he continued whisking. ‘I don’t...I have a very limited repertoire and scrambled eggs is about as haute cuisine as it gets.’
Serena sat up on a stool by the island and tried not to let herself melt too much at seeing Luca in such a domestic setting in worn jeans and a T-shirt, his hair mussed up and a dark growth of stubble on his jaw.
‘Where did you learn?’
He was taking thin strips of bacon now, and placing them under a hot grill. He didn’t look at her. ‘When my mother left, my father let the housekeeper go; he always felt it was an unnecessary expense.’
Serena felt indignation rise. ‘But how did you cope? Did your father cook?’
Luca shook his head. ‘I was at boarding school outside Rio for most of the time, so it was only the holidays when I had to fend for myself.’ His mouth twisted. ‘One of my father’s many mistresses took pity on me when she found me eating dry cereal. She taught me some basics. I liked her—she was one of the nicer ones—but she left.’
More sharply than she’d intended, Serena said, ‘She wasn’t the one who seduced you?’
Luca looked at her, a small smile playing around his hard mouth. ‘No.’
Embarrassed by the surge of jealousy, Serena said, ‘Your father never married again?’
‘No.’
Luca poured some delicious-smelling coffee out of a pot into big mugs, handing her one. Serena bent her head to smell deeply.
‘He learnt his lesson after my mother walked away with a small fortune. She’d come from money in Italy, but by then it was almost all gone.’
