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‘You always liked me to play a little rough, didn’t you, tesoro?’ he demanded as he tugged off the last of his own clothing—and was taken off guard by her fervent passion as she pushed him down onto the bed.
She moved over him, her face filled with an expression he could never remember seeing before as she straddled him. Her eyes were slitted so he couldn’t read them, and she was biting her lips as if she was trying to stop them from trembling.
‘Do it,’ he commanded.
But Justina shook her head. Tonight she was going to call the shots. This was going to be her therapy, the recovery she needed. She would feast on his body until she’d had her fill. She would let the harsh light of reality shine down on this demi-god of her imagination and by morning she would see him for the mortal he really was. This was sex, she told herself fiercely—and she wasn’t going to make the mistake of confusing it with love.
‘I’ll do it when I’m good and ready.’
Dante moaned as she circled her hips to brush her feminine core over his steely erection so that he could almost feel her—but not quite. She was close enough for him to be able to plunge inside her, and yet she kept her moist treasure almost tantalisingly out of reach. His head fell back against the pillow and for a moment he felt almost helpless. This was not how he liked it to happen—at least not with Justina. He liked to be in control, to play the dominant role, and yet she was writhing around on top of him like some teasing whore. And, God help him, he liked it.
‘Per favore,’ he groaned. ‘Please.’
His heartfelt plea made something inside her snap, and despite revelling in her fleeting moment of power Justina knew she couldn’t wait any longer. Positioning herself, she slid down and slowly took his hard, silken length deep into her body. She heard him groan as he filled her and for a moment she couldn’t move. She wanted to fall against him. To collapse against his chest and hug him, clinging tightly as if she would never let him go. To tell him that nothing had ever felt as good as this and nothing ever would. But she wasn’t going to be passive, was she? Or weak. She was going to enjoy her body and make the most out of a situation she had never thought would happen.
Nor should it be happening, taunted a mocking voice in her head, but she shut the door on it as she began to move. Their warm bodies met and reacquainted themselves as she eased his throbbing shaft in and out of her eager flesh. She groaned as he played with her breasts, and when his thumb began to rub
against her clitoris she flung her head back and gave a low and shuddering cry. It felt so amazing that she never wanted it to stop, but it didn’t last as long as she wanted it to. How could it, when they were both so close to the edge? She tried to prolong the erotic dance for as long as possible, but the hot waves were too powerful to hold back. Dark impulses danced over her skin as she gripped his shoulders and pushed her hips forward, driving him in right up to the hilt.
‘Justina!’ he gasped.
‘Dante!’ she moaned in response as she felt the first shimmering tugs hovering at the edge of her consciousness—and then, as she began to go under, he flipped her onto her back, his powerful body dark and tense as he drove into her with increasing speed. Her body felt as if it was exploding with pleasure as the first of the spasms hit her, and then she heard him give his own ragged cry as his head sank down against her neck.
Justina kept her eyes tightly shut as their bodies gradually grew still and felt a brief pang of melancholy wash over her. But she was damned if she was going to let it show. She wasn’t going to start dwelling on how amazing it had been because that was nothing new. And she wasn’t going to start wishing that they could go back to what they’d had before. Because they couldn’t, could they? You could never go back.
Even if you could she wouldn’t want to—not with Dante. Especially not with Dante. Because he was bad news. Or had she forgotten that? Had the urgent greed of her body made her conveniently push away the bitter truth? He’d hurt her more than she’d thought it was possible to hurt and he had the power to do it still. And he would. She knew that. She knew all about the complex factors which motivated him. She knew that he’d seen some of her behaviour as humiliation to his macho pride, and perhaps this was his way of getting even. Taking her body with careless disregard for her feelings.
She wriggled a little, aware that they were still locked intimately together. He was sleeping—or at least he seemed to be doing a good impression of sleeping, with the dark arcs of his long lashes feathering his sculpted cheeks. Once there would have been love as she looked at him, but that emotion had been replaced by a mixture of anger and regret. How could she have done that? How could she? She’d brought him up here to her hotel room and just had sex with him—without any of the usual preliminaries. And why, of all the men in all the world, did it have to be him and only him who could make her feel like this? The only man she’d ever been intimate with was the man who had hurt her. Who had destroyed her trust completely.
She felt him stir inside her. She felt his burgeoning erection and remembered how deliciously insatiable he’d used to be. Once he would have lowered his head to kiss her and started to make love to her all over again. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. Please give me the strength to push him away, she prayed—but Dante got there first.
His silent withdrawal from her sticky body seemed fraught with symbolism—all of it dark. He hadn’t said a single word, and the silence in the room seemed to be growing bigger by the second. He was levering himself up onto one elbow and appeared to be viewing her as dispassionately as a scientist might look into a petrie dish, to see what rogue organisms had sprung up overnight.
‘That was some sex,’ he said, and Justina met the cold expression in his eyes.
She kept her own response deliberately light. Don’t let him know how you feel. Hide your hurt, your anger and your shame and be the kind of woman he usually ends up in bed with. Casual. No-strings. She even managed to curve her lips into the faintest of smiles. ‘You liked it?’
Dante’s face darkened. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how good you are.’ He paused and his voice took on an empty, hollow quality. ‘I’d forgotten quite how good.’
But he had never known her quite like that before, he realised. And, despite his own very comprehensive love life since they’d parted, he felt sick at the thought of her doing the same. He tried to tell himself that it was a good thing to realise that she’d changed. That she was no longer the sweet innocent he’d initiated into sex. He hadn’t expected her to be, had he? Had he?
‘I expect you’ve learnt a lot from all the other men you’ve known in the interim,’ he said.
Justina gave her naked shoulders a little wriggle. ‘I always make it a rule not to discuss other lovers when I’m in bed with a man. It strikes me as particularly bad manners.’
Her words made his mouth harden and he pushed back the rumpled bedclothes before getting out of bed. She watched as he headed for the bathroom, just as she’d watched him do so many times before. His naked olive body was magnificent, the perfect globes of his paler buttocks contrasting with the dark musculature of his powerful thighs.
He emerged minutes later and without another word reached for his clothes and began getting dressed.
‘Going?’ she questioned, still in that same studiedly casual voice.
He paused in the act of pulling on his shirt, his dark eyes flicking over her with a look which was half lust, half disgust. ‘I have a flight to the States in the morning. I told you that.’
‘Of course.’ She didn’t want him to think that she minded him leaving so she got out of bed herself, reaching for the silk robe which was lying neatly folded on the chair by the bed. ‘Would you like a drink before you go?’ she questioned. ‘I can ring down for coffee if you like. It’s a long drive back to London.’
A dark spear of jealousy lanced through him. Dante wondered if she knew how seasoned she sounded. As if she asked men that kind of question most days of the week. He saw her slide the slippery robe over her luscious nakedness and quickly averted his eyes. Maybe she did.
‘No, thanks.’
