AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Look at me,” came the soft command from above her.
Amara closed her eyes for a second, before giving him her eyes, to find him watching her with an intensity that had become harder and harder to ignore as the weeks went by. He looked at her like that more often, like a condemned soul being offered salvation, like a blind man seeing the sun. That look always flared in his eyes before he caged it in. Usually, he was charming and easy-going with everyone else that she saw him interacting with, but with her, there was that intensity she never saw him have with anyone else either. Just with her. And every time she felt his eyes on her, she knew the look she’d find in them.
“Are you scared?” he asked her, his voice rough, his words rolling over her in the quiet of the room.
No, she wasn’t scared. She was hungry for something she shouldn’t be.
Amara shook her head.
He straightened, taking a step closer to her, close enough that she could feel dwarfed in his presence. Amara loved that about him, that he was the only man she knew who could make her feel so small, so protected.
She watched as he slowly raised his hand, slow enough that she could stop him if she wanted, and hooked his index finger in her scarf, tugging it down her neck.
The skin underneath exposed.
Her breasts heaved.
Heart hammering inside her chest, Amara fisted the sides of her dress to keep her hands from doing anything they shouldn’t. She watched him, his dark eyes never wavering from hers even as he exposed her scar to the light in the room, the scar she always hid from everyone.
His gaze never flickered down to it, their eyes locked on each other as he touched the skin with his index finger.
A soft, barely-there touch.
It seared her, from the point of his finger to her flesh, burning and not in a way that was painful. No. It was decadent, like the warmest of fires that seeped into her cold soul, kindling her chilled bones, warming her from the inside out.
His dark eyes, still the most beautiful she had ever seen, focused on her own as he deliberately brushed her scar again, almost as though he was learning its texture.
A small shiver went down her spine, raising goosebumps on her arms and making her breasts feel heavy for the first time with such wild arousal. It was a heady sensation – almost enough to want to make her close her eyes and luxuriate in the feel of the body she usually hated so much.
“Say something.”
The soft command made her lips part, as he continued to lightly rub her scar with his fingers. She looked up at him, seeing for the first time how much her silence had affected him. She swallowed once and he felt it, her throat bobbing against his touch, and his gaze darkened.
There was something in that moment – a vulnerability she had never experienced before, one that she didn’t mind with him, interspersing with the tension that had layered between them, thickening over the years. He had seen her at her worst, continued to see her at her worst, and he still looked at her as though she was something precious.
The words left her lips before she knew it, in her new, raspy voice not louder than a whisper – words he felt on his hands before they filled the space between them.
“Kiss me.”
Silence.
Heavy silence, punctuated just with their breathing.
Something flared in his eyes and she broke their gaze, her eyes moving to his mouth, to trace his lips and his jaw, as her toes curled in her shoes.
She closed her eyes, unable to believe she’d voiced that to the boy she had been half in love with most of her life, the young man who had become something so important she didn’t even have a name for it anymore.
She felt the air between them change, the woodsy scent of his signature cologne that she loved permeating the space between them. His breath brushed over her face – warm and whiskeyed. Her breaths stuttered in response. His hand went to the back of her neck to hold her in place, tilting her face up, and her heart thundered, waiting for the kiss, knowing she would cherish it in her heart for eternity.
She should have known not to expect a normal first kiss from Dante Maroni.
His lips came, landing softly on the skin of her neck, right over her scar.
He kissed it once, twice, and Amara felt her lips tremble, the significance of what he was doing not lost on her.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he whispered against her neck.
“No, we shouldn’t,” Amara whispered back.
