The Sicilian's Bought Cinderella

How the hell was he going to get through this?

It would be bad enough finding themselves having to share a bed even if they hadn’t shared their earlier kiss but they had shared it and that made it all worse. Hunger was never sated by a morsel. He’d had a brief taste of Aislin and all it had done was whet his appetite.

The drive from Palermo had been torturous but they had both made a conscious effort to keep talking: about the expected guests; about the events that made up the weekend, of which the wedding itself was only a small part; about the correct etiquette, which he didn’t care for, but about which Aislin had wanted to know all the details; talking, talking, talking, not another mention of that damned kiss and what it had unleashed between them.

Dio, he could explode from the heat coursing through him. He didn’t know what to do with himself. All he wanted was to batter that bathroom door down and drag her to the bed.

* * *

Aislin slipped the dress over her head and, instead of checking her appearance, stared at the discarded clothes she’d thrown in a puddle on the bathroom floor.

How could she cope sharing such an enclosed space with Dante? Their appointed room was beautiful in both decoration and proportions but they might as well have been given an old-fashioned telephone box for all the difference it made. As soon as that door had closed them in alone, her body had come roaring back to life.

She could cope with her wild feelings for him when they were surrounded by people but when they were alone...?

She pulled hard at her hair and welcomed the fleeting pain. But it was nowhere near distracting enough to override the hot, sticky feelings rampaging through her.

She felt desperate enough to jump under the shower and set it to cold. Or call housekeeping and beg them to fill the bath with ice into which she could submerge herself.

And then what would happen? A cold shower or an ice bath wouldn’t be enough. Soon their effects would wear off and she’d be back to where she was: having to share a suite with the man she desired so badly it was like a sickness had infected her.

Clenching her hand into a fist, she put it to her mouth and bit her knuckles, stifling a scream of frustration.

Desire was not supposed to hurt.

A knock on the door made her jump.

?

?Aislin? Are you okay?’

She pulled it open and found Dante standing there, a crease in his brow, the rest of his features taut.

Their eyes locked together.

Her heart thumped so hard a ripple spread through her body and lifted the hairs from her arms.

Time came to a stop. The room shrank.

Her feet rooted to the floor, her vocal cords frozen.

The green eyes she found so mesmerising pulsed. His chest rose high and then loosened jaggedly.

This sickness wasn’t hers alone, she realised dimly, and as that thought whispered into her consciousness her feet bounded to Dante at the same moment he sprang to life and seized her.

One moment she was gazing at him, the next she was in his arms, like two puppets whose strings were controlled by a deity, being pulled together. Their mouths fused tightly and his tongue swept into her mouth, entwining with hers, his hot, dark taste sending sensation crashing through her.

Aislin threw her arms around his neck and held him as tightly as she’d ever held anything. His hands swept up her back, one reaching up to burrow into her hair, winding a thick lock of it in his fingers, the other roaming everywhere, while her fingers grazed through the soft texture of his thick hair and her nails dug into his scalp.

His taste, his scent, the bristles of his beard biting into her cheek, a pleasure mingled with pain in its own right...

They kissed like starving waifs given one last meal, a wet, feverish unstoppable force, and she revelled in the relief of it and moaned at the pleasure they were unleashing.

Her taut breasts crushed against his hard chest and she pressed every part of herself tighter against him. Her body was aflame with need, desperate for relief from this painful longing that had become such a part of her.

And he held her just as tightly. The strength and depth of his kisses, the hunger in them, the urgent possessive exploration of her body proved he had lost his head to the moment as much as she had.

Had she been possessed? Was that what this longing for him was, not a sickness but a possession?