The Sicilian's Bought Cinderella

And then the words were sucked out of her as the pleasure reached its peak and exploded. She cried out at the same moment Dante released an animalistic roar that penetrated through her skin.

Waves of release crashed through her and she clawed at him, sobbing into his damp cheek pressed so tightly to hers, riding the glorious surges for as long as she could until her entire body felt saturated with their flow.

It was a long time before she could breathe with any semblance of normality.

Blood pounded in her head, pounded in every part of her satiated body.

Eventually Dante lifted his head and kissed her with a tenderness that filled her heart before gently moving off her.

She watched him walk to the bathroom and was suddenly overcome with another urge to cry.

Where the tears came from, she couldn’t begin to think, and she blinked them away, burrowing under the covers, not wanting Dante to see.

But it had been beautiful.

When he slipped under the covers beside her and hauled her into his arms, she had to bite her tongue to stop words she would regret in the morning from being spilt.

There, in the darkness, lying with Dante in a jumble of limbs, the urge to say that she loved him almost overwhelmed her.

* * *

Aislin crept out of bed and slipped Dante’s discarded shirt on. It smelled of him.

She gazed at his peaceful sleeping form with a lump in her throat. An arm was thrown over his head, the sheets tangled around his waist, his breathing deep and regular.

She took her own deep breath and wrenched her eyes away from him to pad to the coffee machine on the table at the end of the room. Once it was made, she took the cup and her phone out onto the secluded balcony, leaving Dante to sleep. The Lord knew he needed it.

There had not been much in the way of slumber that night.

She should be shattered herself but instead she felt wired.

And scared.

She took a sip of the coffee and stared over the balustrade, desperate to shut her thoughts down before they could gain traction.

The only sound was the early-morning bird call. It was so early she doubted even the children were awake.

There was a chill in the early-morning air but the brightening sky was cloudless and promised warmth. The sea in the near distance—she hadn’t realised how close to the shoreline they were—had hardly a ripple in it.

She gazed wistfully at it, wishing for the same calm to replace the ripples of tension within her, then scolded herself for even acknowledging it.

She’d known what she was doing last night when she had made love with Dante. These feelings were nothing but a side effect of the heady hormones that had taken her in their grip.

But you never had these side effects with Patrick...

She dismissed that thought immediately. Compared to Dante, Patrick had been a child, and the girl whose head had been turned by the university jock didn’t exist any more.

Dante had awoken the woman inside her. And, unlike with Patrick, she had gone into this affair with her eyes open. Dante had no power to hurt her.

The jealousy she’d felt when she’d fleetingly suspected Katrina of being one of his ex-lovers had been an irrational reflex. Nothing more than that.

The warmth that had filled her at his protectiveness towards her then was nothing but a reflex too.

Needing to take her mind off him, she put her coffee on the table and called her sister. Finn’s needs meant Orla had to get up early to care for him.

‘What are you doing up at this god-awful time?’

Her sister’s rude greeting soothed her.