Hold You Against Me (Stripped 4)

When he presses all the way inside, I feel the rough hair of him against me. I feel the choked gasp he makes, the shudder deep inside him. “I won’t last,” he gasps.

“Then don’t.”

His hand tightens on mine, keeping my arms up. His other hand plants on my hip, holding me steady. Then he pulls back and surges into me, the fullness so intense I bite my lip. His thrusts grow faster, harder, the force of him shaking the bed. I rock with him because it’s the only thing I can do, my body rising to meet him, reaching for his peak more than my own.

His body stiffens, and he grinds against me, pulsing deep inside. His expression is harsh, pain lining every feature. He clasps at me as he’s falling, as if I’m falling and he’ll never let me go.

When the clench releases him, he slides into me with languid strokes. His lips grow soft against mine, almost playful. His hips drop, changing the angle inside me. He finds some secret place that makes me push up on my toes.

I’m breathless. “Gio. Aren’t you…”

“Finished? Christ, I’ll never be done with you. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to leave your body.”

I thought that men had an orgasm and were finished. That’s what Amy told me, anyway. He still feels hard inside me, though less urgent. His hands release mine, and I hold on to his muscled shoulders.

He presses that spot, watching my face with dark cunning. My mouth opens on a silent cry. I don’t know what’s happening. This isn’t like when he touched my clit, nothing like when I touched myself. It’s a forced surrender, this orgasm, wrenched from my body like it belongs to him instead of me. Pleasure blankets me in muted waves, turning the whole world shades of purple and bronze, midnight eyes and hot skin in an endless expanse.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I wake up with pale yellow across my pillow and something hard nudging my back. The memories come back to me in a rush, the dark shape of him moving over me, hours and hours, relentless, pleasure that morphed into pain and then back again. I moan, sore and aroused in a luscious cycle.

“You’re awake,” he murmurs.

He thrusts inside me, his way smoothed by a full night of his spend. My breath catches at the fiery ache of salt on abraded skin. Then he finds the spot that makes me moan, and my body rocks into him.

“I’m surprised you waited,” I manage to say in a sleepy drawl.

“I said I wouldn’t take you again. After the marriage was consummated.”

A lazy smile touches my lips. “And the middle of the night?”

He pauses, his fingers tightening on my hips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I take the measure of my body, the whisker burn between my thighs, the tender flesh of my breasts. The bruises that circle my hips. He’s awakened something inside me, something firmly woman, something powerful. “What if I want you to?” I ask, rolling my hips.

At that he pulls out and lays me flat on the bed. Pushing one leg aside, he thrusts into me. His eyes fall shut as if in intense relief. “I want you to like it.”

“Then find that place inside me again.”

His lips curve in a brutal smile, one of both surrender and domination. He pulls out of me and works his way down, over aching muscles and reddened flesh. Two fingers explore the inner wall of my body until I gasp. With a wicked glint in his eye, he bends his head and kisses my clit. His fingers and his mouth work in tandem, bringing me to the brink again and again until I’m wrung out, collapsed on the bed, unable to move a muscle as he slides inside and thrusts hard.

The sun has boiled into peak afternoon by the time he withdraws from the bed. His expression is regretful as he heads for the shower. “I have some work that can’t be postponed.”

I sit up and pull the sheet to cover me, a little cold without his body. “To call New York?”

He pauses. “Yes.”

Of course he’ll want to let them know that the marriage is complete. That it was consummated. The family values marriage and blood ties. Now he has both. He’ll be able to continue the search for his mother, which is important. So why do I feel suddenly hollow?

I wish he didn’t look so strong, so virile. Shouldn’t nakedness be a position of weakness? He looks like a warrior, as if he could take on an army without a single piece of armor.

“You can sleep here,” he says, gesturing to the bed. The room. His room.

I shouldn’t ask questions I don’t want to know the answer to. “Will the door be locked?”

He hesitates only a moment. “Romero will escort you anywhere you want to go.”

* * *