She laughed. So did he. But the kiss went from melodramatic to passionate to sweetly, achingly tender, and Nick sank down on the grass and drew her down beside him.
She sighed and laid her head against his shoulder, and he tried to figure out how he could ever have thought her cold and imperious.
The truth was that she was warm and giving.
She was amazing.
He had never enjoyed being with a woman as much as he enjoyed being with his princess. “Enjoy” was the wrong way to describe it. A man could enjoy a fast car. A deal he’d successfully concluded. But what he felt about Alessia was more intense. More vital. What he felt was more like—more like—
Nick blinked.
Easy, he told himself. Just slow down. Relax.
Alessia was bright. She was funny. She was beautiful. He liked talking with her, sparring with her, having sex with her, but sex was what it was. Incredible sex, especially considering that she’d had been concerned about meeting his expectations. She’d made it sound as if she was inexperienced.
Maybe. But she was the most responsive lover imaginable.
And she was on the pill. A good thing, considering that he’d managed to think of everything but protection.
But…
But, why was she on birth control? Better still, why did it bother him? Because it did. That she was using something was, as he’d just told himself, a damned good thing. Otherwise, what would they have done last night besides drive each other half-crazy?
Besides, he wasn’t a male chauvinist. He was all in favor of women having the same rights as men, in sex and in everything else.
Except, suppose she was on the pill because she already had a lover. Then what? Was he sharing her with a man who had the right to touch her as intimately as he had, to explore her body’s dark, sweet secrets?
Last night, she’d cried out his name.
Was there some other name she had cried out last week—and would cry out again, once he was gone?
He couldn’t imagine that. She was not a woman who would go from one man to another. And despite her responsiveness, despite her being sophisticated enough to keep herself protected against an unplanned pregnancy, her reactions to what happened between them in bed were, for lack of a better word, innocent.
Her sighs. Her moans. They spoke not of knowledge but of wonder.
The first time he’d put his mouth between her thighs, she’d been shocked. No, she’d said, no! Not in fear. In stunned amazement that he would do such a thing. But he’d gone on kissing her, tasting her, and her shock had given way to ecstasy and she’d sobbed his name, come apart as he licked her….
Hell.
If he kept this up, he was going to turn her toward him, strip off her clothes, make love to her right here, on this hilltop….
“Nicolo?”
Nick cleared his throat. “Yes, sweetheart?”
“Would it be terrible of me to ask you…to ask you to take me back to the villa?”
His heart leaped. “If that’s what you want—”
“What I want,” she said in a low voice, “what I want, Nicolo, is you.”
Her honesty made her blush. That, coupled with what he saw in her eyes, was almost his undoing. He rose, brought her up beside him, took her in his arms and kissed her. Then he took her back to the villa, to the bed, their bed, and as she sighed his name and welcomed him into her warmth, all his doubts vanished.
She belonged to him.
Only to him.
She fell asleep in his arms.