The Italian's Virgin Acquisition

Smoothing her hair back from her forehead, he took his weight on his elbows, staring down at her. ‘Poppy, amore mia, are you all right? Did I hurt you?’

She gazed up at him, a mixture of wonder and wariness in her gaze. ‘I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt...now.’

Sebastiano swore softly in Italian. ‘Poppy was that...? Were you a virgin?’

She panted what sounded like a yes, her fingers digging into his lower back, her legs widening to take him deeper.

‘Wait,’ he ordered roughly. ‘Let your body get used to mine.’

‘Oh, that feels good again.’

Sebastiano growled under his breath. The cool part of his brain shrieked entrapment, but the primal, instinctive part overrode it, telling him to go deeper and harder in a mating ritual too powerful to ignore.

‘Just relax, Poppy.’ He groaned as she pressed upwards, his hands finding her hips to force her to go slow. ‘Let me show you.’

She moaned softly as he pushed slowly into her, her arms clinging to him, her legs high around his waist to take him all in.

He whispered her name, petting her, watching her, learning what she liked. If sex had ever felt this good, he couldn’t remember it. ‘You’re mine now, bella,’ he growled. ‘Mine.’

He brought her eyes to his, forging a deeper connection with her as he slowly started to move inside her, some primal part of him thrilling to the fact that he was her first.

‘Sebastiano...’ She hooked her ankles around his lean hips, her body straining for something no man had ever given her before.

‘That’s it, Poppy,’ he murmured. ‘Give yourself to me, let me pleasure you. I’ve got you, dolce mia, I’ve got you.’

‘I can’t... I don’t think...’ She panted his name and then he felt it, the moment her body tightened before flinging her into a mind-bending orgasm.

Sebastiano rode it out with her, holding her, soothing her, glorying in the wonderment shining out of her blue eyes.

The ripples of her body pushed at his self-control, making her soft and open for his possession. And Sebastiano did possess her, driven by the demons of his past and a woman who made him want more than any other... Then suddenly it was just her and him, and right before he found his own powerful release she wound her arms around his torso and held him tight with her whole body, sending him to a place he’d never been to before.

‘Oh, my...’ she murmured drowsily, her arms loosening their hold around his neck.

Sebastiano slipped from her body, his heart still pounding inside his chest.

She whimpered as he disposed of the condom, quickly returning to tuck her replete body against his side.

‘That was your first time,’ he said, trying to sort through the myriad emotions coursing through him. Disbelief. Pride. Wariness. Contentment.

His mind couldn’t seem to decide how he was supposed to feel about taking Poppy’s virginity but, damn it, he wished she had told him. ‘You should have told me.’

‘Mmm...’ She snuggled closer against his side, one arm flung across his middle. ‘I didn’t think of it.’

‘You didn’t think of it?’

Now that he couldn’t believe. How could a woman who was about to have sex for the first time not think of something so important?

‘Well, I thought about it, but then...’ She sighed with her whole body. ‘Then I forgot until you pushed inside me.’

Just hearing those words on her lips made him hard again. He clenched his jaw. He didn’t do virgins as a general rule—he’d never had a virgin before in his life—and the fact that Poppy had chosen him to be her first...

‘Why me?’ he asked softly, holding his breath as he waited for her answer.

When all that came was the soft, even sound of her breathing, he glanced down to find she had fallen asleep.

Fallen asleep?

That was usually his modus operandi, his body too sated to do anything but shut down. Only he wasn’t sated right now, he was raring to go again, his brain trying to convince him that he could wake her up, roll her onto her back and slip inside her warm, welcoming body without any need for foreplay.