She was exquisite. She was a blushing rose barely open from its bud, and she was willing to share all of herself with him.
“Adeline…” His mouth travelled down her graceful neck and over her collarbone until it found the swollen nub of her breast. Capturing it in his lips, he sucked hard.
Crying out, Adeline arched her chest into him as she sank her fingers into his thick hair and held him tight against her. It was as natural as the moving tides when Nicolo slid his hand between her legs and she opened for him, spreading her knees wide.
His thumb found the small epicenter of her pleasure, and Adeline’s hips bucked. It was all that Nicolo could take. He was down the length of her body a second later. He guided one of her legs over his shoulder, then he sank two long, thick fingers into her heat.
Adeline moaned as her body welcomed his fingers, but she screamed with sudden, intense pleasure when Nicolo’s lips closed over her sweet button with an insistent suction.
When her hips bucked again, Nicolo moved with her. He kept his mouth on her, sucking and teasing, while the tips of his thrusting fingers rubbed the swell in her channel that made her writhe and moan his name. Her sounds were music to his ears, and they made him want to lose himself inside of her and never find his way back out.
Her pleasured cries intensified to fill the room as her body clamped down hard around Nicolo’s fingers and held him oh so tight in place. She was determined not to let him go, and Nicolo let her keep him until her cries softened to breathy moans and the tension in her body drifted away.
It was not until then that Nicolo made his way back up Adeline’s languid form. He wondered again if he should back out, if maybe they were moving too fast, but his want for her had him too far gone. He needed to be inside of her. Afterward, he would be sure she understood. She was not a fling. He wanted to know her and make room for her in his life. He wanted all of her.
Looking sleepy and sated, the drag of Adeline’s heel up the back of his thigh let him know that she wasn’t done with him either.
Brushing the hair off her forehead, Nicolo looked down into her rich, gold-flecked brown eyes.
“Fill me,” she said. It wasn’t a demand this time. It was a plea. She needed him inside of her… and inside of her was where he needed to be.
“T’amu,” he whispered, calling her his love as he shifted his hips. The tip of his round, throbbing head pressed against her wet, swollen heat. He shifted again and her lips parted for him, inviting him to the entrance of her depths.
“T’amu,” Nicolo whispered again. His heart beat fast as with the flex of his hips, Adeline’s tight channel opened to allow him inside. It was beyond anything that he’d ever dreamed of, and he could barely hold himself back. “Adeline,” he groaned, unable to control his need to thrust deeper. He’d meant to take her slow, to give her body time to adjust to his girth, but his whole body was shaking with need and he felt as though all of the air in the room had left.
He sank in deep, and caught Adeline’s arched neck in his teeth as a gasped moan escaped her.
“Adeline,” he groaned as he gathered her into his arms before thrusting fully into her. Her answer was to open herself by lifting her knees high and wrapping her legs around his torso and crossing her ankles over his lower back. It was all the invitation he needed. He thrust into her hard, again and again. The pulsing bed cracked new lines in the wall’s plaster as he filled her with his full length. He could feel everything, every spasm of her muscles, even the breaths she took.
“Nicolo…” It was a whimpered cry as Adeline’s pleasure grew. Her nails were already branding his back as hers. The pain of it mingled with the unequaled ecstasy of being naked inside of her.
Nicolo slipped a hand under Adeline’s hips to tilt her just a little bit higher as he ground himself against her. Soon, her moans became unintelligible words. She grunted with each hard thrust of Nicolo’s hips as his entire body shook in an effort to hold his seed inside. She wasn’t ready yet. She just needed a little bit more of him. He would hold on. He would wait for her…
Adeline’s body stiffened beneath him and her eyes rolled back in her head.
“That’s it,” Nicolo said with his lips pressed to Adeline’s uplifted chin. Her neck was bowed so far back that nearly the top of her head rested on the bed. “Let me have it. Give it to me!” he demanded.
Adeline’s sheath spasmed and then clenched tight around him. Nicolo tried with all his might to hold on, but when Adeline’s hips bucked, all of his ability to wait left him.
With a heavy groan, he plunged inside of Adeline with all his might, his hips turning into a piston. He held on as every mu
scle in him tightened. A heavy fullness, a pressure that both felt good and uncomfortable followed, and then, with one last, hard thrust, Nicolo cried out his anguished pleasure as he surged into her depths.
It was sleep that claimed them next as they lay wrapped in a tangle of each others’ arms.
Dreams came to Nicolo as he slept. Dreams of a white picket fence, a smiling Adeline—her hand on her round, swollen belly, and laughing children running through the yard. The images were not the stuff of nightmares as Nicolo had thought they would be. Instead, at least within his dreams, they were his heart’s greatest desire and most fervent wish.
8
Adeline
With her eyes still closed and her head resting on Nicolo’s shoulder, Adeline felt him lightly stroke her arm with the tips of his fingers. Her body hummed in satisfaction from the things that Nicolo had done to her the night before. Now, the morning birds were singing, and her heart was light. Too light. She knew that Nicolo was not the committing kind. At almost thirty, a man as startling handsome, charming and rich as he was didn’t stay single on accident. He didn’t want to be tied down.
Without moving, Adeline opened her eyes and peered up at Nicolo, stifling a sigh at his unshaven beard and the strong line of his jaw. His beautiful mouth was tight, though, and his eyes were crinkled at the corner as his gaze roamed the room in the morning light. That’s when Adeline realized that his muscles were tense instead of relaxed. She’d slept like a baby in his arms, but upon waking, he was steeped in worry and stress.
Adeline shifted her own gaze to look around the room without moving her head so as not to alert Nicolo that she was awake, and she saw what it was that he was seeing. Even though the morning light was soft and forgiving, the cracks in the plaster and the damage sustained by abandonment and neglect stood out as if a spotlight were being shone upon them.
He’s thinking of backing out… Adeline’s heart sank. She’d been so close to saving the Romano del Mare. She wouldn’t give up; she couldn’t give up! Nicolo was still with her and she still had his attention. That meant that there was still a chance—albeit, a small one—that she could save the place that she loved most in the world.