Totally at peace with the discovery of its creation, and ecstatic about its captivity in Liliana’s kind hands, he swept her in his arms and silenced her with everything that was bursting in his newly forged heart.
She melted into his kiss, not reciprocating, just yielding to him, letting him do whatever he wanted to her. That communicated how much she wanted him to possess her far more than if she’d gone wild in response.
He tore his lips from hers. “If you don’t want me to take you right now, you’d better stop that.”
Her long, thick lashes rose languidly, revealing passion-filled eyes that almost made him drag her down on the ground and take her there and then. “I’m not doing anything.”
Pushing her back against the nearest wall, he pinned her there with his full weight, needing to imprint her with his body. “Exactly. Your surrender is sending me berserk.”
“Yes, please.”
“Liliana...” Her name erupted from his chest as he hitched her legs around his hips. His tongue plunged inside her open mouth, swallowing her gasps and eliciting more as he drove his hardness against her core through their clothes. “Will you come for me again?”
“Antonio...” She arched against the wall, making a fuller offer of herself.
Feeling her precious flesh burning in his hands, he quickened his cadence, the need to see her coming apart for him again riding him harder with each thrust.
“Do you know what it did to me when I felt you climaxing under me that night?” Her moans fractured, the flush staining her cheeks deepening before she buried her face in his chest. An incredulous laugh escaped him. “Are you shy?”
Suddenly she wriggled in his arms until she made him put her back on her feet, her eyes downcast. “I thought you were horrified... I thought that was why...”
A deeper wave of color surged over her face and neck. He cupped her jaw, made her look at him. “Why I stopped? I did that only because feeling you heave and tremble beneath me, realizing that I aroused you so much I drove you to orgasm even before taking you, snapped my control for the first time in my life.”
She regarded him with a mixture of self-consciousness and disbelief. “You didn’t seem out of control at all.”
“It must be my surgeon facade. But if I’d remained near you one more minute, I would have taken you. Without protection. And I knew you’d let me.”
Her eyes widened in realization and admission, proving he’d been right. She would have let him. She wanted him inside her without barriers, branding her with his pleasure. As he would, soon.
“I had to get away from you since I had no more control and your every touch and breath and glance had me at breaking point.”
A keen escaped her as she crushed herself to him, silently demanding he stop holding back.
Unable to even contemplate it anymore, he pressed her to the wall again. He was devouring her whimpers, undulating feverishly against her when a one-note buzz jolted through them both.
His phone. The line he kept for his brothers.
Dammit.
Setting her down but unable to stop caressing her, he gestured an apology as he pulled the phone out.
It was an integral part of their brotherhood’s pact, to answer a call from a brother at once. They’d depended on one another to survive, then to escape, then to conquer the world. A brother’s call trumped everything. They never called one another on those special lines unless it was something serious. As the group’s doctor, he’d gotten many of those calls.
Then came the last couple of years. Since then he’d gotten calls that were serious only in his brothers’ eyes. After all, they considered any twinge their wives or children suffered the end of the world.
But this was Ivan. He wasn’t married and would never be if all remained right with the world. Ivan had never called him on this line. Not once.
His heart thudding in mounting trepidation, he pushed the answer button. “Ivan?”
“Tonio, I’m landing in LA in half an hour. I need you and your best surgical team ready. Code Whiteout.”
Code Whiteout meant he needed Antonio’s secret surgical facility, where he had a special team on standby and where he treated injuries they needed kept below law enforcement’s radar.
He gritted his teeth at the agitation he felt cracking his best friend’s usual Siberian composure. “Tell me.”
“A...friend and his sister. They were gunned down. I have a team stabilizing them. I need you to put them back together.”
“I’ll meet you there.”