But still she stayed, moaning softly when his mouth brushed the sensitive and tender spot below her ear. Light kisses traced along her jaw, down her neck to the pulse hammering at her throat. Desire pounded her, making her limbs heavy and the need to maintain that distance she’d been struggling to achieve melt away.
He spun her into his arms, and she gasped at the voracious hunger stamped on his face.
‘Romeo...’
His kiss stopped whatever feeble attempt she’d been scrambling for to save herself from the unstoppable freight train of sexual fury that hurtled towards her. But as he took control of her mouth, control of her body, Maisie knew she would welcome being taken over, being flattened by the sheer force of his hunger, as long as it satisfied hers.
And it would.
From searing memory, she knew Romeo was an unselfish lover. If anything, he achieved a deeper level of arousal by piling on her pleasure, taking her to the very brink of sexual release and burning with her as they both fell.
He would give her everything her body desperately craved. And more.
But what happened next? What of tomorrow?
The questions began like small, icy kernels at the back of her mind. Then loomed, snowballed, until she pushed at his chest, desperate to free herself of this illusion.
‘Stop!’
He raised his head immediately but didn’t release her. ‘You want me. Don’t bother denying it,’ he lashed out at her, his body vibrating with the tension that would surely explode at any moment.
His gaze dropped to her lips when she licked them, savouring the taste of him to pathetically add to her collection of memories.
‘Yes, I do. But I won’t let you use me to scratch an itch that only stems out of being thrown together more than anything else.’
He cursed under his breath. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means we have a thing for each other, I won’t deny that. But it’s meaningless. Just a brand of chemistry that will probably go away if we ignore it. I’m not going to experiment on something cheap and tawdry just because we both happen to have time on our hands. I have more self-worth than that.’
He dropped his hands and took a single step back, but his dark gold eyes stayed on her. Accusing. Condemning. ‘We took marriage vows. I think that elevates anything that happens between us well above cheap and tawdry.’
‘Please don’t do that. Don’t rewrite the script on what the end goal is here. We only got married because of Lucca. And we agreed there would be no physical manifestation of those vows. Don’t change the terms now.’
He laughed mockingly. ‘You talk to me about changing the terms when you can’t be in the same room as me or have a simple conversation without your pulse jumping all over the place?’
Heat suffused her face, along with anger. ‘So you thought you’d take pity on your sexually frustrated wife and do something about it?’ she threw at him. ‘How very stoic of you.’
‘If I recall, leaving the physical side out of the marriage was your decision. I merely agreed because you seemed strongly wedded to the idea, pun intended. There’s no shame in requesting a renegotiation.’
‘I’m not requesting anything! All this...’ she waved her hand at the sandy beach, the jaw-droppingly gorgeous moonlight and the discarded champagne bottle and glasses ‘...was your doing. Some sort of attempt at seduction, perhaps?’
He fisted his hair and then released it with a Latin flourish that made her belly quiver against her will.
‘Only because I thought it wise to tackle the situation before one of us exploded,’ he growled, his cheekbones hollowing out as he glared at her.
‘Well, consider it tackled. I’ll endeavour to keep my desires under better control from now on.’
The tension in his body was so palpable, she could almost reach out and touch it.
‘You do realise there are millions of married couples who actually have sex with each other? Why not us?’
A shiver went through her, but she still managed to lift her chin and face that challenge head-on. ‘Because I’m not built to have emotionless sex,’ she flamed at him, at the end of her tether. ‘And I’m damn sure you know that, Romeo. So stop. Please...just stop!’
Burnished gold eyes gleamed with such intensity, Maisie feared she might have poked the lion one too many times. For several seconds he just stared at her, hands on hips, his gaze probing to her very soul.
A heavy sigh depressed his chest, then he nodded solemnly. ‘I will stop if you want me to. But I think we both know it won’t be that easy, gattina. Come and find me when you change your mind.’