The Italian's Wife

lips apart, he plundered the tender moist interior with his tongue in a

very sexual onslaught. He made her want more, he made her want so much

more that she trembled and gasped under the raw, forceful passion he

unleashed on her.

His strong hands moulded her to him and he swept her right off her feet

and up into his arms. Her shaken eyes opened just as he shouldered shut

a door behind him. Tail lamps burned on each side of an enormous antique

bed. The great carved headboard was topped by a fabulous canopy from

which elaborate drapes fell to lie in opulent folds on the floor.

'I've been hot as hell for you all day,' Rio muttered harshly above her

head.

'Honestly...?' Holly mumbled shyly into a sleek bare

brown shoulder, marvelling that she could have incited his desire,

feeling his entire body flaming for need of his but terrified that she

would be a disappointment. The option of saying no did not even occur to

her.

'I'm as hard as a rock, or haven't you noticed that yet?'

That earthy assurance drenched her cheeks with colour.

Rio sank down on the edge of the bed with her still locked in his hold.

One hand anchoring into a fistful of ringlets, he turned her hot face up

to meet his searching scrutiny. 'How does an unmarried mother contrive

to blush like a furnace every five minutes?'

'I don't know...' He hurt Holly with that question, for to her mind it

suggested that he believed she'd slept around before she'd fallen

pregnant, which was very far from being the truth. Yet he had only to

settle those brilliant, beautiful eyes on her and she was lost without

any hope of reclaim. This was the only way she would ever get even

temporarily close to a male like him, a little voice whispered inside

her head. This was not the start of a relationship. Blokes like Rio

Lombardi didn't have relationships with ordinary girls like her. In fact

she couldn't work out what miracle had occurred to make her seem

attractive to him.

Rio set her down onto her own feet so that she stood between his spread

thighs and reached up to the slender straps on her slight shoulders. 'I

want to look at you,' he told her, and before she could even guess his

intention he had tugged the straps down her arms and let the nightdress

fall to her ankles.

'Please...' Naked in front of a man for the first time in her life,

Holly trembled, the flush on her face now feeling as if it was

enveloping her entire body, and it was with the greatest difficulty that

she resisted the urge to try to cover herself. A coil of heat burned low

in her pelvis as his intent gaze scorched over pert breasts crowned by

prominent rosy

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peaks and the cluster of bronze curls at the apex of her slim thighs.

She felt as if she was burning alive with shame on a slave block.

Rio scooped her back into his arms as if she was the size and weight of

a toy. 'You're shaking...and I haven't even touched you yet.'

'Yes...' Her teeth were almost chattering together in the wake of an

enervating wave of apprehension, shame at her own weakness and the most

desperate physical longing.

He closed his hand into her tumbling bronze curls to tug her head back

and arch her spine, so that he had better access to her shivering body.

'Your skin is so fair against mine,' he husked, letting his hand splay

over her slender, taut ribcage, listening to her suck in a gasping

breath before he finally let his lean fingers rise to the jutting swell

of her breasts to play with her throbbing nipples. 'You have gorgeous

breasts...'

Her head was falling back now of its own volition and she was gasping

out loud, helplessly thrusting her aching flesh against his palms,

white-hot heat snaking up from the very heart of her. He lowered his

dark head and let his mouth engulf a distended bud and she cried out

loud, shattered at the strength of her own response but helpless to

control it.

His teeth teased at her tender flesh and then the tip of his tongue

lashed the sensitised tips, sending tremors like lightning sizzling

through her trembling length. She had not known that she could feel with

such intensity, and the whole time he was touching her she was in shock

at the twisting ache of sheer pleasure that jerked her every muscle tight.

Rio gathered her up and rose to bring her down across the bed. He leant

over her, rearranging her to his own satisfaction, his control absolute.

She connected with his burning golden eyes and felt herself melt like

honey on the boil. Lying there so exposed, she had never been more

conscious of her own body. Her nipples were swollen and glistening from

his attentions and the private place between her thighs was

embarrassingly moist. Her nails dug into the bedspread beneath her as

she struggled to get a grip on herself, dredge herself from the

unfamiliar world of what felt like an erotic fantasy, and as soon as she

did she felt wildly out of her depth and as nervous as she had a mere

second earlier been thrilled about what might be coming next.

'Could you put the lights out?' Holly whispered shakily.

'No...I want to watch you,' Rio asserted thickly, lean, strong face set

with primal male determination, his sexual hunger unconcealed.

'W-watch me?' Holly stammered in dismay, utterly overpowered by that

statement, that very concept.

'You don't hide anything. You can't,' Rio pronounced with almost grim

satisfaction. 'I like that. I really get off on the fact that just about

everything you feel you show me.'

'Do...I?' Holly dropped her eyes, gripped by intense mortification.

'Look at me...'

Holly shut her eyes tight.

'Holly...if you want me, look at me.'

For an instant she felt like a wind-up toy that he controlled. Her eyes

smarted and opened and he came down on the bed on one knee, all

domineering male but absolutely gorgeous, and she looked, of course she

looked, was literally nailed to the spot by the sheer power of those

scorching golden eyes holding hers.

With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, he let the tip of his tongue

tease the tremulous line of her reddened lips and

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then slide between and delve in an erotic flicker that made her heart

hammer and her pulses race.

Levering himself back, Rio stripped off his boxer shorts. Holly turned

scarlet. Eyes widening, mouth running dry, surprise and dismay making

her jerk. She had never seen a male in that state before, hadn't ever

wanted to, but there he was, his sex fully aroused, and there was a

great deal more of him than she had naively expected.

'What's wrong?' Rio noticed there was something wrong immediately.

'Nothing...' The denial emerged all shaky. She was already resigning

herself to the prospect of pain but consoling herself with the thought

that what she had once assumed would be the main event hardly lasted a

minute.

Rio came over her with all the nerve-racking cool and grace of a

predator. He toyed with her mouth again, let

a knowing hand curve to a

pouting breast and rolled the rigid pink peak straining for his

attention between his fingers. All the breath that apprehension had made

her hold in was driven from her on a long moaning sigh as her hips rose

off the bed in an instinctive movement old as time itself.

'I want to torture you with pleasure, bella mia...'

He slid a fingertip between her parted lips and she sucked on it

instinctively, the knot of hunger low in the pit of her stomach tightening.

'I want you begging,' Rio confided, shifting with fluid strength against

her thigh to let her feel the hard, potent force of his arousal.

'Mindless... it's going to be a very long night.'