The Italian's Wife

Shock gripped her at those words of sensual threat. She was melting

again, she was enslaved by just the sound of his smoky drawl, the warm

male scent of him and the incredibly seductive feel of that big,

powerful, hair-roughened body in contact with hers. She lifted her hand

and touched one high, proud cheekbone, letting her fingers stroke down

the side of his face, loving the feel of him, loving the right to touch

him, totally hooked on her connection with his liquid dark golden eyes,

and enthralled.

He turned his head and entrapped one of her fingers between his lips,

and suddenly she was snatching away her hand and reaching up in

desperation to find that taunting mouth again for herself. She buried

her fingers deep in his black silky hair, a moan dredged from her as he

ravished her mouth with hard, hungry heat. She was aching for him,

aching where she had never ached before, wanting what she had never

wanted before with the most wanton craving.

'Rio, please...' she gasped, twisting under him.

'You don't want me enough yet,' he assured her thickly, letting his hand

splay against her quivering tummy muscles and then stilling to trace the

fine scar he had discovered. 'What's that?'

Holly tensed at his reference to that imperfection. 'I had to have a

Caesarean when Timmie was born.'

'It's OK. You're still beautiful.' Moving on, Rio let his fingertips

flirt with the damp curls below and laughed with earthy satisfaction as

she automatically parted her thighs.

Locating the tiny bud beneath her downy mound, he proceeded to slowly

drive her wild. Excitement just exploded in her and she writhed as the

throb of need centred at the very heart of her rose to unbearable

proportions. And she was mindless, beyond thought, speech, everything,

reduced to one gigantic, all too sensitive ache of screaming need. But

when she thrashed about, instinctively reaching for a fulfilment she had

never known before, he stilled and let her slide down again, withholding

what she most craved. And every time it happened she became just a

little bit more frantic, clinging to him, almost in tears of

frustration, utterly at a loss as to what was happening to her own body.

72

'Please...I want you now,' she begged strickenly.

Rio traced the swollen moist cleft between her legs, let an expert

finger penetrate her once, twice until she cried out, beyond all shame

and control. 'You're hot and wet and gloriously tight, amore.'

He settled his hands beneath her squirming hips and thrust a pillow

under her to raise her. Then there was a pause and she realised he was

donning protection. But before she could even process that awareness Rio

came over her like a Viking attack force, tipping her up to receive him

at an angle that startled her, and then he drove into her in one long,

deep thrust that put being startled right out of her mind. Indeed,

everything went out of her mind. One moment she was almost sobbing with

impatience, and the next she was plunged into the most wild physical

excitement she had ever experienced.

'Santo cielo...how I want you,' he groaned. 'You feel so good...'

The intensity of her own excitement drove her crazy. He slammed into her

with rhythmic force and she was on fire, gasping and sobbing for air,

overwhelmed by the sheer raw pleasure of his every powerful plunge into

her tender sheath. Blind and oblivious as she was to everything but the

ongoing thunder of her own heartbeat and the plundering glory of his

dominant possession, she was completely out of control." He sent her

hurtling to the peak of ecstasy and a climax so strong that she felt as

if she was shattering into a million pieces.

Letting her quivering weak body settle back down onto the support of the

bed, Rio absorbed the shattered look of pleasure she wore. She collided

dizzily with his searching gaze and her heart turned over at the

sizzling smile of very male satisfaction he gave her. 'I never knew...'

she mumbled in a total daze. 'I just never knew...I could feel like that-'

'Again...and again...and again, bella mia,' Rio husked, reaching down

and lifting her to flip her over onto her stomach before she had the

remotest idea of what he was doing. 'Let me show you.'

'Rio?' she cried in total bewilderment as he tugged her up onto her knees.

He slid into her again and she was so sensitised and so shaken by both

sensation and shock at the position he had put her in, she let out a

startled yelp.

'Am I hurting you?'

'No...' She shut her eyes in shame. I'm not doing this, I'm not. And she

could not believe the pleasure that surged through her again, was

seduced afresh within seconds, beyond caring about anything. She was a

creature enslaved by sensation, totally wanton in her responses.

Explosive excitement had her in a stranglehold and he controlled her, he

controlled her so completely she was incapable of thought or reaction.

And the second time that glorious joy racked her she didn't recognise

the sobs and moans he dragged from her. The experience was all the more

heightened by the feel of him shuddering over her and the groan of

savage release he vented as he finally reached his own climax.

In the aftermath, Holly just collapsed, every piece of energy expended.

Rio turned her over, flipped back the covers and brought her down on a

cool linen sheet. Sprawling down beside her, he curved her back into his

arms. He was hot and damp and the scent of him was so familiar now she

pressed her lips against a smooth brown shoulder, glorying in that

physical closeness. The silence didn't bother her. What she had just

shared with him had been a revelation to her, and the languorous

relaxation of her own satiation

74

was so new to her she could not yet shake off the effects.

'You're not very experienced, are you?' Rio asked above her head, and

for the first time she registered the tension in his lean, muscular length.

'No,' she whispered, suddenly wondering with a deep inner chill of fear

if he had found her less than adequate.

Rio rolled her back against the pillows so that she could no longer

evade his scrutiny. 'So when did you last indulge?'

Her wide, vulnerable eyes settled on his lean, dark features and the

probing gold of his intent gaze and her eyes slewed from his in dismay.

'It's been a long time

-'

'How...long?'

Feeling foolish, Holly worried at her lower lip before muttering with

cast-down eyes, 'Not since the night I fell pregnant.'

'Not since the night you...?' Long fingers curved round her delicate

jawbone and tugged her back beneath his searching appraisal.

'It was my first time,' Holly told him with mortified defensiveness.

'You got pregnant the first time you had sex?' Rio ground out in visible

shock.

'It does happen, you know,' she mumbled, unable to work out quite what

interest he could have in such a subject and embarrassed, but at the

same time needing him to know that she was not promiscuous.

With a seemingly idle hand Rio brushed a stray corkscrew curl back from

her brow and she noticed that there was a slight tremor in his fingers.

His stunning dark golden eyes were trained to her with intensity, his

blue-shadowed jawline clenched hard. 'Are you taking any current

precautions against pregnancy?'

In surprise Holly shook her head.

'I didn't think you would be, cara.' His keen gaze screened by his

luxuriant dark lashes, Rio released his breath in a long-drawn-out sigh.

'You were almost a virgin. No wonder my every move seemed to shock you

so much. You hadn't a bloody clue-'

'No, I-'

'Still don't have a clue,' Rio contradicted with a raw edge to his deep,