Summer Sins

Alicia’s hand came out of nowhere and cracked across Dante’s cheek. Too shocked to take in what she’d just done, she said very shakily, ‘Don’t you ever mention my sister like that again. She’s had enough of your unfair censure and it’s entirely your fault that she ended up in hospital in the first place.’

Heat and anger and passion simmered between them like a visible force. With an inarticulate sound and Alicia’s livid hand print across one cheek, he hauled her into his arms and drove his mouth down on to hers with punishing force. Bending her back, literally to his will.

With some tiny piece of sanity left to her, Alicia broke her mouth away from his and tried to arch away. ‘Dante no—’ Not like this. The shock was beginning to hit her at what she’d just done—the fact that she’d hit him. She’d never struck another living soul in her life.

‘Dante, yes.’

Ruthless and determined to get payback, to punish her, he pulled Alicia in to him even tighter and fused his mouth to hers. At the moment their lips touched again the anger that Alicia had been clinging on to fell away like a flimsy wall. Her desire which had been simmering, burst out of control and again that treacherous, all consuming need flooded every part of her.

Dante pulled back after a long moment, his hands encircled Alicia’s back, holding her captive. Her cheeks were pink, beads of sweat on her brow, a tendril of hair clung to her cheek in a kiss curl. And he’d never wanted anyone so badly than he wanted her right at that moment. He quite literally ached with the need to punish and possess. To take her so thoroughly that he would wipe any other man from her consciousness.

Alicia opened her eyes with effort. She had to stop this, had to make him see that this wasn’t what he wanted. Not like this. She wanted to apologise for hitting him and, more than that, she realized that she wanted to explain … tell him the truth about what had really happened with Raul Carro.

But in a fast, efficient movement Dante had lifted her up into his arms and was striding to the bed. Alicia was still disorientated from the kiss, held against his chest as if she weighed no more than a bag of sugar.

‘Wait,’ she said weakly. ‘Dante, we can’t, really. I don’t want this. Not like this.’

He stopped in his tracks and looked down into her eyes. Her pupils were so enlarged that her eyes looked black, mirroring his own. She felt it too.

‘Don’t lie,’ he said tightly.

‘I’m not lying …’

‘You are. You want this so badly that, even now, even though you hate me, you want me. I know, cara, because it’s the same for me.’

A cold feeling settled into her heart even as her betraying body’s temperature seemed to soar under that look. He put her down on her feet and undid the tightly tied belt on her robe. Alicia stood still, her head downbent as he shucked it off her shoulders and down her arms. A sense of inevitability washed through her. What could she do? He was right, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t want this too. This was the only pure communication they had, without words, their bodies didn’t lie to each other. She hungered for him again so intensely that it washed away all other concerns.

He tipped up her chin with a finger and she forced herself to look blank, not to let him see the pain.

‘Take off your clothes.’ His demand made an erotic shiver skate down her spine. She felt sickened and angry with herself for even thinking of complying. But, with a shameful weakness that proved to be stronger than her will, her hands went to her buttons. A rogue part of her wanted to drive him to the edge of his control now. Without taking her eyes off his, she undid them one by one. The top slipped to the floor with the robe and then she pushed the trousers down and stepped out of them.

Dante looked down her body. Took in her small, high, pointed breasts, the tips puckering under his look. He’d had to ask her to undress because he wasn’t sure that his hands wouldn’t have shaken with everything that had just happened, with the desire that pumped through him, washing away all sanity and coherence, leaving only a need to take … and possess.

He took her hands and brought them to his shirt, instructing her with his eyes to undress him. Alicia’s breath had long ago become laboured. Her fingers were clumsy on the buttons, the heat of his skin making her want to sag against him. Until finally

somehow his shirt was free. His trousers were next. She pushed them down, taking his briefs with them, freeing that turgid, pulsing centre of his masculinity and desire. Her mouth went dry as she looked at him, wondering how she’d taken him before.

‘Touch me.’

She looked up, feeling dazed and then slowly put out a hand and encircled the hard shaft. It felt hot and silky with a steel core. Dante’s jaw clenched, his eyes looked bright, glittering, the muscles in his neck corded and his chest swelled as she moved her hand up and down. Her naive skill made stars dance in front of his eyes and made him immediately correct what he’d thought—there was no naive about it, she was a witch.

He had to stop her, he’d had no idea her touch alone could send him so close to the edge. So he stopped her hand, for one brief moment his hand lay over hers and their eyes met. It was a moment so loaded with sexual tension that he nearly did explode. With supreme control called from somewhere, Dante moved their hands away and pressed her down on the bed.

Alicia was gone. She was in another place and, like the first time they’d made love, she welcomed it. As Dante stroked his hands down her body over silky skin, he lowered his mouth and suckled at her breasts, rousing the peaks to pink tips that looked angry they were so tightly aroused. She could feel the waves building; she was going to come even though he hadn’t even entered her yet!

And then she felt him move down and he spread her legs with his big hands; they came under her buttocks, gripping tight and holding her open to his gaze and … mouth. She wanted to tell him to stop, wanted to say that this was too intimate, but her voice wouldn’t work. Her head sagged back against the mattress as his lips, mouth and tongue sought and found and paid homage to her secret sensitive core. Her immediate instinct was to close her legs but Dante ruthlessly held them apart. She was laid open, bare … like some wanton. And she couldn’t help herself as the tension spiralled out of control and her hips bucked unashamedly towards him as he held her and teased out every last ounce of pleasure from her quivering form.

Like the last time, just when she thought she couldn’t possibly take any more, he moved up her body and lifted her on to the bed more fully. She looked up at him with big eyes. A fine sheen of sweat covered her body and Dante smoothed his hand over the curve of one breast.

‘I can’t … again, Dante, it’s too much …’ Please!

She couldn’t deny it any more—the reason why she succumbed so readily. Her experience with Raul Carro hadn’t come close to what this man made her feel with just a look, and that scared her witless. She was literally a naked quivering mass of vulnerability and this man was going to devastate her beyond anything she’d endured before.

‘No, cara.’ He bent his head to hers, taking her mouth, one hand possessively splayed across her breast, fingers trapping a nipple. He pulled back for a moment. ‘We haven’t even begun; when I leave this morning, you’re never, ever going to forget this.’

Or me …

And, with ruthless and remorseless precision, he was true to his word; he entered her and took her soul soaring high above to a place she’d never been before—again and again. First he was slow and languorous, the second time was urgent, passion consuming them as he took her with an intensity that left her boneless. And the third time, in the shower, she wrapped her legs around his waist and cried out as he clenched his buttocks, driving up into her hard. She had to cling on to him as weak as a kitten afterwards, too afraid to stand because she knew she’d fall down.