‘Doesn’t it inhibit you?’
‘You must be joking, cara mia.’ Lifting a seemingly casual hand, Luciano let his fingertips trace the fine line of her throat and watched her automatically tip her head back to invite his touch.
With the same measured cool, he tugged free the first button on her dress and watched her snatch in a sudden driven breath. ‘I want to look at you here before the sunlight goes…the way I often used to imagine you…’
‘Imagine me…?’ Kerry could barely get breath into her constricted lungs.
‘While I was in prison I pictured you in many ways in many places. You’re not ready for the details, which makes it more exciting for me because you have no idea what I plan to do at any given moment,’ Luciano pointed out with a roughened edge to his dark, rich drawl.
‘F-fantasies?’ Only the one word escaped Kerry, for as soon as the stammer emerged she clamped her lips closed.
‘What do you think?’ The second button came loose, the parted edges springing back to expose the upper slopes of her breasts and the pronounced rise and fall of those pouting swells as her breathing grew more quick and shallow.
‘Shouldn’t we g-go upstairs?’ she heard herself gasp.
‘This is my fantasy but I can promise you that you are about to receive more pleasure than you have ever dreamed of…trust me, bella mia.’
Kerry was trembling. As the fourth button gave, she saw his molten golden gaze drop to the flimsy white bra which only accentuated the prominent pink buds below the lace. Her own sense of anticipation was so intense she was ashamed and she shut her eyes tight, for she was a total slave to the treacherous, maddening ache between her thighs that only he could satisfy. The dress fell away from her warm, damp skin and she hovered in an agony of expectation, the rose falling forgotten from her flexing fingers.
‘You can’t wait…I like that,’ Luciano savoured. ‘But I will make you wait.’
Her dazed blue eyes opened on him, her pupils darkened, dilated.
While Luciano surveyed her with possessive satisfaction, the surge of his own desire gripped him with almost painful intensity. A delicate beauty in silk lingerie, finally his to enjoy, and nothing had ever felt so good or given him such a raw sexual buzz. One provocative glimpse of her slender, quivering body adorned only in narrow bands of lace prevented him from lingering on the uneasy acknowledgement that it was taking him longer to work her out of his system than he had foreseen. He reminded himself that he was in Tuscany to unwind and he was taking time out from the real world only to lose himself in pure erotic pleasure. And never had the pursuit of pleasure exercised greater appeal than it did at that moment.
‘I can’t believe I’m standing here like this…’ Kerry was already shocked by the discovery that it was a turn-on to be half-naked in front of him while he remained fully dressed in his business suit.
‘Not for long…’ Luciano pushed the cups of her bra out of his path and teased her straining nipples with expert fingers until she moaned out loud. He could feel the tiny little ripples of desire pulsing through her taut frame. Suddenly he didn’t want the fantasy, the stupid, impractical fantasy of having her every which way on the stairs, he wanted to carry her upstairs and make love to her in a bed where he could torture her at length in comfort. In defiance of that weakness, he clamped her to him and let his tongue penetrate between her eagerly parted lips with a hungry need to imprint himself on her that was already threatening to rise out of his control.
Kerry was dizzy with longing, weak with desire. She had surrendered all self-will before he even got her dress off. When he let his fingertips skim a provocative sweep of the thin, taut expanse of lace between her trembling thighs, she jerked and cried out, for the slick, wet heat of her feminine core was unbearably sensitive to his merest touch. Her breath sobbing in her throat, she clutched at him with desperate hands to stay upright and buried her burning face in his shoulder.
‘Please…’
He decided that he would do the staircase scenario some other time, scooped her off her feet and carried her on up to the gilded double doors that provided an entrance to the master bedroom off the landing.
‘You make me weak,’ Kerry confided unsteadily.
Luciano tensed at that word that had always had the power to fill him with rare unease. He was always waiting for weakness of some kind to make a sneak attack on him and he knew he would waste no time in rooting it out like the sickness it was. But wanting to spend at least six non-stop weeks in bed with Kerry was just rampant lust, perfectly normal for a sex-starved male, not a sign that he was getting unhealthily hooked on her again. And by the time he left Tuscany in—what?—maybe three, four months, he would be fully cured of the belief that she had any appeal whatsoever. Reassured by that conviction, he stood over her, pitched off his jacket and pulled off his shirt to expose his impressive, hair-roughened pectorals and sleek, smooth brown stomach.
‘Weak…weak…weak,’ Kerry mumbled in helpless addition.
‘Stop saying that,’ Luciano commanded in a raw undertone.
When he chose that same moment to discard his boxer shorts, she stretched back against the pillows and just burned for him. He came down beside her, all thrusting masculine heat and driving energy, but he lay kissing her with loads of arousing restraint. He closed her hand round his bold, smooth shaft and groaned out loud and shuddered when she explored him with an unashamed hunger that she found insanely exciting. But then she found everything that he did next and every move that he made even in response to her insanely exciting.
‘I can’t wait,’ Luciano confessed raggedly.
She was way beyond talking, on an edge so high that when he finally plunged into her the flood of glorious pleasure shockwaving through her took her by storm. She hit a peak very fast, drowned for long, timeless moments of bliss in her own helpless release. But before she could even begin to recover, he flipped her limp length over, tugged her up on her knees and slowly, smoothly entered her again without even losing his pagan rhythm. She could not believe what she was allowing him to do but her own excitement triumphed over her. ‘We shouldn’t—’
‘I have to,’ Luciano growled and sooner rather than later he sent her over the edge of ecstasy all over again and any urge to reason with him evaporated.
When the world had settled again, Kerry lay in his arms and let her eyes drift blissfully shut while he tried to keep her awake. ‘It’s supposed to be guys who fall asleep—’
‘Have a free ego trip. You’re way too lively for me,’ Kerry mumbled.
‘I could keep going all night. This is all I’ve thought about since that first night with you, cara mia.’
She uttered a sleepy laugh. ‘Surely not—’