‘You said you’d never wanted anyone as much as me…’ she reminded him shakily. ‘Was that a lie?’
‘I want you to feel the same passion but you’re too impatient,’ Andreo growled, sliding a hand beneath her restive legs to tug up her knees and remove her briefs. ‘We have all night, bella mia.’
Her hips shifted against the sheet as she sought helplessly to quell the ache at the very centre of her. She was insanely aware of every sensitised inch of her throbbing body: the straining buds of her breasts still wet from his attentions, the swollen dampness between her thighs. She pushed up against his big, powerful frame, adoring the unyielding contours of bone and rippling muscle below his bronzed skin, wildly conscious of the rock-hard rigidity of his bold erection.
Golden eyes glittering, Andreo lifted away from her as though she had burned him, aggressive jawline set at an angle. ‘I intend this to be special.’
It was as if a fever had hold of her and her temperature were out of control. She wanted so desperately to touch him and all that had been holding her back was fear of doing something wrong. She headed back into the heat and strength of him and let her mouth trail from a muscular shoulder down over his hair-roughened chest. There she paused to snatch in an erratic breath and lick and kiss her path across his taut ribcage where…he closed his hand into her hair and dragged her back up to him before she could really start experimenting.
‘Independent woman,’ he whispered in a tone of raw discovery.
He was a control freak but he was gorgeous, she thought dizzily. She studied the black hair she had disarranged, the riveting eyes, high, proud cheekbones, arrogant nose and classic and willful masculine mouth and inside she turned boneless. ‘So I’ll lie back and think of…?’
‘Me…you think about me,’ Andreo instructed with complete seriousness and he kissed her and refused to consider why he had said something so naff.
He reacquainted himself with her slender, seductive curves. In the process, she gasped air in shallow bursts and he forced her to stop thinking and just feel and what she felt was extraordinary in its very intensity. His fingers flirted with the damp curls at the junction of her slim, restive thighs and she moaned out loud, her hips rising off the mattress in a yearning movement as old as time.
‘Oh, please…!’ she gasped.
At last, he touched her where she most needed to be touched, exploring the moist, silken heat at the heart of her where the ache was a torment. Heat and wanton pleasure engulfed her as he utilised a lean finger to probe her tight depths, opening her for his skilled caresses until she felt like honey heated to boiling point and on the brink of spontaneous combustion. It was the sweetest torture she had ever withstood because just when she believed the heights of pleasure could not climb any higher, he would prove her wrong.
‘I’m mad for you,’ Andreo groaned, rising over her and tipping her back from him in one smooth motion.
She felt him, hard and smooth and demanding, enter her. The sharp, rending pain took her aback and her blue eyes flew wide in dismay.
Andreo stilled as a whimper of protest was dredged from her. ‘Shall I stop?’
‘No…’ There was too much of him and she had known that and she shut her eyes tight, waiting until the pain of his intrusion had lessened yet savouring the wonderfully erotic feel of him inside her.
‘I don’t think I’m supposed to be enjoying myself this much when you’re not,’ he muttered in ragged masculine apology.
And she almost laughed and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going to fall in love with him if she hadn’t already. ‘It’s OK…’ she whispered shakily.
‘Amore…’ Andreo pressed his lips to her damp brow. ‘You’re very brave—’
‘Greedy for you,’ she confided guiltily, rising up to him to invite a deeper invasion, controlled by her own desperate need for fulfillment.
He surged into her again and she arched and gasped in shock at the rich, sensual tide of sensation. He prolonged her pleasure with every art he had ever learned. Hot and hungry for him, she succumbed to his pagan rhythm with helpless abandon. The burn low in her pelvis had become a tight knot of delirious excitement, dragging her higher and higher until her heart was thundering in her ears. She hit a pinnacle and drowning pleasure rocked her with wave after wave of ecstasy. As he drove himself into a shuddering release, she held him tight, dazed and oddly proud and incredibly happy. She had had a wonderful time trashing her sensible former self and she had not a single regret.
She dozed off to sleep without realising it. Sliding back into bed, Andreo shook her awake again. ‘It’s only midnight,’ he told her in teasing reproof. ‘How can you be so tired this early?’
Snuggling back into him, Pippa went pink and avoided his too-shrewd gaze. She knew that it had to be the amount of alcohol she had consumed that was making her brain feel as if it were filled with cotton wool and her eyelids behave as though they had lead weights attached to them. ‘Sorry…’
Andreo arranged her back against the pillow and smoothed her tumbled hair back from her brows. ‘What we just shared was fantastic for me but I have a confession to make…’
Her lashes swept up on his serious expression and her heart sank. ‘You’re married?’
‘Dio mio…’
His angry look of reproof soothed her fears so she moved to what was the next-worst scenar
io in her mind. ‘Cheating on your girlfriend?’
‘I don’t cheat,’ Andreo declared loftily, choosing to overlook the reality that a purist might deem him still, in the strictest sense, involved with Lili because he flatly refused to dump anyone by phone.
‘Then what…?’
He grimaced. ‘The condom broke. Too much enthusiasm on my part…I very much doubt that there will be any repercussions but I thought I ought to warn you.’