“You ready for the next step or do you want to stop here?”
She ached inside. She ached for both of them. Her heart raced, but that was to be expected. All the while they’d sat through the meeting, Taviano’s hand had been in her hair or at the back of her neck. Sometimes he had touched her thigh. Or her arm. She’d been so acutely aware of him. Mostly, she’d kept thinking about his declaration, that he was going to devour her. Eat her like candy. She wanted that. She wanted to experience what other women had. And she wanted to experience it with him. Just the thought had her aching so much between her thighs that she shook her head without thinking.
She took a deep breath and leapt off the cliff. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Lie back and take off your skirt and then your panties. Just lie in the sun for a few minutes and feel it on your skin. Let me look at you.”
Her heart nearly beat out of her chest. Could she do that? Could she do that for both of them? Was she that brave? She didn’t have to take off her skirt. Taviano wasn’t forcing her. He wasn’t commanding her. There was no demand in his voice. She asked. He answered. She could pretend she was sunbathing in the nude. She’d done it before. More than once she’d done it. She’d been completely alone in Lucia’s fenced backyard and she’d taken her clothes off in order to prove to herself she was that brave and to check if the pull of the shadows was greater without her clothes on, although she’d been so scared she’d only managed to make herself put her foot into the shadows.
Tentatively, while still on her knees, she shimmied the skirt down her hips, taking her underwear with it. When she brought them over her thighs, she turned sideways so she could slip them over her knees and down her legs to remove them. She was totally nude but not lying down. If she did, she would have to choose whether to lie down so her body faced him or not.
It was terrifying. Yet thrilling. Sexy as all hell because it was Taviano. He didn’t say a single word. It was her choice. She hated and loved that it was her choice—that he gave her that. If he didn’t, she couldn’t possibly have gone through with it, but because he sat very still, a distance away from her, utterly silent with the exception of his steady breathing, she was able to match her breathing to his and slowly stretch her body across that amazing duvet.
The moment her skin slid over the soft fibers, they stroked her like fingers, adding to the already sensual sensation every cell in her body was on fire with. She tried not to squirm or rub herself all over the duvet. It was difficult not to move, and she found herself, as she bathed in the light, feeling as though a spotlight shone directly on her. She couldn’t help moving subtly, letting the duvet send little sparks of electricity dancing through her bloodstream.
“Can you tell me what you’re feeling right now?”
His voice floated to her on those beams of sunshine. She could see her breasts rising and falling, and she found the sight sexy, when she’d never thought of herself that way. She was connected with Taviano, and maybe some of his thoughts had crept into her mind, but for whatever reason, that added to the need rising in her like a tidal wave.
“So sexy. I want you to see me as someone beautiful and sexy. Someone desirable.”
The chair creaked as he rose and walked slowly toward her. Ordinarily, it was impossible to hear a Ferraro walking, but he came across the floor deliberately making sounds. She turned her head to look at him, to watch him come to her.
Taviano was barefoot, his shirt off, wearing only his trousers. His upper body was all muscle and he looked powerful. So much more so than any man she’d ever been around. When he moved, muscles rippled, from his thick chest all the way to the vee disappearing into the pinstriped material of his slacks.
He didn’t stop, he just kept walking until he was at the bottom of the bed and then he put a knee on it and was right there, his mouth on hers, kissing her until she couldn’t think, couldn’t be afraid of anything, because he transported her back into that wonder world of pure sensuality.
He lifted his head and smiled at her, his blue eyes staring directly into hers. “I love you beyond all reason, Nicoletta Ferraro. You are my sanity.”
He brushed kisses over her chin and then his palm fit around her throat like a collar. So gentle. Loose. Her heart beat into his hand. She knew they both felt it. The hand slid down the valley between her breasts to her belly, where it stopped, fingers splayed wide.