lips apart, he plundered the tender moist interior with his tongue in a
very sexual onslaught. He made her want more, he made her want so much
more that she trembled and gasped under the raw, forceful passion he
unleashed on her.
His strong hands moulded her to him and he swept her right off her feet
and up into his arms. Her shaken eyes opened just as he shouldered shut
a door behind him. Tail lamps burned on each side of an enormous antique
bed. The great carved headboard was topped by a fabulous canopy from
which elaborate drapes fell to lie in opulent folds on the floor.
'I've been hot as hell for you all day,' Rio muttered harshly above her
head.
'Honestly...?' Holly mumbled shyly into a sleek bare
brown shoulder, marvelling that she could have incited his desire,
feeling his entire body flaming for need of his but terrified that she
would be a disappointment. The option of saying no did not even occur to
her.
'I'm as hard as a rock, or haven't you noticed that yet?'
That earthy assurance drenched her cheeks with colour.
Rio sank down on the edge of the bed with her still locked in his hold.
One hand anchoring into a fistful of ringlets, he turned her hot face up
to meet his searching scrutiny. 'How does an unmarried mother contrive
to blush like a furnace every five minutes?'
'I don't know...' He hurt Holly with that question, for to her mind it
suggested that he believed she'd slept around before she'd fallen
pregnant, which was very far from being the truth. Yet he had only to
settle those brilliant, beautiful eyes on her and she was lost without
any hope of reclaim. This was the only way she would ever get even
temporarily close to a male like him, a little voice whispered inside
her head. This was not the start of a relationship. Blokes like Rio
Lombardi didn't have relationships with ordinary girls like her. In fact
she couldn't work out what miracle had occurred to make her seem
attractive to him.
Rio set her down onto her own feet so that she stood between his spread
thighs and reached up to the slender straps on her slight shoulders. 'I
want to look at you,' he told her, and before she could even guess his
intention he had tugged the straps down her arms and let the nightdress
fall to her ankles.
'Please...' Naked in front of a man for the first time in her life,
Holly trembled, the flush on her face now feeling as if it was
enveloping her entire body, and it was with the greatest difficulty that
she resisted the urge to try to cover herself. A coil of heat burned low
in her pelvis as his intent gaze scorched over pert breasts crowned by
prominent rosy
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peaks and the cluster of bronze curls at the apex of her slim thighs.
She felt as if she was burning alive with shame on a slave block.
Rio scooped her back into his arms as if she was the size and weight of
a toy. 'You're shaking...and I haven't even touched you yet.'
'Yes...' Her teeth were almost chattering together in the wake of an
enervating wave of apprehension, shame at her own weakness and the most
desperate physical longing.
He closed his hand into her tumbling bronze curls to tug her head back
and arch her spine, so that he had better access to her shivering body.
'Your skin is so fair against mine,' he husked, letting his hand splay
over her slender, taut ribcage, listening to her suck in a gasping
breath before he finally let his lean fingers rise to the jutting swell
of her breasts to play with her throbbing nipples. 'You have gorgeous
breasts...'
Her head was falling back now of its own volition and she was gasping
out loud, helplessly thrusting her aching flesh against his palms,
white-hot heat snaking up from the very heart of her. He lowered his
dark head and let his mouth engulf a distended bud and she cried out
loud, shattered at the strength of her own response but helpless to
control it.
His teeth teased at her tender flesh and then the tip of his tongue
lashed the sensitised tips, sending tremors like lightning sizzling
through her trembling length. She had not known that she could feel with
such intensity, and the whole time he was touching her she was in shock
at the twisting ache of sheer pleasure that jerked her every muscle tight.
Rio gathered her up and rose to bring her down across the bed. He leant
over her, rearranging her to his own satisfaction, his control absolute.
She connected with his burning golden eyes and felt herself melt like
honey on the boil. Lying there so exposed, she had never been more
conscious of her own body. Her nipples were swollen and glistening from
his attentions and the private place between her thighs was
embarrassingly moist. Her nails dug into the bedspread beneath her as
she struggled to get a grip on herself, dredge herself from the
unfamiliar world of what felt like an erotic fantasy, and as soon as she
did she felt wildly out of her depth and as nervous as she had a mere
second earlier been thrilled about what might be coming next.
'Could you put the lights out?' Holly whispered shakily.
'No...I want to watch you,' Rio asserted thickly, lean, strong face set
with primal male determination, his sexual hunger unconcealed.
'W-watch me?' Holly stammered in dismay, utterly overpowered by that
statement, that very concept.
'You don't hide anything. You can't,' Rio pronounced with almost grim
satisfaction. 'I like that. I really get off on the fact that just about
everything you feel you show me.'
'Do...I?' Holly dropped her eyes, gripped by intense mortification.
'Look at me...'
Holly shut her eyes tight.
'Holly...if you want me, look at me.'
For an instant she felt like a wind-up toy that he controlled. Her eyes
smarted and opened and he came down on the bed on one knee, all
domineering male but absolutely gorgeous, and she looked, of course she
looked, was literally nailed to the spot by the sheer power of those
scorching golden eyes holding hers.
With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, he let the tip of his tongue
tease the tremulous line of her reddened lips and
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then slide between and delve in an erotic flicker that made her heart
hammer and her pulses race.
Levering himself back, Rio stripped off his boxer shorts. Holly turned
scarlet. Eyes widening, mouth running dry, surprise and dismay making
her jerk. She had never seen a male in that state before, hadn't ever
wanted to, but there he was, his sex fully aroused, and there was a
great deal more of him than she had naively expected.
'What's wrong?' Rio noticed there was something wrong immediately.
'Nothing...' The denial emerged all shaky. She was already resigning
herself to the prospect of pain but consoling herself with the thought
that what she had once assumed would be the main event hardly lasted a
minute.
Rio came over her with all the nerve-racking cool and grace of a
predator. He toyed with her mouth again, let
a knowing hand curve to a
pouting breast and rolled the rigid pink peak straining for his
attention between his fingers. All the breath that apprehension had made
her hold in was driven from her on a long moaning sigh as her hips rose
off the bed in an instinctive movement old as time itself.
'I want to torture you with pleasure, bella mia...'
He slid a fingertip between her parted lips and she sucked on it
instinctively, the knot of hunger low in the pit of her stomach tightening.
'I want you begging,' Rio confided, shifting with fluid strength against
her thigh to let her feel the hard, potent force of his arousal.
'Mindless... it's going to be a very long night.'