“I want to touch you,” she pleaded.
He drew back and she rolled into his arms, making him shake with relief and desire as her breasts, soft and supple, were crushed against his chest. Her nipples were hard points, her thigh downy as she stroked it against his hip. Her scent was all over him, clouding like an aphrodisiac, leaving him drugged and high.
“I love touching you like this,” she confessed, hands roaming across the naked planes of his chest and hips, his thighs and buttocks and then—her confidence in bed had come a long way—to cup between his thighs. She purred as she weighed and shaped him, making him grit his teeth to hold on to his control.
As she guided him to the place he most wanted to be, he almost mourned the foreplay, wanting more time to claim every glorious cell of her body, but he was taken over by the animal that needed its mate. He settled atop h
er and sank into her with a ragged groan. The world opened before him. Pia was his world. All of her was his.
And this, the slow pump of his hips, stoking more pleasure than any man had a right to, was everything he ever needed.
* * *
As Pia’s heart rate slowed, she reminded herself that climax released a host of chemicals in the brain. This sense of security and eye-dampening closeness was as biologically normal as her sensitive nipples and weight gain.
Love also caused those same symptoms. Or so she’d heard.
Was that what this was? This emotional dependence and sensation that she would split in half from the joy wanting to burst from within her, just because his weight pinned her and his skin was still damp with perspiration?
She was beginning to fear it was, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Tell him? What if he didn’t care? What if he didn’t return her feelings?
Her haze of satisfaction and rumination was broken by his ringtone.
“I told you we had to get out of here before that happened.” His sexy rasp tickled her ear.
“Mmm... My fault for falling under you.”
His smile flashed as his heavy arm left off caressing her shoulder and the blanketing warmth of him rolled away.
Definitely love, she thought, as that brief smile struck like sunshine in her heart.
He was maintaining a light work schedule, all but a few key ringtones set to ignore.
“Killian,” he said as he frowned at the screen. “I have to take it.”
Roman Killian was the husband of their engagement photographer, Melodie, but he also owned and ran the global company that provided all of Angelo’s security needs.
Pia heard Killian’s voice as clearly as Angelo’s.
“Arson,” Killian stated bluntly. “Brazen and designed for maximum damage. All the staff had gone to their own homes so there are no injuries. They have the suspect. Darius Gomez. He claims to be your brother.”
Pia sat up with alarm, fingers searching for the edge of a sheet as she scanned to the glass doors leading onto the private beach of their luxury villa.
“Keep it as quiet as you can, but prosecute to the full extent of the law,” Angelo ordered. “Not an ounce of leniency. Add whatever security my staff requires to feel safe while they clean up.”
Any lingering warmth from their lovemaking was gone. His tone was hard and sharp as jagged glass, shearing off her buzz of gratification.
“Now we find out,” he said gruffly as he ended the call and tossed his phone onto the mattress between them as though throwing down a gauntlet.
“Find out what?”
“How you’ll react. I’ll release my side ahead of any lies they try to concoct.” Her lover was gone and here was the brute who gave no quarter to those who had wronged him. Who stared unwaveringly into her eyes and dared her to try to talk him out of the action he intended to take.
Her heart stuttered in her chest and she tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. She wanted to stop him to spare him whatever suffering was coming, but stopping him was futile, she could tell. The only other thing she could do was wall up her own emotions to allow room for his.
She nodded jerkily. “I’ll call Rico. He needs to know first.”
* * *