The Temporary Mrs. Marchetti

h breast until her body was trembling with need.

He knelt down in front of her, kissing his way from her breasts, down her sternum and to her belly button. He lingered over the tiny cave, dipping the tip of his tongue into its whorled pool before going lower. Alice sucked in a sharp breath as his tongue skated over her lower abdomen, his warm breath a tantalising caress on her most intimate flesh. He separated her folds with his fingers and then brought his mouth to her, making every swollen nerve ending vibrate with delight. The spiralling waves of sensation pulsed through her body with earth-rocking force.

She tried to hold onto her consciousness but it was impossible to do anything but feel. Aftershocks of pleasure rang through her flesh, like a bell reverberating long after it had been struck.

Cristiano got up and eased her down on the bed, only stopping long enough to dispense with his trousers and access another condom. Alice reached for him as he came down over her on the mattress, her hands running over his muscled biceps and then the back of his neck, lifting her head to meet the descent of his mouth.

His kiss was long and deep, thrumming with a building urgency she could feel in every cell of her flesh where it was touching his. His erection probed her entrance and she opened to him, shifting her hips to accommodate him. It was like resuming a dance choreographed just for them. The fit of their bodies in that intimate embrace felt so right, so fluid and sensual—as unconscious and natural as breathing.

Alice stroked his back from his neck to his lower spine, concentrating in the dip above his taut buttocks. She knew all his erogenous zones and it thrilled her to feel his earthy response to her touch. She cupped his buttocks, holding him, rocking with him as he set a rhythm that was in perfect tune with her needs. The feel of him moving inside her body sent her senses into a frenzy of excitement.

No one filled her the way he did. No one knew her body as he did. No one else understood how much she craved this magic of motion, the friction that ruthlessly teased her sensitive flesh until she thought she would explode.

He turned her over so she was on top, his hands cupping her breasts, his dark gaze consuming her as a starving man did a meal he had long waited for in frustrated agony. Alice bent forward over him, her hands placed either side of his head, her hair falling forward to tickle his chest and shoulders. She moved her body in time with his, finding the extra friction that sent her over the edge. The savage pleasure pulsed through her in ever expanding waves like a boulder dropped in a pond. Every part of her body felt the rippling flow of release, until finally a warm soothing tide of lassitude was left in its wake.

His release was close behind hers, the spasms so powerful she could feel them echoing against the walls of her intimate flesh. She could see, too, the contortion of ecstasy played out on his face, and hear his sexy, breathless grunts that made her skin lift in a shower of goose bumps.

Cristiano rolled her back under him, and, balancing his weight on his elbows, he brushed the damp tendrils of hair back off her forehead. ‘You never fail to surprise me.’

Alice teased the curls at the back of his neck with her fingers. ‘In what way?’

He outlined her mouth with a lazy fingertip, the top lip and then the bottom one until her lips were tingling, his eyes sexily hooded. ‘You respond to me like no one else.’

Alice didn’t want to be reminded of all the other women he had slept with since her. Even if he hadn’t brought them back here, she knew he had slept with dozens of women elsewhere. All those hook-ups in his hotels. Night after night. Year after year. It was too painful to think about—especially while her body was still thrumming with the magic of his touch.

She knew it was inconsistent of her to be so petty about it since she’d been the one to end their relationship. But the thought of him making love to someone else with the same intensity was nothing short of torture. How many women? Had he looked at them the way he looked at her? Had he touched them the way he had touched her? Was he making comparisons? Finding her a disappointment now he’d revisited their intimacy?

She dropped her hands from his hair and began to push against his chest. ‘You’d better take care of that condom before we end up with more than a six-month marriage.’

A frown brought his brows together, his eyes studying hers for a beat or two. But then he rolled away and got off the bed and dealt with the condom. He picked up a bathrobe from the hook behind the door and slipped his arms into it and loosely tied the ties. ‘Are you on the pill?’

‘Of course.’

He bent to pick up his trousers from the floor and hung them over the back of a chair near the window. His expression had gone back to neutral but Alice couldn’t help feeling he was annoyed with her again. She could see it in the way he was restoring order to the room. It was his way of controlling his feelings. A battening down of the emotional hatches, so to speak. Funny, but she hadn’t realised he did that until now.

She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top of them, watching him fold his shirt he’d taken from her body such a short time ago. ‘You’re angry.’

He tossed the shirt to one side as if it personally offended him, and frowned at her. ‘What gives you that idea?’

Alice unlocked her arms from around her knees and got off the bed, taking the bed throw rug with her as a sarong. ‘I’m going to take a shower while you play housemaid.’

His hand captured her arm on the way past and he turned her to face him. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You’re cleaning up the room as if you want to forget what just happened.’ Alice unpeeled his fingers one by one, shooting him a look. ‘Of course I’m on the pill. Do you think I’d sleep with you if I wasn’t?’

His eyes held hers in a lock. ‘Even the pill isn’t foolproof. You could miss a dose or have an absorption problem.’

‘True, so that’s why we have to be careful.’

Even though every time I think about a baby my ovaries start jumping up and down in excitement.

His gaze continued to bore its way into hers. ‘So you’re as adamant as ever over not having kids?’

Alice hoped he couldn’t hear her eggs jostling and shoving each other and saying, Let me go first!

‘My business is my baby. It takes all my energy and commitment. I don’t have room in my life for a child. Anyway, what’s with the inquisition? You’re not thinking of making an heir and spare to inherit your millions, are you?’

The skin around his mouth tightened until it was more white than tan. ‘No.’