The Mediterranean Prince's Passion (The Royal House of Cacciatore 1)

His voice had dipped and softened, but his own eyes were bright—and hard. Her mouth felt dry and the tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten it. Say something, she thought. But words suddenly seemed as foreign as the place in which she found herself.

‘Are you thirsty, cara mia?’ he questioned, and his voice sounded husky and slumberous.

Italian, he had said, was the language of love. But this isn’t love, she tried to tell herself. It’s sex, pure and simple—for him.

‘Stop it,’ she whispered.

‘Stop what?’ he questioned, as he began to open the hamper. ‘What kind of a host would I be if I didn’t look after my guest?’

He had thought of bringing champagne, but champagne was too clichéd—and it held bitter memories. She had offered him champagne as an empty gesture once before, but she had been angry with him then. She didn’t look in the least bit angry now. She looked soft, and vulnerable, but ready and waiting—like a delicious cake just waiting to be cut. He took a silver flask from the hamper, filled a cup to the brim with iced lemon and handed it to her.

But Ella was shaking as she took it from him, her fingers trembling in a way over which she seemed to have no control. Some of the cool, delicious drink reached her mouth, but more of it splattered down the front of her dress, leaving damp splotches over the hectic rise and fall of her breasts like giant tears.

He took the cup from her with a hand so steady it could have performed brain surgery, and drank some himself. Then he put the cup down and leaned his face close to hers.

It swam in and out of focus—the dazzle of his eyes, the silken olive skin, the lush, sensual lines of his lips. She seemed to be able to breathe in his virile scent, and she was aware of the silence that surrounded them. The slow, heavy pounding of her heart was the only sound she could hear.

Yet he seemed so utterly in control—while inside she felt as fluttery as a captured butterfly. The balance is all wrong, she told herself, and yet deep down she knew that this was what she had wanted all the time.

‘Gabriella,’ he whispered. ‘You have made me wait, and I can wait no longer.’

His breathtaking honesty made her melt—or maybe it was the warmth of his breath on her skin that did that. Sometimes you could block out a need and a desire so much that w

hen you gave it a peep of life it erupted and became unstoppable.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said helplessly, as he ran the flat of his hand down over her hair.

‘Oh, yes, we should,’ he murmured. ‘It has been too long—much, much too long.’

‘Nico—’

He stilled her words with the touch of his mouth, brushing his lips against hers with a light, experimental touch, feeling her shiver in response and then make a little moan of protest when he moved away again. He bit back a small smile of triumph as he kissed her again—only this time his hands slid up her back and captured her, moving her body hard against his.

Ella was lost in the piercing sweetness of him as he kissed her over and over again, until she was helpless with wanting. Deep, hard kisses, that sent her senses reeling as she moved restlessly beneath him, forgetting everything. Forgetting the deceit and the differences and all that had gone before, just kissing him, and touching him, the man whose own desire was like touch-paper to her senses.

He felt as if he was drowning, sucked deep and then deeper still into a dark swirling vortex of desire as he pulled her to the ground, overwhelmed by the need to take her. Swiftly.

‘Nico!’ His hand was on her leg, rucking her skirt up.

‘Touch me,’ he urged, hot fingertips finding the cool skin of her thigh. She gasped against his neck. ‘Touch me.’

She moved her hand down, laying her palm over him to cup his hardness, and he moaned softly, almost helplessly. She felt a heady power because he was as much at her mercy as she was at his. She put her mouth close to his ear. ‘You’ve…you’ve got me so I can’t think straight…’

‘Then don’t think. Just enjoy it.’ Like I do. He shuddered as her fingertips touched him so intimately. ‘Oh, Dio, yes!’ The words were torn from his lips in a warm torrent. All restraint had vanished. He had never felt so out of control—and it terrified him nearly as much as he exulted in the feeling. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing that you were going to jump even though to do so would be madness.

Aware that this was something he had to do, if it wasn’t going to be over before it started, he pulled her hand away, taking it to his mouth and gently biting her fingers. ‘Lentamente. Take…it…slow…’ he urged.

But he wasn’t following his own advice, thought Ella, her head falling back against the rug as he began to slide her panties down over her knees. She felt the cool rush of air on her heated flesh and opened her mouth to protest that maybe they should move from here. That he was a prince…that this was all happening too quickly. But she opened her thighs, too…

And then his lips were on hers once more, and his fingers were delving into her honeyed warmth, and she was lost in the rhythm of a dance more ancient than either crown or privilege. And then she stopped thinking about that, and thought of Nico instead—this dazzling-eyed man who had haunted her thoughts and her dreams since the moment she had first laid eyes on him—touching her with such sweet accuracy so that she cried in ecstatic wonder against his skin.

Her mouth moved against the graze of his shadowed jaw, and she burrowed beneath his silk shirt to find skin even more silken where it stretched over hard muscle and sinew. She began to tug impatiently at his belt, and heard him give a low laugh of delight.

He stilled her hand as he lifted his head, and his ebony eyes were glazed with a desire that made them smoulder down at her like burning coal. He shook his head. ‘No, let me,’ he said roughly, his gaze never leaving her face as he unzipped his jeans.

He pushed her dress right up and moaned softly to discover that she was bra-less. He dipped his head to suck tightly on her nipple as he wriggled his jeans off, not wanting—not able—to wait to undress her completely. The little cries she was making were inciting him even more as he scrambled like a schoolboy to protect himself, and then there was no more waiting, and he plunged deep, deep inside her slick heat.

‘Nico!’ she gasped as he began to move, because last time it had not felt so full, or so tight, or so unutterably right. She threaded her fingers into his thick dark hair and pulled his head towards her, opening her mouth beneath his as if she couldn’t get enough of him.