The first touch of his lips sliding against hers had the impact of a knockout drug on her willpower.
She’d been starved for the taste of him for days and flicked her tongue out to sample his lips without thought. He groaned and she found herself in his arms, their lips and bodies locked passionately together. It was like that time at his apartment in Athens, but better. She knew what to expect now, what pleasure awaited her in his arms.
She wound her arms around his neck and pulled herself up his body, standing on her very tiptoes, pressing herself as close to him as possible.
He swung her up into his arms, never breaking the kiss. She opened her mouth, inviting him inside and he took the invitation with the power of an invading army. He decimated her every defense and left her helpless against his desire and her own.
He was moving. She didn’t care where he was taking her. She just wanted him to keep doing what he was doing, showing her he wanted her more than other women. Because he certainly hadn’t responded to Zia this way when she’d tricked him into that kiss by the poolside.
Shadows played across Hope’s closed eyelids as the sounds of the party faded completely from her hearing. Then there was the sound of a door closing behind them. But still he didn’t lift his mouth from hers and she didn’t open her eyes. Awash with sensation, her sensory receptors were inundated with pleasure.
The solid feel of a bed beneath her told her he had brought her into a guest room. The feel of his more than solid body on top of hers told her he intended to stay. Her legs instinctively parted, making room for him against her most sensitive flesh. Wearing only their swimsuits, masculine hair covered limbs slid against feminine softness. The sensitive flesh of her inner thighs thrilled to the press of hard, sculpted muscles.
The hands she’d so desperately wanted to touch her were all over her skin, leaving a trail of hot desire in their wake.
She moaned and arched up toward him, pressing her womanhood against his hardness. She trembled. Intimate in a way she could not have imagined, though he was not inside her, she felt possessed. Swollen and hotly lubricated tissues ached to be appeased with a more direct caress.
His mouth broke from hers to trail hot, openmouthed kisses down her neck and across the skin exposed above the line of her tankini top. “You are no shrimp, cara. You are perfect.” He pressed his body into hers, sending further sensation sweeping through the core of her. “We are perfect together.”
She was breathing too hard to reply, her body on fire for more of his touch, her mind an inferno of erotic thoughts.
“Admit it, Hope. I do not overwhelm you. I excite you.”
Did he need the words? Wasn’t her body’s response enough for him to see that she’d been spouting off earlier?
He rocked into her in an exciting imitation of the mating act.
She arched her pelvis, every sliding contact between his hardness and her sensitized nerve endings sending jolt after jolt of pleasure zinging through her.
He lifted away from her, withdrawing his body from the direct contact she craved.
She gasped, trying to reconnect with his body, but strong hands held her to the bed. “You have this with no other man. Your body wants me. Say it.”
“Yes,” she practically screamed. “You’re perfect for me.”
It wasn’t such an admission. He’d already said she was the perfect size for him, but still, she felt she’d given something away. Admitted to a need that made her vulnerable to him.
Her words had a profound impact on his self-control and without really knowing how it happened, she lost her bikini. He disposed of his black shorts. Then it really was his naked flesh moving against hers.
She cried out with the joy of it and then screamed when his mouth fit itself over one turgid nipple. He suckled and she flew apart, her body straining for a release it had never known.
“Please, Luciano. I can’t stand this.” She felt like she was going to die, so rapid was her heartbeat, so shallow her breathing. Her muscles locked in painful rigidity as she strained toward him and the pleasure his touches promised.
His hand fondled her intimately, as he had that night in Athens. “You belong to me, cara.”
She stared up at him through vision hazed by passion. “Yes. But it goes both ways,” she managed to pant, needing him to know this was not a one-way street.
He growled his approval as he stroked her in a tortuous pattern against her pleasure spot. Within seconds she was shuddering under him in a fulfillment that both elated and terrified her. Her body truly did not belong to her in that space of time. He owned it with the gratification he gave her, the emotions that pleasure evoked in her.
“Luciano!”