Leonetti's Housekeeper Bride

Poppy took a step closer to his lean, powerful body. ‘How much is “very much”?’

He brought her hands down lightly to the revealing bulge at his groin. Her fingertips fluttered appreciatively over the hard jut of his erection and he jerked in surprise at that intimate caress. His golden eyes smouldering with erotic heat, he pulled her up against him and crushed her ripe pink mouth beneath his, his tongue darting and delving deep to send tiny shudders of shocking arousal coursing through her lower body. Liquid heat pooled between her thighs.

‘You’re a tease,’ Gaetano told her darkly.

‘No, I’m a sure thing,’ Poppy contradicted, helpless in the grip of the need throbbing and pulsing through her trembling length.

She felt the sudden give at her neck as he tugged loose the tie of her dress. As the bodice dropped to her waist his hands closed to her hips and he lifted her up onto the stone table before reaching below the skirt to close his hands into the waistband of her lace knickers and yank them down.

‘Out here?’ she whispered, shaken by the concept as he dug her discarded underwear into his pocket with single-minded efficiency.

‘Out here because I couldn’t make it back indoors...and I believe I can promise you a very active night,’ he husked, bending her backwards to capture a rosy nipple between his lips and lash it with his tongue while his fingers stroked and teased the delicate pink folds at her core.

‘I want you,’ she framed jaggedly, her breath strangled in her throat by a responsive gasp as his thumb rubbed over her and then a long finger tested her readiness.

He slid a single digit into her lush opening and her body jackknifed, spine arching, hips lifting off the cold stone surface. And the coldness below her only added to the intense heat punching through her quivering body, steamrollering over her inhibitions and heightening every sensation to an unbearable level.

‘So wet, so tight,’ Gaetano growled, yanking down his zip with a lack of cool that even in the state he was in astounded him. On some level the hunger was so all-consuming that he honestly thought he might die of overexcitement if he didn’t get inside her.

His mouth roved between the straining mounds of her perfect breasts, tugging at the swollen buds, arrowing lower, letting her feel the long, slow glide of his tongue while he pulled her to the edge of the table to position her.

He plunged in and drove the breath from her body with the intensity of his entrance. She whimpered as he stretched her, her body clenching round him like a hot velvet glove.

‘So good,’ Gaetano ground out between gritted teeth as he pulled back and slammed back into her with delicious force.

Poppy couldn’t think, she could only feel and she was riding a torrent of excitement she couldn’t control, her entire being pitched to crave the peak of his every powerful thrust. The heat and the hunger and the pleasure all melded together into one glorious, overwhelming rush of sexual ecstasy. Her climax claimed her in an explosive surge of intense sensation and her teeth bit into his shoulder as the exquisite convulsions shook her violently in his arms.

In the aftermath she was as limp as a floppy doll. He fed her feet back into her underwear, retied her dress and lifted her down to the ground again where she swayed, utterly undone by the sheer primal wildness of their joining.

‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No, you blew me away,’ she whispered truthfully.

‘You bring out the animal in me, delizia mia,’ he admitted raggedly, pressing his sensual mouth to the top of her down-bent head in what felt like a silent apology.

‘And I like it,’ Poppy admitted shakily. ‘I like it very much.’

‘What the hell have we been playing at, then, for the last few weeks?’ he demanded.

Poppy shot him a teasing glance. ‘You were depriving me of sex. Why, I have no idea.’

But Gaetano was in not in the mood to talk. He was already painfully aware of the lack of logic in his recent behaviour. He couldn’t answer his own questions, never mind explain or defend his decisions to her. He had honestly believed that for once he was doing the honourable thing and that she would appreciate his restraint. Evidently he had got that badly wrong. She was accusing him of depriving her. Diavelos...no doubt it was sexist but he was the one who had felt most deprived. And being deprived of the joy of her body had eased his conscience.

His brooding silence nagged at Poppy’s nerves. Perhaps even though he enjoyed the physical release of her body he had preferred the distance provided by their lack of intimacy. Maybe he was worried she was getting too attached. Maybe she wasn’t as good an actress as she liked to believe.

‘It was just sex, you know,’ she mumbled as lightly as she could. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything.’