So the tense curse that left his chest meant nothing to her until he used the superior strength in his arms to bring her tumbling halfway back down to earth."I said slowly," he hissed at her. "I will not ravish you, Charlotte."But she didn’t know the difference between fast and slow. Her own wild senses were ruling her actions; the sweet, tight pulse of desire was controlling the pace. The fingers she sent spearing into his neck so she could bring his mouth back to hers were fierce and urgent. "I want to be ravished," she whispered to him.His kiss-heated lips twisted into a grim smile. "You don’t understand the concept, and I will not give you an excuse to accuse me of ravishing you once it is done and your conscience decides to torment you."Her eyes widened in protest. "I wouldn't do that.""You would," he insisted. "You want me, but you don’t want to want me; you have simply allowed yourself to forget that." In fact,’ he added, sending a sardonic gleam to her liquid green eyes,
Then it was there. His hands cupped her bottom to lift her, and he made that first smooth, blinding thrust with his hips. Her body throbbed and stretched to accommodate him; she felt him like a burning shaft of fire in the innocence of her sheath. Her breath caught, her fingers dug into his shoulders, and sensation poured in a swirling wave of fear and anticipation down the pulsing length of where they had joined."You are sure you want this?" he husked at her.The fact that he’d even asked the question after so much pulsing, macho male dominance made tears sting the back of her throat. The point surely was—did he want it?Charley nodded, her mouth just a breath away from his, her eyes clinging dark and vulnerable and helplessly needy to his. It was his eyes that closed when he made that final invasion, his mouth that quivered tautly as she tried to choke back a cry of pain. It was his hands that trembled as he pushed the hair away from her face, then kissed it in soft, soothing touch
Charley drifted asleep in the warm cocoon of his arms and awoke late the next morning to find an empty place beside her in the bed. In a way, it was a relief. No awkward moments having to face him while her defenses were down; no stumbling around trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t come out sounding silly, vulnerable, and gauche. She could shower at her leisure and get her act together.No, she couldn’t. Instead, she sank down on the edge of the plunge bath and let the whole high-octane event of her wedding night rush through her head and her body in small explosions of remembered feelings, few of which made her feel good about herself—or about him.What were they doing to each other? Why were they doing it? All Charley knew as she sat there remembering the hot tempo of their passionate coupling was that somehow, in the last week leading up to last night, she had allowed Dami De Santis to become a terrible fever of desire that had built and built inside her until it had
Charley tensed. "Don’t," she shivered out, mortified beyond belief that he could say something like that to her at all after last night and especially in front of his housekeeper."We are alone." He smiled briefly at the way she flicked her startled eyes to the place where Nina had been standing. "She beat a hasty retreat when you blushed so charmingly." And it is too late to keep your virgin status on our wedding night a secret, amore. There was blood on the sheets.The shockingly abrupt announcement froze the color out of Charley’s face."You did not notice?" Leaning himself away from the door, he started moving towards her. "One of the maids surely will have done it when she remade the bed after you left it."Charley flinched when the sleeve of his shirt brushed her arm as he reached past her to pick up her discarded piece of pineapple."No comment," he mocked when she still said nothing. "I admit, when I saw it, it made me feel positively medieval." He put the pineapple into his m
To her surprise, he just nodded, no clever quick counterattack, his face still serious, the dark golden eyes wrapped in luxurious dark eyelashes, an even shape to his beautiful mouth. He’d dropped the cool mask, Charley realized, and all she was seeing now was the too handsome, worryingly alluring man.Then he was rising to his full height and holding out a hand for her to take so he could help her up. Charley stared at that hand for a few seconds, still hesitant to take what she knew it was offering, yet too aware of the tingling sting of enticement at work in her blood to stop her own hand from lifting and settling into his. His fingers closed around hers, and he drew her upright. When she tried to take her hand back, he held onto it and used it to bring her even closer until she was standing a mere breath away from touching his lean, hard, now very familiar length.Her heart began to thump. He was going to kiss her, and she couldn’t make up her mind if she wanted to be kissed right
Well, the cruelly perceptive bitch, Charley thought breathlessly. "My style team managed to get it just right, don’t you think?" She smiled through gritted white teeth.She hadn’t been around Adelina for years without learning how to respond to such a woman. And even if the floppy brim of her cute pink hat hadn’t been blocking him off from the shoulders upward, nothing on earth would have made her look up at him as she felt Dami’s fingers bite into her again."And with so little notice." Elena slid her eyes down to Charley’s stomach, the suggestion being that she was shocking Charley into releasing a gasp."Gosh," she rallied. "It never entered my head that people would think poor Dami had been forced into marrying me!"‘They don’t.’ Surprisingly, it was Fabio Romano who pulled himself out of his boredom to put a stop to this. Elena is fishing for information. She is always fishing for information—it is the staple diet for a professional bitch.Well, he said it; Charley’s eyes told th
"I believe Nina said so," he returned evenly."But you don’t?" She was staring up at the face of a breathtakingly beautiful creature who could have come straight out of a Titian painting."Your hair is darker, and your eyes are grey, not blue."But the shape of her mouth, the small pointed chin, and the hourglass shape of her slender figure inside a gentian-blue gown that could only have been fashioned by the finest haute couture looked like Charley."How old is she here?" she asked with a reverent murmur."Forty-nine," he replied, dragging another gasp from Charley’s shocked lips because she looked barely eighteen. "My grandfather commissioned the painting as a gift for her fiftieth birthday." He claimed that her beauty was the only thing about her that kept them together. She claimed they stayed together because she allowed it, despite the countless affairs he enjoyed during their long marriage."She loved him, you mean.""I like to think so, though I don’t believe he deserved such
"Yes, please," she breathed.He took that step back towards her, so impossibly beautiful, arrogant, and powerful that he made her heart pump deliriously."Enjoy," he invited, and she couldn’t believe how quickly she moved towards him; she couldn’t believe it was she who was so eagerly touching him with her fingers, tasting him with her tongue, and grazing his flesh with her teeth, while he stood there, passively allowing her with his hands grasping the bedpost so she was trapped in the circle of his arms.Though he wasn’t really passive—he flinched and flexed and breathed tautly to every move she made on him. When she stretched up for his mouth, he gave it; when she bravely dared to run her fingers down through the mat of hair and explore the length of his erection, the velvet-smooth length jerked and pulsed.And he was breathing as unevenly as she was; the tension in him was clenching his muscles tight. When she flung her arms around his neck and just clung, he seemed to see it as so