This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1)(84)

Heat simmered, but it waited patiently, because this moment wasn’t for heat, but warmth. Not for haste, but a slow sweetness. An introduction of sorts. She knew him, and he knew her, but they didn’t know each other like this.

When he rested his forehead against hers, neither spoke. The soft thud of her heart and the brush of his thumb over her palm said everything words couldn’t.

I’m sorry.

I’ll miss you.

I hope.

I want.

“Take me home,” she said. “I want to fall asleep with you one last time.”

He dropped a lingering kiss on her lips before taking her hand.

One last night.



* * *



Her room had never seemed so small or her bed so large. Alessa gnawed on her lip while Dante kicked off his shoes, then frowned at the floor, shoeless but otherwise fully dressed.

Wonderful. Neither of them knew what to do next. Well, she assumed Dante knew something about what was to come, but the immediate next step seemed to stump them both.

Dante rubbed the back of his neck. “When you said you wanted to sleep…”

“I didn’t mean sleep,” Alessa said quickly. “I mean, sleep, too, but—”

He stepped closer and ran the pad of one thumb across her cheekbone. “You are very pink right now.”

“You’re not supposed to notice.” She pushed onto her toes, but still couldn’t reach him. “Do you have to be so tall? How am I supposed to kiss you?”

“Climb?” He bent with a laugh to kiss her.

“Do you still feel it?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.

Dante cocked his head. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“My … my gift. What does it feel like now, when I’m not trying to use it on you?”

“Let’s see.” He tipped her chin, and his lips found hers, slowly, as though he could stretch a night into a lifetime. She responded, instantly, and his hands found her waist. His kisses deepened, until he kissed her with the urgency of a man who hoped tomorrow would never come. He pulled back, breathless. “What was the question?”

“Hmm?” She blinked, dazed.

He bit his lip, looking quite pleased with his effect on her. “I still feel that … purr … or whatever you want to call it. But I think I like it.”

“You think?”

He answered with another kiss. Unequivocally.

She could have spent a lifetime savoring the slide of his lips, the dance of his tongue, the breath they passed between them as though it was the only air left in the world, and they would both die without it. She wanted to take her time exploring every fascinating part of him, but her hands were impatient, and once they found the strip of bare skin between his pants and shirt, her palms slid beneath. His abdomen was all firm ridges and taut muscles, but his lips were full and soft.

His fingers cupped her bottom, pulling her into him, and she melted, softness yielding to the hard planes of his body. When his hand cupped her breast, she forgot how to breathe. Refusing to let go of each other for the time it would take to walk to the couch, they tumbled onto it in a tangle of arms and legs instead.

She looked down at him through the fall of her curls, kissing the scruff of his chin, his lips, his neck, reveling in the husky rasp to his breath. After the third time he caught her halfway through falling off, Dante rolled with her, catching their fall. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, so he hauled her up with him as he stood, laughing into her neck as he carried her to the bed.

“I know they say these skirts were designed for Saverio’s stairs,” Dante murmured, trailing kisses across her belly. “But I have to believe someone was thinking of this.”

He nuzzled her through fabric, his breath warming the bare skin of her thigh, and the world faded away into velvet darkness and yearning, her hands tangling in his hair as she begged Dea silently to let it last an eternity, then not so silently.

But Dante the lover, like Dante the fighter, was determined to find her every weakness, and he did, until she arched against him and the breath shuddered out of her.

She was limp, spent, soft and drowsy, as he found his way beside her and pulled her to him, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her neck—anything he could reach. She snuggled close, whispering against his neck.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She was. As sure as she’d ever been about anything. Pushing up to kneeling, she pulled her blouse over her head. The moon gilded her body until it didn’t look like hers at all, and Dante was stunned into immobility. Her skirt was more difficult, but that seemed to snap him out of his reverent trance. He unhooked it with a flick of his wrist, threw it on the floor, and she was naked and only a little self-conscious as he gazed at her.

Up to her, then. A smile played on her lips as she nudged him to lift his arms and she fought to remove his shirt. It hit the floor and she squinted, fumbling with the buttons of his pants. Her hand slipped inside but she jerked it back out at his strangled sound. “No,” he said with a ragged laugh. “Good pain.”

Like unwrapping a long-awaited present, she took her time undressing him, daring him to be self-conscious, but he wasn’t. His confidence was warranted. The sculpted muscles she’d admired when he was a stranger were even more captivating up close, now that he was anything but.