A Facade to Shatter(50)

He blinked. And then he laughed. The sound burst from him, loud and rich and unexpected. Lia stared at him, her cheeks heating. A tiny thread of irritation began to dance through her. She crossed her arms and stared him down.

He stopped laughing at her, but he was still smiling. “Damn, I needed that.” He put his hands on her upper arms. He didn’t pull her in close like she thought he might. Like she hoped he might.

Yesterday, she’d pushed him away. Today, she wanted to pull him to her. Maybe it made no sense, but now that they were married, she felt more … secure. And her need for him had amplified since the moment he’d pushed a diamond—a large, family heirloom, it turned out—on her finger and said, “I do.”

His fingers dug into her arms. Not painfully, but possessively. “Hell, Lia, you really don’t know why I want you? Are you that blind?”

“I am not blind,” she said defensively.

“You must be if you can’t figure out what’s going on here. You’re beautiful, lush and perfect, and I ache with the need to touch you the way I did in Palermo.”

His words made her soften, melt. Want. She wanted what they’d had in Palermo—except for the part where she woke up and he was gone.

“I …” She swallowed as her heart beat a tattoo against her rib cage. Her throat was as dry as baked sand. It was a frightening thing to say what she wanted. But he was looking at her as if he was dying to touch her, and so she took a chance. “I think I want that, too.”

He made a noise of relief. Then he slid his hands down her arms and around her back, cupping her buttocks as he pulled her fully into his embrace.

“Grazie a Dio,” he said then in a throaty purr, and a liquid shiver danced down her spine. Her hands went up to clutch his shirt as his head descended.

Their mouths touched and a shudder went through Lia. All those feelings she’d felt in the maze yesterday came rushing to the fore. They were almost too much, too overwhelming.

But she wouldn’t push him away again. She couldn’t.

He was big and hard and strong, and she pressed herself against him, her hands running over the hard muscles of his chest and shoulders. Her body was on fire as liquid heat gathered in her core. She could feel the dampness in her panties, the instant response that she couldn’t have prevented even if she’d wanted to.

This thing between them was hot and bright and uncontrollable. It was a need that had to be assuaged, or she would be as restless as a spirit condemned to roam the earth for all eternity.

“Wait,” he said, pushing her back, breaking that delicious contact.

Lia’s stomach fell. If he was rejecting her now …

“Not yet,” he said, his voice sounding tortured enough that she relaxed infinitesimally. “We just arrived, and you need to rest first.”

“I told you I slept on the plane… .”

He slid a hand into her hair, cupped her head while he traced a path over her collarbone with the fingers of his other hand. “I know, but it was a long trip and the doctor said—”

Lia cursed. “I wish you would allow me to make my own decisions without all this argument! We’re going to get off to a very bad start, Zachariah Scott, if you constantly tell me what I should be doing.”

He looked at her for a long minute. One corner of his mouth turned up in a grin.

“What’s so funny?” she asked crossly.

“You. Such a temper from a little thing.”

Heat suffused her. “I am not a little thing and you know it. I’m too tall and I’m only going to get fatter—”

He put a finger over her lips, silencing her. “You are not fat, Lia. You’re lush and gorgeous and you make me hard.”

The tops of her ears were on fire. She didn’t consider herself to be a prude by any stretch—she’d read plenty of books where people had sex, sometimes even raunchy sex—but the idea she affected him that way, and that he had no problem saying it, both embarrassed and thrilled her.

“Allora,” she said, resisting the urge to fan herself with both hands. “The things you say.”

“Makes you hot, doesn’t it?”

Lia put a hand over her eyes. “Dio,” she said.

Zach laughed and drew her hand away from her face. Then he took both her hands in his and held them in front of his body. “I like that you’re still so innocent,” he told her. “I like the idea of corrupting you.”