A Scandal in the Headlines(14)
Elena twisted against him, and then her frantic hands were on the hem of his T-shirt and he sat up slightly to peel it off. He brushed her hands out of the way to rid himself of his trousers, kicking them aside. And when he pulled her back into place they both sighed in something like reverence. And then she was like silk against him, all over him, soft and naked and hot.
Finally.
Alessandro’s heart pounded. He was so hard it bordered on the painful, and then she rolled her hips and moved all of that slick, wet heat against the length of him, and he groaned. He traced the line of her spine down to her bottom, and then bent to take one of those achingly perfect nipples into his mouth. She made a wild, greedy sort of noise, and he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t take another moment of this magnificent torture.
It had been too long already. It had been forever.
He sat up, holding her against him, her soft thighs falling on either side of his. She knelt astride him, her hands moving from his chest to his shoulders, then burying themselves in his hair. Alessandro reached down between them, sinking his fingers deep inside the molten core of her.
She cried out, and he loved it. He tested her slickness, learned her lush shape, his palm hard against the center of her need. He watched her pretty face flush, felt her hips buck against his hand, and he returned to her breasts, sucking a taut nipple into his mouth and then biting down. Just hard enough.
She broke apart in his arms with a wordless cry, hot and wet in his hand, her head falling forward until her face was pressed into his neck. He lifted her in his arms while she still shook and shuddered, and then he thrust hard and deep inside her.
At last.
She was scalding hot, so deliciously soft, and still in the grips of her climax when he began to move. Alessandro held her hips in his hands and guided her into the rhythm he wanted. Slow, but demanding, catching the fire that was tearing her apart and building it up again with every stroke.
Higher. Hotter. Hungrier.
He heard her breath catch again, felt her stiffen, heard the shocked sound she made in his ear. She gripped his shoulders tight and shook all around him again, just as he wanted. He watched her arch back into the sunlight—so painfully, perfectly beautiful. This woman, his woman, lost to her pleasure, mindless and writhing against him, while he moved hard and deep inside of her.
He rolled them over on the lounger, coming on top of her and deeper into her. Alessandro let his head drop down next to hers, and then her arms wrapped around him, her hips meeting his in a wild, uncontrollable dance.
He felt her move beneath him, heard her gasp anew, and each hitch in her breath, each mindless cry, made him want her more. He was so deep inside of her, and they moved together like a dream—like a dream he’d had a thousand times, only much slicker, much hotter, much better.
And this time, when she began to break apart around him, when she threw her head back once more and arched up against him, Alessandro called out her name like the incantation it was and fell right along with her.
Elena came back to herself slowly. Painfully.
She was tucked up against Alessandro’s side. He was sprawled out on the lounger beside her, one arm thrown over his head, looking for all the world like some kind of lazy, sated god. There was no reason he should be so appealing, even now, with his dark lashes closed, his arrogant features with the marks of the previous night’s violence stamped into his skin. And yet …
She sat up gingerly, surprised her body still felt at all like her own when he’d made it his—made her his—with such devastating completeness. Her body still hummed with pleasure. So much pleasure Elena could hardly believe she’d survived it, that she was still in one piece.
Then again, perhaps she wasn’t.
He shifted, and she felt his hand on her back, smoothing its way down to curl possessively over her hip. Impossibly, she felt something in her catch anew. A spark where there should have been nothing but ash and burned-out embers.
Surely this was the end of it. Succumbing to what had burned so bright between them had to have destroyed it, didn’t it? But his fingers traced a lazy alphabet across her skin, spreading that fierce glow deep into her all over again, making her realize this wasn’t over at all.
Elena had made a terrible mistake, she understood then. There were many ways to pay, and she’d just discovered a brand-new one. Perhaps, on some level, she’d held out the hope that what had surged between them was all smoke, no fire. That indulging it would defeat it.
Now she knew better. Now she knew exactly how hot they burned. She would have to live with that, too.