A Scandal in the Headlines(27)

“I’ll know,” she said quietly.

And knew immediately, when his expression changed, that she’d made a critical mistake. For a moment she didn’t understand, though the air between them seemed to burst into flames. His face lit with a dark, almost savage triumph, and his hard mouth curved.

“Yet we both know where your moral compass points, don’t we?”

“Away from you,” she said hurriedly, but it was too late.

“Another lie is as good a word as any, Elena,” he said then, more wolf in that moment than man. “I accept.”

Alessandro pulled her to him with that ruthless command that undid her—that thrilled her no matter how she wished it didn’t. And her body simply obeyed. She knew she should resist this. She knew she needed to push him away, to wrench herself out of his arms before—

But she didn’t.

She didn’t even try.

He took her mouth, masterful and merciless at once, inevitable, and Elena melted against him, went up on her toes, and met him.


Finally.

His mouth was on her again, at last, and it wasn’t enough. Her taste flooded him, driving him wild. Her tongue was an exquisite torture against his, her head tilting at the slightest touch of his hand for that perfect, slick fit he craved. He pulled her even closer, bending her back over his arm, kissing her as if both their lives depended on it.

Mine, he thought, with a ferocity that shook through him and only made him want her that much more.

She was pliant and beautiful, graceful in his arms, her luscious body plastered against him. He could feel her breasts against his chest, her hips pressed to his, and he was fervently grateful she was the sort of woman who wore shoes with wicked heels so gracefully. It made it that much easier to haul the delectable place where her legs met against the hardest part of him, right where he wanted her.

God, how he wanted her.

He lost his head. He forgot what he’d planned, what he’d intended here—he tasted her and the whole world fell away, narrowed down to one specific goal. To thrust himself inside her, again and again. To make them both shatter into a thousand pieces.

To take them both home.

He reached down and pulled her black top up over those fantastic breasts she never covered with any kind of bra, muttering words he hardly understood in Sicilian as well as Italian. He ran his fingers over her taut nipples, watched her bite her lip against the pleasure of it, her head falling back to give him better access.

But it wasn’t enough, so he backed her up against the table and set her there, leaning down to lick his way from one delicious crest to the other. To lose himself in the softness of her warm skin, the scent of it, and those small, high cries she made when he took a nipple deep into his mouth.

She was gripping the edge of the table, her breath coming in hard, quick bursts, and she was so beautiful he thought he might die if he couldn’t bury himself in her. If he couldn’t feel her tremble all around him, screaming out his name. If he couldn’t drive so deep into her he’d forget all about who he’d once imagined she was. Who she should have been.

Who she wasn’t, damn her.

He remembered the stark, sensual picture he’d drawn for her at that dinner weeks back and smiled then, against the delicate skin beneath one of her breasts. He straightened, tugged her to her feet and found himself distracted by the glaze of passion in her bright summer eyes, the color high on her cheeks. He held her face between his hands, his thumbs sweeping from her temples to those elegant cheekbones that drove him mad, and plundered her mouth.

Taking, tasting. Exulting in this, in her. Making her his the only way he could.

He tore his mouth from hers, then spun her around. He felt her tremble against him as he leaned her forward, spreading her before him over the table, using one hand to push a forgotten serving dish, piled high with the remains of fluffy, fragrant rice, out of her way.

“Alessandro …” she whispered as she bent there, offering him the perfect, delectable view. A prayer. A vow. So much more than simply his name.

He smoothed his hands down her back, the sensual shape of her making him harder, making him desperate. But he didn’t rush. He reached around beneath her to flatten his hands against the delectable curve of her belly.

He held his hands there for a moment, savoring the fine, low tremor that shuddered through her. Letting her absorb the heat of his hands. And then he moved lower, pulling open the button fly of her trousers with one hand as the other slid inside to cup her scalding heat in his palm.