A Scandal in the Headlines(28)



She was panting now, leaning her forehead against the table, and he held her femininity in his hand, hot and damp and swollen with desire. And then he squeezed.

Elena bucked against him, against the table, and he did it again. Then again.

Slowly, deliberately, he built up a rhythm. Teasing her. Seducing her. Pressing against her urgent center with every stroke. Her breath grew ragged, her heat bloomed into his hand, and only then—only when she was mindless before him, stretched out breathless and boneless and his to command—did he pull his hand away.

Leaving her trembling right there on the edge.

She sobbed something incoherent into the arm she had thrown up near her head and then let out a moan as Alessandro tugged on her trousers, peeling them over her hips and shoving them down her legs to her knees. He left her panties where they were, an electric blue thong that beautifully framed then disappeared between the perfect twin curves of her pert bottom.

She was restless, shifting her weight from one foot in its high wedged sandal to the other, her hips swaying in an age-old invitation that speared into him like a new heat, mesmerizing him for a moment. Her shoes lifted her to him, making her arch her back slightly as she sprawled there before him, mindless and moaning. His in every way.

He loved it. He thought he could die in this moment a happy man at last, this woman his own, perfectly crafted feast—and he intended to eat every bite. He traced over her thong with a lazy finger, then ran his hands over her bottom, vowing that one day he would learn every millimeter of her with his mouth. Every hollow. Every mark. With his teeth. His tongue.

But not now. His need was like a wild storm in him, pounding in his blood, making his chest tight and his vision narrow.

He freed himself from his trousers and quickly rolled on the protection he’d carried in his pocket, then bent over her, shoving her thong down and out of his way. She was still trembling, still breathing hard and fast, and her eyes were shut tight. He braced himself on one arm, his hand flat against the table near her shoulder.

“Alessandro,” she said again, her voice strangled, but she lifted her hips when he slid a hand beneath her, pressing her face against the table as if it was a pillow.

He reached down and pressed hard against her center even as he shifted his position and drove straight into her.

She came apart beneath him, sobbing and wild.

He had to grit his teeth as she shuddered, as her fingers pressed into the table’s hard surface as if she could find some hold. He let her ride it out, waiting hot and hard and deep inside of her, her perfect bottom snug against him, almost more enticement than he could bear.

When she started to come back to him, he began to move.

He wasn’t gentle. She made that small, highly aroused noise in the back of her throat, the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, and met him, thrust for thrust. She was sinuous and lithe, arched there before him with her black top flowing all around her as she moved with him, like some kind of erotic dance.

It was almost too much for him. He reached out and held the nape of her neck in his hand, making her shudder, then keeping her still.

And then he simply took her.

He ravaged. He savored. He took.

And all the while she cried out her pleasure, her hips wild against his, her eyes shut tight and her cheeks stained red with all of that desperate, delicious heat.

It was perfect. She was perfect.

“You are mine,” he ground out from between his teeth, his hips hard against hers, riding her, devouring her. “Mine.”

When he couldn’t hold on any longer he slid a hand beneath her once more, finding the heart of her hunger and rubbing hard against it, making her jerk against him.

“Again,” he ordered her, his voice so deep, so guttural, he hardly recognized it. And he didn’t care, his own climax roaring toward him. “Now.”

She obeyed him with a beautiful scream, her feet leaving the ground as she shattered into a flare of white hot heat around him, catapulting over that edge once more.

And finally, finally, he followed.


Alessandro didn’t know how long it was before he caught his breath. Before he was himself again, and not just a handful of scattered fragments thrown to every corner of this island. Of the globe.

Elena still lay beneath him, her cheek pressed against the tabletop, and he could feel every breath she took. He angled himself back and off her, regretting that he had to pull out of her soft heat.

She didn’t move, or open her eyes. Alessandro rid himself of the protection he’d used, fastened his trousers, and still she lay there. Making a perfectly debauched, impossibly lovely picture. Her trousers and thong were a tangle at her knees, her sweet bottom and the feminine secrets beneath on display as she bent there over his table so obediently, her mouth slightly ajar as she breathed and her slender arms thrown out before her as if in total surrender.

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