Love in the Vineyard (Tavonesi #7)(60)

“Apparently you have missed me,” he whispered against her sex. Her hands gripped his head, and she tried to drag him up.

He lifted his head. The sight of her breasts, round hilled and tipped with nipples contracted with arousal, shot heat to his groin.

“Not so fast, Miss America. Has anyone ever told you that Americans do things way too fast?”

He stroked his finger deeper into her and bit teasingly at her most sensitive spot, then circled the pink bud with his tongue. She moaned and tried again to pull him away.

“But I can’t—”

“But you can,” he murmured as he slowed his strokes. “Surrender, Natasha. Surrender to pleasure.”

“I want you inside me,” she gasped when he slid his tongue away and then back again, teasing her beyond bearing.

He nibbled, and she writhed against his lips. “No, Natasha. I’m an Italian. We like to do things slowly. We like to enjoy the journey.”

He stroked and licked until her hips rose, pressing harder against his mouth with each wave of her building tension.

He found the slightly roughened, mysterious spot inside her that would send her deeper. As her muscles gripped his finger, he stroked a perfect rhythm, matching the cadence of her gasping breaths.

“Adrian, please.”

Had her tone had any honesty in its protest, he would have released her. But he knew the demands of desire. She could wait. She would wait. And he forced himself to call up all his wavering command to make sure that he could too. When he entered her, he hoped she’d want him so badly that she’d never think of another man. He wanted to be the only man in her mind, the only man in her heart.

Forever.

And then for one day more than that.

But he wanted her to feel the same. He wanted her to surrender to her desire. But he didn’t want her to surrender to him. He wanted her to meet him on fair ground. But that plan could wait to play out later, in due time. Now all he wanted was for her to surrender to the glory of making love.

He drew the tip of his tongue between the folds of her sex and continued licking her with a slow, steady rhythm, savoring her salty, honeyed taste. Her head thrashed as he laved her, and her inner muscles tightened harder around his fingers as she cried out his name again and again. He could spend an eternity pleasuring her, finding even more ways to send her into ecstasy.

When she bucked against him and then went limp with her release, her uninhibited cry shot straight into his heart.

Only the sound of their breathing broke the silence of the cave. He lifted his head and levered up onto his knees. Flickering candlelight shot streams of radiant light across her, lacing her body with a web of light and shadow.

She opened her eyes.

“Adrian.”

When she reached her hand out, twining her fingers in his, he felt like he’d been transported behind the lines of life as he’d once known it. He’d experienced great sex in his life but never combined with such surging, deep feelings.

The force of his recognition robbed him of words. He pulled her to him and cradled her trembling body with his arms.

She rested her head against his chest. Breath caught in his throat as she slid her hand to grasp his painfully throbbing erection through his riding pants.

“Do take these pants off,” she said with the breathy voice of a woman still under the spell of a powerful orgasm. “I want to see you.”

His pulse pounded as he wrangled off his boots and stripped off his pants. Turning back to her, his restraint was shredded. He drew her panties down her legs in one swift pull. He spread her legs and pinned her thighs against the cave floor with his knees. And admired the view. Her creamy skin framed lush dark curls and the slick pink flesh he’d been tasting and pleasuring.

She wriggled out from under his legs with a strength that surprised him. Then she knelt beside him and motioned to his shirt on the floor. “Lie down.”

No one had ever commanded him, certainly no woman. A thrill of titillation shot deep as he did as she bid.

“You’ll wish you had never introduced me to Italian restraint,” she said as she straddled him.

Placing one palm against his heart, she reached around behind herself and fingered his balls. He hauled in a breath and fought for control as she rocked her hips and slipped rhythmically along his shaft while stroking his tightening balls with her fingers.

He growled his pleasure, and she smiled. He cupped her breasts, his palms curving around the perfect and firm mounds. He tweaked her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, and she gasped.

“I want you inside me, Adrian. Now.”

He wanted nothing more. But he couldn’t resist teasing her. “What happened to slow?”

“Lost in translation?” she said with a low moan as she pressed her hands to his shoulders and wriggled until he could feel the pulse in her sex throbbing against him.

He gripped her hips, raising her, and she used her hands to position the tip of his erection at her opening.

And then he remembered—no condom. He grabbed her hips, his fingers denting her flesh, and dragged her up so that she straddled his waist, safely away from his throbbing shaft. His whole body trembled as his hands circled her waist and held her firmly in place.

“Natasha. I don’t have any protection.”

Her eyes widened in the flickering light. “This wasn’t the surprise you had planned?”