The Tuscan's Revenge Wedding (Italian Billionaires #1)(52)
He could tell her that he loved her, but why would she believe it when she would accept nothing else he said? He had hurt her, though without intending it. He had doubted her word, maligned her brother, forced her to abandon her job and her life in the States and come with him. It would take time to rectify his errors, time to win her trust and her love, to bind her to him so she would not, as his mother had done, decide the De Frenza blood was tainted and she wanted no part of his family.
He was not sure he would be allowed that much time. Nor was he certain that he could bear to wait until her trust and her love were freely given. To be her husband while he convinced her that she belonged beside him would have infinite advantages.
There was, he was almost positive, one other way to break through the prickly independence she wore like armor. It was overbearing, even arrogant, but a risk he had to take.
“You will marry me,” he said with great deliberation as he moved toward her, “because you want me as much as I want you. You will marry me because you need me as much as I need you. You will marry me,” he finished as he reached for her and pulled her close against him, “because of this that is between us.”
Her lips were so sweet, so cool and delicious as he took them. He groaned with the perfection of them, breathed deep with gratified longing as he pushed his hand into the softness of her hair, holding her while he slanted his head to probe deeper. He swirled his tongue into her mouth, inciting her response.
And he had it, tentative at first but growing bolder as her mouth heated under his fervid assault. She sighed and gripped his shirt in her hands, twisting it to bring him closer. He felt the curves of her breasts against his chest, recognized their hard peaks, and his brain was suddenly aflame.
Moving with his thighs brushing her legs, between them, around them, he guided her backward until her hips were against the edge of his desk. Without releasing her lips, he swept the top clear of papers, books, his calendar, even his cell phone. Before the clatter had died away, he lifted her to the desk. Before she could do more than gasp in disbelief, he pushed the skirt of her dress up and stepped between her spread thighs.
She was so soft, so warm against him. Only the thinnest of barriers separated them. He rubbed against it, mindless with such closeness, while he captured a breast in his hand. Clasping, squeezing in slow rhythm, he allowed himself to be enticed by the rounded neck of her dress. He trailed kisses down the curve of her neck, tasted her pulse with his tongue, delved into the hollow at the base of her throat. He inhaled her fragrance of flowers, linen and warm woman and felt it mount to his head like the most delicate of wine bouquets.
Delirious, half-crazed with need, he searched for and found the zip of her dress, sliding it down, tugging her bodice forward and down her arms to expose her breasts. The bra she wore was a masterpiece of lace and sensual purpose, made expressly to entice. It was the work of a moment to lower its straps until it became a seductive sling for their lovely pink-crested perfection. Bending his head, he blew upon them, watched the nipples become small sweet candies for his delectation, and took one into his mouth.
Her moan was soft music that urged him to greater effort. He drove himself to earn more of it, and yet more, suckling her while smoothing his hand over her thigh, easing between them to cup her, part her delicate folds. He pressed into the moist and silken depths of her while his body protested its deprivation. Exerting more control than he dreamed he possessed, he ignored the violent pleasure that gripped him as she ran her hands over his body, found and captured his flat nipple with her fingers. Matching her movements in instinctive unison, he stroked into her again and again, then found and rolled the delicate bud of her femininity between thumb and forefinger like testing the most fragile of raspberries.
She cried out, a high-pitched sound he caught in his mouth as he felt its approach. And he held her while she trembled with the force of her release, her body straining against his while she pulsed against his fingers. Then, only then, he lowered his zipper and freed his strutted flesh. A brief pause to sheath himself in brand-new protection, then he wrenched her forward to the very edge of the desk and sank into her wet heat.
She crooned, twining her legs around his, pressing her forehead to his breastbone. It was all he needed. Easing her backward, supporting her until she lay upon his desk, he pumped into her in aching need while his heart threatened to burst inside and his pulse almost drowned out the praise and the most sacred of promises that he whispered in the language of his fathers. Telling her how hot arguing with her made him, how proud he was of how she stood up to him, he held her gaze while he took her, and even as she coalesced around him again, drawing him into the surging power of her heartbeat, her ultimate pleasure.
He joined her in it, exploding in supreme and ruthless enjoyment, knowing it had never been like this before and might never be again, knowing he possessed her in that moment if in no other.
He knew, too, even as he shuddered in glorious, unending surcease, that she had still not agreed to be his wife.
12
Carita and Jonathan arrived at the villa with a police escort racing ahead of their matching ambulances and another bringing up the rear. The undulating twin notes of the siren drew everyone to the front entrance. There they waited in a double line, Amanda, Nico and his Nonna on one side, and Aunt Filomena, Carisa and Yolanda on the other. Jonathan was helped up the steps on his crutches by the medical technicians, while Carita was brought in on a stretcher. Both were smiling, almost laughing with the ridiculous display they made and their pleasure in it.