“Please,” I gasp.
“We should stop for tonight.” He says it like it takes every ounce of his restraint. “I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
“No.” It comes out so fast, it surprises us both. “I mean, I want it. But if you don’t want to?—”
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my fucking life.”
His words shock me. But they’re too raw, too real, to be anything but honest.
“Feel it.” He picks up my wrist, gently, and lays my palm on the crotch of his pants. “This is what you do to me. How could I not want you?”
God. He’s hard as a rock. And—there’s no way he’sthatbig, is there?
I drag my hand up and down along the clothed shaft experimentally. He sucks in a breath like it hurts, and I almost stop, but he keeps my hand there.
It doesn’t hurt,I realize.He just wants me that much.
It’s a foreign thought—being wanted. Being needed.
Whatever hesitation I had flies right out the window. “Fuck me,” I whisper. “Please.”
Riccardo’s eyes go dark.
Within seconds, he’s lifting my wrists and pressing them to the pillow above my head. His grip is firm. I couldn’t pull free if I tried, and for some reason, that thought shoots straight between my legs.
“You say stop,” he murmurs in my ear, “and we stop.”
I nod breathlessly. “Okay.”
“Promise you’ll say it,gattina.I need to know that, if it gets to be too much, you’ll tell me.”
It’s such a sharp contrast with last night. With what could have happened and didn’t.
I’m so lucky.
“I promise,” I murmur.
He unbuttons his shirt, drops it, then settles between my thighs again, lining himself up. My heart pounds for a different reason now. Fear and want tangled together, but the want wins.
He catches me staring. My cheeks go red. I want to bury my head in the pillows and disappear, becausesurelystaring like that is not polite etiquette in bed, is it?
“Sorry,” I blurt. “It’s just, it’s the first time I’ve seen…” I trail off, too embarrassed to finish that thought.
His pupils blow even wider.
He kisses me. It’s hard, passionate, a small slip in control. I lock my legs around his waist, high on the delicious friction of his hips rocking into mine.
Then he pushes in, careful, inch by inch, watching my face the entire time. The pressure is sharp at first, then full, then consuming.
I gasp, nails scraping lightly at his forearms.
“Are you okay, kitten?” he asks, voice strained.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Don’t stop.”
He moves slowly at first, letting my body adjust, holding himself up so he doesn’t crush me. But the discomfort is short-lived. Soon, pleasure overwhelms me.
“More,” I whisper.
