“We are not the sums of our pasts, Alessandro.” Still gently caressing his face as if he were beloved to her, her gaze burned into his. Searing in its violet intensity. “We are our futures. We cannot change what has happened, cannot undo what has been done. All we can do is live for tomorrow rather than for yesterday.”
She was right.
The rightness of it, the acknowledgment, settled in his bones. Worked straight through him. Found its unerring path to his heart. To the husk he had believed long dead. As if she could hear his thoughts, her hand was there, splayed over his steadily thumping heart, absorbing each beat.
“You do not know what I have done,” he rasped, compelled to warn her. To dispel her notions there were any lingering traces of goodness in him.
“I know the man you are,” she insisted. “You are a man compelled to fight for what he believes in, a man who loved his wife and son with a dedication I admire, a man who—”
He could not bear to hear any more. He silenced her by taking her lips with his. On a growl, he claimed her mouth. And with a heady feminine sigh, she kissed him back. He deepened the kiss, savoring the way she tasted, like the sweet, red wine from their earlier dinner and like something more mysterious and delicious.
Catriona.
He did not deserve her, but he was greedy when it came to this woman he had wed. And he was going to take anyway. Take because he could. Because he had to.
Deber, he reminded himself as he walked them to her bed, kissing her all the while.
Duty. He had a debt of obligation to the title, just as he had to this land.
But a small voice inside him said he was lying to himself. The blood coursing through his veins, the rampant desire stiffening his cock, the urge to drive himself home inside Catriona—none of these had anything to do with duty. Nor did the way he dragged his lips down her throat, or the way he cupped the inviting fullness of her breasts. Or the way he stopped everything to stare down at her, his breaths ragged.
Her lips were reddened and full from his kiss, her eyes glazed with passion. Her hair was a bewitching cloud falling around her shoulders, calling attention to the elegance of her fine-boned face. The freckles on the bridge of her nose called for his attention, and he could not resist dropping a kiss there, as if in so doing he could claim these tiniest parts of her for himself, too.
He wanted all of her.
Everything she had to give.
The knowledge astounded him as much as it terrified him. But he would not think of it now, for his need was monumental, bursting forth, demanding satisfaction. He tore at the belt keeping his banyan in place, and then he shrugged it from his shoulders, allowing it to fall to the carpet. He kissed her cheek before withdrawing enough to remove the sinfully tempting night rail.
She aided him in drawing it over her head.
She was nude before him, and though it was not the first time by far, he devoured every satin-smooth bit of skin. He could see her thus a hundred thousand times, and still his ardor would not be quelled, he was certain. His hands were on her, learning the hollows and dips, the curves and swells, the heat and the womanliness of her.
A different word stole into his wild thoughts then.
Delicious.
Everything about Catriona was worthy of worship. The flare of her belly, the beauty of her hips, the sweet mound between them. He had tasted her there before, but he wanted her again, just as much as ever. Perhaps more so. He kissed her, slowly, softly at first. Then with growing hunger. His fingers dipped into her sex, and she was already slick, the bud hidden within her folds swelled with her own need.
He played with her, listening to the quickening of her breath, drinking in the new urgency of her kiss. With his knee, he urged her legs wider apart, to grant him greater access to the honeyed cove he wanted most. He worked her pearl in slow, steady circles, all while making love to her mouth. What a beautiful mouth it was, and his, all his, just like the rest of her.
Hushed, hungry mewls were sounding from his wife’s throat now. He could feel her climax pulsing to life, ready to burst open. But he wanted to prolong the pleasure for both of them. He sank one finger inside her. Instantly, she tightened, jerking against him to bring him deeper.
He caught the pout of her lower lip in his teeth and tugged. “Not yet,querida. I am going to make you mad with wanting me first.”
*
Alessandro did nothave to make such a promise to her, for he had already made her mad with wanting him. He was all she could breathe—his spicy, masculine scent—and he was all she could feel—his lips against hers in the most decadent kisses she had ever known, his finger teasing her.
After keeping him at a polite distance for the last little while, she could not get enough of him now. She was ravenous. But if his actions were anything to judge by, so was he. Somehow, they wound up in the bed together.
Alessandro was pressing sweet, unhurried kisses all over her body. Down her throat, over her breasts. He flicked his tongue around a nipple. Her fingers sank into the thick, lustrous strands of his hair. The rasp of his beard against the underside of her breast made her quicken between her thighs.
He kissed down her belly, settling himself there. And then his tongue was on her. In her. Her body bowed from the bed, seeking more of his splendid torture. The pleasure was too great. It exploded within her, like fireworks erupting brilliantly across the night sky. Dazzling and brilliant and filled with color.
As the violence of her spend subsided, leaving her with a sated glow, a new determination rose within her. He kissed his way back up her body, but when he settled himself between her legs, she stopped him with a staying palm on his shoulder.
“No,” she said.
