My dog too. She peeked out of her tent, watching him, her tail wagging. Traitor.
“I need sleep,” he said in Italian.
Three simple words that made my heart flutter. Because he might as well have said, “I trust you.” He slept here when he was wounded too. In our world, that was even bigger than “I love you.”
He stood in front of me, naked, waiting. What was he waiting for? He walked right in without knocking, and he wanted, what? Permission to slip in beside me? Or did he want me to ogle him naked? Because I was. Shamelessly. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
The room was dim from the blackout curtains, but I could see scars on his body. His were scattered, where mine were concentrated to my shoulders and back, but he had enough that I’d be able to trace, count, and memorize each one. Probably not for the first time.
How lucky was I to discover this man for the first time more than once?
“A woman’s bed is like her kitchen,” he said in Italian. “A man tries to take a bite before she’s ready to share, she has every right to beat the fuck out of him.”
“Get me a slipper, will you?” I smiled.
He didn’t.
The joke was on me because I couldn’t control the beats of my heart. Or how my stomach dipped and never came up. Or how sweaty my palms felt, even though they were dry.
Having him this close, but not touching him, was like having the antidote to my incurable disease behind an unbreakable glass.
On another deep, trembling breath, I moved the blankets back until sheets showed like bone under flesh. He slipped in beside me and pulled me so close that I could hardly breathe. When he looked down at me and I looked up at him, our response to each other seemed so natural, but so fucking breath-stealing.
Our lips met. Our hands explored. Even my feet rubbed against his legs and feet in long, soft strokes. My body’s way of trying to get deeply entangled with his. As close as we were, I needed to be much closer. I needed to feel him inside of me. So deep inside that he would always be protected from another fire in my mind.
Maybe the deep kisses and light touches became too much for him, because he rose up on his knees and tore my silk pajamas off. The action was so violent compared to where we had just been. A chill stole over my body as the cool air in the room caressed my overheated skin.
He straddled me on the bed, one powerful leg on each side of me, trapping me. His gaze connected with mine before he took in my naked body beneath him. I wanted to squirm, to touch, but I kept still, even though my heart raced and was louder than the fan whirring in the background.
“Every inch of you,” he said in Italian, his eyes stilling on mine, “belongs to me.”
The wordsevery inch of you belongs to me, toowere on the tip of my tongue. But I didn’t have time to say them. I became breathless as his mouth came against mine, and he kissed me so deeply that it felt like he was trying to steal the soul from my body.
I was completely lost to this kiss, to him—the entire world could be on fire, and I’d refuse to die any other way than in his arms.
I almost gasped when he tore his mouth from mine. Maybe I did. Because even though his lips moved, they didn’t stop working. They moved from my mouth to my chest, his tongue circling my nipples before his teeth grazed them. A soft whimpering sound came from my mouth.
Goosebumps puckered my skin, but I felt hot. Feverish. Every inch of me, all that was his, trembled for him.
His erection skimmed my skin as he moved even lower, his mouth leaving a wet trail as he sucked and licked and bit. Past my navel, he stopped and looked up at me.
Our eyes seemed to communicate silently, and a heavy breath left my mouth as he eased my thighs apart and his tongue started to work magic.
Yeah. Magic.
What he was doing was making me thoughtless, mindless, shameless.
My hands gripped the sheets, my back arched, and I pushed closer to his mouth as I made noises that seemed to echo softly from my chest, when on the inside, my entire system raced toward the high.
He was devouring me like he’d been starving, and suddenly he was offered his favorite food—and I was the juiciest peach he’d ever tasted.
Compared to the soft noises coming from my mouth, the orgasm that ripped through me was violent, almost deadly, because my heart stopped, my head went fuzzy, and I couldn’t breathe.
He was out to kill me.
He was on me again before I could recover. Opening my thighs even further apart, he buried himself so deep inside of me, a garbled noise I couldn’t control escaped my mouth. He was fucking me like a wild animal. A wild animal that only needed this. Just this.
My hands went to his ass, my nails sinking in, urging him to split me open, to take everything inside of me for his own.
