My body reacted instantly.
My mouth parted. My back arched, pushing my breasts up, as if he was caressing my hard and aching nipples. My thighs craved to open, my legs to wrap around his powerful hips. My body raced, but my hands moved slowly, as if I were unwrapping a present, removing the shirt from his shoulders, flinging the expensive fabric to the floor, right over mine. With trembling hands, I unbuttoned his slacks and pushed them down, hooking my fingers in his briefs, undressing him all at once. He kicked his socks off.
Getting to his feet, he stood before me naked.
It should have been criminal to cover such a physique with a worthless custom-made suit, but I appreciated that it existed,because if he walked around naked, I would commit a crime if another woman tried to step close to my territory.
Yeah, I had made a claim on Rocco Fausti, just as he had made a claim on me.
Getting to my feet, I circled him, my finger tracing all of his lines greedily, just as his eyes had inhaled mine in the same way. His eyes followed my trajectory, until I ran a finger up and down his back.
This proved something to me.
He already trusted me. That was why he had entrusted me with what was left of his heart. The pendant dangled between my breasts.
I reached up and stroked one end of his shoulder to the next, making a zigzag pattern as I followed all his lines. And when I stood in front of him, the slash across his chest red and angry in the light, I hid the heavy sigh that came from the depths of my chest. But I’d decided to see it differently. Just as I had said to him the night before, she had opened his chest and freed his heart. I had been going straight for it while his was coming straight for me.
Our hearts had collided on this island.
His hands were balled into fists, like that was where his power resided—the only thing keeping him from touching me. But he was allowing me this. A chance to see him naked and vulnerable. He was allowing me to become his judge and jury.
“Mio,” I whispered, and he made a strangled noise in his chest. “You belong to me, Rocco Fausti. Allmine.”
I said the words, just in case he didn’t feel my claim down in the marrow of his bones, like I felt his inside of me. But I knew he needed this. I knew he needed me to claim him this way.
“There’s not a damn thing lacking about you, Rocco Fausti. You’re the entire world.Myentire world.” I hit my chest like he had when he repeated his family’s motto, then I repeated it.“La mia parola è buona come il mio sangue. Myword is as good as my blood.”
My words, the warm conviction behind them, were stirring something deep inside of him, drawing him closer and closer to me, even though he hadn’t moved. A feral smell, like an animal marking his territory, cut through our combined scents as if it was made of cotton, and the wildness of the scent he was throwing off was made of sharpened steel. His cock, straining against taut skin, was leaking his seed, my words like a fist around it.
His cock was as bold and beautiful as he was, but only a part of him, a part that made himhim, that completed his picture, that made him whole.
Like I’d said.
He lackednothing.
Forcing myself away from him, I slipped back in bed, moving the cover over.
An invite—dated for the rest of our lives.
“Rocco,” I whispered.
His eyes slowly opened to mine, and a strike of fear lanced through me at the look I found. It was as if all his desire had been trapped in the black circles around his irises, and it was bleeding out, forcing the green to surrender to an all-consuming passion. I started to tremble, but it didn’t stop him from stalking toward me, his eyes not missing the way I’d moved back the cover to invite him in my bed.
He stopped at the mattress, though, and moving my body like it was nothing but a rag doll in a monster’s grip, he situated me like he wanted me. He leaned over me, taking my mouth in a breath-stealing kiss, until he sensed I was having trouble breathing and moved down my face to my neck, to lick between my breasts, before he took my nipple in his mouth and sucked.
It felt like a zap went straight from my nipple to my uterus. It tightened. And I knew the snap of it would send me spiraling. It happened again when he lavished the other one with the same attention.
I had grown a throbbing pulse between my legs.
He dropped to his knees, and after licking my thighs, theequivalent of flinging me inside of a whirlwind made of dopamine, he ordered me to look at him.
“I will go slow,” he said, caressing between my legs, and I closed my eyes again, moaning. “Look at me,Amora,” he ordered once more.
My eyes fluttered open, like a newly developed butterfly would open its wings. When our eyes connected, he groaned and said in a rough voice, “You are my heart’s long-lost craving—a craving that starved me down to the marrow. You are here now, and a king’s table could not compare. And I will not allow a second with you to go unappreciated.” He set his face between my thighs and started to devour me.
My hips pulsed to meet his tongue as a soft gasp seemed to echo throughout the room. I had no idea pleasure this consuming existed. Climbing the stairs to his heavenlycastelloover the sea had nothing on how high he was bringing my body. Every cell was flooded with a mind-numbing drug that tore through my system and pushed me outside of myself. I was a being made of only feelings—and he was touching every one of them with his mouth, eliciting a version of me who had only existed in this moment. My hands reached out, fisting the sheets, as his tongue forced my hips to pulse up, causing my breasts to jiggle.
It felt so good, I almost wanted to cry.
