‘Let’s see then.’
Leo positioned himself. Notched at the centre of her, entering slowly as she moved underneath him, then with one swift thrust, buried himself deep. The pleasure of it so fast and sharp it was as if the world exploded in a shower of stars. Simone’s hands gripped his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his flesh as he began to thrust. Hard, uncompromising, yet she was there with him stroke for stroke, moving her hips in time to his relentless rhythm. There was just her and him, the soft bed and sensation. He was a captive of it. Of her. Pumping his hips and driving them both on to their ultimate pleasure. He ground into her as she pressed up into him. Both of them working as one to chase each other up to a cliff edge hanging just out of reach. Then, Simone stiffened and cried out. Her body spasming around him. That’s all it took to throw him over the edge too. Falling and spinning into an abyss that seemed to have no end.
Instead, it felt more like a beginning.
Simone woke to soft light filtering through the windows of the room. The heat of a body at her back. The weight of an arm round her waist. She shut her eyes again, relishing the sensation, letting the memories flood back to a night where she’d felt truly wanted. In a way, she realised now, that she’d never experienced before. Desire washed over her like a rush of hot water. Leo had made love to her for most of the night with a ferocity and need like he was on a mission to imprint himself onto her. If he’d wanted to ruin her for anyone else, she was pretty sure he had but she didn’t know why that left her both elated and untroubled. In the end, she’d been reduced to a begging mess of sensation, before they’d both crashed into a dreamless sleep.
She wasn’t sorry about any of it, although she couldn’t help wondering… Had he not seen her dancing with Rocco, would it have been the same? Did Leo do it just because he really wanted her, or, like Jace, because he felt he had something to prove?
Leo’s hand flexed over her belly and pulled her close. Hard against him, her back to his chest.
‘I can hear you thinking,’ he murmured into her hair. His voice was rough with sleep. ‘If you can string together any thoughts this early in the morning, I must not have done my job well enough last night.’
And there it was, like walking from central heating into a frigid winter’s wind. Because that’s what this was, a job. Did Leo believe he’d done his job well? Was he congratulating himself?
‘Hey, hey,’ he said, releasing his hold on her and easing her onto her back. He propped himself onto his elbow and looked down at her, his eyebrows raised. ‘Any regrets?’
No regrets for the passion. It wasn’t like she was an innocent girl. She was an adult, making her own choices. Her regrets were for the fears.
‘Why would you say that?’ she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Your whole body was tense and when you worry you have this little crease…’ he held out his finger and stroked it gently between her eyebrows, ‘…right here.’
Of all the things he could have said, this was the evidence he was trying to understand her. It was an insignificant thing about her and yet he’d still noticed it.
Her mother’s voice immediately rang through her head.Stop frowning, Simone. You don’t want lines that injectables won’t take away. Perhaps we should end that line before it really begins?
She’d tried to book Simone an appointment with her own plastic surgeon the next day.
Simone had been eighteen.
More power to anyone to whom that appealed. Simone didn’t judge. It was every woman’s right to feel good about themselves, however they wanted to. But at a time when she was still trying to find herself, growing into her gawky limbs and foreign curves, it had made her feel insecure about everything. It had taken another few years for her to stop caring, once she’d realised that how she looked and presented herself wouldn’t make anyone love her any more than they were ever going to. And love could be bought, anyhow.
It was all meaningless.
‘No regrets,’ she said.
‘Then what’s troubling you?’
‘Do you really care?’
The words simply blurted from her mouth, all too needy. Yet she was lying naked here, both physically and emotionally, and part of her, the one that still carried her wounds, needed to know.
Leo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Why would you even think to ask that question? Of course I care.’
Simone believed him. Now, questions churned inside her. So many. Leo appeared to be an open book because there’d been so much written about him. But he’d mastered the art of disclosing only what was on the surface, whilst making people believe he’d let them into a deeper part of his soul. She saw it now. Whilst she couldn’t say why, she wanted to unlock that part of him that he held on to so tightly. She asked the first thing that came into her head.
‘Why the rivalry with the Silvestri family?’
It was Leo’s turn to frown. She reached up her own hand and stroked at the line with her forefinger, like he’d done to her. His eyes drifted shut for a moment, then he rolled over onto his back, carrying her with him. She lay, her head on his chest, palm splayed on one of his pectoral muscles dusted with dark hair, as he held her tight. Like he was a man lost at sea, holding onto her as a life preserver.
‘That’s a long story.’
‘We have late checkout.’
He chuckled but there was nothing happy about the sound.
‘We do.’ Leo’s chest expanded as he took in a deep breath, blew it out. His body tensed.
