My breath stutters, catching painfully in my throat. “Untie me.”
“Eager to make another futile run for it?” he croons mockingly in my ear. “Let me give you the alternative. Stay right here, where it’s nice and warm.”
“Said the spider to the fly,” I attempt to snap, but it comes out more like a rusty whisper dropped into a rustier bucket.
“Hmm. I already have you tiedin my web.” His free hand circles my unbound wrist. “Say the word,cara mia, and I’ll make surrender feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”
I barely manage to swallow a moan and kick myself again for my weakening resolve as the air thickens instantly, the room going quiet in that charged, electric way it only ever does when Giovanni is like this, fully awake, fully present, fully aware of exactly what my body is doing in response to his.
“Giovanni,” I whisper, my voice already compromised, the protest I’m furiously yanking at remaining irritatingly elusive. “This is?—”
“Yes,” he replies softly. “You feel it too.”
“Not what I was going to say,” I protest, again so feebly I wonder why I’m bothering. I close my eyes, because this is crueland unfair and my own body is betraying me at precisely the worst possible moment.
“You’re right. I should untie you,” he murmurs thoughtfully, his lips brushing my hair as though he’s genuinely considering it.
My pulse jumps violently.
“But then I wouldn’t enjoy how tense you are right now. How valiantly you fight everything you’re feeling without stopping to examine if it might be just what you need. What we both need to put all this nonsense in perspective.”
I swallow. “Fuck you.”
His mouth curves against my hair in a slow, knowing smile.
“There’s the spirit,” he replies lightly, but his voice is rough as sandpaper. “But I think I prefer,fuck me, please, Gio.”
I twist in his arms until I’m half on my back, half trapped against his side, our bound wrists stretched awkwardly between us, my breath coming shallow and fast.
His gaze drops to my mouth. Then my throat.
Then my pebble-tipped breasts beneath his black T-shirt. Then back to my eyes. The look there makes my toes curl in helpless anticipation.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
“No,cara mia, we both know you don’t. No matter how much you try to. Your delightful body point-blank refuses, and I’m guessing your mind is very exercised with the amount of resistance you’re attempting to exert?”
“Is this a joke to you?”
“After everything I’ve told you, what do you think, my clevermugghieri?”
I’m struggling for a rebuttal that simply refuses to come when he bends, slowly, inexorably, displaying my utter lack of willpower to stop him, and he kisses me.
It starts as a single butterfly-soft brush of his lips over mine. And then it immediately turns feral.
His fingers tunnel into my hair and his mouth slants over mine, a man reclaiming something he never accepted losing.
My lips part with a sound I don’t recognise as mine, and suddenly he’s everywhere, his mouth devouring mine, his tongue stroking deep, his teeth catching my lower lip in a way that makes my whole body arch into him without permission.
My bound hand clenches helplessly between us as his free hand slides up my thigh, under the hem of the T-shirt, palm hot, fingers sure and ruthless in their precision.
“Oh God,” I gasp, the words breaking loose from my throat.
He swallows the sound.
“You see how futile this is for you? You ran,” he murmurs against my mouth. “And you still come undone for me like this.”
“Fuck you,” I pant again, because I don’t have anything else that isn’t a moan.
