“I don’t understand why you are fighting this. It’s only sex. Unless you’re afraid of catching feelings?” He arches a brow as he drinks greedily from his tumbler.
“Catching a disease is more my concern.”
“Ouch.” He plants a hand over his chest. “You wound me.” In an abrupt move, he sits up and slides down the couch until he’s much closer. On instinct, I draw my knees up, and now he has a perfect view of my pristine white lace panties.
His nostrils flare, and his pupils are so dark they’re almost black. “You know I’m clean, and it’s been over a month since I’ve been with a woman.” Knocking back the rest of his whisky—like the heathen he is—he sets his empty glass down on the table and bravely places his hand on my bare leg. Heat from his palm seeps into my skin, warming me all over. “I don’t know why you’re resisting. I want you. You want me.”
“I don’t evenlikeyou,” I coolly retort before I take another couple sips of my drink.
He trails the tip of his finger up and down my leg, eliciting a rake of fiery tingles all over my skin. “Lie to yourself all you want, but you’re not fooling anyone, especially me.” His palm flattens out on my leg as he starts inching it upward. Liquid lust settles in my core as he fixes me with a wicked look full of intent. His intense gaze and the feel of his strong hand moving up my leg is like being sucker-punched in the ovaries, and I’m struggling to hold on to my resolve. “That one time we shared was incredible,” he adds as his hand rounds my knee and treks higher. I swallow over a sudden ball of nerves clogging my throat, hating how my chest heaves and butterflies swoop into my belly in wild anticipation. “I couldn’t get you out of my head for months. I even went back to the airport in Maine to try to get a lead on you, but there was no trace.”
There wouldn’t be. My team is good. They know how to cover my tracks. My eyes widen, and a gasp leaves my lips as his fingers breach the hem of my nightgown and slide along the inside of my thigh. My core pulses with abject need, and my nipples harden, clearly visible against the flimsy silk.
Fire flares in his eyes as they lower to my heaving chest. “Truth be told, I have thought about you a lot since the day we met.” His eyes pierce mine in place as his hand briefly stalls on my inner thigh. “No woman has ever gotten under my skin until you.”
I want to believe him, but he’s too smooth. His seduction tactics are slick in the extreme. He’s a man. They’re programmed to want sex. The large bulge in his pants is testament to that. I’m his wife, and he wants sex with me. He knows there are boundaries, but he’ll do anything, say anything, to get me to give in.
Massimo already unsettles me, and I can’t give him this power over me.
He needs to understand I’m in control.
“Stop,” I say when his fingers brush against the front of my panties. “I don’t want this,” I lie because I haven’t been this turned on in a long time.
True to his word, he removes his hand from under my nightgown, and begrudging admiration sweeps through me. “We need to consummate our marriage,mia amata,” he says, reaching in to cup my cheek. “It is the way of these things.”
“No one will know but us,” I counter, wrapping my fingers around his wrist and pulling it away from my face. I can’t have him touching me, even if it’s apparently innocent, because his touch does weird things to my body and confuses my brain.
“We are stuck with one another now, Catarina. We might as well enjoy it.” He inches a little closer, putting his face all up in mine. “I will make it good for you, I promise.” Leaning in, he kisses the corner of my mouth.
I straighten up, fighting a losing inner battle. “I know what you are doing. These seduction tactics might work on other women, but they won’t work on me.”
He chuckles. “Sweetheart, I have never had to try this hard with any woman. Usually, all it takes is one look, and they’re beating a path to my door.”
“Ugh.” I shove at his shoulders, pushing him away. “That only makes me more determined to hold out.”
He exhales heavily, looking slightly defeated, but it could be tiredness forcing him to back down. It’s after three a.m., and we partied hard with our guests. “Why fight me on this? We already agreed.”
“We agreed to three times a week,” I remind him, tucking my legs in snugly against my chest and wrapping my arm around them. “There is nothing in the contract that says we have to fuck on our wedding night.”
“That was short-sighted on my part, but I don’t get the big deal. What does it matter if we fuck now or two nights from now?”
Perhaps it’s time I tried a different approach. Wetting my dry lips, I decide to make myself a little vulnerable in the hope he’ll respond to it and back off. The truth is, he is right on a lot of scores.
I do want him.
I have agreed to sex as part of our arrangement, and sex has always been one of my go-to strategies when I need to control a man.
It would be easy to lure Massimo in and have him exactly where I want him.
But he’s no ordinary man.
There is a combustible chemistry between us that can only lead to trouble.
And he’s the brother of the man who destroyed my innocence and set me on this path.
Although it helps that Massimo looks nothing like Carlo, I don’t know how I will react if I let him touch me more intimately. It wasn’t a factor in our previous encounter because I didn’t know who he was. But I know now, and I’m not sure I can handle it.
Will it conjure long-hidden memories to the surface?
