Chapter Twenty Five
Olivia
I take a final bite of dessert and set my fork down with a sigh. The budino was rich and delicious and just right. My shoulders feel loose. The candle throws a small gold circle on the table, and inside it, there’s just us and the soft scrape of silver against china as Roberto sets his fork down too.
“Full?” he asks.
“So full,” I say. “In every sense.” I lean back and press a hand to my stomach. “If Bianca made this, I’m writing her a thank-you note.”
He smiles fondly. “She’d love that.”
It makes me go all soft and gooey inside that he has a soft spot for her. How could someone as intense and intimidating as Roberto feel so much for his family? Butterflies dance in my stomach as I watch him.
The man who can command a boardroom, work a crowded room with charm and ease, and intimidate a salesperson who was getting a little too flirty, is the same man who can make me feel what I’ve never felt for another man before.Can make me feel cherished and used—in the best way possible. Have me begging for more, then hold me and comfort me afterward.
Then sit across from me and have a romantic and intimate dinner.
I marvel at all the different sides of the man in front of me.
He watches me as well, and the impulse to fill the space with nervous chatter flickers and dies; the quiet feels right. Heat curls low in my stomach at the heated look in his eye.
He pushes back from the table and rises, smoothing a palm down his shirt. “Dance with me,” he says, hand extended. The words are simple, but the little tingles under my skin start up again. I slide my fingers into his, and the heat of his skin shoots straight through me.
He draws me in slowly, one hand at my waist, the other still holding mine. We fall into step to the soft music just like we did in the shop, only now there’s no shop, no seamstress, no reason to pretend we don’t want this.
My body remembers the way to him. I step; he guides. I breathe; he tightens his fingers, and I feel it everywhere.
“Perfect,” he murmurs, close to my ear. His breath warms my skin. His palm spans my back, thumb settling in a spot he must know is sensitive because my knees loosen a fraction. I sway into him, not quite touching, a narrow inch between us that feels electric. He doesn’t close it. He makesme want to ask.
“Roberto.” His name comes out soft. My free hand finds his shoulder, then the side of his neck. He’s shaved, but there’s the faintest rasp under my fingertips. His eyes drop to my mouth and climb back to my eyes.
He turns us in a slow circle. The room blurs to candlelight and glass. He keeps me right where he wants me, but not quite where I want to be. His restraint winds me tighter than if he’d pressed me to the wall and ravaged me.
When he finally pulls me that last inch closer, our bodies line up, and my breath catches. His mouth doesn’t touch me, but his voice does. “I’ve wanted this all night.”
Heat skates down my spine.
“Me too,” I whisper, and it feels like stepping off a ledge I was already falling from. His hand tightens at my waist, and I tip my face up the smallest degree, like my body is drawn to his.
He doesn’t rush. He never does. He draws our joined hands lower, anchors them near my hip, and the shift brings his chest against mine. The contact is nothing and everything. My heartbeat stutters, then syncs to the slow measure of the song and the slower measure of his breath.
“Olivia,” he says, barely making a sound, like he’s tasting it. I feel it right where his thumb strokes my back, in the spot low in my stomach that’s been a live wire since I walked through the door downstairs and found him standing, handsome and irresistible in his tux. I curl my fingers onto the back of his neck, and he exhales through his nose, like he’s keeping careful control.
I find myself wanting to test it, push him and see what happens.
The music swells and he turns me, guiding me backward a step, then forward, keeping me tucked close. My skirt brushes his shins; his belt grazes my abdomen; the world narrows to points of touch. I think about the first time he said ‘don’t move’ and how easily I obeyed. Now I move because he asks without words, and it’s worse—better—because I want to.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, even as his mouth lowers to hover a breath from mine.
I could. I don’t. I angle up, closing that last inch he held onto. Our mouths meet, soft, then not soft at all—still careful, but with heat underneath that promises what careful will turn into if we let it. His hand slides to the small of my back and holds me there, exactly where he wants me, exactly where I want to be.
His mouth takes mine like we’ve both run out of patience. The slide of his lips on mine makes my knees go weak. He deepens the kiss, and heat floods my body so fast it makes me dizzy. I fist my hand in his shirt to keep myself upright, and he answers by fitting me tighter to him, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, no space left between us.
He kisses like he does everything else, with focus and control. His tongue strokes mine, and a sound escapes me, low and helpless. The hand at my back anchors me; the other frames my jaw, thumb angling me exactly how he wants. I let him, greedy for the way he takes and gives in thesame breath.
“Olivia,” he murmurs against my mouth, and the rumble of it goes straight through me. I chase him when he pulls back a fraction, catch his lower lip between my teeth, and he inhales sharply through his nose, a tight sound that tells me I’ve found a wire. His restraint frays. He presses me back two steps until the edge of the table grazes my hips. Silver rattles; a candle flickers. We don’t care.
His mouth leaves mine to trace my jaw, my cheek, then lower. He doesn’t mark me, but he wants to. I want him to. He opens his mouth over my pulse and holds there just long enough to make me shake. My fingers slide into his hair and hold, not to push but to anchor myself.
