Long fingers clasped her cheek with such gentle reverence that all the longing she’d fought flooded back into her. “Tell me why you want to leave.”
“I don’t want to let one arrogant asshole’s rejection ruin my trip.”
He laughed, a deep, hard sound that enveloped her. And then he hissed in pain. The cut in his lower lip had split again, and a drop of blood appeared.
She pressed the pad of her thumb to stanch it. He flinched but held still. “I didn’t mean to hurt you more,” she whispered, a languid heat spreading through her.
He clasped her wrist and pressed his face into her palm. His body caged hers against the desk without quite touching. “I like all the things you inflict on me,bella. Laughter, hurt, jealousy… They remind me that I’m alive.” He nuzzled into the side of her face. His chest rose and fell, the tension in his body setting hers alight. “You’ve no idea how much I loathe myself for hurting you.”
The soft press of his lips at her temple cracked open her heart with such violence that Sam couldn’t breathe. Word by word, kiss by kiss, he was stealing away parts of her, and she didn’t know how to keep herself intact anymore.
“Then, don’t,” she whispered, tucking her chin into the crook of his elbow. He smelled of sweat and blood and whiskey, and she inhaled him as if he were air. Fingers around his forearm, she clung to him, loving the fierce heat of his body.
“I haven’t felt anything for so long… With you, it is futile to resist.” His soft words were breathed into her skin, as if he were releasing the shackles around himself. He tilted her chin up. “Tell me what hurt you so much.”
“You looked at me as if I was…broken. As if my history makes me damaged. Even Matteo behaved better.”
He was shaking his head, regret making his face even more severe. “Ahh…you know just how to hurt me.”
Sam shook her head. “I—”
Thumb notching into her chin, he cut her off. “Look at me, Sameera. Listen to me.” His warm breath feathered over her face. “In my eyes, you’re perfection. From the moment you walked in, I wished you were mine. I burn with jealousy when you talk of him with such fondness. How I reacted…it’s my weakness,bella. Not you.”
His hands cradled her head, and his mouth hovered an inch over her mouth, and Sam thought she might be drowning but she didn’t care. “I want you so much, Sam, it’s an ache in my body. Even the bruises won’t kill it. But the thing is…” he licked her lower lip, and a hot poker of sensation hit her “… I can’t offer anything beyond a few weeks. No future, no relationship. This would be an affair to work you out of my system. For some goddamned reason, you’re a novelty. But the fascination will wear off.”
“How does your brutal honesty make you hotter?” she said, chasing his lips. She licked his lower lip, tasted the blood and then nipped him right where the lip was split.
He shuddered, jerked her toward him until she wrapped her arms around his neck and every inch of her was plastered to him. “All I have to give you is pleasure. But you’re the kind of girl—”
Sam buried her face in the hollow at his throat and scraped her teeth over his pulse. “I’m the kind of woman who has filthy dreams about you, Alessandro. The kind that wanted you from the first moment, even though I came here for Mateo. The kind of woman who touches herself thinking of you. The kind of woman who survived three surgeries as a teenager and wants to taste life. If you hated hurting me, then make it better. Make me feel good.”
“Bene.” He licked the shell of her ear, and Sam shivered. Then his mouth went south, trailing warm, wet kisses across her neck, her shoulders, the swell of her breasts.
She swept her hands over him, the sharp jut of his shoulders, the warm, taut skin of his chest, the hard muscles beneath. That she could touch him with such abandon made her breath falter. She snuck her fingers under his shirt, scoring his abdomen with her nails, then trailed them lower.
“No.” His forbidding tone made her belly roll. “My control is so thin,tesoro. And my need to be inside you…too high.”
“Yes.”
Gripping her wrists with one hand, he pushed them above her head with a growl that made dampness gush at her sex. “I want to make it up to you. I want you to forget the men you were dancing with, the ones you flirted with. I want you screaming my name.”
Sam twisted, trying to throw off his hold. She felt a soft breeze on her bare breasts before she heard the hiss of the zipper on her dress. Her nipples instantly puckered, brazenly begging.
“Perfection,” he whispered, gray eyes heavy with desire.
He watched her as he cupped them. As he swirled mindless circles around her nipples. As he rubbed the aching buds with his fingers. As he played with her relentlessly until her spine was bowing toward him. As he bent his head and flicked at one aching bud and then…feasted on her.
It was greedy and dirty and wet, and she was bent over his arm as he licked and nipped and drew her into the wet cavern of his mouth. Need pooled low, making her thong damp.
She moaned in protest when he released her, afraid he was abandoning her again. Until firm fingers clasped her calves.
Heart fluttering behind her rib cage like a trapped bird, Sam looked down.
He was kneeling between her thighs, his face tilted up. Elegant hands pulled her thighs until her ass was half hanging off the desk. And then for long, breathtaking moments he watched her—from her hair spilling over her bare shoulders, her knotted nipples wet from his mouth, the diamond glinting at her belly button, to her hips where her dress pooled.
His nostrils flared, and there was a harsh, saturnine quality to his expression that made the hunger in his eyes seem devouring. “I wish you could see yourself now. As I see you, Sameera. You’d never doubt what I think of you, then.” The gravelly edge of his voice at the end said something she couldn’t catch. “Spread your thighs.”
“What?” Heat crawled up her bare chest, up her neck until it crested in her cheeks.
