Page 7 of Accidental Alliance

Her chin lifts. Defiant little thing. “Why?”

Heat flares low in my gut.

I close the distance between us in two strides instead of answering her question, my hand fitting around her throat to use to back her against the wall behind her next to the windows.

We’re close enough now that her perfume fills my lungs. It’s light and floral with an undercurrent of warmth like cloves.

My hand flexes, just once, as I fight the urge to lean down and tease her mouth with my teeth.

Lust is simple.

It is controllable, a bodily need that comes and goes like bad weather.

What I feel when I look at Isabella is something else entirely, something more corrosive.

It lingers, festers, makes me restless in my own skin no matter what I do to purge myself of it.

“Careful,” I murmur again. My hand rises from her throat to brush a stray lock of chestnut hair behind her ear. My fingers linger there, tracing the delicate shell of her ear. “A girl like you shouldn’t play with men like me.”

Her breath catches, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she leans into the touch. “And what kind of man are you tonight, Elio Conti?”

The kind who is about to break every rule drilled into him since he could hold a gun, I want to say.

Instead, I cup her face and tilt her head to the side.

My lips brush along the spot just below her ear, relishing in the shiver that rolls through her body from the contact. “The kind who’s going to fuck you until you forget why you ever thought this was a bad idea.”

She laughs softly.

Her hands come up to fist in my shirt, pulling me closer. “Then stop talking and do it.”

I can never deny her anything.

My mouth crashes down onto hers.

2

ELIO

Her lips are soft, yielding in a way that makes my blood roar.

She is soft in the way I knew she would be and still, somehow better than anything I imagined, giving in to me just enough to make the blood rushing through my ears suddenly surge straight down to my cock, coaxing something primitive inside me to lift its head and bare its teeth.

She tastes like the wine from dinner and something sweeter, something uniquely belonging to Isabella.

A taste I could spend a lifetime chasing and still never have enough of. The realization hits me so hard, it draws a low groan from deep in my chest, rough and involuntary.

I deepen the kiss before the thought can settle and caution can drag me backward and remind me what a terrible idea it is to give in like this.

My free hand slides to the small of her back. The other remains locked around her face.

My palm spreads over her spine and I pull her flush against me, my cock giving a hard jerk the moment her body fits against mine.

Christ.

The contact is brutal in its perfection.

Her slim curves mold against my broader frame, obliterating every ounce of self-control and reminding me of every sleepless night I’ve spent thinking about what it would feel like to have this exact collision.