Читать книгу A Deal To Carry The Italian's Heir / Christmas Contract For His Cinderella - Jane Porter - Страница 17

LEO JUST STARED, his mind filled up with images of their naked limbs tangled, slick and moving together. The woman he’d wanted forever, finally within his reach.

He shook his head, as if he could simply dislodge those images. “You’ve had a very emotional evening.” He ran the pad of his forefinger gently over the dark shadows under her eyes. Amazed by her resilience and the strength of her resolve. Aroused by the boldness of her gaze. “On top of a manic two weeks. On top of a stressful last decade.”

“Leo—”

“Tomorrow, you’ll regret it. Tomorrow, you’ll panic that we’ve blurred the lines. I will not take advantage of a weak moment.”

She pulled back, a flare of anger in her eyes. “Ah...this is you being all honorable and letting me down gently, isn’t it? I’m a big girl, Leo. I can take it.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Just say you’re not interested in sleeping with me. Especially after learning that I’m not as rational and robotically perfect as you thought I was,” she said, a flash of self-doubt in her eyes.

“Maledizione! You think I could want you less because you stuck to your guns in the face of emotional blackmail from the one person who should be protecting you from that bully Mario? You think years of want goes away in a single evening? If only it were that easy, bella.”

Silence descended on them, fraught with the energy of an attraction that was all out in the open now. She licked her lips, the pulse at her neck drumming away madly. “I believe you. Now will you do me the courtesy of taking me at my word?”

“I always have.”

“Good. I feel as if the fog I’ve been living in is finally lifting. I’m sick of living afraid, always calculating risks, always worried about the outcome. I hate that I let Mario win all these years. I hate that I’ve used him as an excuse to give up so many things that give me joy, pleasure, excitement.”

But no more.

“I want to leave all thoughts of ovulation kits and basal temperatures and IVF out of this. I want to conceive our child doing what I desperately want.”

Her husky demand carried over the damp air currents in the greenhouse, the naked want in it echoing around them. And Leo knew his reasoning capability was crumbling to dust. That in the face of her bold demand and perfectly outlined reasons and the heat of their kiss singing through his veins, he was going to give in. Still, he looked for reasons to make sure this was exactly what she wanted.

“You can’t do this because you’re angry with him.”

“Let me come closer.”

Neha kicked at his feet and he spread his legs apart in response and she moved into the gap, closer and closer until her thighs grazed his hard thighs and the tip of her breasts were a mere inch away from his chest and the deepening scent of his skin filled her nostrils.

She moved her fingers from his chest—his racing heart gave her courage—up the corded column of his neck, to the raw stubble already coming in at his jaw, winding around his neck until her nails were sinking into the rough hair at his neck, scraping at his scalp. Digging for purchase. Determined to stay.

She bent closer, her mouth inching toward his. His hands stayed on her shoulders, pressing lightly, stopping her from covering that last bit of distance between them.

“If you think this is some twisted way to get back at Mario or a petty rebellion against my mum, you’ve got it all wrong.” She shook his hands off her shoulders and pressed up snug against him. Heat and hardness, he was a perfect fit for her, and she shuddered at how good it felt. “I had a huge crush on that hot twenty-year-old who walked into my life that day. In a parallel universe, I grabbed that boy, and planted a kiss on him that sent him to his knees. If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be to go after that guy.”

She wiggled against him, trying to get closer, and he cursed softly. She felt his arousal against her belly, incontrovertible proof that sent shivers up and down her spine. Her lips close to his, she licked at the corner of his mouth. “This is all about me and you, Leo. I want this for no other reason than I need to desperately know how it will feel to have you inside me.”

“Let me look at you, then, cara mia.”

Neha pulled back from him, her heart still racing. Her body already mourning the loss of warmth from his. “What?”

“That damp T-shirt has been tormenting me ever since I walked in.” Wicked light filled his eyes—a flash of that Leo he must have been before he’d had to bear the burden of the Brunetti legacy. “I should very much like to see you properly.”

“You mean...here?”

“Sì.” Unholy amusement curved his mouth. “You said tonight. I say here. Now.” He looked around the greenhouse, that hardness that was an intrinsic part of him etched on his features again. Lost to her in those few seconds. “This ghastly place needs new memories, anyway. I can think of nothing better than walking in here a few years from now and picturing you, all damp and naked and waiting for me.”

That glitter in his eyes at his imagined image of her was incredibly sexy. “But—”

“Second thoughts, cara?”

Neha shivered at the blatant hunger written over his features. At the dawning resolve in his eyes. At the unspoken challenge in every pore of his body. It wasn’t enough that she’d thrown herself at him, was it? He would strip her bare, of clothes and defenses, until there was not even a sliver of doubt that she’d walked into this with every sense alert, every cell desperate for it.

Leonardo Brunetti wasn’t a man who would give anything of himself without demanding everything in return.

“I’m more than ready to persuade you, like you did me. Unless you prefer the dark and a bed, then, we will walk back to my—”

Neha tugged the hem of her T-shirt up and over her head in a smooth movement that surprised the heck out of even her. The appearance of the lacy baby-pink bra and how it cupped her breasts, the way his eyes drank her in, pushed away the hesitation that came with baring her body to a man after a long time. To the man she’d always be attracted to on so many levels.

“I forgot there’s a reason you’ve held my interest for so many years, despite my every effort to suffocate it, sì? Dio en cielo, you’re sexy and bold and you will be the death of me, cara.”

Every word out of his mouth bucked up Neha a little more.

She didn’t wait for another order. In for a penny, in for a pound. Not that her heart wasn’t beating at a pace that might send it careening out of her chest. But Neha had never lacked for guts once she’d set her mind on a goal. Never lacked the gumption to see things through thoroughly.

While the media regularly published articles about how she’d gained weight or that her body type wasn’t currently in fashion, Neha had never let the criticism get to her. Thanks to her mum’s constant positive dialogue and praise when Neha had complained as a teenager that she was too big, everywhere, she’d developed a healthy appreciation for her body early on in her life.

Reaching her hand behind her, she undid the clasp of her bra. An expansive sigh drummed up her chest as her heavy breasts were freed from the metal underwires of her snug bra. Dark color streaked Leo’s cheeks as he watched the gentle bounce of her breasts.

Her spine straight, she threw her bra at his feet, reveling in the naked desire chasing away every other shadow from his face. The damp air currents swirling around the greenhouse kissed her nipples, making them rigid. Her skin was damp, and hot, and felt far too tight to contain her.

Holding his gaze, she kicked off her shoes. The smooth floor was surprisingly cold against her bare feet, a welcoming contrast to her overheated body. Then she peeled off her shorts and stepped out of them, standing in front of him in white lacy knickers. She’d never been more glad of her expensive lingerie habit—her one decadent indulgence.

He made a thorough inventory of her—as if he was determined to not miss an inch of everything she had bared. Her heart thudded so loudly in her ears that she could barely hear herself think.

“I’m glad you waited to take this chance with me, cara. I’m glad you decided I wasn’t worthy of you back then. That twenty-year-old, he was full of arrogance and ego and vigor. He didn’t have enough sense to appreciate—” his gaze touched her everywhere: her bare breasts, the firm and yet soft curve of her belly, her muscled thighs, the white lace barely covering her sex “—everything about you. He wouldn’t have known what to do with a bold, sensual creature like you. But me, now... I can appreciate everything you are. I can appreciate what a gift you are.”

And just like that, Neha knew she’d picked the right man to do this with. She mock frowned and licked her lips. His gaze zeroed in on the action. “Are you saying the thirty-six-year-old man has all the sense but lacks in vigor?”

A flash of white teeth against dark skin that gleamed with such masculine intent that some places in her body tightened and some loosened. He undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt and shrugged it off those broad shoulders. “Why ask questions when you’re about to try it, tesoro?”

Between one blink and the next, he was all over her, a violent storm of need and demand that pulled her in.

His mouth crushed hers, his arms were steel bands around her body and his hard thigh was lodged in between hers, almost lifting her up, rubbing exactly where she needed contact. She dug her nails into the bands of muscle in his back and rubbed herself shamelessly against the taut clench of his thighs.

“Cristo, you’re wet already,” he whispered, licking into her mouth just as eagerly as she clung to him.

The slide of his rough chest over her sensitized nipples was a sensation she’d remember to her dying breath. His hands seemed to be everywhere on her body and yet landed nowhere. Not for enough time. Not to her satisfaction.

His hands patted every inch of her back, his teeth tugging and his tongue licking at the hurt, and then moved to her chest. The graze of his callused fingers over her swollen nipples sent a needy moan rippling out of her mouth. Learning her, drawing on her body’s cues, he rolled the tight knots back and forth between his fingers, tightening the arrow of need concentrating in her lower belly.

Pleasure flew in rivulets up and down her body, there one second, fleeing to a new part of her the next, driving Neha to near madness.

When he bent her over the counter that he’d been leaning against and brought his mouth to her breast, Neha jerked at the wet warmth. He licked around the center begging for his attention in mind-numbing circles. Blew hot air, plumped and shaped and caressed the soft weight with such exquisite skill that Neha arched into his touch, begging for more and more. Again and again his clever fingers and his cleverer mouth ministered to her, noting her responses, driving her wild, waiting for the wet lash to reach the place where she needed it the most.

“I’ve had dreams of touching you like this. Cristo, I’ve brought myself to...”

He stopped when Neha jerked her head up, his words just as arousing as his caresses. “You what?” The thought of Leo taking pleasure in an image of her was like a hot cinder going off in her entire body.

Color streaked his cheeks and those thick lashes hid away his expression. She rubbed his lower lip with the pad of her thumb. “Show me,” she said, knowing that he’d always be a man of actions and not words. Never words. Even if every cell in her wanted to hear all the intimate things he’d thought of her through these years. “I’m in your hands, lover. Do whatever you want with me.”

“Sì?”

“Sì.”

“What do you want?” he asked, his hands never stopping in their exploration of her body. Cupping her buttocks, tracing the line of her spine, palming her breasts, nipping her lips. On and on and on, he kept the fever building in her.

“Your mouth, now, here,” she demanded boldly, cupping her breast and raising it up to his mouth like a prize.

His nostrils flared, primal male satisfaction in every carved angle. “Dio, only you could demand and yet somehow give, cara mia.”

She didn’t have enough brain cells left to figure out his cryptic remark. All she cared about was that he...

And then he was there. The cavern of his mouth was there, surrounding the hard tip of her nipple. Wet. Warm. Welcoming. First this breast and then its twin, until her nipples were gleaming with wetness and exquisitely sensitive even to his warm exhale.

He licked and stroked the nipple with a thousand lashes of his tongue, pressing up against it in such a cleverly wicked way that each swipe of it sent a current of need down to her sex. And then he closed his mouth around it, and he sucked in deep, drawing pulls that made her sex twitch with growing need.

“Dio, you’ll climax if I continue this,” he whispered against her neck, almost to himself. “You’re extra responsive here.” He tweaked a nipple and she felt an answering jolt in her pelvis.

Neha nodded, engulfed between ropes of sudden shyness and a desperate desire to climax.

Baring her body to a man she’d known for fifteen years hadn’t given her a moment’s doubt. But this intimate dialogue between them, the look in his eyes when he so thoroughly studied every inch of her damp skin, every rise and dip of her body, every jerk and twitch when he touched her somewhere new, as if he was cataloging it all away for future reference, this made a fragility she didn’t like fill her up. Fragility that would let fears in, that would make this moment into more than what it was right now—utterly perfect.

“Please, Leo.” She pulled at his hair, forcing him to lift his mouth from her tender nipples. “I need you...now.”

“Not yet, cara.” The sheer masculine arrogance in his tone scraped at her skin, winding the knot in her lower belly tighter. “Not until I have touched and kissed and learned every part of you.” His palm was on her belly now, inching lower and lower. The tips of his fingers played hide-and-seek with the flimsy seam of her knickers. In and out, in and out, covering more ground every time, stealing her breath on every dive inside.

“Not until I’m inside you and we’re moving together, sì?”

She shivered at the rough promise in his words. Drank in the sight of him—damp hair sticking to his forehead, muscles bunched tight in his shoulders, that hard chest breathing harshly as if he’d been running, greedily. “I think that’s setting the bar a little too high for the first time.”

“I like high bars—” a rough tangling of tongues and teeth “—and bold challenges issued by a bolder woman—” a wet lash against her turgid nipple “—and I want to be inside you when you come so hard that you’ll burst out of your skin.”

Neha jerked at the first touch of his fingers against the folds of her sex. Light and soft and oh, so gentle that she was ready to scream, he explored every inch of her. Drew a line around her opening with his finger and brought the wetness up to the bundle of nerves desperately waiting for his touch.

When he rubbed her there in a soft, mind-numbing circle, Neha cried out at the burst of fiery sensation. Heart in her throat, her breath coming in a harsh rhythm, she lifted her pelvis, chasing his clever fingers. He repeated the action, until she thought she would go mad with wanting.

Wanton, incoherent cries fell from her mouth. She was writhing under his careful, crafty caresses, begging him with her body. Reduced into nothing but a shivering, spiraling mass of sensation and pure pleasure.

Every stroke of his finger, every kiss he showered on her breasts, every breath he exhaled into her skin, every word out of that wicked mouth, drove her higher and higher until release was a shimmering mirage beckoning her fast. She gripped his wrist when he’d pulled away, her limbs honeyed, her entire being pressed down under a languorous weight. “I’m so close, please,” she said, and his husky laughter enveloped her in its embrace.

“No, not yet.” His smile was wicked, his rough tongue-and-teeth kiss purely possessive.

“I hate you,” she whispered, sweat dripping into her eyes, her body unwilling or unable to follow her brain’s simplest commands.

He pulled her up gently, as if she were a treasure he meant to hoard all for himself, his mouth curved into a dark smile, his eyes dilated, tension radiating in waves from his powerful body. Large hands clasped her chin, pulling her closer. He kissed her softly this time, less lust and desire and more...affection and connection. If her heart had ever been at risk, Neha knew it was then. His desire and his ultimatums and his possessiveness...she could handle all of those. His tenderness, however, would be the ruin of her.

“You trust me, don’t you, Neha?”

“Always, Leo.”

His face broke into a radiant smile that washed away any misgivings on her part. Washed away the frustration inside her limbs, flooding her with a renewed sense of wonder. She loved seeing him like this—demanding things of her—loved being with him in that moment, sharing this intimacy.

He tugged her with him, and she went without protest.

The lounger she’d noticed earlier came into her vision and dissolved like every other thought that didn’t concern her eyes when they could gorge on the supremely male specimen in front of her.

Any thoughts of even intrusive shyness disappeared as he undid his trousers. And his black silk boxers.

A soft gasp built up and out of her chest as her gaze lowered to where he couldn’t hide his desire. She could stare at him for the end of time and still not have enough. His thighs were thickly muscled, covered in hair, while his hips were leanly sharp planes, his skin lighter there than the rest of his body.

Neha licked her lips, her gaze once again going to his arousal, and a growl rumbled up from his chest. While she watched him, he hardened and lengthened. Her core dampened, as if in perfect answer.

“Come to me, cara,” he said in a wicked tone that promised to make every fantasy of hers come true. Flushing, Neha lifted her gaze to find him seated on the lounger, his long legs on one side, utterly confident in his nudity.

Neha went to him, her skin damp, every muscle shivering, her heart overflowing with the rightness of this moment. With the conviction that she was exactly where she wanted to be in the entire universe. Naked, wanton, with the one man she’d wanted all her adult life. Living her life purely, simply, fully, in the moment.