Her smile threatened the control.
Her smile sang to him like a siren off the Amalfi coast.
The blouse fell open. The bra unsnapped.
She gazed at him, the last of the ice melting in her eyes, the smile growing on her lips.
Vico swore he heard the snap when his control cracked.
His wife arched into his hands as he lifted her breasts to his mouth. She was lush and full, more womanly than before. But he’d take her thin or plump. Or anything in between. Because the essence was still Lise. Her skin was still a salty pearl of delight to his lips. Her nipples were still tight buds of magic begging for his tongue. The round, plush weight of her breast was still meant to fit in the palm of his hand, made for him since the beginning of eternity.
The Italian words flowed over her body.
He was no longer capable of any speech other than the one he’d been born into. Yet it wasn’t the words, it was him he gave her with his native tongue. All the reckless vitality of his temperament, the restless energy of his character, the emotive nature of his culture.
She took his gift. He felt it move between them.
His lips moved with reverence across the round bump of her belly. Whispered words of his home slipped beyond her skin to touch his bambino. A child he didn’t deserve, but already loved.
A clutch of fear shivered through him.
“Mmm,” she purred as she slid her fingers around his head, holding him to her and the child.
The burn of tears welled, threatening to wet her skin.
His mia dolce was determined to drive him insane with desire, though. She left him no time to wallow in the desperate love and fear he had for his bambino. Her long, lithe legs wrapped around his hips, tugging him into her, shattering his anguish and swamping the remnants of his control with an overwhelming need.
She tugged once more.
The mist of tears in his eyes disappeared under the torrent of primitive lust. He pushed himself between her thighs, fitting his body to hers as she lay on the table watching him. Somehow, her skirt had ratcheted high up her hips, allowing him to look his fill of the pale beauty of her skin. His hands slipped along her thighs, pushing the wool skirt aside, staring down at the lace at the end of her stockings, wrapped lovingly around the soft skin at the top of her legs. The lace was echoed in her panties, the frills edging the silk. The wet silk.
His nostrils flared as her aroused scent drifted to him. Salty, spicy, sexy.
“Vico.”
He tore his gaze from the heart of her with a monumental effort. He breathed in, trying to find some small stitch of sense, yet her fragrant need slipped into his nostrils once more. “Lise,” he croaked.
“I want you.”
Her words cut through the painful need thrumming in his body.
A gift.
Another gift for him.
If he’d been capable of moving, he would have fallen to his knees at her feet. A submissive subject ready and willing to slay any dragon or fight any foe. But he wasn’t capable of doing anything other than stare into her eyes.
The blue was startling. Not a shred of ice or frost. Only a cerulean, brilliant blue. He was sure he’d never seen the purity of a soul as clearly as he did at that moment. She blinked and then smiled as she lifted her hand to slowly trail it down his heaving, hot chest.
Down, down. To the ravening beast she’d unleashed. Willingly asked for.
The groan ripped out of him as he tipped his head back and felt. Felt her clever fingers smooth over the hard, demanding primitive part of him. Within seconds, he was fast at the point of no return.
A raspy huff of breath escaped him as he yanked her hand from his body. “Too much.”
She smiled her siren smile.
He grinned back, suddenly so full of life and happiness and hope it nearly exploded inside of him with a shining joy he hadn’t felt since he’d been a kid. Two could play the seduction game. Grabbing her hips, he pressed the wet silk to his aching groin.
She cried out.
He gasped.
The time for anything other than this, this—
The animal in him took over. With one swift jerk, he unzipped himself, tore the silk off her and plunged into the hot, wet, glorious lips of her sex. With one more thrust, he pushed her into bliss and he forced his need down so he could concentrate on her. The slender paleness of her neck as she arched into her rapture. The sound of her soft cry as she slid deep into the ecstasy he gave her. The clutch of her muscles around his cock, milking him, pleasuring him.
Claiming him.
His body could hold on no longer and the thrust of his hips could not be contained. Lust rode him, drove him into a pounding punch of ache and glorious need. There was no time or meaning to anything except this.
This male body in her female body.
This sense of blind bonding he’d never experienced before.