After another smothering, devouring kiss, he withdrew. “It’s merciful you are, since I’m beyond addicted to you. It’s also lifesaving for those men you didn’t bother with. If you had, I would have gone hunting them.”
She burst out laughing. “Now I’ve got an image emblazoned forever in my mind. You in a loincloth, chasing poor, inferior men, clubbing them over the head and throwing them in a pile.”
His smile was predatory. “Si, amore, laugh at the caveman your love has made of me.”
Arching with an unbearable surge of delight and desire, she opened for his erection, needing him back inside her. “Go caveman all over me, please.”
His pupils flared in warning. “I’m barely holding him back, so behave. You’re too sore now.”
“But I want you to let him loose. Make me almost die of pleasure again, Antonio.”
Groaning as if in pain, he thrust against her. “From the first time you cut me up with that tongue of yours, I knew. That under the guise of the prim, contentious scientist there was a woman I wanted desperately. But even I wasn’t ambitious enough to hope I’d find this, the most perfect, uninhibited sex goddess. You almost killed me with pleasure, too.”
“Then take us to the edge of mortality again, please.”
“Command me, amore. You only have to breathe, to just be, and I would literally die for you.”
Before her mind could wrap around those earthshaking words, he rose over her, opened her wide around his hips and slid his hardness between the molten lips of her core. He nudged her nub and the world vanished in a burst of pleasure.
It came so quickly, a boil in her blood, a tightening in depths that now knew exactly how to unfurl and undo her. She opened herself for him, knowing he would only pleasure her this way, undulating faster against him until another orgasm, different yet still magnificent, tore through her.
He pinned her down as she came, gliding his shaft against her quivering flesh in the exact pressure and rhythm to drain her of every spark her body needed to discharge.
After she slumped in quivering fulfillment, he rose between her spread legs and pumped himself to a roaring climax.
Watching him take his pleasure over her trembling body, the body he now owned, was mesmerizing. It was the most flagrantly erotic sight she’d ever witnessed, and the most profoundly fulfilling emotion she’d ever felt.
Pulling her to his body, he mingled their sweat and pleasure and heartbeats, surrounding her in his love and cherishing, dragging her into a realm of safety and contentment.
* * *
When next she woke up, it was to Antonio’s caresses.
He was wiping her down with something wet and warm. Moaning, she opened her eyes to find him bent over her in dim, golden light, a being out of a fable, cosseting and worshipping her. Joy surged on a tremulous smile as she sought his eyes, only for it to be aborted at the sight of the disturbed expression in their depths.
That had her scrambling up, her heart shedding its languor, starting to drum painfully. “What’s wrong, Antonio?”
He exhaled, continued to rub her stomach. “I was watching you sleeping so trustingly in my arms...and I kept wondering how you feel the same for me. Or how you’d continue to.”
She stopped his hand. “Where is this coming from?”
Extricating his hand from her grip, he threw the hand towel aside squeezed his eyes shut briefly. “Apart from my...partners, I never had any relationship of any sort with anyone.”
This was all? She poked her elbow in his side, inviting him to grin back at her. “Same here.”
“You’re nowhere near the same, mi amore.”
“Of course I’m not. You’re unique.”
He shook his head. “It’s you who are. While having more money and power than almost anyone doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near your level.”
“I already told you I don’t factor your money and power in your uniqueness. The man you are beneath the trappings, the force of nature who achieved such success, who saves lives and puts bodies back together like no one else can, who turns everything he touches into the best it can be...that’s the man I love.”
“Dio mio, dea mia. You’re far more than I ever imagined anyone could be. You’re far better than I deserve.”
She scrambled up to her knees, caught his hot face in trembling hands. “Why, my love? Why do you feel that way? When you said you feared I’d be the one to lose interest, I thought you were being gallant. But you meant it, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “It scares me like nothing has before, that one day you’ll look inside me and hate what you see.”
This was more serious than she’d first imagined. And it needed to be resolved, at once.