Bought by Her Italian Boss(21)

He stepped closer, setting one hand then the other on the wall next to  her head, leaning in. "I wanted you when you smiled across the lobby and  you were already under suspicion, so I couldn't do a damn thing about  it. I wanted you when I looked at this..." His boiling metal gaze slid  down her front, scalding her. "And I knew every other man in the world  was looking at you, too." His gaze flashed up, bright and piercing. "I  want to kill each and every one of them," he added tightly. "Especially  Jensen."

Her knuckle bumped his side and she realized her hand had lifted of its  own volition, moving to press against her chest and keep her heart  inside its cage. It slammed hard and fast.

He looked at her splayed fingers. "Scared?"

"I honestly didn't think you..." Her voice trailed off as his expression hardened with accusation.

"How could you not know? You look at me constantly. I feel it. How could  you not be aware that I'm watching you, too?" He picked up her hand and  pressed it to his own chest, where his heart punched against her palm.  "You felt this in the car, when just my touch made you scream with  pleasure. How could you not know it's the same for me?"

Emotion pressed at the backs of her eyes and thickened her throat.

He watched her struggle to swallow and cupped his hand under her jaw,  palm against her throbbing artery, thumb caressing the hollow below her  ear.

"The only thing holding me back, mia bella, is your indecision. Have you  made up your mind yet? Do you want cheap, physical gratification?" The  bitterness in his tone scraped at something in her, making her squirm in  a kind of guilt.

She had hurt him with that? She searched his eyes, the windows into his  soul. "What else would it be?" she asked in a near whisper.

His lips hardened and his brow lowered in consternation. "I don't know. But it would be a hell of a lot more than that."

She lifted her hand to the side of his face, drew him in and pressed a  kiss of apology onto his mouth. It was perfect and sweet and healing.

And a mistake.

With a moan from her and a tortured groan from him, they laced  themselves together, mouths opening with instant passion, dragged  together like magnets meeting its attractor. His fingers dug into her  back, her bottom, crushing her close. She arched into his steely body,  loving his strength and the smell of him and that firm evidence of  arousal that was not purely incidental, but his reaction to her.

He pressed her into the wall with his body, stilling the rock of her  hips with a hard pin of his own. "You want me," he said against her  lips. It was a demand for confirmation.

"I do," she admitted with an ache of helpless need.

"Now?"

"Wh-what?" She opened her eyes to see a fiery passion in him that was  barely controlled. This man who seemed to have command of the entire  world was so affected by her, he was looking at her with a kind of  desperation. She thought she could feel each pulse pound in him, rocking  his entire being.                       
       
           



       

"Here?" she asked. She was achy and heavy and ready. The thought of waiting until they were upstairs-it was too far.

This was insanity. Complete insanity.

"No?" He shuffled closer, feet between hers, one hand going to the slit  in her skirt, finding her bare thigh and stroking across her skin like  magic. "If not here, say so now."

She might have hung on to a shred of decorum if he hadn't found the  front of her lace undies and traced lightly while his mouth found the  side of her neck at the same time. Need flooded through her at that  light caress. She gasped with longing, clinging to his shoulders, trying  to keep her knees locked so she wouldn't wilt right to the floor.

"Open my pants," he said, breath hot on her skin while the nibble of his  lips made her shiver with pleasure and that exploring touch worked past  the edge of lace into wetness and need. She made a guttural sound of  pure excitement as he circled and pressed the swollen bud he found. His  other hand was gathering her skirt out of the way, lifting her bare  thigh to his hip, opening her to his flagrant touch.

"We can't," she gasped, but her hands worked the button on his pants,  the fly. She had never tunneled her hand into the heated front of a  man's trousers, but there was his shape filling her palm, naked and hot  and silky. He was commando, shockingly bare to her touch, smooth with a  graze of rough hair at the base, so steely and thickly aroused she  gasped and clenched in anticipation.

He bent his knees, urging her to line him up as he shifted her underwear  to the side. He traced his thick tip along her seam, parted, sliding  easily against her then probing. "Do I need a condom?"

Late for that, wasn't it? She was dying! Panting with excitement.

"I'm on the pill," she managed to say, moving in invitation. She wanted him so badly. Now.

Their breaths mingled. His nostrils flared as he found her opening and  pressed with more purpose. Nerves made her stiffen slightly, but she was  eager, anxious as she looked into his eyes, wanting him to like it,  wanting this to be good.

"Oh," she whispered as he pushed the tip in, stretching her. Her gaze  clouded and her breaths grew uneven. When she clenched on him, little  shock waves of pleasure jolted through her. Her eyelids grew heavy and  wanted to close.

He pressed farther in, his weight driving her against something that dug  into her back. She wriggled, making a noise of discomfort. "The rail-"

He smoothly lifted her, one hand going under her bottom where he  balanced her above that infernal rail and then he was firmly seated all  the way in, eye to eye with her. It was incredibly intimate. Man and  woman. Steel and silk. Their panting breaths humid against each other's  lips.

"Hold on to me," he rasped.

She closed her legs around his waist, twined her arms over his shoulders.

He moved, watching her expression as he withdrew and returned, driving  in deep, holding there a moment, then dragging out slow, tantalizing her  to new heights, arousing her with each thrust. Then he built the tempo  to swift thrusts that were exciting and delicious and sent her racing up  the slopes of need.

She clung to him with every part of her. He was hard everywhere, tense  and determined. Her lips ached to be kissed, but she needed air. She  couldn't look away from his gaze, watchful, waiting, demanding. It was  too wild, too erotic, too scorchingly fast. She was there, right there,  shuddering and flying apart. Finally closing her eyes as the pleasure  detonated into something otherworldly.

A deeply animalistic noise left him as he arched deep and pulsed inside her, holding her in that state of ecstasy.

She gloried in the moment, body electrified as they completely possessed each other, united in this moment of culmination.





CHAPTER EIGHT

GWYN COULDN'T BELIEVE she had let him do that to her. Her legs were  still trembling as she joined him inside the ballroom, having slipped  into the ladies' room the minute they left the elevator to recover  herself.

"Cara, please meet some friends of mine," he said, settling his arm around her as he introduced her.

It was different. She was different and they were different. Her world  had been upended all over again. The sexual awareness was still there,  but instead of being a sharp, unmet need, it was a deep, perilous  knowledge. She knew what her body was capable of. He did. They both knew  what he could do to her, how he could strip her of willpower and blind  her with desire. She wondered if she had really done the same to him  because he didn't seem as affected.

His arm sat heavier on her, more possessive, but when his glance came  into her eyes, his held the light of memory and male satisfaction, but  none of her wariness.                       
       
           



       

She was suffering all the same crush and attraction and fascination, but  it was even more painful now. Before, she had yearned for him to match  this feeling. Now she knew it didn't matter if he did. She was lost  regardless.

It made the stares and the curled lips and the dismissive way people treated her as he introduced her all the harder to bear.

She said nothing, still wondering how on earth she would survive Vito  let alone the rest of all that had happened. It made her desperate for  reassurance, but he was no help, standing here looking indifferent,  letting one of his executives from New York talk his ear off about some  policy Vito had assigned him to write.

To her, it sounded a lot like a guy trying to impress the boss by  telling him how hard he was working, rather than actually doing the  work.

Meanwhile, Gwyn realized she knew the woman from the Charleston branch  who had just caught her eye. Here would come a gauntlet of questions.  This was going to be the worst night of her life.