It did hurt, but not a lot. A strong pinch and a determined stretch. A tremendous fullness. Incredible and incredibly intimate. He seemed to have a lot to offer. He propped himself on his elbows, fingers in her hair as he withdrew a fraction, then pressed in again. Each time she thought that was it, he did it again, sinking deeper each time.
She was shaking, thinking this wasn’t the dreamy romantic act she had always imagined, but very, very real. Everyone in the world did this, but it was the first time she was doing it, and it was more physical than she had expected. Carnal. Intense.
There was no hiding anything from him when connected to him this way. Her eyes might be closed, but she couldn’t hold back her small gasps. He had to know she was trembling, even though he shook, too, shoulder blades flexing under her hands.
She opened her eyes and saw his lips pulled back with strain. A muscle pulsed in his jaw, and his breath hissed through his teeth. Just as she thought she couldn’t take any more, he settled on her, belly to belly, fully seated inside her, and opened his eyes to look into hers.
“Bedduzza,” he breathed, thumb touching her temple. “Hurt?”
A tear had leaked out the corner of her eye.
“It’s just really... I didn’t expect it to be this—” Intimate? Important? “It’s overwhelming.” She was different now. He was her first lover, and she would remember forever that he looked so remote as he possessed her this way. Fierce to the point of frightening. Yet tender enough to kiss away her tear, leaving her feeling strangely divine.
“You’re killing me.” He eased her legs around his waist and sank a fraction deeper, then he cupped her jaw. She could feel the tension in his grip. The restraint. He said something else in Sicilian before he covered her mouth in a kiss. Sweet and lavish, but with a purpose. He wanted to incite her passion and did.
Soon she was responding, moaning into his mouth, thinking a kiss was so much more significant when bodies were joined. She could feel him pulsing inside her. It made her needy and frustrated. She sank back into that world of sensation he seemed custom made to deliver to her.
He began to move.
It hurt, but assuaged at the same time. She didn’t know what to do, but her body did. She undulated with him, finding the rhythm that fed the fire. They seemed as completely attuned to one another as they had been on the hill, meeting and parting, returning again and again to each other. Creatures of the earth doing earthly things.
As his tempo increased, so did her greed. Her arousal level. Somehow she was there again, ready to peak, clinging to him with every fiber of her being. Making agonized noises of acute pleasure while he moved faster and bit out something that could have been an order or a plea.
She couldn’t hang on any longer. She let go and plummeted into the abyss, falling apart even as he pulled her in with him. His hips thrust deep and his cries underscored hers as they clung through the paroxysm that exploded, then melted them into a heap of boneless flesh.
* * *
Dante lay on his back, forearm flung across his brow, distantly aware of noises in the bathroom, but his brain was barely functioning. He didn’t bother trying to discern what she was doing. He had managed to roll away long enough to remove the condom, noticed blood and handed her a tissue. She’d released a mortified gasp and retreated to the bathroom where she had left her things when she had undressed for the hot tub.
He stayed on the bed, sorry he’d hurt her, but wrung out by the best sex he’d ever had. His organ was still tingling. All of him was. His entire body was damned near singing like a choir.
He hadn’t even meant to kiss her. When he had ordered her to stay, he really had been thinking he only wanted to keep an eye on her. Go to the bank with her tomorrow. Unravel the Benito mystery.
Okay, maybe sex had been hovering in the back of his mind because they’d acknowledged the elephant. I don’t want to be attracted to you, either. Wanting her was a betrayal of himself, but fighting this attraction had proved to be beyond him. They were consenting adults, and he had thought she was as experienced as any millennial. He hadn’t believed her about being a virgin. Not really. Not when she responded like she’d made love a thousand times.
He’d been as gentle as he could, once he discovered how tight she was, only really believing she was new to the act when the deed was done. When she’d had him in a vice of pleasure so acute it bordered on painful and a tear was trickling from her eye.
That fragility of hers had been the only thing that kept him this side of savage while a storm of possessiveness engulfed him. Maybe the imposition of restraint had made the build that much greater, he didn’t know, but definitely he was affected by the knowledge he was the only man who’d ever enjoyed that passion of hers. Something truly base and barbaric wanted to be the only man who ever would. Their mutual release had been cataclysmic. Beyond his experience.
So good he already wanted to make love with her again.
So self-destructive. She was a lying, thieving Fagan.
Except she hadn’t lied about being a virgin. That meant he had to give a little more credence to her other claims. He absorbed that, disturbed. Suppose she had been paying him back in good faith. That meant there was a criminal making victims out of both of them.
She came out of the bathroom, footsteps heading toward the stairs.
He dropped his arm and saw she was wearing her miniskirt and droopy pullover. Did she have nothing else? He was sick of seeing her in that. He should take her shopping, as he would with any lover.
Is that what she was?
“Where are you going?”
She paused with her hand on the ball of the newel. Her teeth released her bottom lip into a small pout. Her brow crinkled with uncertainty. “To Sharma’s.”
An uncomfortable skip of alarm went through him along with his newfound possessiveness. His muscles tensed, ready to spring from the bed and drag her back there. “You’re staying here, with me.”
If he had any remaining doubts that she’d been a virgin, they were snuffed by her tortured profile as she looked away. He’d never witnessed such discomfort with post-lovemaking rituals. He always tried to keep things very friendly with his lovers, if casual. This wasn’t casual, though. He and Cami were inextricably linked by their past and now by a unique experience. Her first time.
An edgy uncertainty wound through him. How would she remember this? How would he?
He would never forget her; that much he knew. The profoundness of this encounter was still hitting him, breaking down and rebuilding things inside him.
She kept her face averted, but he read her defensiveness. Underlying insecurity. Should he soothe and reassure? What message would that send?
As the silence protracted, she flinched and started down the stairs.
“Cami.” He came up on an elbow.
She paused. Her shoulders fell. “I can’t keep doing this, Dante.”
“Neither can I,” he lied, deliberately misunderstanding her. “You have done the impossible. Exhausted my libido.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the girls,” she shot back.
Ah. Now he understood. “You knew I wasn’t a virgin.” He curled his arm beneath his head and relaxed once more. “Frankly, you want your first experience to be with someone who knows the ropes.”
“But I didn’t expect it to be with a stranger. I barely know you! And I didn’t expect to feel so...” Her jaw firmed as she faced him with a hint of cynicism. “Well, I guess I’m not supposed to feel anything, am I? That’s how these things are supposed to work, aren’t they?”
Why that stung, he didn’t know. He came up on his elbow again.
“Come here.” He patted the edge of the mattress. When she hesitated, he said, “Do you need me to come get you?”
She tightened her mouth and warily came across to perch on the side of the bed.
“Did I hurt you?” That question was burning a hole in his brain.
“No.” She brushed at a fleck on her skirt. “I mean, a little. The normal amount, I suppose.” She shrugged, blushing. “I’m fine.”
He liked women, liked flirty ones who were sweetly perfumed, soft and indulgent of his needs. He liked to indulge them. Spoil them and pet them and enjoy the warmth of their bodies against his own.
This one was prickly and wary and someone he should not trust. Nevertheless, she invoked a rueful remorse in him with her tart, “normal amount.” He wished it was none.
He gathered her up and rolled so she was beside him on the bed, all elbows and resistant stiffness. She made a face and lifted her head off the pillow. “It’s wet.”
He threw it away and dragged a dry one into its place. Then he watched her try to avoid his gaze, expression grumpy. She wasn’t trying to get away, but she didn’t relax.
“I didn’t believe you,” he admitted, suspecting that was the real source of her desire to flee. “You’re very sensual. That wasn’t your first orgasm in the tub.”
“Oh, please. I know how my own body works.” She rolled her eyes.
“And now I do.” He let that sink in, watching the pink that deepened in her cheeks beneath the fan of her lashes. “Does that bother you?”
“Yes. I get the feeling you’ve made a study of how to get that sort of reaction from women, and I’m just the latest specimen you’ve collected.”