It was exactly as it had been so many times between them, running quickly beyond their control. She twined her arms around his neck and dug her fingers into his hair, pressing him down to deepen the pressure of the kiss, opening her mouth wide beneath his and meeting his tongue with her own.
It was struggle and reunion . Anger and anguish. Clash and fury and a clawing desperate heartache that made her pull at him, rather than push him away.
His natural need to dominate had him trying to take control, but she wouldn’t have it. Not this time. She was too furious. He had used her, and this time she used him. She scraped his bottom lip with her teeth and arched herself to wriggle against him.
Excitement expanded his chest in a hissing breath. He skimmed the dress from her shoulders in one abrupt move that had her pulling back, eyes widening with shock as the air touched her naked torso. They were outside, in the vineyard.
“You’re right,” he growled. “Not here.”
As he seemed to grapple himself back under control, something defiant and angry and incredibly hurt moved in her. She needed his passion to heal it. She needed to know she was stronger than him in this moment. That her will could prevail. She needed him to be as overcome as she was.
He started to turn her toward the house, and she flung herself into him.
“Yes, here.” She leaped, opening her legs and forcing him to catch her with a grunt, then twined her legs around his waist.
They kissed again, but he swore against her lips as he took her to the ground beneath him. Cool grass tickled her shoulder blades and her sandal fell off.
His hot mouth slid down her neck, and she opened her eyes to the stars. “I can’t bear how easily you do this to me, Dante. Even when I win, you win. You own me.”
He set his forehead against her jawbone. “It’s the same for me, damn you. How do you not know that? You’re all I can see right now. All that exists in my world. Do you think I’m proud of this reaction?”
The weight of his hips sat heavily between her thighs, pressing his hardness where she was aching with anticipation. That, coupled with his words, were all she needed to sink back into the throes. Her thighs shifted to better hug him, and her fingers began pulling at the top button on his shirt.
Even as she warned herself to cling to some sense, Dante was dipping his head to steal a taste of her nipple. Every other thought died then, lost beyond how good he made her feel.
She knew she ought to feel used by him. Manipulated even. But the care he took, and the way he seemed to shudder with restraint as he tasted her with such a sense of worship, was badly needed reassurance of his desire for her. Of this mad connection that shouldn’t exist, but did.
She pressed his shoulder so she could get at the rest of his buttons, then didn’t bother with opening them. She pulled his shirt apart so the buttons gave way until finally the heat of his chest settled over hers. They both groaned. His mouth climbed and paused as it often did on her collarbone, where the tiny raised white line always seemed to need a lick of his attention. Then his teeth scraped her nape and finally he kissed her again.
A moment later, he dispatched her panties into the weeds. She lay beneath him in the soil while he lifted on an elbow enough to open his pants. She guided him with her own hand, taking his damp crest into her core with a sob of relief.
He entered with a fierce thrust and a carnal groan. They were barely human in that moment. All civilization gone as they mated.
She scraped her hands down his back beneath his shirt, encouraging his hard thrusts as she raced toward the crisis. Her climax was so quick and shattering, she cried out with loss. He smothered her muted scream with his mouth and didn’t stop moving. The rhythms of his thrusts kept her in that glittering plane of orgasm, not allowing her to descend. Within moments, she was overcome and sobbing out her ecstasy again, but still he didn’t relent.
Over and over the waves of pleasure ground through her, until she was unable to tell where she ended and he began. All she knew was that he was the instrument of her ecstasy and she would never let him go.
Only then, as she accepted that he was a part of her, did she feel the muscles of his back tighten. He lifted his head and tilted it back, howling at the sky as he finally joined her in supreme joy.
* * *
She was softness and light, her hair silken against his nose, her scent clean and familiar and now carrying the aromas of his home. Latent orange blossoms and fertile volcanic ash.
The civilized man in him wanted to apologize for having her in the dirt like this, but there was no room in him for groveling. Possessiveness engulfed him. She was his. If he had to prove it again, he would. Every remaining hour of their lives, if necessary.
He couldn’t drink in enough of her. Her throat, her still racing pulse beneath his lips, her sweet cry of surrender still ringing in his ears. The warm roundness of her perspiration-dampened breast hot in his palm.
As afterglow went, this was more like survival of a shipwreck. They were washed ashore, lucky to be alive.
“I didn’t use a condom.” He hadn’t even thought of it.
“The damage has been done.”
True, but he still should have at least thought about it. Conscious decision-making had abandoned him, however.
“Here I was afraid that you didn’t want me anymore. Or wouldn’t,” she murmured.
“I don’t see this wearing off.”
“But it doesn’t solve anything, Dante.” She pressed his shoulder, urging him to gently extricate and roll away, allowing her to sit up. “It changes nothing.”
Bits of grass stuck to her ivory skin. He brushed at her back and shoulders. She was like a goddess in the moonlight, casting a spell with her iridescent beauty. Her narrow spine broke something inside him that had hardened over the years and threatened to solidify again, every time he thought of his cousin’s betrayal.
“In fact, if anything proves how disastrous our marriage would be, this is it. We’re each other’s downfall.”
“Did you feel belittled by our affair?” He feared it was too late to ask that, having taken her on the hard-packed soil of the vineyard. “Because it was always just this for me. Madness, yes. A compulsion, but not something I was using to hurt you.”
He heard her swallow, then she said, “I feel small. Made to feel small, because your feelings weren’t involved.”
“Were yours?”
* * *
Cami couldn’t bear how vulnerable that question made her feel. She was peeled right down to the core by their lovemaking and had to dig deep for a deflection. “I was a virgin. Of course I built it into something bigger than it was.”
“It was big, Cami. It meant something to me, too.”
She couldn’t look at him for fear he would somehow trick her into giving up her autonomy all over again. “That doesn’t mean we should continue doing this. Or make it worse by getting married.”
“‘Worse?’ What kind of a husband do you think I would be?”
“You don’t want to marry anyone,” she reminded him. “Certainly not me.”
“That was true when I said it.” His hot hand returned to splay across her lower back. “But I want to be married to the mother of my child. Maybe I didn’t see myself marrying you when we were having our affair, but I’ve since seen enough passion, and enough compatibility in other areas, that I think we could build something.”
“You said this was a compulsion. I don’t want to be your drug addiction.”
“You called us toxic. Let’s both find a kinder vocabulary.”
He sounded short, and she felt as though she hovered on a tightrope, carefully inching along into an abyss, in danger of falling at any moment, not even able to look up to the other side for fear it wasn’t even there.
“You’ve been living in squalor, Cami.” He sat up beside her, and his profile was jagged shadows and brutal angles. “I can’t expect you to forgive me for that. Marriage is the best compensation I can offer. You’ll be entitled to half my wealth, and our child inherits all of it.”
“I don’t want your money, Dante.” She sighed with a pang.
“What do you want? To live alone in Canada, denying me access to my child and denying our child all of this? You’re right. I won’t let you have that.”
She wanted his heart, but she never got what she wanted anyway. She threaded her arms into her dress and found her feet. “Can we just get through the investigation and figure out the next steps after that?”
He hitched his pants into place as he stood, then brushed his knees and looked to button his shirt before shaking his head at finding all of them gone.
“The effect you have on me,” he muttered. “If you need time to get used to the idea, fine.”
She snorted and walked away.
* * *
After breakfast the next morning, Bernadetta showed Cami around the gallery of family photos with great pride, offering up dozens of names and relationships. Cami would never remember all of them, but she was particularly taken by Bernadette’s wedding photo. The young Bernadetta looked overwhelmed, but her husband was so handsome and powerful looking, Cami knew exactly how she’d been drawn into marrying him.
“Dante really takes after him. You must have loved him very much.”
Bernadetta hesitated, which made Cami snap a startled look at her.