She looked up. ‘This time.’ She repeated the words like a mantra, and he smiled.
‘I told you I couldn’t wait to remove that dress. I haven’t changed my mind.’
Sienna swallowed as he pushed his pants down past hips lean and strong, carelessly stepping out of them. She watched, wide-eyed, as his sleek-fitting black underwear met the same fate, and she stopped breathing altogether when he moved closer. Of course once wouldn’t be enough. On their one previous night together, Rafe had shown he had stamina to burn. He knelt on the side of the bed, reached out, and lifted one foot in his hands. Deftly he undid the tiny diamante-studded buckle at the side of her shoe and, holding her ankle in one hand, swept the shoe from her foot with the other, tossing it and the best part of several hundred euros carelessly to the floor behind him.
Vaguely she registered that he must have no idea how much shoes cost, or didn’t care, but after a moment, she didn’t care either, not when his thumbs started their dance over the ball of her foot. She groaned.
She’d read articles where people had claimed the feet could be erogenous zones, and she’d largely discounted them as fanciful and fictional, but the graze of his fingers, the brush of his skin against the silkiness of her stockings, had her trembling and rethinking her ideas. Or maybe it had nothing to do with her feet and everything to do with the way he looked at her while his fingers worked, dark eyes made darker with desire, more insistent with need.
Or maybe not, she thought, as the other shoe met a similar fate and Rafe stroked the underside of her foot with his thumbs, causing her back to arch and a sigh of pleasure to erupt from her lips.
‘Do you like that?’ he said, repeating the action, and she licked her lips and nodded.
‘It’s…nice.’
‘Only nice?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘Then do you like this?’ His fingers trailed up her calf, disappearing beneath a sea of green silk that lapped around her legs like the incoming tide, his fingertips tracing circles higher and higher up her leg.
‘It’s all good,’ she conceded, ‘although I can’t help but feel a little overdressed.’
He laughed, low in his throat, and the vibrations and the sound were almost enough to bring her undone. He reached up a hand and undid the jewelled clasp at her neck. Instinctively she reached up a hand to prevent the bodice falling down, but he stopped her arm and the fabric slid unrestrained to her waist, releasing her breasts to the air, and to his gaze.
‘Christo,’ he uttered, as he reached for them with his hands, ‘but you are beautiful.’ His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples before he leaned over and took one pink peak into his mouth.
Pleasure speared downwards, like arrows fired and finding their mark, to that place he’d already filled and which ached to be filled again. He worked magic on one breast, and then the other, before lifting his head and swallowing her into the perfect kiss.
She felt his hand low behind her, wondered at his expert discovery of her invisible zip, and felt the cool sweep of air as he tugged down her gown over her hips.
She made a move to remove one satin glove, and he stilled her hands, running his hand along one long satin-cased arm, running another down one silk-clad leg. ‘No,’ he said, ‘leave these. You feel and look exquisite exactly how you are.’
She wanted to believe him, even though her make-up must be smudged beyond repair, her lips pink and swollen, and she could feel her hair coming loose, heavy coiled tendrils even now tumbling around her shoulders. But who was she to argue, when his touch made her feel the seductress she had set out to be?
‘You’re not angry with me,’ she asked on a gasp as he pushed her back into the pillows, his tongue lapping its way first around and then into her belly button, an erotic prequel of what was to follow, ‘for coming tonight?’
He lifted his head the merest fraction. ‘If I had my way, you would come every night.’
She laughed a husky laugh and shuddered against the bedclothes, her back arching as his tongue renewed its exploratory journey. ‘I meant about coming to the casino. You’re not angry?’
His fingers dug into her thighs; his face lay buried in her belly as he grazed her skin with his teeth. ‘You have a strange concept of foreplay. What does it take, I wonder, to shut you up.’ His teeth nipped at her skin, and she laughed and squirmed again, and he pushed himself higher so his mouth was once again within reach of her nipples. ‘But no. Do I look angry?’ He paused on the way up, laving at her skin. And he drew one perfect breast deep into his mouth, his tongue circling an even more perfect peak.
She arched into his mouth, her breath quickening. ‘It’s such a beautiful place.’
‘Still won’t shut up?’ He found her other breast, lavishing the same attention for detail on that one, his hot mouth, his lips and tongue working together like an orchestra.
Teeth grazed her nipple, and she flinched, a deliciously compelling combination of pleasure and pain, a symphony of sensation. ‘Sebastiano described it as the jewel in Montvelatte’s crown.’
He lifted himself higher, hovering over her as he kissed her eyes, her chin and nose. His lips found hers, teased them open with his tongue and pulled her into a kiss so deep she was lost in it. Then he drew back and she opened her eyes, waiting. Perplexed.
‘Sebastiano was wrong,’ he said tightly, every angle and plane in his face suddenly accentuated, an exercise in barely restrained control. ‘Because you are the jewel in Montvelatte’s crown.’
And then he plunged into her in one fluid stroke that vanquished the air from her lungs and the conversation from her lips. In that hitched moment, they breathed the same air, shared the same oxygen and, as he filled her completely, shared the exact same space.
Satin-clad hands tangled in his hair, swept the powerful skinscape of his back, and held him to her. Silken-clad legs slid along his, tightening around him and urging him still deeper. And all the while his silken words tangled in her mind, part of the magic, no small part of the sensation.
It might have been a slower build up this time, less frenetic, and with more time to discover and rediscover each other’s bodies, but when she came apart, it was a different kind of power that took her shuddering to completion, a different kind of wholeness that brought her back, holding him close, her limbs entwined with his.
A different feeling that left her more confused than ever.
‘So that’s what it takes to make you shut up.’
Minutes had passed, minutes in which the gradual calming of her breathing belied the growing turmoil of her mind.
Getting him to care for her wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
She unburied her face from his shoulder, breathing in his warm male scent, relishing it, even though at the same time the amount she enjoyed it bothered her on another level. ‘Apparently.’
Rafe sat up, poured a glass of water from a covered decanter on the bedside table and turned, his eyes brushing along her body as she lay, eyes that took everything in. It was ridiculous to feel shy after what they’d done and what they’d shared, but she still did, still felt exposed. And a trifle ridiculous still wearing stockings and her satin gloves. Then he handed her the glass and she scooted up in the bed, accepting it gratefully, suddenly realising her thirst exceeded her embarrassment.
‘I’ll speak to Sebastiano,’ Rafe continued. ‘Get him to free up my diary for a day or two.’
She blinked up at him, hopeful and suspicious in the same motion. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve been working too hard. And because we have a lot to catch up on.’ He padded across the floor and pulled open a closet, totally at ease with his nudity. And why not, she thought, when you had a body built as if it should be immortalised in marble, every movement revealing the play of superb muscle structure beneath his skin? He was a living sculpture, perfectly proportioned in all the right places, abundantly proportioned where it mattered most. He pulled a white robe from the closet and slipped it over his shoulders, swiping another golden robe from a hanger.
He handed it to her, and for now she clutched it to her chest. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Once news gets out about the wedding, media coverage will make going anywhere a nightmare, but there’s still so much you haven’t seen here yet. The southern part of the island, for instance. Or we could go for a cruise around the island. Maybe take a closer look at Iseo’s Pyramid if you liked?’
‘That sounds good,’ she heard herself say, not wanting to sound too grateful, too desperate for the opportunity.
He reached out a hand to her and she took it. ‘I have to talk to Sebastiano. Why don’t you start in the shower and I’ll join you shortly.’
She would love a hot shower to massage her spent bones. She’d love it even more with him. She remembered another night, what seemed for ever ago, another promised shower. Maybe this time he might actually join her there. The look in his eyes told him he was definitely planning to.
Her hand in his, she stepped from the bed to the floor. ‘So you won’t be needing this, after all,’ he said, tugging the robe from her hands so it slid to a golden pool at their feet. ‘And you won’t be needing these any more.’ He slowly drew down first one glove and then the other until she was totally naked but for her lace-topped stockings.