Clutching at his shoulders, she moaned his name as he unzipped her skirt, still suckling her, wetting her bra with his ministrations. Impatiently, he peeled the cup from her breast and sucked the nipple between his teeth to scrape it lightly.
She pushed farther into his mouth and drowned in sensation as he lit her up expertly with a combination of hard teeth and magic hands against her bottom.
"Daniella," he murmured against her flesh, abrading it with slight five-o'clock shadow, which felt so amazing she shuddered.
Leo lifted his mouth and she nearly sobbed as it left her skin. He licked his lips in a slow, achingly obvious gesture designed to communicate how delicious he found her. Drinking in the sight of her pale pink bra-and-panty set, he reached around to unhook her bra, letting her brea**sts fall free.
He cursed, almost reverently. "Beautiful. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And you're all mine."
Her knees went numb, but his sure hands held her upright as he leaned down to kiss her waist, openmouthed, drawing her panties down simultaneously. His fingers trailed between her legs up the backside, wandering unchecked in some unknown pattern and thoroughly driving her insane.
"Leo," she choked out.
"Right here," he murmured and captured her hand. "In you go."
He led her up the stairs and into the tub, helping her lie back against the incline of the oval. She peeked up at him as he snagged a rose petal, swishing it through the water, through the valley of her breasts, around her already sensitized nipples. The motion shafted biting desire through her flesh.
When he rubbed the petal between her legs, a moan rumbled in her throat.
"Playtime is over." She yanked on his tie. "I want you in here with me."
His irises flared with dark heat.
Clothes began hitting the floor and she shamelessly watched as he revealed his taut body inch by maddeningly slow inch. A smattering of dark hair covered his chest, screaming his masculinity, and hard thighs perfectly showcased the prominent erection she wanted inside her with every shuddering breath.
He splashed into the water. The giant garden tub shrank as gorgeous, vibrant male filled it.
Leo grasped her arms and settled her into place against his chest spoon-style and immediately covered her brea**sts with his hands, kneading them. She gasped as his thick flesh ground hard against her rear.
Rose petals floated in the water, catching on wet skin, filling the air with their warm floral scent. He murmured wicked things in her ear as he touched her, and in combination with the warm water, his hands felt like silk against her skin, in her core, against her sensitive nub.
She reached behind her to grasp his erection. It filled her palm, hard and hot, and she caressed the slick tip. A groan ripped from deep in his chest.
He tore her hand away and clasped her hips, repositioned her and drove home in one swift stroke.
"Dannie," he whispered, his voice guttural, raw. Beautiful. It crawled inside her, filling her as surely as he filled her body. Clasping her close, he held her, torso heaving against her back as they lay joined in the water. Completed perfectly by the other.
After an eternity, he lifted her hips high enough to yank a long slice of heat from her center and eased her down again. They shuddered in pleasure together.
This was different. Leo was different. More focused. Drawing it out, allowing her to revel in the sensations, to feel so much more than the physical. It was a slow ride with plenty of mental scenery along the way.
Intense Leo was her new favorite and his brand of romance stole her breath.
"Dannie," he said again and increased the rhythm, hypnotically, sensuously.
He repeated her name over and over as he completed her. A dense torrent of heat gathered at the source and she split apart with a sob, not the slightest bit surprised he'd made her cry after all. She'd given him what he needed and it had been returned, tenfold.
What he'd started with the diamonds, he ended with the rose petals. She wasn't in the process of falling in love with him. It was done. Irrevocably. Wholly.
Her heart belonged to her husband.
"Leo, I..." What would he say if she told him? Surely he was in the throes, too. That's what this was all about, wasn't it? Their marriage looked different than what they'd originally thought. He wanted it to be different.
"Speechless? You?" He chuckled. "I'm incredibly flattered."
It took every ounce of Elise's personality-makeover training to bite back the words as he drained the tub and helped her out, then dried her with slow, tender swipes of a soft towel. This was too important to let Scarlett off the leash. Too important to screw up.
He'd never said he loved her. Only that he wanted to do things differently. Maybe this pseudohoneymoon was simply about sex. Goodness knew she'd given him permission to make it so often enough.
But honestly. If he didn't want her to fall in love with him, he should stop being so wonderful.
Leo threw on a robe and returned with flutes and a bottle of champagne. They drank it in bed while they talked about nothing and everything.
She kept looking for the right opening to blurt it all out. Shouldn't he know that he'd made her wildly happy? That their marriage was everything she'd ever dreamed of? Her feelings for Leo far eclipsed anything she'd ever felt for Rob. She'd found purpose and meaning in being a wife; she'd married a man who made her body and soul sing in perfect harmony and her mother was being taken care of. Leo was a sexy genie in a bottle, granting all her wishes effortlessly. She wanted to tell him.
The right moment never came.
He didn't shoot her long, lingering glances with his gaze full of love. When he took her glass and set it on the bedside table, then thoroughly ravished her, he didn't whisper the things in his heart while holding her.
Instead, he fell into a dead sleep. She lay awake, but he didn't murmur secret confessions into the darkness. Though he did seek her out while unconscious, sliding his solid thigh between hers and wrapping her up in a cloak of Leo. That part she had no difficulty understanding. He enjoyed having her in his bed. Enjoyed the closeness without the requirement of having to expose himself emotionally.
The feelings, the rush of love and tenderness, were strictly one-sided. For now.
Her marriage was almost everything she'd yearned for since she was a little girl. She had forty-eight hours to entice Leo that last few feet to the finish line.
* * *
When the early light of dawn through the triple bay window of the bedroom woke Leo, he didn't hesitate to indulge in another fantasy-the one he'd denied himself thus far.
He gripped Daniella's hips and wedged that sweet rear against his instant erection. His fingers trailed over her brea**sts and she sighed and it was sleepy. Erotic.
"Leo. It's-" One of her eyes popped open and immediately shut. "Six twenty-three. In the morning."
"I know." He nuzzled her neck and she arched sensuously against him. "I slept sinfully late. It's refreshing."
"Thought you were taking the weekend off," she muttered and rolled her hips expertly. The cleft between her bare cheeks sandwiched his raging erection. His eyes crossed.
"Taking the weekend off to-" She did it again. Deliberately.
"Talk a lot?" she suggested sweetly and choked on the words as he skimmed a finger through the swollen folds of her center.
Closing his eyes, he breathed in the scent of crushed roses and the musk of Daniella's arousal. "Not hardly."
He sank into her and it was amazing. There was something about spooning with her that just killed him. They fit together this way, moving in perfect cadence as they had last night, and he savored it.
All her beauty was within easy reach and he made full use of the access, tweaking her gorgeous brea**sts and circling her nub as he sheathed himself from behind again and again. Hot friction sparked, driving them both faster.
She climaxed with a sexy moan and he followed in a brilliant chain reaction of sensation that didn't quit.
Playing hooky from work had a lot going for it. He was slightly ashamed at how much he was enjoying his weekend off, especially given that it had essentially just started. There was a lot more indulgence to be had. A lot more fantasies to enact. A lot more dread at the imminent reel back Monday morning.