The Heroic Surgeon(19)

She bit down hard on the heel of his palm as all her desperation detonated, crashing down through her, each convulsion wringing her tighter of every sensation her body was capable of.

And it left her feeling so empty that the last of her sobs were real distress, not the delirious weeping of release.

Her hands flailed on his head, gliding, memorizing, as he completed her pleasure, just enough pressure, enough insistence, making sure she had nothing more to want, to feel. He stopped only when there was no more, leaned his cheek on one inner thigh, rubbed his forming beard into it, sought her streaming eyes with his tenderly tempestuous ones, deepening the connection, heightening the intimacy.

It was undreamed of, caressing his face like that, experiencing his magnanimity. Her heart clenched an obsessive fist around the memory. It would never let go.

He let her down from his shoulders, held her to him, contained her, still fully clothed, absorbing her shudders, soothing her. “Shh, shh, amore—ah, bellisima mia—I’ve never seen or felt so much beauty, so much wonder…”

His words spread in her body and brain, balmy, corroding, had her whimpering to him again, incoherent, supplicant, desperate, “Please, please…”

He carefully propped her against the wall, a boneless heap. Then he rose and began to undress, his eyes giving her no respite. She needed none.

The ferocity in his gaze melded with the permeating gentleness of his essence, promised the violence capable of silencing the screaming tension, the cherishing that would express and assuage their need, on every level.

Seeing him standing above her, powerful, beautiful, had a backdraft roaring higher in her blood. She pounced on him, didn’t know where she found the power, her need a ragged sobbing filling her throat.

He undid his buttons in a succession of frenzied motions—and it felt so slow! A growl of frustration erupted from her, her eagerness pushing him against the wall. She fell to her knees, in supplication, in ravenous wonder, took him between trembling hands and lips.

His surprise at the role reversal was short-lived, his surrender to her worshiping even shorter. He growled and hauled her up, fumbled her bra off and pressed his rough chest against her released, swollen breasts, abrading her stinging nipples. The sensation screamed down every tortured nerve, the very idea of the intimacy, of his need for it, inflaming her even more.

So he felt the same. It wasn’t about physical release, but about merging, taking and being taken, finding that release with her, inside her.

Her heart still thrashed in her chest, demanding her instant addiction, his feel, his scent and taste…

“Take me inside you, amore mio—just take me…”

“Yes, yes, yes…” She strained in his arms, climbing higher, the legs clamping his steel buttocks flailing.

He flexed his mass and power, his manhood nudging her entrance, seeking, asking. Everything in her opened, accepted, surrendered. At last, Dante was invading her, completing her, holding her eyes as he eased his girth inside her, expanding her beyond her limits, letting her see every nuance of shocked wonder and pleasure transfiguring his magnificent face.

He thrust, full and hard, sought her depths. He found them, then further, where she’d never been touched, right through to her soul, filling all her emptiness and loneliness, ending her solitude.

All her nerves fired at once and she screamed. No—she wanted it to last for ever.

He withdrew, yet still clung to her, eyes and need and flesh, dominating her, surrendering to her. Then he rammed back into her. Her convulsions started from the furthest point he caressed within her body, spread in expanding shock waves, each building where the last just began to diminish, constricting her whole body around him inside and out. He withstood her storm, every shudder and tear and scream. Then he gave it back, plumbing a new depth inside her, impaling her to her heart, releasing all his agonized ecstasy there.

She drowned, thankful, replete, complete.

His tongue mated in moist, luxurious heat inside her still gasping mouth, twisting and turning in a languid, healing duel with her own. And there was rain, a warm, blissful shower cocooning them in an obscuring cascade.

A pungent scent enveloped them, familiar, cleansing. He was on his knees again and she was draped over him, her knees hugging his sides. He was still filling her, rocking gently as he worked the soap lather in easing, avid patterns over her back and buttocks. She slithered from him to kiss his face and neck and shoulders, took the soap and started her own worshipful painting.

So this was how it felt to feel, to love. To live.

Tomorrow, it would be over. But she still had the rest of tonight. Starting now.

She put her lips to his wound, prayed for him and gave thanks. Tonight would have to be her whole life.





CHAPTER TEN


“PLEASED with yourself, Guerriero?”

Dante turned slowly. He couldn’t move any faster if his life depended on it. His life force had been drained in Gulnar, in their love-making. Only enough was left to keep him on his feet.

His swollen lips twitched, the imprint of her every tooth still shooting pained pleasure bolts to every erogenous zone. She’d bring him to full life, full frenzy again the moment he saw her.

She’d stayed behind with Dimitri, to talk to him some more, after he’d checked him, documented his short-and long-term post-operative care and allowed his removal from Recovery to Intensive care. Ten minutes, she’d promised. And no more, he’d insisted. He wanted every minute of the rest of the night and time was ticking by…

He met Emilio’s bitter eyes and sighed.

So even war reaching their front doors hadn’t overwhelmed the hospital staff’s interest in the latest scandal. The amazing part was, he didn’t give a damn who knew or who said what. He still didn’t know what had come over him. He’d had no idea he had something like this in him, this blinding passion, this uncontainable hunger. On the last record, and presumably on the best of authority, he was a passionless brre.

I always needed more! But I tried excusing you, thought maybe it was your preoccupation with your career. But you’re just cold, Dante! And now you’ll lose interest completely and it isn’t fair…

Irony huffed out of him. If only Roxanne could see him now. Any hotter and he’d set the place on fire.

Emilio bristled. “Oh, laugh, Guerriero. Lick your whiskers. Don’t think you’re anything special though. You know Lorenzo Banducci, don’t you? Gulnar went after him the same way, and for the same reason.”

So she had gone after Lorenzo? Had Lorenzo succumbed to her as he had?

What kind of a stupid question was that? What man could resist her? And would Lorenzo have even tried? Of course he’d succumbed, taken all he could of her for as long as possible.

It shouldn’t hurt. That was the past. And he had nothing to say, nothing he should feel, about her life or choices anyway, not in any tense.

He shouldn’t. But he did. Feel. Too much. And he wanted to knock Emilio down for confirming his suspicions, for planting the corroding images of Gulnar with Lorenzo in his psyche, adding them to his other morbid imaginings.

But Emilio was in love with Gulnar, was hurting, too. He should feel sympathy for him if his pain was even a one-thousandth of his.

He didn’t. Not in the least.

Though knowing he wasn’t and would never be Gulnar’s lover did remove him from the top of his hate list.

But Emilio seemed bent on venting some venom and he could afford to let him have some catharsis. He cocked his head at him, pretended interest. “And what is that reason she went after both me and Lorenzo—and not you?”

If she picked her men with certain physical criteria, he and Lorenzo shared almost all of them. Big, tall, distinctive, dark-skinned. Latin. But so was Emilio. Why had she excluded him from her list of possible conquests?

“I don’t share the main criterion you both have in her eyes.”

“What? Being surgeons?”

Emilio snorted. “Gulnar doesn’t look at social status or money or perceived life-role importance.”

Dante believed that. In her eyes, in her arms he was his basic self. She valued him, not what he did or was or had. She was the first one who ever had.

Emilio went on. “Gulnar doesn’t have one shallow or covetous bone in her body. No, she has only one rule about the men she takes to her bed—figuratively speaking in your case. They have to be safe. And I’m not safe.”

“Safe? What are you talking about?” An ugly suspicion detonated in his mind. “Heaven help me, Fernandez, if you’ve ever even thought of hurting her…”

Emilio waved him away in total boredom. “Don’t be ridiculous, Guerriero. I don’t hurt women, not in any way and not even if they drive me crazy and tear my heart to pieces like Gulnar has been doing for the last two years. Oh, OK, so she hasn’t meant to, and it’s my fault that she has, but anyway I’m not safe because I love her. She went after Lorenzo because she believed he couldn’t care about anyone, not in an emotional, monogamous way. That made him safe. But even when he proved her wrong and fell for Sherazad, she still used him to drive her point home to me, to keep me away.”

Gulnar had come between Lorenzo and his wife? Hadn’t cared that Lorenzo was in love, had seduced him, not caring if she would have wrecked his relationship, or broken another woman’s heart?