The Italian's Deal for I Do(49)

It was perfect. He was perfect. Her eyes told him so as he started to move. Her leg snaked tighter around his waist. The hypnotic quality of his lovemaking demanded her full and complete attention, and she gave it to him, savoring every deep drive of his body into hers.

“Tell me,” he insisted, his gaze a hot brand on her face. “Tell me how I make you feel.”

“So good,” she moaned. “Like nothing I’ve ever felt before...”

Something passed between them then, deep and irretrievable. She saw it in his eyes, watched him register it before his face went blank; he lifted himself up on his forearms and took her with a fierceness that stole her breath. The show of pure strength sent her lust into overdrive. Her body pulsed back to life as his thick hardness caressed her insides. His eyes glittered as her face telegraphed her pleasure. “Touch yourself,” he commanded. “I want to watch you make yourself come.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, that particular demand a bit much for her even at this point. But his deep strokes were promising a release that wasn’t coming, and she needed it badly. She moved her fingers between her thighs and against the hard nub of her. His low growl of approval reverberated in her ear. “That’s it, bella. That is so sexy.”

She stroked faster, harder, the deep throb of his body sending her close to a release she knew would break her. His breathing turned harsh in her ear, his strokes coming quicker, deeper, his rough encouragement in her ear spurring her on until she teetered on the edge.

“Now, Liv,” he ordered hoarsely. “Come with me.”

She sent herself over the edge with a desperate slide of her fingers against her throbbing flesh. His hoarse curse as his body swelled inside of her and he came amplified her mind-shatteringly good orgasm to make her whole body shake. He let his body cover hers, carried her through the storm until she stopped shaking and came out the other side.

They stayed like that, their bodies joined, for so long that her eyes drifted shut. The last thing she remembered before passing out from pure exhaustion was Rocco withdrawing from her, leaving the bed, then returning moments later to gather her in his arms and press her against his long, hard body. She felt safe then, safe to let go. So safe she ignored the fact that she had just given her soul away.

* * *

Rocco woke with his habitual insomnia at 2:00 a.m. This time, however, he lay with perfection in his arms. Olivia was curved into his side, fast asleep, his arm slung around her waist, her silky hair spilling across his chest.

He captured a lock of her hair in his fingers. Watched the moonlight play across its golden strands. The singularity of what they’d shared last night slammed into his head like the most potent of wake-up calls. His hand froze, tangled in the golden strands. What did he think he was doing? Did he actually even know?

Gingerly, silently, he slid out of bed and found his boxers lying on the floor. He slid them on, took a bottle of water out of the fridge and went out to the living room to settle in his favorite chair. It would be an hour or two before he found sleep again. It had been this way since he’d been a little boy. It had started after his mother had died and his father had gone out to gamble at night, leaving him and Alessandra alone in the house. Rocco had woken in the middle of the night to find his father still gone and paced the house, instinctively playing guard dog over Alessandra. Missing his mother terribly. He would stay up until he could no longer keep his eyes open or his father came home. Whichever happened first. Later when Giovanni had taken them to Villa Mondelli, he continued to wake at night. He would sit on the stone wall of the majestic house on the water and stare out at the silent, dark lake and mountains.

What a huge, dark world, he’d thought. Had his mother’s essence been swallowed up by this massive, endless lake? Or was she still there looking over him? He’d ached for her those nights. Ached to have her warm, reassuring voice soothe him to sleep, not a nanny who wasn’t the same. He’d dealt with his childish fear of the unknown by making up stories of friendly sea monsters who would come up to shore and take him to play in those dark depths, returning him before dawn.

Now in the middle of a New York night decades later, a full-grown man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he craved the reprieve Olivia had given him last night.

In helping her to move through the darkness, to move on from the past, he had lost himself in her. He had allowed himself to take what he wanted, to hell with the consequences. And there would be consequences. His insides shifted, rearranging themselves in a foreign pattern he didn’t recognize. He wasn’t sure there was any going back from last night.