His low groan filled her ear as she regained sanity. “I need a condom.”
“I’m on the pill,” she managed to get out. “It’s fine.”
His fingers bit into her hips, then, needing no second urging as he tipped her forward, filled her again and again with hard thrusts that made her release reverberate through her body. He chased his orgasm fast and hard, and it was explosive when it came, his essence filling her with a sweet, hot warmth that seemed to touch every part of her.
She wasn’t sure how long it was—five, ten minutes perhaps—before he pulled his T-shirt over her head, cleaned them up and carried her back to bed.
Olivia wrapped herself around his big warm body and willed her complex, hardened lover to sleep. He passed out in her arms minutes later.
The triumphant, warm feeling that filled her at being able to soothe him was matched only by the stark, fairly terrifying knowledge that she was lost, totally irrevocably lost, to him. And he would likely never, ever return those feelings.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ROCCO WAS CONSIDERING going in search of his fiancée with a Milan Fashion Week kickoff party on the agenda when Gabriella returned from an errand she’d been running for him and stuck her head in his office, a horrified look on her face.
“Did you forget your meeting with Renzo Rialto?”
His stomach plummeted. Dio del cielo. He had. He’d been fixing a last-minute seating glitch with the wedding planner.
“His PA just sent me a message to reschedule.” Gabriella’s gaze searched his face as if to say he’d been off lately and was he okay?
No, he wasn’t, he decided, raking a hand through his already rumpled hair. In the week and a half since he and Olivia had been back from New York, his attempts to drown himself in his soon-to-be wife’s charms and get her out of his system had failed miserably. If anything, he was falling harder.
He was distracted and antagonized, and it was a problem he couldn’t seem to fix.
“I clear forgot,” he said to Gabriella. “What did you tell Renzo’s PA?”
“That you were detained in another meeting, were ever so sorry and would reschedule.”
“Bene.” He flashed her a smile, grateful for his PA’s tact. But inside, his guts were churning. He and Renzo had been meeting to discuss North American business strategy, a key priority for Mondelli in the coming year. His fingers tightened around the pen he was holding. Renzo would drag him over the coals for this. Ask him where his priorities were...
“Could you reschedule for next week, same time?”
Gabriella nodded and disappeared.
He threw down his pen, furious with himself. The damn wedding was turning into a beast he couldn’t control. So was Olivia’s stress. He’d watched her push her way through her fears to walk in London Fashion Week. Watched her brave press speculation she wasn’t the model she had once been with rumors running rife about what had happened backstage in New York.
“She doesn’t have her usual swagger,” one commentator had pronounced. Panic Attacks Wreak Havoc on Top Model’s Career blared another tabloid that had apparently been able to find someone backstage that night in New York who would talk.
Olivia had transgressed it all with a determined focus on the end goal that said she’d let it kill her before she gave up. She wanted her line. She wanted her dream. But the stress was clearly taking its toll. She was looking gaunt, she wasn’t sleeping much and the tabloid viciousness was eating away at her like a slow-moving disease.
He stared vacantly at the original Monet on the wall opposite him, its magnificent colors and lighting a favorite of his. The light in Olivia was fading daily. And nothing he did seemed to help.
He ran his palms over his stinging eyes. It should make him happy his fiancée was keeping it together, because his future was just as intertwined with Olivia’s success as hers was. The board was thrilled with the rise in Mondelli’s stock price, business was booming with the brand’s newfound cool factor and Olivia was the hottest name in the industry.
It seemed the more miserable Liv was, the more speculation surrounding her, the more the brand skyrocketed. His chest tightened with that interminable, inescapable guilt he had been feeling for weeks. It was like a two-edged sword he was constantly being impaled on.
The only time Olivia was happy was when she was in the studio with Mario creating. And in bed with him. And since that was also a source of confusion between them, because it could never be more than sex for him, and he could see from her eyes when they were together that it was more for her, he felt like the biggest bastard alive.
The late-afternoon sun spilled into the room, blinding him momentarily. He dropped his gaze to the pile of research he’d intended to take to his meeting with Renzo this afternoon, ironclad evidence Mondelli was on an upswing in the American market. He had never, ever forgotten a meeting in his career. Certainly nothing of this magnitude.