Matteo’s scorching, openmouthed kisses drove the past from Quinn’s head. He tasted her, licked into her until she could do nothing but focus on the heat they were generating. She pushed closer, met him kiss for kiss. And when that wasn’t enough, he sank his hands into her waist, lifted her up and wrapped her legs around him, her bare skin sliding against the rough material of his trousers. The feel of his hard flesh beneath her made her heart slam against her chest. He was already aroused. Potently, highly aroused.
She wasn’t sure she knew how to handle him.
Matteo pushed her back so he could look at her. Ran his fingertips up her bare arms to her shoulders, his heated gaze sending goose bumps to every inch of her skin. Got her so caught up in him that was all she could think about. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he murmured, sinking his teeth into her shoulder. “If you knew how close I was to breaking all the rules that night at the castello...”
She sucked in a breath. “You walked away...”
“I was one step away, Quinn. One.”
She watched, hypnotized, as he slid his fingers under the straps of her dress and pulled them down. His muttered oath told her he appreciated the fact she’d had to lose her bra. His gaze as he cupped her hot, ultrasensitive flesh was reverent. “I’m a chest man,” he murmured. “And yours...” he said, sliding his callused fingertips against the tips of her breasts, “is magnificent.”
He held her gaze as his thumbs covered her nipples, circled them into erect, aching points. Her soft moan of pleasure made him take her mouth again in approval. “Talk to me, Quinn. Tell me what you like.”
“More,” she muttered. “Just...more.”
He turned her around, pressed her back against the piano. The hard wood dug into her back, made her arch against it, but when he lowered his head and took her nipple into the heat of his mouth, she stopped caring. She dug her fingernails into his biceps and let out another low moan. He tugged, sucked and laved her until she was half-crazy with the pleasure of it. Feeling it deep down inside of her.
“You like that?”
“Yes.”
He cupped her other breast in his hand and lavished the same treatment on it, tortured her with his swirling tongue until her insides collapsed and everything went liquid. She had never felt so needy, so desperate. So lost in something. In him. Too shy to put it into words, she clamped her legs harder around him and begged with her body for more.
“Slow down,” he murmured, pulling back. “We should take this to the bedroom.”
She froze. “No bedrooms.”
“No bedrooms?” He frowned down at her. “Why?”
“Here,” she insisted. Moved her fingers to the buttons of his shirt. “I want you here.”
A dark fire lit his gaze. He let her unbutton the shirt. Let her uncover his drop-dead gorgeous six-pack of a chest that was every bit as amazing as that of her ultrabuff Krav Maga instructor. Then he captured her hands at her sides. “I wasn’t finished.”
Her throat went dry. She was pretty sure she wanted him to finish. Positive actually.... He held her gaze as he spread her thighs wider, pushed her back firmer against the wood so that she was exposed to him. Vulnerable. Then he pushed the hem of her dress up her thighs in a deliberate motion that made her breath seize in her throat. His palms skimmed across her bare skin, branding her. “I thought you might have lost the panties too,” he murmured, pressing the heel of his palm against the heat of her. “Not that I’m complaining. They’re very sexy.”
She sucked in a breath as he worked her with the heel of his hand. Her pleasure had never been of any consequence to Julian, it had been all about him. But Matteo was so focused, intent in the way he touched her. “You want more?” he asked, setting his mouth to the sensitive spot between her neck and shoulder.
“Yes.” She moved her hips against him in an instinctive plea.
“Good,” he murmured, sinking his hands into her waist and lifting her so her hips rested on the piano keys. “Because this is one fantasy I’m not denying myself.”
He slid his hands under her dress, hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and made her lift her hips so he could strip them off. A bolt of excruciating self-consciousness sliced through her at the way she was displayed in front of him. Like an instrument for him to play.... But her heart was racing, the blood in her veins thrumming. The air sat heavy and humid around them, fragranced with a million exotic flowers. The only sound in the whisper-still night was the crash of the waves on the shore below. And it calmed her....