Her face burned. Stupid, stupid...
‘I think you’re right.’ She forced the words out between stiff lips. ‘I don’t want this.’ Pride made her voice brittle. Defensive. ‘I don’t need pity sex.’
A sound came from above her—a harsh, ferocious growl of a sound—and she snapped her eyes open.
Nico grasped her wrist, not gently, and pulled her hand to his groin.
‘You think this is pity?’
A gasp caught in her throat. Nico’s eyes blazed into hers, but it wasn’t the glittering anger and raw desire she saw that stripped her lungs of air—it was the irrefutable evidence of his arousal, big and thick and rock-hard against her hand. Heat coiled in her belly, and she curled her fingers around his impressive length. Santo cielo. He was enormous—and hard. For her.
A low, guttural curse shot from his mouth. ‘Marietta—’ The way he rasped her name was half-warning, half-groan. ‘I want you,’ he said roughly, tightening his fingers around her wrist, thrusting his groin harder into her hand to encourage her grip. ‘Make no mistake about that. But you need to be certain this is what you want—because believe me when I say this is the point of no return.’
The fierce heat in his gaze, the solid, rigid length of him in her hand, extinguished her doubts. She squeezed him, giving her answer, and he pulled her hand away from him and loomed above her. Anticipation shivered through her and then his mouth covered hers, and that sudden, shocking clash of lips was ten times more electrifying than she could ever have imagined.
The world spun and she reached blindly for an anchor, until her hands latched on to the hot, hard flesh of his shoulders. He moved and she tightened her grip on him, terrified he was going to end the kiss, but he simply angled his head so he could take it deeper. His tongue stroked over her lips, then thrust between them—and the explosion of heat and earthiness in her mouth was unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
When he raised his head colour slashed his cheekbones, emphasising their prominence, and his eyes had darkened to an inky blue. His gaze raked over her face and lower, down to her breasts in the revealing yellow bikini. He fingered the gold clasp holding the triangles of fabric together and then, with a single flick, unfastened the top. The fabric fell away, exposing her to his scrutiny.
‘Spectaculaire...’ he murmured, and cupped his hand around her right breast.
Her shoulder blades arched off the cushion, her body straining instinctively into his touch. When his thumb stroked over her extended nipple the sensation was exquisite, but nowhere close to being enough. She needed more...
She moaned. ‘Nico...’
A dark, anticipatory gleam lit his eyes. He lowered his head and sucked her nipple into his mouth, gently at first and then, when she gasped and drove her hands into his hair, harder, using his tongue and his teeth to tease and torment, until she cried out some incoherent words, which he obviously took as encouragement, because he popped her nipple out of his mouth and lavished the same attention on her left one.
Her nails scraped over his scalp. ‘Dio... Nico...’
Something broke loose inside her. Something wild. Demanding. She thrust her chest upwards, urging him on until she was conscious of nothing else besides the heat of his mouth and his tongue and the tight, coiling sensation inside her. Time stopped, ceased to exist, and she didn’t know if seconds or minutes had passed when she registered the faint metallic slide of a zipper—realised Nico’s hand was at the front of her shorts.
She froze. Only for a moment, but he felt it. His mouth slipped off her nipple, and she wanted to groan.
‘I’m not changing my mind,’ she said hurriedly, cursing the insecurity that had struck her out of the blue.
She tried pulling his head back down, but he resisted.
He cupped her jaw. ‘You froze. Why?’
Inexplicably, her hands trembled. She let go of him and curled them against her stomach, closed her eyes.
‘Marietta—’
‘My legs,’ she whispered. ‘They’re not...’ Not beautiful. Her face heated.
‘Open your eyes.’
/> She did, and they prickled dangerously. Madre di Dio. What was wrong with her? She wanted this. He wanted her. Why was she suddenly afraid of revealing her body to him?
‘You are beautiful, Marietta,’ he said. ‘And I want all of you.’ His hand tightened on her jaw when she would have looked away. ‘Do you understand me?’
She stared at him, and then she swallowed and nodded. He dropped a scorching kiss on her mouth. Then he pushed to his feet, removed his shorts and briefs and stood before her fully naked.
The moisture evaporated inside her mouth. Her imagination had not done him justice. He was glorious, every part of him lean and muscled. Her gaze trailed from his broad chest down over the ridges of his abdomen and lower, to where his arousal jutted proudly from the nest of dark hair at the juncture of his thighs. Her belly turned molten. He was so hard. So big.
He dropped to his knees, slid the zipper the rest of the way down and removed her shorts and bikini bottoms. Heart pounding, she shrugged off the straps of her bikini top. And then he scooped her into his arms, stood, and carried her across the hot sand into the water.
* * *