He groaned out another spate of Italian, something about trying to kill him, and kissed her with sudden raw passion, scattering her thoughts so she knew nothing but the heat of his leg on hers and the much anticipated stroke of his hand from her rib cage down past her hip, under her dress, up her thigh and then—
She raked her fingertips down his back then pulled his shirt free and sought the hot skin of his back. Her entire being went taut with expectancy, tingling under his trace of her underpants. With a small lift of her hips she encouraged him and he rewarded her by sliding his fingers beneath the lace. His knowing touch parted and pressed and slowly caressed as he gently worked his hand into intimate contact with her wet center.
She rocked her hips, hands moving mindlessly on his flexing back as she set the pace. He complied with her signals, lovingly stroking her into madness.
When the sweetness grew too sharp to bear, Lauren dug her nails into his spine. She tried to escape the pressure of his kiss to tell him. She wanted to strip and feel him push his thick penis inside her, but he used his stronger body and all-encompassing kiss to keep her exactly where she was, at the mercy of his unrelenting touch. He refused to let up on the lazy stroking and the cataclysm engulfed her before she could stop it, tumbling through her in an avalanche of thunderous pulses, sending quakes of pleasure echoing through her that were so deep she bit back a scream at the intensity of it.
Slowly she came back to herself. Paolo was kissing her very tenderly between her panting breaths. He extricated his hand from beneath her skirt and she tried to roll into him, sensitized to everything about him: the extreme tension gripping him, the erection thrusting imperiously against her thigh, the blood pounding hard in his throat as she moved her hands to cradle his jaw and tried to bring his mouth to hers.
“Tesoro,” he murmured, roaming his lips over her face. “You have to marry me. You know that, si?”
Delicious lassitude gripped her, but so did a desire to bring him the same pleasure he’d just given her. Marry and do this for the rest of their lives?
“Yes, of course,” she breathed. Her head felt heavy as she lifted to touch her lips to his and only grazed his chin.
He pulled away even further, lightly brushing off her touch while his gaze skimmed down her body, gleaming with ardent possessiveness. Flicking her dress down to cover her thighs, he levered from the bed.
“Where are you going?” She didn’t mean to sound so desperate, but she didn’t understand. Protection wasn’t an issue—
“To make the arrangements,” he answered, his smile tight. “Tempted as I am, I said I’d wait until we’re married. I will.”#p#????#e#
He walked out.
CHAPTER NINE
LAUREN DIDN’T SLEEP. She didn’t cry, either, even though her eyes burned. She stayed on the bed fully clothed, curled around her aching stomach where fury burned in its pit. He was such a man.
Perhaps not a typical one. She wasn’t a complete idiot about biology and the battle of the sexes. She knew women were usually the ones left unfulfilled while their partners snored off their climaxes. Not that Ryan had ever left her frustrated sexually. He’d always taken the attitude that if she wasn’t finished, he wasn’t finished. At first she’d viewed his attention to detail as proof that he was enamored with her. Later she realized it was more to do with his drive to conquer women through seduction. It had made her sick to realize she was just one more scratch in his headboard.
She felt sick now.
For all his talk about chemistry, Paolo wasn’t nearly as affected by her as she was by him. That made her want to pull back in and disappear. She thought about checking train schedules, but running away was so cowardly. So virginal. And she’d promised to marry him. That wasn’t just a promise, but something she knew in her heart was best for their baby. All her reasons stood strong. Except that she’d let herself believe for ten minutes that Paolo cared for her and had found out she’d been right in the first place. She meant nothing to him.
Her ego withered as she remembered how quickly she’d become besotted. She had let herself read into his sudden show of emotion that, she realized now, had been for the baby growing inside her. I love the way you feel. His thumb and forefinger had been spanning from hipbone to hipbone across her navel when he’d said it, but she’d made it about her.
She tried telling herself that marrying knowing full well that his feelings were only physical was okay, but that was the crux of it. Not that she’d climbed the hill of hope and had a tumble. No, she had thought they were evenly matched in the lust department and they weren’t. She’d just made all the advances—again!—while he had been undeniably aroused but had walked away.