He licked the aching tips as if he were testing their rigidness, their plumpness. Soft flicks, long, leisurely flicks, his gaze telling her without words how much he liked the taste of her. Gauging with those piercing eyes what she liked.
Pia arched her chest into his mouth, pressed her fingers into his nape to keep his mouth at her breast, and then flushed at her own shameless abandon. Eyes dark, Raphael noted it. She closed her eyes.
Every sensation was magnified a million times. A running kaleidoscope of colors burst behind her closed lids, as if her every sense was on the verge of explosion, of new birth.
The rough, sucking sounds he made with his lips, the Italian that emerged from his mouth drove Pia wilder, hotter, wetter between her thighs.
And suddenly his mouth was gone, leaving her desolate.
Her eyes flew open, her breath serrated.
His eyes gleamed with possessive wickedness, a feral satisfaction. “I wish I could show your face to you now, mia cara. Your eyes are so wide that they drown your face, your mouth is pink and swollen from my kisses, your skin is trembling and marred already with my attentions…
“Shall I carry you to the mirror, Pia?” His eyes held hers, a thousand unsaid desires in them, dark fantasies she could see them both drowning in. There would be nothing of her that he didn’t touch, that he didn’t take. Nothing he didn’t own. “Shall I show you what I see? How beautiful you are?”
She opened her eyes, saw his nostrils flare. And blushed hot when she sensed the scent of her arousal thick in the air. A muscled leg thrown over her thighs, he leaned over on an elbow.
“There is nothing shameful about what you feel for me, tesoro. About what you need from me.” His mouth closed over the turgid nipple and pulled, and Pia jerked. She clutched her thighs tight as sensations zoomed and coalesced there. As if there was a direct connection between her nipples and the shockingly wet place between her thighs.
His broad palm descended between her thighs and when Pia squeezed them again under another pull of his wicked mouth over her nipple, he was there, giving her the pressure she craved.
His fingers opened her up, a wicked smile curving his lips. Holding her gaze captive, his sculpted mouth blew on her hot, wet nipple, and his fingers drew mesmerizing circles over her folds, stroking, petting, spreading the dampness.
And then his finger was inside her, stretching her.
Spine bucking off the bed, Pia gasped at the sudden invasion.
“You’ve never done this before?” he asked softly, as if he was afraid to scare her off.
Pia couldn’t even answer, for every ounce of her brain’s rationale was busy processing the caresses of his thumb. Somehow, dear God, he’d found that spot that seemed like her entire being was centered there even as he pumped in and out with his other fingers.
Pressure drew her body tight, like a bow stretched too much. “I would like an answer, mia bella.”
Pia shook her head frantically chasing the speed she needed, arching her lower body into his hand. “No. Per favore, Raphael…”
“Anything you want, bella.”
And then his thumb settled there, pressing and stroking mindlessly until Pia writhed against that touch, frantic in her own skin.
It was science, it was hundreds of years of evolution and yet what Raphael did to her felt like magic. As if what happened between them couldn’t be explained away by a theory.
The world dissolved into pure sensation as he stroked her just the way her body needed it. Unbearable pleasure broke over her in cresting waves, building one over the other, throwing her out into the space and then gathering her back into herself, but a different version. And when she fell back to the ground, Raphael was there to catch her with his warmth, his endearments and praises, with his arms.
Desperate to keep touching him, desperate to keep the connection even as those powerful tremors in her lower belly ebbed, Pia pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen forward onto his forehead. Realizing the possessiveness of the action, she stilled.
“Touch me, bella. Anywhere you want.”
With a sigh, Pia greedily ran her fingers over his taut form.
He prowled over her on all fours and she reveled in the feral hunger stamped over every tight muscle, every jutting bone. She wanted to shatter his control. She wanted him as delirious with pleasure and need as she was. She slid her questing fingers over the rough silk of his bare back, loving the grooved line of his spine. He smiled against her neck, interrupting the kiss he’d been pressing there.