Lowering his mouth, he kissed her breasts again, licking her nipples and drawing them into his mouth, and then she felt the blunt head of his erection pushing between her thighs.
It was too big. She tensed. It would never fit inside her.
Her hands pressed against his chest, and he stopped moving, shifting his weight minutely.
‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. ‘Take your time. You just need to get used to me.’
His voice calmed her, but it was the hunger etched on his face that made her start to move against him.
Taking a breath, she parted her legs further. She arched upward, straining for something she didn’t understand, something just out of reach, something that would satisfy the insistent clamouring of her body.
He moved above her and instinctively she opened her legs wider, her breath jerking in her throat as he rubbed the tip of his erection against the bud of her clitoris. Curling her arms around his shoulders, wanting to feel all of him inside her, she lifted her hips and he pushed into her.
There was a moment of sharpness and she tensed—must have tensed, because he stilled above her. Not wanting him to suspect her virginity—or, worse, stop—she pulled him closer and began to move against him, trying to regulate her breathing as her body stretched to accommodate him.
He was fully inside her now, and his mouth found hers as he matched himself to the rhythm of her breathing. As he started to increase his pace she felt the pulse inside her accelerate in time to his movements.
She was panting now, lunging up towards him. Muscles she hadn’t known she had were straining, pulling apart, fraying, and she gripped his shoulders as her whole body suddenly splintered in a rush of pleasure so intense she could have wept.
And then he was thrusting into her, clamping her body to his, his groans mingling with her ragged breathing as he tensed, shuddering helplessly against her.
His hands tightened in her hair and he kissed her face, murmuring her name against the damp skin of her neck. ‘Sei bellissima,’ he said softly.
She smiled, suddenly shy beneath his dark gaze. ‘Was it okay for you?’
‘Was it okay for me?’ He laughed. ‘I’ve never been asked that before. It was more than “okay,” cara. It was incredible.’
‘I didn’t know it could be like that,’ she said slowly.
How could she have imagined such dizzying pleasure was right there, at her fingertips? Her cheeks felt warm. Or rather at his fingertips. She had wanted it to be amazing but she had completely underestimated how it would feel, the bliss of being touched, the heat of his mouth...
His eyes roamed her face. ‘What’s it been like before?’
Her heart gave a jump. She could lie, but it was done now. They had made love. There was no need for secrets between them.
‘It wasn’t like anything.’ She took a breath. ‘There was no “before.” You’re my first—my first lover.’
* * *
Her first lover.
Vicè stared at her in silence, made mute by shock and disbelief.
She’d been a virgin.
He couldn’t have been any more stunned if she’d thrown a bucket of cold water in his face.
His head was spinning. With an effort, he replayed the time they had just spent in each other’s arms.
When he’d entered her—he gritted his teeth, her actual first time—her body had been tight, and there had been moments when she’d tensed, moments when he had felt her hesitate.
But he’d put it down to nerves over having sex with somebody new. He hadn’t thought she had no experience whatsoever.
Suddenly his skin could barely contain the chaos inside his body.
He was frustrated with himself for not realising, and he felt guilty for not taking it more slowly, more gently—he would have done if he’d known. He was angry too, incomprehensibly. Angry with Ciro, for putting him in this position, but mostly with Imma.
He swallowed against the rush of questions rising in his throat.