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‘I am going to make you scream my name,’ he murmured, oblivious to the direction of her thoughts. ‘Over and over and over again.’

She nodded, but when he brought his body over hers she lifted a hand and pressed it to his chest. Their heads were level, his steel-grey eyes boring into hers, and Jemima told herself to have courage—to do the right thing. It wasn’t that big a deal, she reasoned. Surely he wouldn’t really care?

‘I have to tell you something.’ She swallowed, her pupils huge in her pale eyes.

‘Tell me quickly.’ He brought his mouth to her cheek, kissing her there, dragging his tongue down her body to the valley between her breasts and lower, over her flat stomach towards her womanhood. Of their own accord her hands tangled in his hair, pulling at it frantically. When his mouth connected with her feminine core, she startled, pushing up on her elbows, uncertainty losing the battle to pleasure.

His tongue ran along her seam and she twisted on the bed in an instinctive response so that his hands gripped her thighs and moved her legs wider, clamping down on them and holding her right as he wanted her.

His name tumbled from her lips, just as he’d said it would, the Italian word so exotic in her mouth, so moreish and tempting. Pleasure was a wave building within her and she couldn’t stay afloat. It sucked her down into a turbulent ocean and she didn’t even care that she was drowning. She didn’t care that she could barely breathe.

Her fingers tousled his hair, pulling at it frantically as pleasure eroded her awareness of time and place, and finally she exploded, breaking free of the ocean and finding her place amongst the stars. The orgasm claimed her, every cell of her, every fibre of her being. She was celestial matter, she was time and place, she was ancient and new, she was indefinable.

Pleasure was a thousand barbs beneath her skin. She lay back against the bed, her breathing rushed, her sanity in tatters. His body was coming over her, so even as she was shipwrecked on the shore line of their passion she knew she had to find a way to speak and be heard.

‘Cesare, wait.’ The urgency of her words stalled him. He braced his body over hers and she felt his sheathed arousal at the entrance to her womanhood; she was so hungry for him and more of this that for a brief second she contemplated not speaking. ‘You have to know...’

‘Yes?’ His tip nudged at her entrance and she groaned, pressing her hands to his chest, wanting him with a ferocity that was beyond her comprehension.

‘I want you. I really, really want this.’ The words were breathless. She looked up at him and said nothing else. She wasn’t sure why—she knew telling him of her innocence was the right thing to do—but when she opened her mouth she simply couldn’t find the words. Instead, she heard the cacophony of news articles about her, the names she’d been called, the marriages she was said to have ruined, and she was struck dumb, silent in the face of the world’s assumptions.

He stared down at her, his gaze intent enough to see all the way into her soul, and then he smiled, a look of such complete confidence and sexy dominance that her heart exploded, taking up all the space that should have been reserved for her lungs, making breathing impossible.

‘I want you.’ It was the last thing she said before he thrust into her, claiming her and removing her innocence in one hard movement.

* * *

Cesare froze, holding his body where it was with the greatest of efforts, his arousal buried inside the beautiful Jemima as shock tore through him. He’d been a teenager the last time he’d slept with a virgin and it had been a disaster. A simple act of sex to Cesare had meant the world to her and, after seeing the way he’d carelessly broken her heart, he’d sworn he’d never again sleep with an innocent woman.

And he hadn’t. He’d steered clear of anyone sexually inexperienced because there was a burden in being a woman’s first.

Her tightness was unmistakable, as was the resistance he hadn’t felt until he was already inside her, too late to change what had happened. He pushed up onto his elbows, his breathing ragged, and even as question after question spilled through him her muscles squeezed him, filling his eyes with white light, blinding him with his own insatiable need for release.

‘Damn it.’ The words were clipped, gruff.

‘Don’t.’ The wobble in her voice had him re-focussing his gaze on her. ‘Don’t stop. Please.’ His eyes chased her features: the tell-tale flush of pink running towards her brow, lips that were swollen from how she’d been biting down on

them, pupils that filled her irises almost completely. ‘Please.’

He swore softly because he suspected wild horses couldn’t have forced him to stop, even as he knew he would have if she’d been in pain. He moved his body more gently, though, slowly allowing her time to adjust to the feeling of his possession, to acclimatise to the sense of having him inside her, watching her carefully for every flicker of response that crossed her face.

Emotions he hadn’t expected pounded him—and emotions were something he generally preferred to keep way, way out of his sex life. But, for the first time in a long time, he felt a heavy sense of guilt. Of responsibility—a feeling of having done something wrong.

‘Oh, God, Cesare...’

The sound of his name on her perfectly shaped lips dragged him back to the present, to the physical and the pressing, the passion and the perfection of this. Her nails on his back were desperate, as though she could scratch past pleasure and bring herself back to sanity. There was only one way for that—and he needed the release as badly as she did.

He might have teased her and tormented her, drawing out her orgasm, withholding the ultimate pleasure until she was almost incandescent with desire, tormenting her with the strength of her longing. He would have done so if this had been any ordinary night, any ordinary lover.

But that was gamesmanship and he didn’t feel like playing games any more.

Her cries became fevered, her body writhing as pleasure threatened to tear her apart, and when she tipped over the edge he followed her, releasing himself without making a sound, already mentally detaching himself from this, from her, even as he tipped himself inside her and felt her muscles spasm wildly around his length.

This had been a mistake—and Cesare Durante didn’t make mistakes.

Nor was he a man who tolerated surprises. He stared down at the woman beneath him, her eyes fluttered shut, her breathing rapid, and he pulled away from her, removing himself, standing without saying a word. He couldn’t.

He’d learned a long time ago not to react when he was angry, not to react when his emotions were in play, but in that moment he felt an odd fury, a sense of having been duped into something he would never knowingly have consented to. She’d been a virgin, and he hadn’t offered anything beyond one night. What the actual hell?


Tags: Clare Connelly Billionaire Romance