‘But the building is stunning. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to alter it. I love the organic shape. It’s not just a skyscraper.’ Her soft voice brushed like warm satin over his ego and his bare body. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, when clients change their mind?’
Renzo reached for the drawer of the bedside table. ‘Very hard.’ But he wasn’t thinking about his client. He snagged a foil package and tore it open. ‘Your clients must be demanding too.’
Sonia shrugged, the movement hitching his shirt even higher up her body as he rolled on a condom with a trembling hand.
How could a woman be so totally unaware of her overwhelming sex appeal? It almost didn’t seem possible. Except Renzo had learned with Sonia that what he saw was always the real woman. There was no subterfuge. Her genuineness was amazingly arousing. He recalled the first day when she’d stared at his naked body with blatant hunger and it had taken all his power to pretend to be a civilised man who waited to know a woman before bedding her.
Sonia leaned further forward to pore over his innovative design. He watched her hand hover over the drawings for the pair of office blocks that incorporated vertical gardens, high tech energy efficiency and outdoor green space on several levels. He was pleased she was impressed. He was proud of this project.
‘I suppose some clients can be demanding,’ she murmured. ‘But they pay for the privilege. Though I haven’t met any clients since I started work at the House of Conti. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I really am here, not working out of my spare room in Australia. And all because Massimo Conti saw some dresses I designed on my previous visit to Italy. I really am very lucky.’
‘It’s not luck, it’s talent, if Massimo Conti wants you in his design team.’ Renzo had met the CEO of the fashion house just once, and had been impressed by his astuteness and drive.
But at the moment it was another sort of drive focusing his mind. Renzo swung out of bed and prowled across to where Sonia stood at the drawing board.
He let his hand drop to the back of her leg, trailing his index finger up the taut, silky skin and lifting the hem of the shirt she wore.
Her breath hitched and she moved to straighten up, except his other hand pressed down between her shoulder blades, keeping her bent forward.
‘Let me?’ His voice emerged as a hoarse growl, his throat dry at the prospect of all her luscious femininity there for the taking.
Sonia turned her head enough to look over her shoulder and catch his eye. For a second she stared back at him and Renzo felt the fizz of arousal quicken. Then she turned back towards the drawing board. Instead of speaking, she shuffled back, pushing her rump into his groin.
Renzo closed his eyes and sent up a prayer to whatever deity might give him strength to resist exploding too early.
He’d been inching the shirt slowly higher. Now he thrust the fabric up over her bare, pale cheeks and high up her back so he looked down on the pure sinuous symmetry of ripe feminine curves. The narrowing at her waist, the mouth-watering sweep out to her hips.
He stepped closer, his erection between her warm thighs.
There was a sigh. Maybe his. Possibly hers. Then she was backing further against him and he was nudging her legs wider, bending his own knees while he positioned himself where he needed to be. Silky hair brushed his knuckle and he watched a quiver pass through Sonia’s whole body, laid out before him. He probed a little, met wetness and heat and heard her hitch her breath. She gave a little shimmy of the hips as if inviting him in and that was all it took for his patience to shatter.
One steady thrust through Sonia’s welcoming body, through plush tightness into a world of sensation, and he impaled himself at her core.
For a second neither moved. Even their breathing stopped, as if both felt that awe-numbed reverence of complete physical perfection.
But Renzo was only human. He withdrew and thrust again and again. One hand anchored her hip, fingers curling tight. The other slid down, under his loose-hanging shirt, to cup her glorious breast.
He almost came then, feeling that jiggle of warm flesh in his palm, especially when Sonia arched back against him, grinding her pelvis in a slow rotation that drove him to the edge of reason.
Words poured from his lips, an uncensored stream of Italian as he told her just what she did to him and what he wanted to do to her, if only he could keep control of his body long enough.
For answer Sonia grabbed his hand on her hip and pushed it down between her legs, to that most sensitive spot.
‘Harder,’ she gasped, pushing back onto him.
Renzo needed no further urging. He withdrew and slammed back to her, so deep he felt as if they’d stopped being Renzo and Sonia and become one—
‘Again!’
Renzo’s lips pulled back in a grimace of pleasure as he let his fingers slide against her bud in time with each thrust. He felt the tremors begin to build in her.
He tightened his hold on her breast, pinching her nipple on the next thrust. Then, abruptly, his climax was on him, a ripple of sensation in his groin, coursing up his spine, through his belly. His fingers delved harder as he took her again and again and again, till Sonia screamed and arched back, pinioning herself on him.
Fire engulfed him. Fire and thunder and a blinding arc of lights that swung past his closed eyes and exploded in neon showers.
Finally, after an aeon of ecstasy, his sated body melted into hers and he slumped, boneless and weightless.
Summoning the last of his strength, he straightened, hugging her close, and stumbled to the bed with her in his arms. They settled there, she lying against him, their bodies breathing as one, limbs entwined and hearts gradually easing to a single, thrumming beat.