Reluctant laughter escaped Luciano. He stared down at her anxious face and a deep hunger for the warmth of her engulfed him in a tidal wave of need. He pulled her into his arms and claimed her mouth with devastating urgency.
Taken by surprise, Jemima laughed and then gasped beneath the savage onslaught of his mouth. Her body caught flame like hay, a burning ache stirring between her legs, a hot, prickling awareness stiffening her nipples.
‘Madonna! I think I’ll die if I don’t have you now,’ Luciano growled, long fingers closing into the shoulders of her swimsuit to wrench it down and release her breasts.
He tumbled her down on his bed and skimmed off his shorts in an impatient motion, coming up on the mattress to join her unashamedly naked and eager. He knelt at her feet and yanked her swimsuit down her hips to toss it aside while his smouldering gaze wandered at will over her splayed body.
‘I love these...so pretty, so lush,’ he husked, his fingers cupping the curves of her high, full breasts before rising to stroke the pouting crests. ‘And these.’ A lean hand travelled up a slender thigh and nudged her legs apart to display a tantalising ribbon of soft, glistening pink. ‘And this perfect place, piccolo mia. I am enslaved...’
He found that feminine perfection with the erotic expertise of his mouth and it was magical and then terrifying to lose control so fast. She clutched at his hair. She sobbed. She gasped. Ultimately she cried his name in an ecstasy of quivering, wanton pleasure, her body weak and heavy with satisfaction as she lay beneath him, too stunned by his passion and the explosive response he had roused from her to move again.
‘What was it about me...er...being nosy that set you off?’ she whispered helplessly.
Luciano’s brow furrowed. He honestly didn’t know. He had looked at her and an uncontrollable urge to take her to bed had overpowered him. He couldn’t explain it. Her wild response to him had soothed the savage turmoil inside him in a manner beyond his comprehension. He touched her with gentle fingers, put his mouth to a rose-pink nipple, toying with her for a few moments, smiling against her flushed skin as she muttered his name as though she were saying a prayer. He turned her over onto her stomach. She complained about being moved and he ignored it, lifting her up, aligning their bodies and then plunging into the damp, silken heat of her with a raw groan of enthusiasm, swiftly echoed by her boneless cry of encouragement.
Delicious sensation ricocheted up through Jemima’s body, building from the hot, aching heart of her into a blaze that consumed as Luciano slammed into her with compelling strength. Her excitement climbed with the sweet, earthy delight of his penetration. And just when she believed that powerful excitement couldn’t reach any greater height he sent her flying into an orgasm that snapped taut her every muscle and blew her apart in a sublime surge of drowning, melting pleasure.
‘Oh...wow...’ Jemima mumbled, flopping down against the pillows.
Luciano flipped her over and gathered her damp, trembling body close. ‘Oh...wow...’ he teased. ‘Well, you have no choice but to marry me now.’
‘How’s that?’ she framed, barely able to think straight.
‘I didn’t use a condom—’
Her brows pleated in dismay. ‘Luciano—’
‘Having unprotected sex is a sign of commitment, which I have never risked before with a woman,’ he announced above her head.
‘You want a brass trophy or something?’ Jemima looked up at him with wry amusement.
‘No, I want a repeat...’ Luciano growled, treating her full lower lip to a tiny carnal nip swiftly followed by a soothing stroke of his tongue. ‘That was the best sex I ever had, piccolo mia.’
‘Good, because you won’t have got me pregnant,’ Jemima told him with assurance. ‘It’s the wrong time of the month for that.’
Luciano stared down at her with brooding intensity, his lean, darkly handsome features set in unsettlingly serious lines. ‘Don’t be too curious with me.’
Jemima had become very still and her eyes were troubled. ‘Why not?’
‘Unlike you, I’m not the sharing type. I have too much stuff to hide.’
‘Red rag to a bull, Luciano,’ Jemima warned. ‘And if we’re getting married there’s nothing you should need to hide from me.’
Luciano sat up, his dark eyes veiled, his lean, strong body taut with tension. ‘My father killed my mother when I was three,’ he breathed in a constrained undertone. ‘She was trying to take me and leave him... He threw her down the stairs and she broke her neck. I saw it happen.’
Jemima froze and then consciously unfroze again to close her arms protectively round him. ‘How horrible for you to be forced to live with a memory like that.’