She gave a gasp, head thrown back, and he began to pluck at the nipples, engorging at his touch. Blood surged in his body and she gasped again, head rolling. He gave a low laugh, his body responding as fully to hers as hers did to his, and pulled her back against him. The curves of her hips fitted against him, desire cresting at the lush softness of her against the hardening of his own body.
For a moment...a totally self-indulgent moment...he kept her there...
Then he released her, stepping away.
‘I’ll use the bathroom,’ he told her, turning away, striding in, shutting the door behind him.
He took his time, methodically stripping off his clothes, draping them over the shower rail, putting his shoes beneath the vanity. The process gave him the pause he needed. The control he needed. Yet he could feel a nerve working in his cheek, knew how tightly his jaw was tensed, how focussed his gaze was as he reached for a towel to snake it around his hips.
For one long second he saw his own reflection.
It was that of a stranger.
I don’t do this. I don’t pick up women at parties and bring them back to my hotel room. I don’t do it.
And to do it now—at this juncture of his life...
So why? Why was he doing it?
The question burned, demanding and accusing.
He got his answer as he walked out of the bathroom.
She was lying in the bed, half exposed by the pulled-back bedding, and her lush, ripe body was waiting for him.
For his possession.
The sheet was cold beneath Ariana’s naked back and she welcomed it. Her body was a blaze of heat. Filled with an insanity she could not subdue. Because surely she was insane, to be doing this? Coming to the hotel room of a man she had never set eyes on before this evening?
She felt defiance spear through her. She was giving herself to this moment and she would not question why. A stranger he might be, but what was burning between them she could not—would not—be denied. Or resisted...
He is like no one I have ever known before! Whatever it is about him, it draws me to him. I just want him so, so much... I want him to want me and desire me...because I am burning with desire for him...
Restlessly, she moved her naked body on the cold sheet, arousal blazing in her. She had never, ever, felt it so strongly before.
Only now—with this man—he’s setting me alight...
Anticipation, hunger, the longing for him, for his touch, his possession, made her breathing shallow, her heart race. She felt her arousal mount. Where was he? What was keeping him? She wanted him—she wanted himnow...
And then, with a leap in her heart, a catch in her throat, she saw he was there. Walking out of the bathroom, his torso hard and muscled, wearing nothing but a towel snaked around his hips, which could not disguise the fact that what was possessing him was just as powerful.
His eyes were fixed on her, dark, and purposeful. He stopped by the bed, looked down at her. Her breasts were bare—there seemed little point in modesty now...not after his shocking, intimate possession of them. Her nipples were crested coral peaks, straining upwards above the sheet pulled across her.
Until he lifted it away.
He looked down at her completely naked body. His gaze seared her. Then in a single movement he had flung aside his towel and slid his smooth, powerful body, naked and aroused, down beside her, to start his possession of her. His complete and total possession...
Light was pressing on Ariana’s eyelids. Bright and insistent. She didn’t want it, but could not turn it off. Something had woken her—some noise. She opened her eyes, blinking, saw sunlight diffused through the window of the room.
The hotel room she’d just spent the night in.
With Luca Farnese.
She stilled, heat flushing through her naked body. Consciousness burning in her of the night she had just spent with him.
Dear God, did I really do it? Did I really fall into bed with him the very evening I met him? Fall into bed with him and have sex so abandoned, so intense, so absolutely incredible that I can’t believe it was possible...
But how could she deny it? Or want to deny it...