ALEXIS’S HEART POUNDED, every sense felt amplified a thousand times as she paced the length of her room.
She hadn’t been this anxious even seven years ago when she’d been naive and Leandro had been the reckless fantasy she’d indulged in.
He was still an unattainable fantasy come true but now she understood the man, what made him so irresistible to her and even better, she understood herself.
All through the long, unendurable evening, she’d been aware of Leandro’s every word, every movement, of the possessive light in his gaze and his touch. It was as if there was a current that tugged and tossed them even with other people around.
And, yet, somehow, he had also been her anchor in a sea of unfamiliarity.
Every time someone had blatantly wondered at how she’d landed his interest despite her lack of high connections or illustrious career, he’d batted them away with that arrogance. Threw out casually that it was his stars that had aligned finally that Alexis had come back into his life.
That moment had stretched infinitely, Alex’s heart in her throat at the genuine sentiment in his words.
Soon, with Tina’s help, Alex had separated the covetous from the caring ones, the superficial hangers-on from sure but curious friends of the family. And if Tina was distracted, there was Luca.
Tears had filled her eyes at how his family soon embraced her, and Alex knew it was from Leandro that they took their cue.
So strange that she’d received what she had always craved for, from the man who manipulated her into accepting it.
Now, it was past midnight and Izzie was out for the night after thoroughly enjoying being the center of attention. And she knew Leandro would be here any second.
She had all but issued an invitation. But acting the confident aggressor who wouldn’t back down was easy when it was all words and safe kisses. When they were surrounded by a hundred other people.
Now, now she trod a path on the thick carpet, her nerves stretched to the hilt. She was wondering if she should just change into her pajamas and wait for him or remain in her dress and brazenly go to him when she heard the door open.
Nape prickling, chest tight with ache, she turned.
Leandro stood leaning against the door just like he had that first night. His jacket was discarded, hair rumpled. But this time, there was no fury, no distrust, no inscrutability. There was only a fire and she knew he was going to set her aflame tonight, demand everything she had to give, bend her will to his.
Just because she’d demanded he give her a tiny part of him.
“Am I allowed in here, Alexis?” Stark longing pinched those features, making him look sharper, harsher. “Have I paid the toll to be in your room?”
She stared at him, heart in her throat. A dangerous light glinted in his eyes as he pushed off the door. Tension swathed the room. “Toll, Leandro?” Unease fluttered through her gut, knotting it until fierce anger came to her aid. “Is that how you still see this? After everything I’ve said to you, will you still call this some sort of trade between us?”
He shrugged and approached her, something predatory in his very gait. “I’m trying to understand if I’ve paid enough to touch you, to be inside you.”
Alex wanted to howl and rage and scratch that arrogance off his face. Wanted to throw those hurtful words back at him. She wanted to take Izzie and walk right out of his life. She wanted to—
No, she wouldn’t give up this easily. There had been such vulnerability, such desperation in his tone when he had told her about that dress. She pressed her hand to her stomach, felt the silk under her hand and slowly, a thread of her courage, her determination returned.
He couldn’t stand needing her like this, couldn’t bear that she’d ripped that invulnerability he believed he possessed. So she played his game and dared him. “I want this as much as you do.”
His head jerked toward her, his gaze drinking her in. “Izzie won’t wake up again tonight, will she?”
Without waiting for her answer, he crossed to the connecting door, looked through it and then locked it.
The sound of the latch clicking magnified in the fraught silence. Turning around, he undid the cuffs of his shirt and pushed them back. Long fingers moved to the buttons on his white shirt then. With a casualness that only betrayed his need to be in control, he unbuttoned it all the way, pulled it out of his trousers and shrugged it off.
Alexis’s pulse raced, pounded.
The shirt slithered to the ground soundlessly while moonlight bathed olive-gold skin stretched taut over contoured muscles. A smattering of hair covered his chest, a line of it disappearing down his taut abdomen. Her chest fell and rose at the evidence of his arousal.
Possessiveness streamed through Alex. She wanted to touch him and stroke him and see more of what he hid beneath that facade. She wanted all of Leandro.
“Come here then, cara.” He pushed off the door and her entire body vibrated as if in tune to him. “Let us see how good our understanding is with each other, how many liberties you’ll allow me before you stop me.”
“Do you think you can scare me away with those words?” He was the only man she’d ever wanted this intimate pleasure with. The only one who’d made her believe she was bold enough, worthy enough for everything. “You think this is a punishment?”
He reached her and pulled her to him. Pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. His tongue flicked the veins on her wrist. Waves of heat engulfed her as he trailed that wicked mouth up her arm.
Everywhere he touched, pleasure burst forth.
He was as much as prisoner to this fire between them as she was.
Like a mass of clay waiting to be molded by a master sculptor, she went willingly into his hands, gave herself over with complete trust.
“You’re a little scared, tesoro. Admit it.”
She laughed as he turned her around. “No, Leandro. I trust you implicitly.”
She heard his heated hiss before he licked the sensitive curve of her neck.
Her knees bumped the high bed and to her back stood Leandro. Their bare feet touched, the buckle of his belt dug into her backbone. His wide shoulders framed hers. Every inch of his rock-hard body imprinted against her shuddering muscles.
Hands on her hips, he kneaded her muscles, stroked them up and down her sides, grazing the sides of her breasts with his palms. Currents swept downward as her nipples tightened, turned into knots of need with a direct connection to the pulse between her legs.
But he didn’t touch her where she wanted even as his mouth kissed her back, licking and nipping.
She arched and slammed back into him as his teeth dug into a spot on her shoulder. His erection nestled against her buttocks and lengthened, erotic heat spewing into her muscles. Alex burned to the tips of her fingers, wanting to touch that rigid length.
Her mouth dried with anticipation, of feeling that velvet heat pound through her aching sex.
She heard his curse and rough rasp in Italian when she ground herself against him wantonly. There was no fear when it was this man. No shame in this need that only he fueled within her.
“Should I take you like this, Alexis?” Something she had never associated with Leandro, a feral rawness, a wild heat reverberated in his voice. “Should I bend you over and sheath myself in you, cara? I have fantasized about it, I have spilled into my own hands like a schoolboy imagining you like this, bella. Should I possess you like I have never taken another woman? That’s what you want of me, si?
“You want what I’ve never given anyone else. You want what I don’t have to give.”
“Yes. I want your darkest fantasy, Leandro.”
Reaching behind, Alex plunged her hands in his hair. Reduced the distance between them even more. Her breasts pouted in the air, desperate for his touch. “So stop testing me and tormenting yourself, Leandro.”
Her heart pounded in utter contrast to the insouciance in her tone. To take her like that, he meant to deny her the pleasure of touching him, the pleasure of making love to him. He meant to strip this intimacy of tenderness. But if this was what he needed to learn that she wouldn’t break, then so be it. “Whatever you want, do it soon. It’s been seven long years since anyone touched me. Seven years since I’ve known this pleasure...and God, I need it more than I need air right now.”
Sulky and demanding and utterly sensuous, she couldn’t believe that was her.
But unlike him, Alexis reveled in the current that thrummed through her, in this feeling of being so sharply attuned to another person.
“You have not been with another man.” His shock and disbelief coated the air.
“I’ve never wanted another man like I want you. Then or now,” she said simply. “Do you still not get it, Leandro? You make me want to risk everything. You make me want to live.”
Something reverent fell from his lips as he held her tight against him.
She felt the breezy air from the windows on her puckering nipples and bare flesh before she heard the rip of the silk. “Wait, no...” she cried but already the silk was pooling at her feet.
Breath crashing over her, she shuddered, told herself it didn’t matter. The dress might be beyond repair but what it represented was enough for her.
One finger traced the ridge of her spine as he whispered at her ears. “I will buy you a thousand dresses, Alexis,” gravel-rough, his voice was a sultry caress just on its own, “and then rip them all off you. By the time I’m through with you, you won’t even think of another man, much less ask him to put his hands on you.”
With that heated promise, he moved his hands around and cupped her breasts. Rough and abrasive, the sensation was beyond erotic. Alex moaned and pushed herself into those hands. His fingers pinched the needy nubs, sending arrows of wet heat to her sex. “Please...” she moaned, trying to turn in his arms, needing more desperately. Thighs trembled, knees shook as his touch became rougher, her nipples turning into turgid points of pleasure and pain.
But he didn’t let her turn. “Please what...Alexis? Should I stop? Is this too much for you to bear?”
“Not enough,” she groaned. For the life of her, she couldn’t stop begging.
“Should I take these lovely breasts in my mouth, cara? Should I tangle my tongue on these tight buds and suckle? Should I use my teeth on them?”
“Yes, please, God, yes,” she muttered, quaking from head to toe.
“Maybe if you please me, bella,” he offered, his words full of retribution and Alex wanted to kill him right there.
He moved his hand down the concave plane of her stomach, pushed his fingers into her thong. Deliberate and torturous, he traced the crease of her folds with exquisite pressure.
Breath was fire in her throat. “Damn it, Leandro... Will you kill me?”
His delicious laughter played along her very nerves. And then he flicked the swollen bundle screaming for his attention.
Alex jerked as he rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb, a groan clawing its way out of her throat. Fever took over her lower body and she rocked herself against his fingers instinctively.
Threw her head back against him and whimpered as pleasure edged closer but still remained elusive.
“Widen your legs for me, bella,” he commanded.
Thighs trembling, she did.
She had no mind of her own, no will of her own. She would have gone down on her knees and tasted him if he willed it of her in that moment.
Her thong out of the way, his fingers found her aching sex again. “Dio, you’re so wet for me. So hot for me. Raise your knee,” he asked again and when she did, he plunged first one and then another finger into her wet core.
His other hand stroked her bare buttocks, moved up and down her spine.
Fire. Need. Desire. She had everything and nothing.
Alex became a mass of a million different sensations as he stroked in and out and his thumb pressed on her clitoris.
Fine droplets of sweat beaded all over, her own skin was a prison. Whorls of pleasure gathered in momentum and intensity, threatening to break her into a thousand pieces if relief didn’t come soon. The world narrowed to her sensitive flesh and his fingers and the blinding pleasure of both.
Throat dried. Nerves screamed.
“Come for me, mia cara,” he persuaded her, rough and husky and bit down on her shoulder.
Tension corkscrewed through her belly and tightened and tightened until her climax beat down on her in relentless waves. Alex threw her head back against his shoulder and let out a deep keening cry that sounded erotic to her own ears. Her pelvic muscles contracted, released, spasmed, still his fingers stroked her. On and on it went until she didn’t know where or what she was. Until she was only fragments of sensation and pleasure.
She fell against him, only upright because he was holding her.
His hands moved the damp swathe of her hair from her neck and he flicked her skin with his tongue, whispering soothing words as if she was a distraught filly. “Dio, you come like thunder streaks the sky, you taste like lightning in the air...” She felt his shudder at her back, the rigid press of his erection against her butt. “I never stood a chance against you, bella.”
The desperate hunger in his tone woke Alex from the stupor of her pleasure.
Determined to have whatever he gave her, swallowing down her self-consciousness, Alex anchored herself on the arm around her midriff, and started to bend forward.
Instantly, he stiffened around her, stopping her from moving. “Leandro?”
* * *
Whatever his dark threat, whatever he’d forced himself to say, to consider, whatever strategy he employed to keep Alexis in her place and his roiling emotions in theirs, Leandro knew he failed.
That she’d undone him.
He already felt as if he’d cheated himself of the sight of her unraveling, of seeing those gorgeous eyes widen and flash in pleasure, of that sensuous mouth softening. Of being drenched in the passion of her cry.
So before the tremors of her orgasm had subsided, even before she had caught her breath, he turned her around, desperate to see her.
She hung on to him like a limpid doll, eyelids drooping down, pink flush staining her cheeks and damp neck, her naked body bowed in the aftermath of her release.
High and pouty, her breasts were a languid invitation, the flare of her hips, the lithe length of her thighs a sensual feast.
Desire and tenderness and every emotion he’d never experienced buffeted him from all sides. How had he even assumed he could separate sex and emotion, especially when it was Alexis?
How could he be in control when she eroded it so easily? How could he hold himself back when she stole all of him by giving everything of hers?
Hands on her hips, he lifted her onto the bed. He shed his trousers and boxers and climbed up over her.
Feasted his gaze all over her damp, trembling body.
Doe-like eyes fluttered open and then widened slightly. “I can see you,” she said with a smile. “And touch you. I’ve had dreamed so many times of stroking my hands over you, of learning every inch of you. Of seeing your eyes widen in desperate need. Of you smiling at me, of knowing that you revel in this attraction between us as much as I do.”
“I do, bella,” he admitted hoarsely. He bent his head and surrendered to this woman. “Touch me, Alexis. All you want.”
Pushing herself onto her elbow, she reached out instantly. Fingers fell on his shoulders and fluttered down his collarbone.
Feather-soft caresses that burned him. Light strokes that learned him.
Traced the ridge of his chest. Moved in maddening circles that made his throat dry.
“Leandro?”
“Si, mia cara?” he said breathless and still beneath her tentative touch, pulse thundering under the surface, senses screaming for more.
A fingernail raked his nipple. His breath hissed out of him. “Why does the press call you a saint?”
“The press is not always truthful, bella.”
“But they call Luca the devil and I know he is one when he sets his mind to it.” Now her finger moved over his abdomen, traced the roped ridge of muscle there and moved lower.
Grasping her wrist, he pushed it up over her head. With her other hand, she smoothed his brow, plunged her hands into his hair and tugged. Mouth against his, she pleaded with her lips.
She didn’t demand like he had done, she simply gave of herself. And made him give of himself to her.
“After the night we shared, I stayed away from women for a long time.”
“How long?” she whispered, pressing her hot little mouth to his pectorals.
“Does it matter?”
“To me, yes.” Now, her tongue came out, licking him as if he was her favorite dessert.
He fisted his hands on the sheets, desire a live beast inside him. “Alexis...” he groaned, and held her hair in a punishing grip.
As if she understood his unspoken command perfectly, as if she was tuned in to every dark fantasy he had ever had of her, she grazed his nipple with her teeth. When she pursed her mouth and sucked on his skin, Leandro jerked, his erection drawing tight against his belly.
Dio, he wanted her on her knees, that pert mouth around his rigid length. He wanted all the pleasures with Alexis that he’d never allowed himself before.
Her mouth reached his abdomen now. Steel would have more give than his muscles then. “Do you still want me to believe I was one of many?” she whispered against his skin. “That I was just a convenient lay?”
“No...my father...was indiscriminate with any number of women, abusive of my mother in ways I can’t even bear to mention. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never become like him.” He forced the words out wondering if they would bring back a little sanity. “After I was with you...that next morning, I realized you had been a virgin. That I had taken you like that, with such little tenderness, against the wall, that even your gasp of pain couldn’t penetrate the haze of my desire...”
A hard, inflaming kiss that delivered the depth of her want on his lips. It soothed and yet claimed. “But that pain was momentary, Leandro...nothing compared to what I felt after. Nothing compared to what you made me feel.”
He closed his eyes, the memory haunting him even now. “I couldn’t bear to look at myself. I couldn’t stand to think I had been so reckless with my hunger. So mindless.
“And I abhor befriending women, letting them think I was interested when I had no intention of ever marrying, just for sex. So I never touched another woman again.”
Something akin to wonder crossed her face as she cradled his cheek. “Seven years, Leandro?”
The implicit trust in her gaze, the pure pleasure in the curve of her mouth felt like a gift, one he had never received before. “Any release I needed, my hands provided it.”
Even as she stared back at him like a queen, gloriously naked, color suffused her cheeks at that. “Then it’s true. I have toppled the saint from his pedestal,” she whispered with a satisfied smile before she claimed his mouth.
Soft and tentative, she slanted her lips this way and that, looking for that perfect fit. Swiped her tongue over the seam of his lips.
He pushed his hand through the silky curtain of her hair and held her there, awash in the heated seduction of her mouth. But he needed more. Soon, he took over the kiss. Dueled his tongue with her tentative one. Scraped his teeth across her lush lower lip. Sucked it into his mouth.
He explored and ravaged that soft mouth so thoroughly that her whimper raced along his spine.
But it wasn’t enough. Dio, nothing was going to be enough except utter possession. And complete surrender.
He pushed her onto her back and covered her body with his. Inch by inch, skin to skin, hardness against soft curves, he settled over her lithe body.
A perfect fit, as if they were made for each other.
As if there was magic in the room. Something beyond passion and pleasure. Beyond the frantic beats of their hearts and the sweat-slicked friction of their skin.
There was a raw intimacy, a closeness with Alexis that he vowed to never lose.
Alex’s jagged growl joined his as her breasts rubbed his chest, as she brought her knees up and his thick shaft settled against her womanhood. He jerked at the heated invitation of her sex, slick against his. Her arms vined around his neck, fingers plunging into his hair and scraping. Softness settling against his hardness in all the right ways.
She was made for him, the thought circled him.
“Leandro, please, I want to touch you... I want to—”
“No, cara. I can’t...wait anymore.”
Pushing her thighs wide with his hips, rough hands holding her down for him, he entered her in one slick thrust and sheathed himself in her fully.
A gasp wrenched out of her as her sex stretched and closed over him like a tight fist. Every muscle in him screamed for movement, for friction, sweat gathered on his forehead. Leandro buried his mouth in the crook of her neck and counted his breaths.
Only then did he realize the tension in Alex’s body, the punishing grip of her fingers on his shoulders. The thought of hurting her, again, cleaved him in two.
“Alexis, mia cara,” he said, her name a prayer on his lips, “did I hurt you?” Had he been rough in his desperation?
Slowly, she relaxed under him, her breath blowing warmly against his shoulder blades. “No...it just feels unfamiliar and strange.”
Her skin tasted like summer to his lips. “Good strange?” he somehow managed through the shrieking demands of his body.
“Overwhelmingly good, achingly...intimate.” Her words mirrored his thoughts in a moment of pure perfection. She glanced at him and then away as if she needed to hide her expression from him. “Don’t you think so?”
He smiled against her trembling mouth. “You think me capable of thinking, cara?”
After a moment, she found his gaze again. Kissed the corner of his mouth.
Slowly, her hands drifted down his back, cupped his buttocks and then she wiggled her hips under him. Liquid fire surged through every nerve ending. “I like when you can’t think, Leandro.”
It was all the sign he needed.
And then he was thrusting deep and hard inside her, breath balling up in his throat and she met him thrust to thrust, raking her fingers over his back, urging him on and on with her whimpers and moans.
Hands on her hips, he tilted her up for him and pistoned in and out, deeper and faster.
The slap of flesh, the pounding of their hearts, the damp whisper of their skin...
There was nothing civilized, nothing even remotely like self-control left in him anymore. Only the mind-numbing pleasure rushing at him mattered.
In the blink of a breath, he moved his hand and tugged the center of her slick sex with his fingers.
With a whimper, Alex bowed and bucked and fell apart around him and the convulsions of her body sent Leandro careening toward his own release.
Pleasure splintered him into a thousand pieces, slammed his heart awake as if it had merely been a functioning organ until now. His very breath a fire in the back of his throat, Leandro let out a guttural grunt at the surfeit of sensation.
Alex’s hands came around him and held him hard as he fell from the dizzying pleasure.
And Leandro knew that he’d never been more vulnerable in his entire life. Knew why he’d fought and resisted this rushing fate from the moment he’d seen her again.
Not when he’d discovered the abuse his father had heaped upon his mother. Not when his mother had walked out and he had hugged a sobbing Luca and had taken on the mantle of his family and business. Not when Rosa had died and he had suddenly felt anchorless.
It seemed as if there were no coping strategies left. No automatic mechanisms that his mind could conjure to lift away the strange weight on his soul, the fever in his blood.
Alexis had burrowed herself under his skin, into his heart and if he lost her, he had a feeling his world was never going to be the same again.