levered herself up until she knelt before him, face to face.
‘My turn,’ she whispered, her eyes sparkling.
For such a slight woman she had a hidden strength, able, with a push of her hand, to shove him onto his back.
She laughed softly, taking hold of his wrists and pulling them up and over his head.
This had to count as the single most erotic moment of his life: Alessa straddling him, pinning him down, her swollen breasts brushing against his face. Every time he made to capture one in his mouth, she would move just out of reach.
Her teasing was deliberate, as was the way she straddled him, positioning herself on his erection. Every time she moved out of the reach of his mouth her crotch rubbed the length of his erection, the material of her knickers preventing any penetration.
She leaned down to kiss him on the mouth, still holding his wrists.
With a simple flick he could be free from her clasp.
Instead, he kissed her back, succumbing to the delights she wanted to bestow on him.
Her soft mouth pressed along his jaw then she released her hold on his wrists and slowly made her descent. No part of his chest was left unkissed or unstroked, his skin alive under the trail she made.
When she reached his groin she completely ignored his erection, her mouth working around it, her hands cupping his balls while her tongue darted out to taste them.
Her movements were clumsy, a sign of her inexperience, but this only added to the eroticism of the moment.
This was all for him.
Her tongue flickered onto the base of his shaft.
A powerful bolt shot through him, a groan escaping his lips.
He gripped the bed sheets in his fists and clenched his teeth even tighter, finding a spot on the ceiling to focus on.
For a moment he’d been certain he was going to come.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, stopping what she was doing to look at him, her eyes clouding with doubt.
Speech wouldn’t form. He shook his head and sat up, leaning forward to clasp her cheeks and pull her into another kiss. In a tangle of arms and legs they collapsed together, Alessandra beneath him, devouring each other with their mouths.
He tugged at her knickers, pushing them down her hips, using his thighs and legs to pull them down. When they reached her ankles she kicked them off then wrapped her legs around him, raising her bottom so her heat rubbed against his erection.
And then he was inside her, burrowed in her tight heat, the relief giddying.
The first time they’d made love he’d been blown away with how deeply he’d felt everything, every touch, every movement magnified.
This was something else completely.
Slowing their kisses, he began to move, keeping his groin ground to hers.
Her soft moans fired him, her kisses fuelled him, her roaming hands and fingers burning through his skin.
He opened his eyes to find her gazing at him in a dazed wonder.
Reaching for her hand, he brought it up to rest by the side of her head and clasped it tightly, kissing her with renewed passion as his thrusts deepened. It was as if he’d fused into one with her.
He felt rather than heard her come. Her grip around his erection thickened and tightened, her lips freezing on his, her only sound a tiny, almost breathless mew.
He was hardly aware of his own release. His senses were too full of Alessandra, watching every last moment of her climax.
Finally spent, he burrowed his face into her neck, careful not to put too much weight on her belly, and savoured the most delicious warmth he’d ever known spread through him.
The heavy weight of sleep soon came to claim him, and he shifted his weight off her. She followed his movements and settled into the crook of his arm with a contented sigh.
He awoke a few hours later. The suite was in darkness, a sliver of moonlight shining through.
Alessandra was draped over him, breathing deeply, her hair tickling his neck and chin. He smoothed it down, marvelling at its silkiness.
He tried to doze but sleep refused to return.
How could he sleep with so much racing through his mind? When there were so many emotions racing through his chest, it was a struggle to catch his breath.
The first time he’d slept with her, in her apartment in Milan… He’d struggled for thoughts and breath then too.
This was much worse.
He’d felt her getting too close in Mikolaj’s restaurant, that feeling she could see through the veneer of his skin and through to the heart of him. That feeling had been compounded after the visit to his mother’s house. He’d retreated to New York partly to talk sense into Rocco but mostly for space to compose himself in preparation for his new life.
Marriage wouldn’t change anything, he’d convinced himself. He would compartmentalise Alessandra’s presence in his life just as he did with his mother. They would live together but they wouldn’t be together.
Making love to her again… Something had come alive inside him. He’d felt it uncoiling when they’d exchanged their vows but with everything going on that day had put it to one side. Now it, whatever it was, had uncoiled and bitten him, hard enough that it felt like a physical pain.
Before he could hope to decipher it, she roused in his arms, pulling herself up enough to kiss him, deeply, passionately, awakening in an instant.
He responded as if he’d been lying there waiting for her to wake, groaning when she slid onto his already hard length.
Doing nothing but hold on to her waist to support her, he let her take the lead. The moonlight bathed her, letting him watch as she took her pleasure, watch the lips that parted, the eyes that glazed. Her soft moans deepened until she ground herself onto him. He felt her release as deeply as he felt his own, revelled in the pulsations that seemed to draw his own orgasm into unquantifiable realms.
Afterwards, when he thought she was falling back into slumber, she pressed a kiss to his chest.
‘I could get used to this,’ she said, her voice sleepy but tinged with a smile.
And tinged with something that sounded like hope.
His eyes opened with a jerk.
He remembered the look in her eyes when they’d exchanged their vows. Now he knew what it had been: hope.
Alessandra had hopes for their future as a married couple.
She was changing towards him—she had
