in a silky line under his trousers to where she could see the bulge of his arousal.
Serena’s brain melted and she welcomed it. She didn’t want to think or analyse—only feel.
His hands moved to his trousers and he undid them and pushed them down, taking his underwear with them. His erection was awe-inspiring. Long and thick and hard, a bead of moisture at the tip.
‘Seven years, Serena,’ he said throatily, ‘For seven years I’ve wanted you above any other woman. No one came close to how I imagined this.’
She looked up at him, taken aback. She watched as he reached for something in a drawer in the side table. He rolled protection over his length. There was something unashamedly masculine about the action.
‘Lie back,’ he instructed gruffly.
Serena did, glad he was giving instructions because she couldn’t seem to formulate a single coherent thought.
Luca curled his fingers under the sides of her panties and gently took them off. Now she was naked. And even though she’d been naked in front of men before it had never felt like this. As if she was being reborn.
Luca came down over her on strong arms, their bodies barely touching. He kissed her, and those broad shoulders blocked everything out. Serena reached up, desperate for contact again, her hands touching his chest and moving down the sides of his body, reaching around to his back, sliding over taut, sleek muscles.
Luca broke away. ‘You’re killing me. I need you...now. Spread your legs for me.’
Serena’s entire body seemed to spasm at that husky entreaty. She moved her legs apart and Luca came down over her, his body pressing against hers. She could feel the thick blunt head of him pushing against her, seeking entrance.
She opened her legs wider, every cell in her body straining towards this union. Aching for it. She looked up at him, her whole body on the edge of some unknown precipice.
As if some lingering tension shimmering between them had just dissolved, Luca thrust in, hard and deep, and Serena cried out at the exquisite invasion.
It was sore...he was so big...but even as she had that thought the pain was already dissipating to be replaced by a heady sensation of fullness.
‘Serena?’
She opened her eyes. Luca was frowning. She hadn’t realised that she was biting her lip.
He started to withdraw. ‘I’ve hurt you.’
There was a quality to his voice Serena had never heard before. She gripped him tight with her thighs, trapping him. ‘No,’ she said huskily. ‘You’re not hurting me... It’s...been a while.’
He stopped, and for an infinitesimal moment Serena thought he was going to withdraw completely. But then he slowly thrust in again and relief rushed through her.
Luca reached under her back, arching her up into him more as he kept up a steady rhythm that made it hard to breathe. She could feel her inner muscles tight around him, saw his gritted jaw, the intense look of concentration on his face.
Luca pressed a searing kiss to her mouth before trailing his lips down, closing them over one nipple and then the other, forcing Serena’s back to arch again as spasm after spasm of tiny pleasures rushed through her core.
She locked her feet around the back of Luca’s body and he went deeper, but she couldn’t break free of that sliver of control that kept her bound, kept her from soaring to the stars. A blinding flash of insight hit her like a smack in the face: she recognised now why she couldn’t let go in this moment of intense intimacy—the reason why she’d never let herself feel this deeply before—it was because she’d always been too afraid of losing control.
Which was ironic. But being out of control on drink and medication had been—perversely—within her control. This wasn’t. This was threatening to wrench her out of herself in a way that was frankly terrifying.
A small sob of need escaped Serena’s mouth as that elusive pinnacle seemed to fade into the distance. The turmoil in her chest and body was burning her. But she couldn’t let go—even as she heard a guttural sound coming from Luca’s mouth and felt his body tense within her before deep tremors shook his big frame and his body thrust against her with the unconscious rhythm of his own release.
She felt hollowed out, unsatisfied.
Luca withdrew from her body, breathing harshly, and Serena winced minutely as her muscles relaxed their tight grip. As soon as Luca released her from the prison of his arms she felt the need to escape and left the bed.
She barely heard him call her name as she shut the bathroom door behind her, locking it. Her legs were shaking and tears burned the back of her eyes as the magnitude of what had just happened sank in. There was something fundamentally flawed, deep inside her. She’d been broken so long ago that she couldn’t function normally now. And Luca had to be the one to demonstrate this to her. The ignominy was crushing.
Serena blindly reached into the shower and turned the spray to hot, stepping underneath and lifting her face up to the rush of water. Her tears slid and fell, silent heaves making her body spasm as she let it all out.
She heard banging on the door, her name. She called out hoarsely, ‘Leave me alone, Luca!’
And then, mercifully, silence.
Serena sank down onto the floor of the shower as the water beat relentlessly down over her body. She drew her knees up to her chest and dropped her head onto them and tried to tell herself that what had just happened wasn’t as cataclysmic as she thought it was.
* * *
Luca looked at the locked door. He wasn’t used to feeling powerless, but right now he did. He cursed volubly, knowing it wouldn’t be heard because he could hear the spray of the shower and something that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
His chest hurt. Was she crying? Had he hurt her?
Luca cursed again and paced. He went to his wardrobe and took out some worn jeans, pulled them on, paced again.
Dammit. No woman had ever reacted like that after making love with him. Running to the bathroom. Crying. And yet...
Had he really made love to Serena? Luca asked himself derisively. Or had he been so overcome with lust that he’d not taken any notice of the fact that she clearly hadn’t been enjoying herself?
He winced now when he thought of how tight she’d been. And her husky words...It’s...been a while. To be so tight he’d guess a lot longer than ‘a while’. Which meant what? That her reputation for promiscuity was severely flawed, for a start. And she’d been awkward, slightly gauche. Not remotely like the practised seductress he might have expected.
He’d seen how her face had tightened, become inscrutable. She’d shut her eyes, turned her head away... But Luca had been caught in the grip of a pleasure so intense that he’d been unable to hold himself back, releasing himself into her with a force unlike anything he’d known before.
For the first time in his memory Luca was facing the very unpalatable fact that he’d behaved with all the finesse of a rutting bull.
The
