a feather. Her arms moved around his neck but she couldn’t resist trailing her fingers along his jaw, and then reaching up to press a kiss against the pulse she could see beating under his bronzed skin.
His chest swelled against her breasts and her whole body pulsed with heat and awareness.
He put her down gently by the rumpled bed, where the scent of their bodies lingered in the air, sultry... Even though they’d already made love Serena was trembling as if they hadn’t even touched for the first time.
They came together in a kiss of mutual combustion.
There was no time for Serena to worry about her body letting her down again because she was too feverish for Luca—hands spreading out over his bare chest, nails grazing his nipples, causing him to curse softly. Her hands moved to his trousers, and she unzipped them, freeing his erection. She took him in her hand, relishing the steely strength.
Luca’s hands were busy too, opening the belt of the robe and sliding it over her shoulders. Serena looked up at him and took her hands away from his body so that the robe could fall to the floor.
His gaze devoured her...hot. Dark colour slashed his cheeks as he tugged his trousers down and off completely, kicking them aside.
He pushed her gently onto the bed. Serena was shocked at how fast her heart was racing, how ragged her breath was.
Gutturally he said, ‘I want to take this slow—not like before.’
But Serena was desperate to feel him again. She was ready. She shook her head and whispered, ‘I don’t want slow. I want you.’
He caught her look and said rawly, ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded again, and saw his jaw clench as if he was giving up some thin shred of control. He reached for protection and she watched him smooth it onto his erection, an almost feral look on his face.
Serena’s sex pulsed with need. She lifted her arms and beckoned him, spreading her legs in a mute appeal.
His eyes flashed and he muttered something indistinct. He leant down to place his hand on her sex, cupping its heat. Serena found his wide shoulders and gripped him, biting her lip.
He spread his fingers and explored her secret folds, releasing the slick heat of her arousal.
His voice was rough. ‘You’re so ready for me.’
‘Please...’ said Serena huskily. ‘I want you, Luca.’
Every cell in her body felt engorged with blood as he came down over her, pressing her into the bed, his body hard next to her softness. Crushing it deliciously.
He bent his head and took one pebbled nipple into his mouth, his teeth capturing it for a stinging second before letting go to soothe it with his tongue. This teasing was almost unbearable.
Serena was about to sob out another plea when he pushed his thick length inside her. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath as he pushed in, relentless, until he was buried inside her.
‘You’re so tight...like a vice.’ He pressed a kiss to her mouth, hot and musky. ‘Relax, preciosa...’
The endearment did something to Serena. She felt her body softening around him. He slid even deeper and a look of deep carnal satisfaction crossed his face, making something exult inside her. A sense of her own innately feminine power.
Her nipples scraped against his hair-roughened chest with a delicious friction as Luca started to move in and out, each powerful glide of his body reaching deeper inside Serena to a place she’d locked away long ago. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. It was as if he was holding her within his gaze, keeping her rooted in the inexorable building of pleasure.
He reached around to her thigh and brought it up over his hip, his hand smoothing her flesh, then gripping it as his movements became harder, more powerful. That hand crept up and cupped her bottom, kneading, angling her hips, so that he touched some part of her that made her gasp out loud as a tremor of pleasure rocked through her pelvis.
Unconsciously Serena tilted her hips more and Luca moaned deeply. His thrusts became faster and Serena could feel the tight coil of tension inside her, tightening and tightening unbearably, to a point of almost pain.
She was incoherent, only able to stay anchored by looking into Luca’s eyes. When she closed hers briefly he commanded roughly, ‘Look at me, Serena.’
She did. And something broke apart deep inside her.
Her whole body tautened against his, nerves stretched to screaming point. Luca moved his hand between them, his fingers finding the engorged centre of her desire, and he touched her with a precision that left her nowhere to hide or hang on to. She imploded. Her control was shattered—the control she’d clung to all her life. Since her world had fallen apart as a child, when being out of control had become her control.
In one instant it was decimated, and Serena soared high on a wave of bliss that was spectacular. The definition of an orgasm being a petit mort, a small death, had never felt so apt. She knew that a part of her had just died and something else incredibly fragile and nebulous was taking its place.
She floated back down to reality, aware of her body milking Luca’s own release as he shuddered and buried his head in her shoulder, his body embedded deep within hers. Her legs wrapped around him, and the pulsations of their mutual climaxes took long minutes to die away.
* * *
Luca was in the kitchen the following morning, making breakfast, before he realised that he’d never in his life made breakfast for a lover. In general he liked being in a situation where he could extricate himself rather than have to deal with the aftermath and unwelcome romantic projections.
But here he was, cooking breakfast for Serena without half a second’s hesitation or any desire to put as much space between them as possible. His head was still fuzzy from an overload of sensual pleasure and the revelations she’d made.
He couldn’t help thinking of her: a little girl, traumatised by the violent death of her mother, with a sadistic and mercurial father who tried to discredit her as soon as he could. Somehow it wasn’t that fantastical to believe her father capable of such things.
He thought back to that night when he’d watched Siena come to bail Serena out of jail. The way she had tended to Serena like a mother to her cub...the way Serena had leant on her as if it was a familiar pattern. Both had been manipulated by their father’s machinations. Both had been acting out their parts. The good girl and the bad girl.
It all made a sick kind of sense now, because Luca knew he hadn’t imagined the vulnerability he’d sensed about her that night he’d first met her...
A sound from behind him made him tense and he turned around to see Serena, tousle-haired and dressed in the robe, standing in the doorway. She looked hesitant, shy, and Luca was falling, losing his grip. Everything he thought he’d known about her...wasn’t.
His hands gripped the bowl he was using to whisk eggs. ‘Hungry?’
‘Starving.’
Serena’s voice was husky, and it fired up Luca’s blood, reminding him of how she’d shouted out his
