in his molten gaze, Alex couldn’t back down. “I don’t care how wealthy you—”
His tapered fingers squeezed her palm gently. “I don’t agree with my grandfather, bella.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come tonight?”
Tension filled the infinitesimal silence before he answered, “Luca told me he picked up a drunk Tina and couldn’t locate you. I don’t like the idea of you being out at night in Milan alone.”
“You could’ve asked anyone else to do that. Your security team...you didn’t have to come yourself. You could—”
“What you’re hoping for, it will never happen, Alexis.”
“You called me Alexis,” she said simply, letting the warmth of his body float her away.
His head cocked to the side, and he rubbed her jaw.
Shock...he was shocked that he had said her name. The fingers that had been brushing her cheek pulled away. “Come, it is time for you to leave.”
It was as if he’d slammed a door in her face.
He wasn’t talking just about the nightclub or Milan, but Italy. He was telling her it was time for her to leave. Panic flared through her, but beneath it was a realization that sent her heart slamming against her rib cage. All these days...
“You want me,” she accused. “You made me feel like I was the only one who felt it, as if I was gauche enough to read it all wrong—”
In a near-violent movement that sent her breath bursting through her, Leandro captured her wrists. Stilling her body from leaning into him. “This is a mistake.”
Yanking her hands away from his grip, Alexis pressed her body against his.
A jagged sound wrenched out from his lips, throaty and low. Moving her hands up his chest, Alex tilted her head back. Every inch of his face was frozen in some kind of torturous agony. And she didn’t intend to let him win.
She buried her mouth in the opening of his dress shirt. Velvet-smooth and hot, his skin burned against her lips. “Kiss me, just once. Show me what you feel, just once.”
One hand snuck into her hair. Her scalp prickled as he tugged her up. Dark need pinched his features and Alex shivered, suddenly, finally, understanding the depth of the need he hid under that infuriatingly indifferent mask.
Anticipation roped with tension set her nerves on fire.
“You do not know who you’re playing with.”
She jerked back. “Am I so beneath you then?”
He shook his head. But the shadows didn’t leave his eyes. “You’re too young.”
“I’m old enough to know what I want.”
Flicking her tongue out, she tasted him. His hands vined tight around her, flattening her nonexistent breasts against his chest, knocking the breath out of her. “You think I’ll stop at one meager kiss?” Pure need punctured every word. “You think to play with my desire and walk away after a chaste embrace, to taunt me like you do these boys with your innocence?”
His warning only incensed her desire even more. “I’m not the one afraid, Leandro.”
A volley of Italian fell from his mouth as she pressed her lower body to his. The ridge of his erection against her belly made her quiver.
His fingers descended on her hips, hurting her with their grip to keep her unmoving. “I will not touch my brother’s seconds.”
“We shared one kiss before I walked away. I’m not interested in Luca.”
“You are the first woman in the world to claim that.” Something flashed in his gaze even as his long fingers drew maddening circles over her wrists. “Which is why he likes you so much.”
If her heart beat any faster, it would rip out of her chest. But still, she risked. And in this spine-tingling risk she took with Leandro, Alex felt more secure, more wanted than she’d ever felt in her life. “And you?”
It was as if all the walls he kept up fell down in dust and a primitive hunger filled his gaze. “I feel need, Alexis. When I look at you...all I feel is desire.”
Even then, it was she that lifted her head, reached up and pressed her mouth to his. She, who had no experience with men, that wrapped her hands around his nape and refused to let go.
She that touched her mouth to his.
Soft and hot and hard at the same time, his mouth was a gateway to heaven and hell. Every nerve ending quivering, every instinct driving her forth, she ran the tip of her tongue tentatively, slowly, over that cruelly sculpted lower lip.
With a growl that made her belly tighten, finally he relented. Finally, he touched that hard, harsh mouth to hers.
Lights exploded behind Alex’s eyes as if the world was a kaleidoscope of sensations and textures.
Masculine and demanding, he parted her lips and pushed in.
With his tongue and teeth, and with an expertise that made her sex shockingly wet, Leandro devoured her.
There was no playfulness, no seduction to his kiss, just as his words. It was a full-on sensual assault that left no doubt about where it was leading.
His hands skimmed everywhere—her breasts and the boldly taut nipples, her hips, the curves of her buttocks—before they crept under her dress and pulled it up.
Long fingers hitched her thigh around his hips until the heat of her was intimately pressed against the rigid length of him.
Every inch of her vibrated with excitement, desire, need, every inch of her thrummed at the sensation of power.
When he pushed her against the wall and covered her breasts with his hands, Alex whimpered.
When his fingers reached her wet core—alien and intrusive, her gaze flew to his, shocked and aroused and oh-so-willing. Her mouth dried at the stark need in those gray eyes.
Groaning, she came off the wall like a bow when he curled a finger inside her just so, driving a fork of heat through her pelvis.
When he flicked the rim of her ear with his tongue, and told her what he was going to do to her, Alex buried her mouth in his neck and gave herself over.
To the man, to the moment, to the incredible sensation of being wanted.
Seven years later
“DOES YOUR ARM still hurt, Mamma?”
Alex tucked the quilt around Isabella and kissed her forehead. “A little, baby,” she said, opting for the truth.
She
