My body responds to him instantly, easily. The desire that’s been building all day consumes me, and the heady feeling makes me lose myself in the sweet stroke of his tongue across mine.
“Così bella,” he murmurs, his teeth grazing my bottom lip. He sits up and I move to sink my fingers in his hair, but I’m trapped.
He’s tied my wrists to the bed. With his tie.
“I told you… Tonight is mine. I can’t explore you and pleasure you the way I want unless you’re not touching me.”
I want to argue and fight with him, but the lust that fills his eyes as his gaze travels across my nearly naked body stops me. Instead of annoyance, red-hot desire wraps around me and I give in to him.
My heart pounds at the slow, reverent way he kisses his way down my neck and across my collarbone. Everything about the way he’s touching me is sending me into overdrive and making me push my body into him.
I don’t care if I can’t touch him or if he wants to take this slow.
I need him now.
His name falls from my lips as he leaves my br**sts and kisses a pattern down my stomach. He slows down when he’s hovering above my panty line, and instead of continuing his descent, he kisses from hip to hip. His hands, flat on my stomach, prevent me from pushing myself into him.
“As long as you’re doing that, I’m not going further.”
The threat is real and I immediately still. He chuckles and brushes his nose across the lace covering me.
“I love the way you smell,” he murmurs, his lips brushing the top of my thigh. He peels the material down my legs and throws it to the side. “Bend your legs.”
I meet his gaze when he covers my knees with his hands and pushes my legs open. I watch as he drags his eyes from mine to my lips, over my br**sts, and settles them on my exposed center.
He inhales sharply and leans down again, his arms circling my thighs and holding my legs apart.
“Please, Aaron.” I drop my head back, eyes closed, at the excited tensing of my muscles.
“And I love the way you taste. You taste f**king perfect.” He touches his tongue to me and explores slowly, leaving no part of my core undiscovered by him.
He licks and he tastes and he sucks, each glide and sweep lifting me higher and higher. I pull at the blue tie holding my wrists captive but it doesn’t work. I can’t move them, and I can’t push my hips into him the way I want to.
He has me here, still, completely at his mercy. I have no control, no power. All I have is pleasure and heat and—
An intense orgasm that has me writhing on the sheets, desperate to grab on to something, and a tongue working me feverishly through it. Then he’s gone and I’m aching for his touch all over again.
Aaron kisses his way back up my body to my mouth and wraps my legs around his waist. He’s naked, his skin soft against mine, and he rubs himself along me. He’s teasing me, proved by the way he pushes the top of his c**k inside me only to pull back out. He does this over and over, and it pushes me to the edge and I snap.
“Fuck, Aaron! Now, please!”
He bends his forehead to mine, grabs the back of my head, making my eyes open, and pushes into me. I moan at the sweet feeling of him easing in to the hilt, stretching me even as my muscles clamp around him.
His thrusts are slow and deep. His hips rock and circle, making sure he hits every spot inside me. He kisses and touches me, never faltering in his relaxed, easy tempo.
It feels like forever passes until I feel a second orgasm build, balling up into an exquisite ball of tension, waiting for the right moment to explode and shatter me.
And my hands are free.
“Come,” he whispers in my ear, his voice strained.
He suddenly picks up speed and pounds into me. I grab his shoulders and tilt my hips up, taking him even deeper as the ball begins to unravel inside me. My head thrashes, his name falling repeatedly from my lips until I go.
I clamp down on him and vaguely hear him shout my name into my ear with a string of curse words through my scream.
He kisses my cheeks, brushing away a wetness I only recognize as my tears. I shake my head into his shoulder and cling to him, using all the strength left in my body to stop him from leaving.
“Bambi,” he whispers, rolling to the side.
A tear drips onto his skin. Bambi… Him coming to the hotel… Me answering the door in Bambi pajamas… Him taking me to Disney the next day just because of the little deer, my favorite Disney character…
“Please don’t cry.”
I squeeze my eyes shut to stop the tears and shudder in his arms. That memory, that very one from the first weekend we spent together just days after we met, is the one I blocked out and refused to acknowledge because of what that day signified. It marked the day my teenage heart started to fall for the beautiful, confident guy I met by chance.
Now it means something else.
It means I broke the rules.
I always would. There was never any other way out of this. When loving someone is as easy and natural as breathing, there’s no way not to. No way to break the fall.
I don’t want to love him so completely that it consumes me… But I do.
God, I do.
Every single part of me is irrevocably in love with Aaron Stone.
Chapter Twenty
“There’s a car waiting for you downstairs, Signora Black.”
“There is?” I question the concierge down the phone.
“Si. From Signor Stone. He says you must go now.”
“Uh, okay. I’ll be five minutes. Wait, wait!” I call. “Go where?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Fantastic. Thank you.” I put the phone down and run my fingers through my hair.
I’m wearing nothing but his shirt, my hair looks like birds nested in it overnight, and I may as well have swapped faces with a panda. Fucking hell.
I wrench a brush through my tangled locks and kick through my suitcase for a dress. I lift a new floral one out and onto the bed with my toes and grab a wipe to clear my face of yesterday’s makeup. Thank god for being a woman and having the power to multitask.
I button my dress with one hand after pulling underwear on and apply my mascara with the other. Shoes. Purse. Phone. Check.
The bell boy opens the car door for me, and I thank him, sliding into the sleek vehicle. The driver says nothing to me as he pulls away and into the busy midday traffic. I sit back in the car, chewing my bottom lip, and wonder what could be so wrong that Aaron would throw me into a car without telling me anything.
What if something is wrong? What if this guy is taking me to a hospital somewhere where I have to try and get past nurses by speaking in a mix of Italian and broken English to see him? What if he’s had a car crash or something?