Luca's Bad Girl - By Amy Andrews Page 0,19

he never went without.

Two steps and he was in a cloud of steam, enveloped by hot water and her. He plastered her against the requested wall and plundered her lips and her neck and her breasts with his mouth. Then he boosted her up the tiles, positioned her slippery body at just the right height and plunged straight into her, his mouth swallowing her guttural cry.

Luca pounded into her relentlessly, satisfied to hear her gasps, to see the loll of her head as each thrust rocked her entire body. He tongued her breasts, her heat and her sweat and her essence in each drop of water sluicing over her nipples.

Pressure built strongly and relentlessly as each drive took him closer. In his veins, in his head, in his loins. Pleasure, so intense it hurt, coiled low in his gut. She cried out and bucked in his arms and the coil whipped out, cracking like a lightning strike, zapping every erogenous zone, every cell.

She tightened around him and he came and he came and he came.

Luca was in the kitchen, percolating coffee in nothing but a low-slung towel, when Mia came out of the bathroom dressed in the clothes she’d arrived in half an hour earlier.

Minus her underwear.

And the earring she’d lost somewhere in the midst of the head-banging sex. Down the drainhole, she suspected. Her hair was hanging in wet strips down her back and her body ached all over.

In a good way.

‘Coffee?’ he asked.

Mia shook her head, distracted by the perfection of him. Broad shoulders, trim hips, flat belly. His damp hair curled around his nape and ears. She felt the slight ache inside her begin to throb in carnal recognition of him and the things he could do.

It’d be so easy to take four or five paces forward and whip that towel away. Drop to her knees. Show him she was a pretty dab hand at doling out pleasure too. Go again right there on the kitchen floor as her traitorous body was demanding.

But then what? Once more after that? Stay the night?

She wasn’t a stay-the-night kind of girl. It was why she always went to the guy’s place—easier to leave and never look back than to tell someone to go.

‘No, thanks,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going to head home.’

Luca lounged against the bench and crossed his arms over his very impressive chest. ‘You’re not clingy. I like that.’

Mia nodded. ‘Good. Looks like we’ll get along just fine, then.’

‘I think you’re the first woman I’ve met who didn’t want to be held afterwards.’

Mia shook her head. ‘Not the cuddling type, I’m afraid.’

Luca regarded her silently for a few moments. He could almost buy into her act. Except he’d seen another side to her that first night. Sure, Mia McKenzie seemed feisty and tough but there was definitely a vulnerable side.

She was an intriguing woman.

‘And why is that?’ Luca mused.

Mia knew exactly why. She wasn’t blind to the scars that growing up in an emotionally barren house had left. Sex was a quick, easy connection—she’d found that out at uni. But cuddling—staying?—was hard. Sex was physically intimate. Cuddles emotionally intimate. Certainly not something she’d had an awful lot of experience with from the main male role model in her life as she’d been growing up.

Cuddles called for a certain level of trust. And she’d been too scarred to trust anyone at any level—particularly men.

He was standing patiently, all big and solid, looking at her with expectation. She could have easily opened her mouth and told him the reasons.

But it was none of his damn business.

‘It sends the wrong message,’ she said.

Mia shifted slightly as Luca studied her with his big brown eyes. It was kind of unnerving.

She straightened her shoulders. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

Like she cared if he did.

Luca stayed very still. ‘No. It just seems like something a—’

‘What?’ she interrupted, scorn lacing her voice as her blood pressure rose a couple of notches. ‘A man? Like something a man would say?’

Why was it okay for men to use women for sex but not for women to use men?

‘It’s a new century, Luca. Gotta move with the times.’

Luca chuckled at the sudden glint of fire in her stained-glass eyes. Her whole body had become animated. His gaze drifted to the bounce of her unfettered breasts before it flicked back to her face. ‘Sicilian men aren’t known for their tendency to move with the times.’

Mia shoved her hands on her hips as her nipples responded to his blatant