A Scandal in the Headlines - By Caitlin Crews Page 0,12

At last.

Neither one of them moved. Elena wasn’t sure she breathed. This disastrous, unquenchable attraction seemed to swell and grow, radiating from his hand to hers, a hard, gnawing ache that every heartbeat only made worse. It penetrated every part of her, and made her want. Crave. Need.

“It haunts you,” he said, a dark, male hunger stamped across his face. “I haunt you. Believe me, Elena. I know.”

She jerked her hand from his. But as she did, she had a searing burst of clarity.

She wanted him. She always had. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, that a single dance should never have affected her so much. It had. He had. And that wanting had ripped apart her world, changed everything. She’d been paying for it for six long months, in isolation and often in fear, moving from odd job to odd job across the whole of Italy, trying to keep herself out of sight and away from Niccolo.

All because of this. All because of Alessandro.

She had already been crucified for this crime. She paid for it every day. Why not commit it?

And if there was a part of her that knew that this was also the best way to prove to Alessandro that she was exactly the kind of woman he believed her to be, that this would cement his opinion of her, she told herself that only made the decision easier.

“This isn’t a haunting,” she whispered, watching the thunder roll through his eyes. “Neither one of us is a ghost.” She smiled then. “I can prove it.”

And then she indulged the roaring inside of her, that terrible hunger, and put her hands on him.

Not a light touch on his shoulder as she had when they’d danced, polite and appropriate. She slid her palms over the whisper-soft cotton that strained against his marvelous torso, and felt the pure, raw heat of him. The iron strength. Her head spun, dizzy and delicious.

Alessandro let out a sound that was almost a laugh, and then he tugged her closer, lifting her up against him. Her aching breasts pressed hard against his beautiful chest, sending a frantic shiver through her, and he muttered a curse. He settled her on the rail, his arms strong and hard and exquisite as they held her fast. She heard her boat shoes fall off, two loud slaps against the stone floor, and then she forgot them.

Alessandro stepped between her legs, and it wasn’t enough. Her skirt kept him from pressing against her, into her, even as he leaned into the palms she’d flattened against him. She was surprised to see her hands were shaking. She was shaking. Or maybe the world was, all around them, and she didn’t care.

This was finally happening. Finally.

He held her with one hand in the small of her back, hot and hard and his, while his other hand moved to her neck, her jaw, tracing patterns. Igniting her. And it wasn’t enough—

“Look at me,” he commanded her, that low voice of his snaking through her like a brushfire, making her skin seem to pull tight over her bones, and she would do anything. Anything he wanted. Anything at all.

Anything to keep them both burning like this.

His dark green eyes flashed, triumph and fire, and that wonder she knew was only theirs. Only this. His mouth looked nearly grim with need, and she knew she should be afraid. Of him. Of what was about to happen—what had always been going to happen, sooner or later.

But again, she felt only that wild passion. That desire. And that conviction that she was safer now, in his clever, dangerous hands, than she had been in months.

“Inevitable,” she whispered before she knew she meant to speak, and the faintest hint of a smile moved across his mouth, then was gone.

“Hold on,” he ordered her with a gruff intent that made her core seem to glow.

He moved his hands to cradle her face between them, and she grabbed his shirt in greedy fists.

At last, that voice chanted inside of her, again and again. At last.

And then he took her mouth with all of that ruthlessness and command, and Elena lost her mind.

CHAPTER THREE

HOT. WILD.

She was his.

And she kissed him back as if she wanted to devour him, too.

As if he’d set her on fire and this was how they’d burn, together, in this tumult of heat and glory, and her perfect mouth he couldn’t taste enough.

She was better—this was better—than Alessandro had dared imagine in the middle