that it was delicious to know another side existed.
And he too was unleashed.
There was no thought of bed now, just a craving for skin.
He reached for the zipper but as his hand brushed her breast she moaned into his mouth and he read that moan, the zipper forgotten, roughly handling her breasts through the silky fabric.
It made her feel desperate, frantic even, for more of his touch.
Mia had felt desperate and frantic many times in her life, though for sadder reasons, and she had always hidden it, always held on to her emotions, but when with Dante, when safely locked in his embrace, her reserve tumbled.
His hands were everywhere, roaming her body then deftly hitching up her dress, his hands impatient and delicious. She had never wanted anything so much in her life. She was no longer shy, or guarded. She was grappling with his shirt just to feel his chest, and then his belt—she did not know who this woman was. They were both panting and their foreheads were locked together as he reached for a condom. There was the tiniest moment for Mia to tell him that it wasn’t necessary, but she was desperate and wanton and sliding down her panties as that thought dispersed.
The sumptuous lounge was impossible to negotiate because they could not bear to drop contact.
Dante lifted her heavy gown and then he lifted Mia and positioned her and with his hands on her hips pulled her down onto him. But Mia did not know how to move with abandon, how to find her own rhythm, when she had known but one night with him.
Dante searched for a wall, any wall, but as he moved them to it the roses in their vase were knocked to the floor in their haste.
Then she felt the cool wall behind her and she locked her arms around his neck as he took her against it, over and over again.
Mia’s legs were wrapped tightly around him and the heel of one stiletto was digging into the back of the other calf. She was vaguely aware that it hurt but she could no more consider moving than flying to the moon, for the feeling of Dante inside her, raw and unbridled, was beyond exquisite.
He thrust into her so deeply and so rapidly that her thighs were shaking, and her neck was arching so that the top of her head met the wall. ‘Dante...’ She was coming and crying but still he did not relent.
‘Di più,’ Dante said.
More.
And there was more, Mia found, for as he thrust into her, she heard Dante’s breathless shout as he released himself into her, which had her clamping all over again, every nerve so tight she could not even scream as, for a moment, she entirely left her mind.
And then he kissed her back into time.
He carried her through to the bedroom and laid her down, before collapsing beside her to collect not just his breath but his thoughts.
Soon he would undress her, Dante decided. Soon they would start again, but slowly this time. But it wasn’t just sex on his mind as they lay together, staring at another ceiling. This time his arm did not cover his face.
‘What do we do?’ Dante asked, and turned his head so they looked at each other. ‘Meet once a year in our decadent palace, or...’ He saw her eyes shutter and guessed she wasn’t ready to glimpse stepping out and facing the world and to hell with the scandal it would cause. Yet he was beginning to glimpse a tentative future, when he never once had before. He was starting to trust Mia, and he knew this was different because in the three months they had been apart he had not been able to get her out of his mind.
‘What do you think we should do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Mia admitted. She looked into those gorgeous black eyes and knew she could hold it in no longer. ‘Dante, I’m pregnant.’
Mia waited, for his intake of breath, for his shock, or even his refusal to acknowledge that fact. What she did not expect was the dark chill of his calmness, like a still, deep pond that would silently swallow you, or the weary sigh he gave, as if he had expected no less.
‘Of course you are,’ Dante said, and he rolled himself off of the bed. That suspicious, contemptuous look that he displayed so well was on her again.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mia asked.
‘It means,’ Dante