lips apart, he plundered the tender moist interior with his tongue in a
very sexual onslaught. He made her want more, he made her want so much
more that she trembled and gasped under the raw, forceful passion he
unleashed on her.
His strong hands moulded her to him and he swept her right off her feet
and up into his arms. Her shaken eyes opened just as he shouldered shut
a door behind him. Tail lamps burned on each side of an enormous antique
bed. The great carved headboard was topped by a fabulous canopy from
which elaborate drapes fell to lie in opulent folds on the floor.
'I've been hot as hell for you all day,' Rio muttered harshly above her
head.
'Honestly...?' Holly mumbled shyly into a sleek bare
brown shoulder, marvelling that she could have incited his desire,
feeling his entire body flaming for need of his but terrified that she
would be a disappointment. The option of saying no did not even occur to
her.
'I'm as hard as a rock, or haven't you noticed that yet?'
That earthy assurance drenched her cheeks with colour.
Rio sank down on the edge of the bed with her still locked in his hold.
One hand anchoring into a fistful of ringlets, he turned her hot face up
to meet his searching scrutiny. 'How does an unmarried mother contrive
to blush like a furnace every five minutes?'
'I don't know...' He hurt Holly with that question, for to her mind it
suggested that he believed she'd slept around before she'd fallen
pregnant, which was very far from being the truth. Yet he had only to
settle those brilliant, beautiful eyes on her and she was lost without
any hope of reclaim. This was the only way she would ever get even
temporarily close to a male like him, a little voice whispered inside
her head. This was not the start of a relationship. Blokes like Rio
Lombardi didn't have relationships with ordinary girls like her. In fact
she couldn't work out what miracle had occurred to make her seem
attractive to him.
Rio set her down onto her own feet so that she stood between his spread
thighs and reached up to the slender straps on her slight shoulders. 'I
want to look at you,' he told her, and before she could even guess his
intention he had tugged the straps down her arms and let the nightdress
fall to her ankles.
'Please...' Naked in front of a man for the first time in her life,
Holly trembled, the flush on her face now feeling as if it was
enveloping her entire body, and it was with the greatest difficulty that
she resisted the urge to try to cover herself. A coil of heat burned low
in her pelvis as his intent gaze scorched over pert breasts crowned by
prominent rosy
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peaks and the cluster of bronze curls at the apex of her slim thighs.
She felt as if she was burning alive with shame on a slave block.
Rio scooped her back into his arms as if she was the size and weight of
a toy. 'You're shaking...and I haven't even touched you yet.'
'Yes...' Her teeth were almost chattering together in the wake of an
enervating wave of apprehension, shame at her own weakness and the most
desperate physical longing.
He closed his hand into her tumbling bronze curls to tug her head back
and arch her spine, so that he had better access to her shivering body.
'Your skin is so fair against mine,' he husked, letting his hand splay
over her slender, taut ribcage, listening to her suck in a gasping
breath before he finally let his lean fingers rise to the jutting swell
of her breasts to play with her throbbing nipples. 'You have gorgeous
breasts...'
Her head was falling back now of its own volition and she was gasping
out loud, helplessly thrusting her aching flesh against his palms,
white-hot heat snaking up from the very heart of her. He lowered his
dark head and let his mouth engulf a distended bud and she cried out
control it.
His teeth teased at her tender flesh and then the tip of his tongue
lashed the sensitised tips, sending tremors like lightning sizzling
through her trembling length. She had not known that she could feel with
such intensity, and the whole time he was touching her she was in shock
at the twisting ache of sheer pleasure that jerked her every muscle tight.
Rio gathered her up and rose to bring her down across the bed. He leant
over her, rearranging her to his own satisfaction, his control absolute.
She connected with his burning golden eyes and felt herself melt like
honey on the boil. Lying there so exposed, she had never been more
conscious of her own body. Her nipples were swollen and glistening from
his attentions and the private place between her thighs was
embarrassingly moist. Her nails dug into the bedspread beneath her as
she struggled to get a grip on herself, dredge herself from the
unfamiliar world of what felt like an erotic fantasy, and as soon as she
did she felt wildly out of her depth and as nervous as she had a mere
second earlier been thrilled about what might be coming next.
'Could you put the lights out?' Holly whispered shakily.
'No...I want to watch you,' Rio asserted thickly, lean, strong face set
with primal male determination, his sexual hunger unconcealed.
'W-watch me?' Holly stammered in dismay, utterly overpowered by that
statement, that very concept.
'You don't hide anything. You can't,' Rio pronounced with almost grim
satisfaction. 'I like that. I really get off on the fact that just about
everything you feel you show me.'
'Do...I?' Holly dropped her eyes, gripped by intense mortification.
'Look at me...'
Holly shut her eyes tight.
'Holly...if you want me, look at me.'
For an instant she felt like a wind-up toy that he controlled. Her eyes
smarted and opened and he came down on the bed on one knee, all
domineering male but absolutely gorgeous, and she looked, of course she
looked, was literally nailed to the spot by the sheer power of those
scorching golden eyes holding hers.
With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, he let the tip of his tongue
tease the tremulous line of her reddened lips and
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then slide between and delve in an erotic flicker that made her heart
hammer and her pulses race.
Levering himself back, Rio stripped off his boxer shorts. Holly turned
scarlet. Eyes widening, mouth running dry, surprise and dismay making
her jerk. She had never seen a male in that state before, hadn't ever
wanted to, but there he was, his sex fully aroused, and there was a
great deal more of him than she had naively expected.
'What's wrong?' Rio noticed there was something wrong immediately.
'Nothing...' The denial emerged all shaky. She was already resigning
herself to the prospect of pain but consoling herself with the thought
that what she had once assumed would be the main event hardly lasted a
minute.
Rio came over her with all the nerve-racking cool and grace of a
predator. He toyed with her mouth again, let
a knowing hand curve to a
pouting breast and rolled the rigid pink peak straining for his
attention between his fingers. All the breath that apprehension had made
her hold in was driven from her on a long moaning sigh as her hips rose
off the bed in an instinctive movement old as time itself.
'I want to torture you with pleasure, bella mia...'
He slid a fingertip between her parted lips and she sucked on it
instinctively, the knot of hunger low in the pit of her stomach tightening.
'I want you begging,' Rio confided, shifting with fluid strength against
her thigh to let her feel the hard, potent force of his arousal.
'Mindless... it's going to be a very long night.'
Shock gripped her at those words of sensual threat. She was melting
again, she was enslaved by just the sound of his smoky drawl, the warm
male scent of him and the incredibly seductive feel of that big,
powerful, hair-roughened body in contact with hers. She lifted her hand
and touched one high, proud cheekbone, letting her fingers stroke down
the side of his face, loving the feel of him, loving the right to touch
him, totally hooked on her connection with his liquid dark golden eyes,
and enthralled.
He turned his head and entrapped one of her fingers between his lips,
and suddenly she was snatching away her hand and reaching up in
desperation to find that taunting mouth again for herself. She buried
her fingers deep in his black silky hair, a moan dredged from her as he
ravished her mouth with hard, hungry heat. She was aching for him,
aching where she had never ached before, wanting what she had never
wanted before with the most wanton craving.
'Rio, please...' she gasped, twisting under him.
'You don't want me enough yet,' he assured her thickly, letting his hand
splay against her quivering tummy muscles and then stilling to trace the
fine scar he had discovered. 'What's that?'
Holly tensed at his reference to that imperfection. 'I had to have a
Caesarean when Timmie was born.'
'It's OK. You're still beautiful.' Moving on, Rio let his fingertips
flirt with the damp curls below and laughed with earthy satisfaction as
she automatically parted her thighs.
Locating the tiny bud beneath her downy mound, he proceeded to slowly
drive her wild. Excitement just exploded in her and she writhed as the
throb of need centred at the very heart of her rose to unbearable
proportions. And she was mindless, beyond thought, speech, everything,
reduced to one gigantic, all too sensitive ache of screaming need. But
when she thrashed about, instinctively reaching for a fulfilment she had
never known before, he stilled and let her slide down again, withholding
what she most craved. And every time it happened she became just a
little bit more frantic, clinging to him, almost in tears of
frustration, utterly at a loss as to what was happening to her own body.
72
'Please...I want you now,' she begged strickenly.
Rio traced the swollen moist cleft between her legs, let an expert
finger penetrate her once, twice until she cried out, beyond all shame
and control. 'You're hot and wet and gloriously tight, amore.'
He settled his hands beneath her squirming hips and thrust a pillow
under her to raise her. Then there was a pause and she realised he was
donning protection. But before she could even process that awareness Rio
came over her like a Viking attack force, tipping her up to receive him
at an angle that startled her, and then he drove into her in one long,
deep thrust that put being startled right out of her mind. Indeed,
everything went out of her mind. One moment she was almost sobbing with
impatience, and the next she was plunged into the most wild physical
excitement she had ever experienced.
'Santo cielo...how I want you,' he groaned. 'You feel so good...'
The intensity of her own excitement drove her crazy. He slammed into her
with rhythmic force and she was on fire, gasping and sobbing for air,
overwhelmed by the sheer raw pleasure of his every powerful plunge into
her tender sheath. Blind and oblivious as she was to everything but the
ongoing thunder of her own heartbeat and the plundering glory of his
dominant possession, she was completely out of control." He sent her
hurtling to the peak of ecstasy and a climax so strong that she felt as
if she was shattering into a million pieces.
Letting her quivering weak body settle back down onto the support of the
bed, Rio absorbed the shattered look of pleasure she wore. She collided
dizzily with his searching gaze and her heart turned over at the
sizzling smile of very male satisfaction he gave her. 'I never knew...'
she mumbled in a total daze. 'I just never knew...I could feel like that-'
'Again...and again...and again, bella mia,' Rio husked, reaching down
and lifting her to flip her over onto her stomach before she had the
remotest idea of what he was doing. 'Let me show you.'
'Rio?' she cried in total bewilderment as he tugged her up onto her knees.
He slid into her again and she was so sensitised and so shaken by both
sensation and shock at the position he had put her in, she let out a
startled yelp.
'Am I hurting you?'
'No...' She shut her eyes in shame. I'm not doing this, I'm not. And she
could not believe the pleasure that surged through her again, was
seduced afresh within seconds, beyond caring about anything. She was a
creature enslaved by sensation, totally wanton in her responses.
Explosive excitement had her in a stranglehold and he controlled her, he
controlled her so completely she was incapable of thought or reaction.
And the second time that glorious joy racked her she didn't recognise
the sobs and moans he dragged from her. The experience was all the more
heightened by the feel of him shuddering over her and the groan of
savage release he vented as he finally reached his own climax.
In the aftermath, Holly just collapsed, every piece of energy expended.
Rio turned her over, flipped back the covers and brought her down on a
cool linen sheet. Sprawling down beside her, he curved her back into his
arms. He was hot and damp and the scent of him was so familiar now she
pressed her lips against a smooth brown shoulder, glorying in that
physical closeness. The silence didn't bother her. What she had just
shared with him had been a revelation to her, and the languorous
relaxation of her own satiation
74
was so new to her she could not yet shake off the effects.
'You're not very experienced, are you?' Rio asked above her head, and
for the first time she registered the tension in his lean, muscular length.
'No,' she whispered, suddenly wondering with a deep inner chill of fear
if he had found her less than adequate.
Rio rolled her back against the pillows so that she could no longer
evade his scrutiny. 'So when did you last indulge?'
Her wide, vulnerable eyes settled on his lean, dark features and the
probing gold of his intent gaze and her eyes slewed from his in dismay.
'It's been a long time
-'
'How...long?'
Feeling foolish, Holly worried at her lower lip before muttering with
cast-down eyes, 'Not since the night I fell pregnant.'
'Not since the night you...?' Long fingers curved round her delicate
jawbone and tugged her back beneath his searching appraisal.
'It was my first time,' Holly told him with mortified defensiveness.
'You got pregnant the first time you had sex?' Rio ground out in visible
shock.
'It does happen, you know,' she mumbled, unable to work out quite what
interest he could have in such a subject and embarrassed, but at the
same time needing him to know that she was not promiscuous.
With a seemingly idle hand Rio brushed a stray corkscrew curl back from
her brow and she noticed that there was a slight tremor in his fingers.
His stunning dark golden eyes were trained to her with intensity, his
blue-shadowed jawline clenched hard. 'Are you taking any current
precautions against pregnancy?'
In surprise Holly shook her head.
'I didn't think you would be, cara.' His keen gaze screened by his
luxuriant dark lashes, Rio released his breath in a long-drawn-out sigh.
'You were almost a virgin. No wonder my every move seemed to shock you
so much. You hadn't a bloody clue-'
'No, I-'
'Still don't have a clue,' Rio contradicted with a raw edge to his deep,