The Italian's Wife Read online

  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

  loud, shattered at the strength of her own response but helpless to

  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.

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  '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

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  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,