Redemption Of The Untamed Italian (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  ‘I want...’

  ‘Yes?’ His own voice was roughened by desire. ‘What do you want, Jemima?’

  There it was again—the mental block, a complete inability to say what she was thinking. She groaned, reaching for him, sitting up and pulling at his sides, but he didn’t move. He kicked out of his shoes, watching her, his chest rising and falling with each of his deep breaths as he shrugged out of his shirt.

  He had a tattoo that ran just beneath his heart: ‘come sono’. Her Italian was limited to industry terms and social niceties. ‘“I am me”?’ she said aloud, her eyes chasing the cursive ink.

  ‘“As I am”.’ He stepped out of his trousers and now a kick of fear hit her gut. Not fear of what was to come, but fear at how out of her depth she was. Her pulse lurched wildly through her body and she knew she should say something. But ancient feminine instincts gave her confidence and had her pushing to the end of the bed so that his legs straddled hers, his body so big, his presence overpowering. His fingers curved through her hair, and then her lips sought his flat chest, pressing to the ridges there as she scrambled onto her knees on the edge of the bed so she could trace one of his nipples with her tongue, flicking it curiously before transferring her attention to the next one.

  In the back of her mind, she was vaguely aware of how new this was, and yet she didn’t feel anything except pleasurable anticipation and relief. She wanted this. She wanted it so badly. Soon, her virginity would be gone, and she’d know the pleasure of a man’s body... She couldn’t wait.

  His chest moved rapidly with each curious little exploration of her tongue. Power trilled in her veins—the knowledge that she was driving him as wild as she was set her pulse skittering.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OVER DINNER SHE’D admired the strength of his arms but now, without a shirt, she saw for herself that he was muscled in a way that suggested he worked out often. There was a sense of power and control in his every movement. His chest was ridged with muscles and his flesh showed a deep tan, as though he spent a lot of time outdoors.

  He reached down, his fingers tangling in the elastic of her thong, sliding the underwear over her legs in a way that was so sensual and tantalising she couldn’t bear it. She ached to reach down and remove it herself to speed this up not because she wanted it to end—she already knew she didn’t—but because she needed it to begin. She needed him as though he were oxygen.

  His mouth on her breast was completely unexpected. His tongue curled around her nipple, perhaps retaliating for her own leisurely exploration. But his was so much more skilled, so much more thorough. It wasn’t a fair match at all.

  His tongue swirled around the dusky peach areola and then he drew it into his mouth, sucking there until she was moaning, moist heat slicked between her legs. His other hand curved around her breast so his fingers could torment that nipple, alternating between a light, barely there brush of his fingers to a tight squeeze that sent arrows of desire firing against her flesh.

  ‘Please,’ she moaned, no longer aware what she was asking for, knowing only that she needed something he alone could provide. He was still wearing boxer shorts but he pressed his arousal to her womanhood and she writhed at the pressure, the unexpected intimacy of that gesture. His body thrust against hers as though they were already making love, and she ached to be. She ached to feel him inside her.

  She’d always wondered if it would hurt—losing her virginity—but in this moment she was far too caught up in the hedonism of sensation to anticipate anything other than wild, utter bliss.

  Her nails dug into his shoulders and her lips kept searching for his. His kiss was a temporary balm to the wildness in her veins but not enough—there would never be enough. She needed complete surrender—his? Hers? She didn’t know.

  ‘I need you,’ she groaned, her hands moving down his back, her nails scraping against his flesh and pushing into the waistband of his shorts so she could curve her grip around his buttocks and hold him tight to her sex. She lifted her hips wordlessly, instinctively inviting him to sweep away her invisible barrier, to become one with her.

  ‘I wanted to do this the moment I saw you,’ he muttered, moving to stand, pushing at his boxers impatiently. His eyes were fixed to her face with something like impatience—or possibly accusation—something she didn’t understand and couldn’t fathom. He reached to his side, pulling a condom from the bedside table, watching her as he opened the foil square.

  She stared at him, transfixed, as he rolled it over the length of his cock, so big and hard, so fascinating. Her throat was dry, her heart pounding, and for the first time since agreeing to this she felt doubts creep in.

  Not doubts about wanting him.

  Doubts about the fact he didn’t know about her inexperience.

  She didn’t need to be a mind-reader to recognise that Cesare Durante was a man who was used to sophisticated lovers. She was pretty sure springing her virginity on him would be poor form.

  Her cheeks warmed now with the beginnings of embarrassment rather than desire, and she pushed up to stare at him, disbelief that her conscience was getting the better of her making her frown.

  ‘I am going to make you scream my name,’ he murmured, oblivious to the direction of her thoughts. ‘Over and over and over again.’

  She nodded, but when he brought his body over hers she lifted a hand and pressed it to his chest. Their heads were level, his steel-grey eyes boring into hers, and Jemima told herself to have courage—to do the right thing. It wasn’t that big a deal, she reasoned. Surely he wouldn’t really care?

  ‘I have to tell you something.’ She swallowed, her pupils huge in her pale eyes.

  ‘Tell me quickly.’ He brought his mouth to her cheek, kissing her there, dragging his tongue down her body to the valley between her breasts and lower, over her flat stomach towards her womanhood. Of their own accord her hands tangled in his hair, pulling at it frantically. When his mouth connected with her feminine core, she startled, pushing up on her elbows, uncertainty losing the battle to pleasure.

  His tongue ran along her seam and she twisted on the bed in an instinctive response so that his hands gripped her thighs and moved her legs wider, clamping down on them and holding her right as he wanted her.

  His name tumbled from her lips, just as he’d said it would, the Italian word so exotic in her mouth, so moreish and tempting. Pleasure was a wave building within her and she couldn’t stay afloat. It sucked her down into a turbulent ocean and she didn’t even care that she was drowning. She didn’t care that she could barely breathe.

  Her fingers tousled his hair, pulling at it frantically as pleasure eroded her awareness of time and place, and finally she exploded, breaking free of the ocean and finding her place amongst the stars. The orgasm claimed her, every cell of her, every fibre of her being. She was celestial matter, she was time and place, she was ancient and new, she was indefinable.

  Pleasure was a thousand barbs beneath her skin. She lay back against the bed, her breathing rushed, her sanity in tatters. His body was coming over her, so even as she was shipwrecked on the shore line of their passion she knew she had to find a way to speak and be heard.

  ‘Cesare, wait.’ The urgency of her words stalled him. He braced his body over hers and she felt his sheathed arousal at the entrance to her womanhood; she was so hungry for him and more of this that for a brief second she contemplated not speaking. ‘You have to know...’

  ‘Yes?’ His tip nudged at her entrance and she groaned, pressing her hands to his chest, wanting him with a ferocity that was beyond her comprehension.

  ‘I want you. I really, really want this.’ The words were breathless. She looked up at him and said nothing else. She wasn’t sure why—she knew telling him of her innocence was the right thing to do—but when she opened her mouth she simply couldn’t find the words. Instead, she heard the cacophony of news articles about her,
the names she’d been called, the marriages she was said to have ruined, and she was struck dumb, silent in the face of the world’s assumptions.

  He stared down at her, his gaze intent enough to see all the way into her soul, and then he smiled, a look of such complete confidence and sexy dominance that her heart exploded, taking up all the space that should have been reserved for her lungs, making breathing impossible.

  ‘I want you.’ It was the last thing she said before he thrust into her, claiming her and removing her innocence in one hard movement.

  Cesare froze, holding his body where it was with the greatest of efforts, his arousal buried inside the beautiful Jemima as shock tore through him. He’d been a teenager the last time he’d slept with a virgin and it had been a disaster. A simple act of sex to Cesare had meant the world to her and, after seeing the way he’d carelessly broken her heart, he’d sworn he’d never again sleep with an innocent woman.

  And he hadn’t. He’d steered clear of anyone sexually inexperienced because there was a burden in being a woman’s first.

  Her tightness was unmistakable, as was the resistance he hadn’t felt until he was already inside her, too late to change what had happened. He pushed up onto his elbows, his breathing ragged, and even as question after question spilled through him her muscles squeezed him, filling his eyes with white light, blinding him with his own insatiable need for release.

  ‘Damn it.’ The words were clipped, gruff.

  ‘Don’t.’ The wobble in her voice had him re-focussing his gaze on her. ‘Don’t stop. Please.’ His eyes chased her features: the tell-tale flush of pink running towards her brow, lips that were swollen from how she’d been biting down on them, pupils that filled her irises almost completely. ‘Please.’

  He swore softly because he suspected wild horses couldn’t have forced him to stop, even as he knew he would have if she’d been in pain. He moved his body more gently, though, slowly allowing her time to adjust to the feeling of his possession, to acclimatise to the sense of having him inside her, watching her carefully for every flicker of response that crossed her face.

  Emotions he hadn’t expected pounded him—and emotions were something he generally preferred to keep way, way out of his sex life. But, for the first time in a long time, he felt a heavy sense of guilt. Of responsibility—a feeling of having done something wrong.

  ‘Oh, God, Cesare...’

  The sound of his name on her perfectly shaped lips dragged him back to the present, to the physical and the pressing, the passion and the perfection of this. Her nails on his back were desperate, as though she could scratch past pleasure and bring herself back to sanity. There was only one way for that—and he needed the release as badly as she did.

  He might have teased her and tormented her, drawing out her orgasm, withholding the ultimate pleasure until she was almost incandescent with desire, tormenting her with the strength of her longing. He would have done so if this had been any ordinary night, any ordinary lover.

  But that was gamesmanship and he didn’t feel like playing games any more.

  Her cries became fevered, her body writhing as pleasure threatened to tear her apart, and when she tipped over the edge he followed her, releasing himself without making a sound, already mentally detaching himself from this, from her, even as he tipped himself inside her and felt her muscles spasm wildly around his length.

  This had been a mistake—and Cesare Durante didn’t make mistakes.

  Nor was he a man who tolerated surprises. He stared down at the woman beneath him, her eyes fluttered shut, her breathing rapid, and he pulled away from her, removing himself, standing without saying a word. He couldn’t.

  He’d learned a long time ago not to react when he was angry, not to react when his emotions were in play, but in that moment he felt an odd fury, a sense of having been duped into something he would never knowingly have consented to. She’d been a virgin, and he hadn’t offered anything beyond one night. What the actual hell?

  When he’d been nine years old, a teacher had introduced him to a Rubik’s Cube for the first time. It had been a simple warm-up exercise for the class, but Cesare hadn’t been able to comprehend how inanimate plastic could not be bent to his will. He’d spent hours staring at it, moving each tile, until some time around midnight on that same day he’d brought order to the madness of the cube.

  He felt that same desperate sense of misunderstanding now. Jemima Woodcraft—a virgin? Impossible. Except it wasn’t. He’d felt the proof of her innocence for himself. He strode towards his en suite bathroom, dispensing with the proof of their love-making in the waste-paper basket, and with the same motion he grabbed a towel and wrapped it low around his waist.

  He met the reflection of his eyes in the mirror, his expression grim. She’d come to his bed knowing what that would entail. Which left one question. Why the hell had she chosen to lose her virginity to him?

  Calmer, he turned, moving back into his bedroom. She was sitting up, a sheet wrapped around her body, her gaze averted from his in a way that was infuriating and somehow endearing all at once.

  ‘You were a virgin?’ He didn’t need the confirmation, yet it still seemed important to establish the fact beyond any doubt. Or perhaps he simply wanted to hear her admit it.

  He clamped his jaw together and expelled a harsh breath so his nostrils flared. ‘Jemima?’

  His eyes narrowed, studying the pallor of her face, and frustration bit at his insides. She wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘Yes.’ The word was soft.

  ‘And you came here tonight to sleep with me?’

  Now her face lifted, though she focussed her gaze about an inch above his shoulder. ‘Yes.’

  At least she wasn’t lying to him. ‘You didn’t think this was something I ought to have known? Something I might have liked to consider?’

  Her chin tilted at a defiant angle. ‘I tried to tell you.’

  Cesare frowned, guilt and disbelief churning in his gut. ‘When?’

  ‘Before! Before you—before we—before we were together,’ she finished with a shake of her head. ‘I tried but I...was embarrassed, I guess.’

  ‘You thought it was better for me to feel your innocence as I obliterated it?’

  She winced, her expression showing hurt.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  For some reason, everything she said somehow made it worse. He felt angry. Disempowered. As though she’d taken what was supposed to be an easy exchange between two consenting lovers and turned it into something so much more complicated.

  ‘You don’t think this is something I deserved to know? To decide if I even wanted to be your first lover?’

  Her face drained of colour. ‘Would it have made a difference?’

  He swore in his native tongue, the curse a harsh invective that slammed around the room and seemingly electrocuted her. She jack-knifed from the bed, the towel locked toga-style to her body.

  But he didn’t stop; he couldn’t. ‘You’re damned right it would have made a difference. I don’t do virgins, Jemima. What did you think? This would make me want to buy into your cousin’s hedge fund? That I’d feel so guilty at having unknowingly become your first lover I’d pay whatever I could to absolve myself of that responsibility?’

  She sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes narrowing. ‘How dare you? This had nothing to do with Laurence.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  The column of her throat shifted as she swallowed. ‘Be that as it may, it’s the truth. I came here tonight because I wanted to sleep with you, not for any other reason.’

  ‘And if I knew do you think I would still have wanted to sleep with you?’

  Her cheeks paled and he told himself the sensation rolling through him was satisfaction.

  ‘I honestly didn’t think it would matter.’

  ‘You were a
twenty-three-year-old virgin. I brought you here thinking you were like me, that you enjoy sex for sport. If I had known you’d never been with another lover, I would never have touched you.’

  She sucked in a breath that was pure indignation. ‘Well, rest assured, Cesare, I have no intention of darkening your door ever again.’ She glared at him, somehow managing to look elegant and haughty even as she crossed the room in a bed sheet.

  But dissatisfaction rode through him. He still didn’t have any of the answers he wanted. He followed her into the living room.

  ‘How is this even possible? There are countless articles about your conquests online...’

  ‘Yeah, and the Internet gets it wrong sometimes, you know.’

  ‘But so completely wrong?’

  She paused to shoot him a withering look. ‘What do you think?’

  Her dress had been discarded on the floor. She lifted it over her head and dislodged the sheet as she pulled it down so that he was deprived of another glimpse of her body. It didn’t matter. The sight of her was likely burned into his memory anyway.

  ‘There are photographs. And what about Clive Angmore?’

  ‘An acquaintance,’ she muttered, running her fingers through her hair as she looked around for her handbag. ‘Nothing more.’

  ‘So you were, what? Saving yourself for marriage?’

  Her shocked gasp tumbled through the room and his heart twisted sharply in his chest. ‘You should know, Jemima, that this makes no difference to me. For whatever reason you came here tonight, and whatever you were expecting it might mean to me, nothing has changed in my mind. This was just sex, nothing more.’

  She glared at him, her expression pinched, her face wearing a mask of contempt, but the effect was lessened by eyes that were suspiciously shimmering, moisture dabbing her eyelashes. His gut rolled.

  ‘I don’t want anything from you.’