Olivia Gates - One Night In…

‘You’re so beautiful.’

Meghan let her own hands roam along the smooth expanse of his back. When had he taken off his shirt? She didn’t know if she’d taken it off; everything was a softened haze of desire, of need.

Nothing mattered but this moment, this time of touch and taste and feel.

Oh, how she felt.

She felt his hands as they slid across her stomach, temptingly lower. She felt his lips as they traced a fiery path of ardent need, tender desire, down her throat, pausing where her pulse leapt and jerked. She felt him smile against her skin.

Then he moved to her breast, taking his time, teasing her with his tongue, laughing softly at her arching gasp when he took her nipple into his mouth, and the shock of feeling was without fear, desire without shame.

The need he was creating within her was a thrumming pulse in her core, a glorious ache begging to be satisfied. And she knew he felt the same. Felt the pressure of his desire against her middle, heard his ragged gasp as he moved lower with his hands and his mouth.

‘Alessandro …’ It came out as a supplication as she lay there, subject, slave, to his devotions.

She tried to take control. She let her own hands drift lower, reaching for the pulsing heat of him. She saw his eyes darken with desire, heard his breathing hitch.

‘Mia gattina … those claws are sharp!’ He chuckled softly, capturing her hand with a groan. ‘We have time … we have time …’

Meghan shook her head in protest. She didn’t want to slow down. She didn’t want to wait. She knew if she waited, if she let time and memory catch up to sensation, she would hesitate. She would start to doubt, to question, to fear.

To feel shame.

Now she just wanted to feel, feel this —his hands, his mouth, his body—with her senses and not her heart, to lose herself in the beauty and passion of being touched, caressed.

She wanted to feel … and to forget.

She knew that, and she pulled him to her to kiss him, hard, to banish the memories. The ghosts.

And then it stopped.

Alessandro pushed himself away from her, back onto his knees. His face was flushed, his breathing ragged. He pulled a hand through his hair and exhaled slowly.

‘We need to stop.’

Meghan stilled, stiffened in shock. Humiliation came—a fast, hot rush of feeling. She was suddenly conscious of how she must look, her hair in a tangle around her face, her lips swollen, cheeks flushed. Her shirt was hitched up around her neck, her bra clasp undone.

And Alessandro was looking at her with a quiet sorrow that made everything they’d just done seem dirty.

‘Why?’ She pulled her top down, and Alessandro stilled her hand.

‘Don’t. You’re lovely.’

‘You’re not looking at me as if you’re thinking that right now,’ Meghan said, her voice coming out far more tremulous than she’d meant it to. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Alessandro stretched out beside her, tracing one finger along the tender skin of her navel. Meghan shuddered lightly.

‘I’m rushing things,’ he said after a moment. ‘When we make love, it won’t be like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Rushed. Frenzied. Because we are angry.’

It took a great deal of her pride and courage to say, ‘If I was angry, it was at myself. For wanting you.’

He paused, sitting up on one elbow to regard her thoughtfully. His fingers drifted up to touch her chin, tilting her face so their eyes met. He traced the outline of her lips with a fingertip.

‘He hurt you very much, didn’t he?’

Meghan opened her mouth soundlessly. She hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected tenderness on the heels of such passion, understanding coupled with desire. She nodded, helpless to deny what he already knew. ‘Yes, he did.’

Undone by compassion where she’d expected condemnation, she felt tears sting her eyes. She forced them back. Lying next to him, her sorrow plain to see, Meghan felt far more exposed than when her clothes had been rucked up.

She tried to shrug away, but he stilled her with one gentle hand on her shoulder.

‘Don’t hide from me.’

‘What do you want from me?’ Meghan whispered. He wanted her body; she knew that. Understood it, even. Yet now he seemed to be asking for more. Her emotions, her desire, her soul.

Her heart.

Except he didn’t want that, did he? He couldn’t possibly want that.

Alessandro’s eyes darkened even as he continued to stroke her face with tender, absent movements, a gesture of unthinking intimacy. ‘I want you to want me,’ he said at last. There was a hidden vulnerability in his voice that made Meghan ache.

Want him? Of course she wanted him. He had to know it. It was in her every look, her every word.

Her every thought.

‘I do want you,’ she admitted with a little laugh. ‘I think that’s obvious.’

‘But you’re ashamed,’ Alessandro said quietly. ‘Ashamed to be with me.’ There was an ache in his voice, of need and pain, that Meghan couldn’t begin to understand. It almost sounded as if he thought she were ashamed of him … rather than herself.

‘I can’t help that. I … I have a lot to get over, I suppose. When you touch me I want to forget. I want to feel and not to think.’

‘That’s only half of the experience.’ He smiled down at her, his expression softened with tenderness, yet a shadow lingering in his eyes. ‘You can make love with your body and your mind.’

‘I suppose you’re the expert?’ Meghan said, and it came out halfway between a joke and a jibe.

‘Perhaps with the body.’ Alessandro’s mouth tightened briefly before he smiled and brushed the hair back from her forehead, tangling his fingers in the silken strands. ‘Like you, I’m waiting for my mind to catch up.’

Meghan’s mouth opened soundlessly at this admission. We ‘re so alike. Yet they were impossibly different. ‘Where do we go from here?’ she forced herself to ask, though at the moment she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want Alessandro to leave.

She didn’t know what she wanted.

‘We wait.’

‘For what?’

‘For you to come to me of your own free will, with no shame, no fear, no frenzy. For both of us to give … completely.’

Meghan struggled to sit up, pushing her hair away from her face. Alessandro dropped his hand, still smiling.

‘That’s asking quite a lot.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Maybe I do.’

He raised one eyebrow. ‘Do you want to leave me?’

Meghan let out a shaky breath. ‘No. But I should.’

‘Why? What is this should?’

‘Alessandro …’ She closed her eyes, felt his fingers drift along her face. ‘There’s no future for us, is there? I’m not …’

‘You’re not what?’

She bit her lip. How could she explain her doubts, her fears, without opening the Pandora’s box of her past? ‘You thought I was a whore.’ She hadn’t meant to say it, didn’t want to remind him, knew from the chilling silence that she shouldn’t have. Her old wounds were too fresh, the scars raw and red.

Alessandro stiffened, his hand dropping from her face. Meghan opened her eyes.

He rolled off the bed, standing there, his chest brown and bare and glorious, his expression like iron.

‘You still think I invited you here presuming you were a whore, that I hired you for a whore’s work.’ He shook his head, the movement sharp and contemptuous. ‘This is old ground, Meghan. And I’m getting bored with it.’

‘As you’re bored with me?’

His voice was level, almost a drawl. ‘Just about.’

Meghan swallowed painfully. He had the ability to hurt her so easily. ‘But you judged me,’ she whispered.