The day after they’d returned from his yacht, she’d left the next morning, returned eight hours later. She hadn’t stayed the night since. Durante hadn’t asked her to. But they spent their afternoons and evenings together, making love and every other thing under the sun before he escorted her to her apartment.
She couldn’t believe she’d thought herself frigid. Evidence said she was bordering on nymphomania. A condition with a specific activator by the name of Durante D’Agostino.
Now she had only to think of him for her body to gnaw at her with the need for him. He had only to touch her, sometimes just suckle or caress or blow his breath on any of her triggers, and those were many and increasing, to unleash her first release. But the shattering climaxes he gave her when he took her boggled her mind.
Not that it was all about or even mainly about sex between them. They reveled in each other in every other way. Every day brought ever-expanding harmony and deepening involvement in each other’s lives. This evening was another milestone. He was introducing her to his friends. Or as he’d said, “producing them for her inspection and approval.”
“Stay.”
Durante’s gruff whisper forked through her.
Not from surprise. She’d felt his approach. She’d probably felt it when it was still an intention forming in his mind. She’d waited for him to initiate the reconnection, set the pace and tone of this encounter as he had every other so far.
She had no idea what this one word could mean. She’d just come in.
Could he…? She didn’t dare think what he meant. So she quipped, “Again with the canine references. But then you already got me to roll over and beg.”
His eyes crinkled as he pulled her to him, tenderness mixing with rough sensuality and possession into a mind-melting concoction. “You got me to beg, too. I can even do back flips and walk on my hands, at your order.”
He bent, opened his mouth over the pulse in her neck, suckled her in long pulls as if he were drinking her. Fireworks exploded inside her, followed by a gush of readiness and the need for him to fill her again.
But his friends were coming in minutes.
That was logic’s voice. Her body’s said take all you can, while you can.
She obeyed it, moaned, “Take me, Durante bello, take me…”
He raised his head, instant ferocity taking over his face, thinning his lips. He snatched her skirt up to her waist, took her by the buttocks and spread her around his hips. He staggered with her to the nearest erect surface as she clung to him, disintegrating with the firebomb of hunger he’d detonated inside her. He set her against something that rattled as he freed himself, tore her panties out of the way, slid her up her support to scale his length. She felt the head of his erection at her moist entrance, keened. He let her crash down on him, just as he thrust up, piercing her. It took no more than feeling him forging through her to shatter her. She shrieked with the sledgehammer of orgasm, convulsing around his shaft as if she were imploding.
He growled into her mouth. “Sì, Gabriella, sì, take all of me, take your pleasure of me, come all over me.”
The orgasm raged on and on until he roared and slammed her against the rattling support, his release so powerful that she writhed, trembled, sobbed with the sensations. She went nerveless and he tightened his hold around her, still hard and twitching inside her. Her flesh quivered around him with the aftershocks of the profound release.
He took her slack mouth in carnal possession, blowing air into her breathless lungs, growling all the while, rocking gently again and again inside her, satisfying her to her last tremor. “Siete magici, mi’ bellezza…magici…”
Her head flopped on his shoulder as she tried to get her nerves to spark. She needed to hold him, to revel in his existence, his magic. “It’s you…you who are, bello mio…”
The bell rang.
Durante jerked. “Maledizione. I should have told Giancarlo to entertain them somewhere else until…” He swore again. “I should have known I wouldn’t be able to last until they left to make love to you. I yearned for you all day, Gabriella mia.”
She moaned. “And I for you.”
He took her lips, strode with her wrapped around him to his bathroom. He put her down gently on the huge platform of marble flanking the sink. Then he reluctantly, and so slowly, withdrew from her depths. She moaned at the ache of separation.
She groaned again at the sight of herself in the mirror behind him, at his brutal beauty and caring as he kneeled in front of her, intimately taking care of the evidence of their lovemaking, so her skirt wouldn’t be stained. Then he rose to his feet and towered over her, his muscles rippling under his shirt as he struggled to straighten and smooth his pants.
“Take your time getting ready.” He took her face in his hands, urgency rippling in the passion in his grip, his eyes. “But answer me first. Will you stay, bellissima?”
“Tonight, you mean?”
“I mean every night.”
Gabrielle gazed across the room at Durante. He was putting on some music, laughing with his younger cousin, Eduardo. Her heart quivered. She’d said yes.
But…he’d said stay. Not live. Was there a difference?
“So how long have you known Durante, Gabrielle?”
She turned to the mahogany-haired, green-eyed woman so aptly named Jade. A few years younger than her, she judged, Jade glowed with that special vitality healthy pregnant women had. She and Eduardo were both floating on air. Their love for each other was almost visible, tangible.
Jade was also curious in the most innocuous way Gabrielle had ever experienced.
“Not long. We met three weeks ago.”
“Bet it feels like three years.”
Now, how did she know that?
Jade answered her unvoiced question, “It was like that with me and Eduardo. Did you have a tempestuous beginning, too?”
Gabrielle laughed. “So there is a pattern with the D’Agostino princes.”
As she laughed, she felt rather than saw Durante stiffen. Her eyes flew to his, locked, mingled, mated across the huge space until the room flooded with tension so carnal, so predatory and proprietary, she felt as if he were inside her again, occupying her, dominating her, dissolving her in satiation.
The volcanic exchange lasted only a couple of seconds before Eduardo drew his focus away again as Jade caught hers.
Jade sighed. “But they’re worth every heartache. At least I know Eduardo is literally worth dying for. How’s your Durante?”