A Reputation to Uphold (20 page)

Suddenly he blinked and spun her around until her back crushed into his front and thought vanished.

‘See over there,’ he said, pointing to a sliver in the rock wall where natural daylight peeped into the cavernous space.

‘I see it.’

‘That’s your reward if you do everything I ask of you in the next twenty minutes. I will show you heaven on earth.’

A seam of unease tore up her spine while ruffles of exquisite elation spun up her midriff. ‘Everything you ask?’

‘
Everything
I ask. I swear I will not hurt you and if at any time you wish me to stop, you have only to say the word.’

‘What word?’ she asked breathlessly.

Flicking her earlobe with his nose, he whispered in her ear and her eyelids shuttered.

‘And you’ll show me heaven?’

‘I’ll show you more than heaven,
cara.
’

No thought, no hesitation. In truth, she’d never felt so alive. ‘I’ll do it.’

Dante exhaled harshly, his breath fanning her nape as he curled his arm around her waist and yanked her tight against him. Her bottom nudged his groin and if she’d been in any doubt as to what was on his mind, the hard length of his arousal quashed it with stunning effect.

With her back to his front, he moved them through the water until they reached a jagged lip. ‘Up.’ He lifted her clean out of the water and she stumbled forward a step. ‘Don’t turn around.’

So Eva waited. For his touch, for his command. Her heart a
bump, bump,
thumping beat, her hands trembling.

Slosh—
she heard him leap from the water. ‘Close your eyes,’ and he came flush against her once more, steering her pathway with his hard body.

Jerkily they came to a stop and she was smacked with so many sensations she swayed uneasily on her feet. ‘Can I open them?’

‘No. Trust me,
cara mia
,’ he said, voice smouldering as he gently took her hands and laid them flat against...a wall.

Then his fingers were at her nape and he slowly untied the sash of her bikini top. No wires, it wrapped around her breasts sash-like and tied at her nape. A tie he was languidly unravelling with practised hands.
Oh, God.

‘Breathe,’ he said with calm severity and she inhaled long and low—the fresh scent of raw earth, Mother Nature at its finest weaving through her head, smoky like an image of opium mist. ‘Do not be afraid of your body. Let it speak to you.’

Bones now lax, her other senses heightened, she felt the material give way, the heavy weight of her breasts pull on her shoulders. Then the soft material slithered around her face, vanquishing any remaining light behind her eyelids.

Blindfolded.

No fear. Just anticipation thrumming through her veins. Life beating in her heart.

‘What can you feel?’ he said in that husky murmur that made her heart thump faster, harder. ‘Because you like to touch, don’t you,
tesoro
.’

‘Heat everywhere,’ she said, her voice a quiver, rasping past her dry lips. ‘As if...I’m stood in an inferno blasted from every angle. So hot. So sticky.’

‘More—tell me more,’ he said, breath ragged as he splayed her legs with his large hands.

‘Sand tickling the soles of my feet. Cool and wet. Slipping,
sliding
between my toes. Rock biting into my palms. Coarse. Craggy. And now...’ She gasped, shook with the force of his devilish touch. ‘Your big warm hands curving around my waist, spanning, gripping...flaring wide over my stomach...sneaking under my waistband.’

Legs turning to water, she leaned forward, bracing her full weight on the wall. ‘You’re taking them off,’ she whispered on a tremulous breath.

A thrilling ripple of wicked titillation sizzled over every inch of her skin, set fire to her veins. Sweat trickled down her spine. So hot. So very hot.

‘I am. Slowly, teasingly, sliding the damp clinging fabric down your beautiful long legs. I dream of these legs,
tesoro
. Around my waist. My neck. And,
Cristo
, if they do not kill me, your lush firm behind just might.’

His long dextrous fingers shimmied down her legs, pushing her bikini to the floor and then he kissed,
oh
, he kissed and moulded his hands to her calves, lapped the backs of her knees with his velvet tongue.

A primal groan, long and deep, rumbled from the depths of his chest as he lapped and kissed the curve of her bottom, gently nibbled up her spine, pressing his lush wet mouth over every inch of her skin. Until she was boneless. Pliant. Completely at his mercy.

‘That’s it,
cara
, give yourself to me.’

Eva crushed her lips. Fearing it was too late. Far too late. She’d given herself to him long ago. Dante Vitale had owned her from first glance.
No, no, Eva. Don’t even think it.

Panic flared behind her left breast...but when his hand slid back around her waist, glissaded up her torso and gently cupped the heavy weight, panic was replaced by the fervour for pressure and she pushed into his hand.
Oh, boy.

A guttural groan tore from his throat. ‘
Maledizione
, Eva.’ His foot pushed the inside of her calf—first one, then the other—forcing her legs wider. ‘More.’ And she did exactly that, shuffling across the sand, widening her stance, bending more at the waist, the jagged rock now lancing her palms.

‘You have the most beautiful back I have ever seen,’ he said, his Italian accent now deliciously raw as if the polished exterior was being buffed away. ‘Every dip, every curve, provocative perfection.’ He scraped his blunt fingernails across her shoulders, down her vertebrae and Eva threw her head back, arching sinuously.

Perfection? Did he really mean that? She wanted to ask but it sounded so needy. And she hated need. Knowing the only person she could rely on was herself.

‘What do you feel?’ he growled.

‘You. Everywhere.’ And he was. Flush tight at her back, she could feel his thick erection, hard and demanding behind his swim shorts.

Without conscious thought, she lifted one hand from the cold craggy rock, reached behind her and smoothed down his sweat-drenched honed stomach to touch him. Hot. So hot. Hard. So very hard. He must be in agony. So she curled her fingers around his thick length, determined to entice, but he jerked from her touch.

‘No,’ he said, with his raw, unrelenting force of will. ‘This is about your pleasure, not mine,
cara mia
.’

Before she could think of a retort to tempt him, he rolled her nipple between the pads of his fingers—gentle, hesitant—luring a moan from her parched throat.

With every touch, he waited for her reaction, testing, teasing. And her heart,
God
, her heart ached. Why was he doing this for her? Why did he care?

His thumb dusted over her small scar and Eva stiffened, waiting for the threads of tension to pull in her stomach. A tug that never came.

‘So brave,
tesoro
,’ he murmured. ‘Do not let this remind you of what has passed or what may come. Let it remind you how strong you are. That you have fight in every breath you take. How you must live in the moment, make every second count.’

Tears stung the backs of her eyes like tiny daggers. ‘Dante...’
I’m scared.

‘No fear, Eva. No more fear. Promise me this. Whatever happens,’ he said huskily, smoothing his big hand down her midriff and laying his palm on her tummy in that way that tore a yearning through her heart, ‘no more fear.’

Another command. Another touch. To enrapture. Inflame. Banishing all thought. All fear. Until she could no longer resist the heady pressure making her insides twitch, the blood thrum through her body. More intense than ever before. Dante flicked his thumb over her nipple, sending another bright hot spark firing to her core. And, ‘Oh, God, Dante I...’

‘What,
cara mia
?’

‘When you do that...’

He did it again, bit into her shoulder, soothed the bite with the velvet flat of his tongue, cupped both her breasts in his hands and oh-so-lightly squeezed the soft flesh.

Wham—
her body shook and sparked with the first flicker of an orgasm—an orgasm the likes of which she’d never known. And the air whooshed from her lungs as she tried to fight it off.

‘
Cristo
, Eva,’
he said, before murmuring hushed Italian in her ear, making her stomach scrunch, her orgasm coil tighter. God, she wished she knew what he was saying. It was the same words every time he made love to her, she was sure. Words that spoke to her heart. ‘Let go.’

Another demand, blurring her vision, her mind. Until her body took over, stomach concaving with the force of the building pressure and Eva pushed her bottom towards him, seeking, a wanton cry gushing from her throat. ‘Dante,
please
.’

Trembling, she hovered at the edge of heaven—or was it hell?—and heard him swear long and low. Still like cast bronze. Then shudder as if he fought some kind of evil, an internal battle, grappling with the reins of his control.

‘Eva, do not beg me,
cara
,’ he said, voice harder than the rock beneath her fingers. ‘No protection.’

Silence. Just the soft trickle of water in the distance, the heavy beat of her heart echoing in her ears.

Silence. As if they both waited for the other to speak.
So take me, take another risk. I want you so much.

Silence.
Speak to me, please. Tell me what you’re thinking
...

A sigh, laced with resignation, dusted over her nape. Soft skin he graced with a kiss, so ardent it was almost devout as he gently flicked his thumb over her tight nipple and slid his other hand down her stomach, murmuring, ‘Let go,
cara
.’ He thrust two fingers inside of her, growling in her ear, ‘Let. Go.’

Wham—
she splintered into a million pieces, every bone cracking with the force of the orgasm tearing through her like a tornado.

‘
Dante
,’ she cried. Because it went on and on, whipping the air from her lungs, swirling every thought in her mind and lifting her so high she literally feared the cataclysmic drop. And still he was relentless. Thrusting his fingers in and out as she clenched and spasmed around his hand, her body convulsing, racked with pleasure.

Falling, falling, her legs buckled and Dante’s hand slipped from her breast to wrap around her waist holding her upright with iron strength.

‘I won’t let you fall
.
I swear it,’ he said with such fierceness she glimpsed a hidden meaning. If she could just think past the carnal oblivion...

‘Again,
tesoro.
’

‘I...I can’t.’

‘
Sì
, you can,’ he said with dark intensity as he pushed inside her, hand now flexing, curling, cupping—simultaneously teasing her buttons inside and out while his heat seared her back. ‘So beautiful, Eva, so very beautiful.’ And his mouth licked and bit her shoulder and his thick erection nuzzled the crease of her bottom and—

Wham
—another orgasm ripped through her core, all molten heat and liquid fire, tearing her apart, burning, scorching her lungs until she felt like a living, breathing flame.

Stripped to her soul, at that moment she knew the truth. She’d been lying to herself all along.

Dante Vitale owned her. Heart, body and soul. Always had. Always would.

So when her head began to spin with black ribbons and the ground lifted to meet her, she said the only thing she could. The only thing to thwart the words leeching from her heart, words embedded since she was eighteen years old.
I love you
...

‘I surrender.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S
HIVERING VIOLENTLY,
E
VA
roused from delirious possession to find herself straddling Dante’s lap as he sat on the floor of the cave, his long legs stretched out beneath her.

Body lax, mind weak, she buried her face in his neck and surrendered to his ministrations as he wrapped her bikini sash around her breasts and tied a knot at her nape with a soothing amorous touch.

Air. She needed air. So hot. So dizzy. But, as she filled her lungs, all she could smell, all she could taste was his signature masculine scent: bergamot with lashings of the blackest amber. Dark. So very dark.

Dante raised his knees off the ground behind her and her body slipped forward until they were slick—skin against skin—and instinctively she clung to him like a life raft as he wrapped his arms around her, rocking with a gentle persuasion. As if she was his most prized possession. Such a foolish thought, her defences kicked in to frisk her skin with apprehension and shoot sanity into her mind.

Surrendering her heart to him was one thing, didn’t mean she was insane enough to imagine he returned the strength of her feelings. So she didn’t want to cling to him. Or need him.

I won’t let you fall. I swear it
...

Space. She needed space. To think. To breathe. The lines were blurring hazier by the second.

Lifting her face from the crook of his neck, she pushed at his chest, swivelling her shoulders to twist free of the steel cage of his arms. And if a tiny part of her wanted him to hold on—to never let her go—that tiny part was crushed when he immediately released her.

‘Can you stand,
tesoro
?’ he asked, his voice raspy, dry.

Oh, boy
. Pricked with embarrassment at the way she’d lost it, she tore her face from his view and coerced her legs to wake with a gentle flex. ‘I think so.’

Curving those big hands around her waist, he lifted her to her feet, holding her in place as she tested her weight. Then,
oh, boy
, she made the mistake of looking down and his face was right
there
and...where the hell were her bikini bottoms? ‘I’m fine,’ she croaked. ‘Really.’

Eva took a step back and leaned against the cool wet rock as Dante pushed himself up in one graceful athletic movement and swept his hands down the backs of his thighs, sand flicking in every direction.