The Fall Of Jacob Del Garda (10 page)

Relief that he wasn't going to get all hot and heavy with her battled with bitter disappointment and Gabriella decided that she was one hell of a contrary woman.

Her shaky sigh had him bury his face in her neck and take a shaky inhale.

"Try to stop thinking," he said, his deep voice rumbling against her back. "Let us just go with the flow for a few hours. If you want to sleep then sleep. If you want me to love you then tell me you want me."

She did want him to love her, so, so much.

But he would see her naked and she wasn't sure she was ready for the whole emotional turmoil of him seeing her scars.

Her voice was no more than a whisper, "I do want you to make love to me. So much. But..."

He gently turned her on her back and came up on his elbow to stare down into her face.

"You are worried about my reaction to your body?"

Her cheeks burned as she gave a single nod and he shook his head as his dark eyes filled with conflicting emotions, understanding, sympathy and a frustrated disappointment that she still couldn't trust him.

"
Querida
." His voice went deep. The tone a warning that made her bite down hard on her bottom lip. "A few scars that show your amazing courage are not going to make me love you less. By hiding yourself from me you insult my commitment to you, to us. And by running away from me you did not honour my love for you," he said sternly. Her eyes flew to his and her heart fell at the passing of a judgment she could see in his eyes. "We will not speak of this now. I am not going anywhere. And neither are you. But you will not be comfortable sleeping in your clothes."

He wasn't demanding she strip. The choice was hers.

Pushing herself up to sitting, Gabriella sent up a prayer for thanks that only one bedside light was lit. With trembling fingers she began to unbutton her shirt to reveal a thin tank of black lycra with shoelace straps. She dropped the shirt on the floor and stared at his fabulous face.

"You
hate
breast implants," she reminded him, and could have kicked herself when his brows rose over surprised eyes.

"I am not a fan of slim women with enormous breasts that were not what nature intended." His hand lifted and he touched the back of her hand and ran his fingertips up her arm until he reached her shoulder strap.

Gabriella sat utterly still.

Very slowly he pulled the strap down her arm while her eyes watched his face searching for that moment when he would turn away. He did the same to the other strap, until the tank was sitting perched on the edge of the big reveal.

Then his fingers looped into the front of her top and very gently pulled it down to her waist. For a breathless moment his eyes studied her body before his head tipped as he ran a gentle finger over the pink U of the scar running under each breast. She had no nipples. The decision to have a nipple tattooed hadn't yet been made.

Then his eyes shot to hers and she didn't see rejection or disgust.

She blinked.

What she saw was a hint of humour.

"They did a good job. Very perky. They will look good in sexy bras and bikinis"' As her eyes filled again with stupid tears, he shook his head as his deep voice continued, "Gabriella, you are not defined by your breasts."

He ran his knuckles gently down one breast, all the while he never took his eyes from hers. "No sensation?"

She shook her head. "None."

"And you miss it?"

"Yes," she whispered.

He gave her a wicked little half smile. "I seem to remember you have plenty of other erogenous zones,
querida
. I look forward to familiarising myself with them again." Then he studied her breasts again. "If I touch them will it hurt you?"

Gabriella let out a huge breath she didn't even know she'd been holding.

"No. They're made of silicone. I need to massage them on a downward stroke every day, so that they have a natural droop."

"
Si
? Then that is a job I am happy to help with," he promised in a sinfully sexy voice.

He lowered his head and left the gentle blessing of a single kiss on each breast. Then with a shuddering sigh he carefully rubbed his cheek against her breast and wrapped strong arms around her narrow waist and held on tight.

Gabriella couldn't help but run her hands through his thick black hair, pressing him closer. He was muttering words in rapid Spanish and she felt the tell-tale wetness of his tears against her skin as they slid down her flat tummy.

"Don't," she pleaded, undone. "Please don't get upset."

His mouth followed the trail of his tears and his tongue rolled around and inside her navel. The erotic shock of the move made her womb go tight and she knew he felt it because he went absolutely still. Then he inhaled the scent of her soft skin and his clever fingers unbuttoned her black pants. He tapped her hips to make her lie down and lift them while he slid her pants and panties down her legs to her knees. For the longest moment he simply stared at her laid out naked before him. His enormous erection tented his Calvins and her centre wept with her need of him. His cheeks were flushed as he pulled her pants and black lacy panties from her bent legs and tossed them on the floor. Sliding to his knees between her legs he stripped off his Calvins and let her feast her eyes on every single inch of him.

He was leaner. Harder. His torso had the dips and plains of a defined six pack and his pecs were rock hard. As was another part of him nestling between strong muscled thighs, a part which seemed to reach out towards her, pulsing and twitching, searching for its mate.

And Gabriella's mouth went bone dry.

Jacob had never been shy of showing his naked body, but now he gave a slightly ashamed grimace.

"It has been a long time for me. I am afraid I am not going to last very long."

The statement held a fact, Gabriella realised when she looked into his dark eyes. He was telling her again that he'd never made love with another woman.

"Jacob, love me the way you used to."

She was trembling and her vulnerability made him vow to take great care with her. Slowly he freed her hair, to flow over her shoulders, absorbing the texture, silk. Crushing a fistful he buried his nose in it, flowers.

Then his head dipped to the warm spot under her ear, his mouth took a taste.

It occurred to Jacob that she didn't smell the same. She didn't taste the same.

He raised his head to find her eyes on his. There was no doubt of her desire for him. However, Jacob was more than aware of the wary look in her eye. A look he'd put there by his behaviour. His hand slid to her waist and she jolted as if he'd branded her.

He took a deep inhale, moved back to look at her flushed face.

"Want me to stop?" he asked quietly.

Gabriella pressed her hands against that hard chest, arching back to look up at his face.

He'd changed.

Her fingers curled into the fine silky hair, and he hiss out a breath her nails scraped his flesh.

"No," she whispered, knowing, needing, what was going to happen next.

His smile was slow, dangerous.

Then his mouth tasted hers. The kiss was kind, cautious, careful.

He was kissing her as if she was about to break.

Steeped in the sensation of falling, she'd no idea her hands were sliding up his chest to link around his neck. As if in a dream, she was aware of his hands, steady and sure, caressing her back. Stroking, soothing her from shoulder to hip and beyond.

Gabriella indulged herself in the deep pleasure his touch brought, intense, fluid. She no longer cared about her scars, her sense of loss. All she cared about was the touch of his mouth on her skin as his lips went a journey of re-discovery down her body.

The flick of the tip of his tongue on her navel brought an answering ache low in her belly. The pleasure was piercingly shocking in its intensity. And that pleasure continued to build as his mouth continued to taste, to torture, to tease.

His hands took no rest as they moved so softly, so carefully, over her. When his fingers brushed gently over her inner thigh, a fire raced so fast through her blood, she moaned. Her fingers were in his hair, pressing him closer.

Now the trembling started again as the ache low in her belly became an unrelenting torment.

"Love me," she demanded.

The man was relentless.

He didn't stop, didn't hurry.

God, he was destroying her.

"I am loving you," he murmured against her flesh.

She tried to lift her pelvis, but now strong hands pinned her to the bed.

"Please," she begged him.

Their eyes met.

Even through a thick mist of need, she could see his eyes were focused, determined.

"I will not rush this."

Jacob looked at her, spread out for him like a banquet, his to taste, to take at his leisure.

The little bud of nerve-ends at her core was swollen, pink. He dipped his head. The pulse throbbing under his tongue as she cried his name. He heard the desperation, the need, but he would give her no quick release. When he took her this night, she would never forget it. Now, the flat of his tongue licked her core.

"This is just the start," he promised.

She reached for him, and he grabbed her wrists.

Now he wasn't patient as his own hunger rode him hard and fast. He used his lips, his tongue, like a weapon until she was crazy with desire. When he used his teeth, gently, she screamed over the first frantic climax.

She couldn't breathe.

Then at last her hands were free.

And his hands were relentless as they possessed every single inch of her.

Gabriella dug her fingernails into strong shoulders as she made her own demands. All that could be heard was quick breathing and desperate requests.

Then he lifted her hips and he was deep inside her. His entrance was so swift, so sensationally shocking, it caught her breath, but Gabriella was so, so ready for him.

My God, how could she have forgotten how big he was? How he stretched her almost too much?

It was too much, too fast.

Hadn't he promised himself to go slow?

Christ, she was too tight.

Then his mouth was on hers. Hot, wet and wondrous. But it was all too much. Jacob knew he wasn't going to last. And he'd be damned if he was going to spill inside her like a sixteen year old.

With a final kiss on that swollen mouth to mark the spot for later, he slid his aching body out of her.

His groan of heartfelt loss matched hers.

But he wanted more, much more.

Like a man desperate to taste his woman after a year of abstinence, he rose to his knees between those fabulously long legs. The skin of his hands were so much darker against her pale flesh as his hands circled her graceful ankles lifting them to bend her legs. Then his head dipped, permitting his mouth to spend time to lick, to taste, to inhale the scent of the delicate skin behind her knee. How could he have forgotten how sensitive she was just there? The way she trembled made him do it again. But he was a man on a mission. A mission to the very heart of her as again he nuzzled, tasted, his way up the soft, sweetly scented skin of her inner thigh. Then he placed open mouthed kisses on her quivering navel, the jut of her hipbone... one and then the other.

When her fingers slid into his hair, pulling him with reckless abandon towards the very heart of her in a silent plea... for more... he gave it to her as he placed his mouth on her sex to kiss, to lick, to savour and to again suck that screaming bud of nerve ends into his mouth.

She came immediately. Her scream of ecstasy made his shaft leak as he devoured her release. His tongue so slowly circling, circling, that throbbing little bud to bring her down to earth gently.

He waited until she groaned in need before he slid his shaft inside her again.

And this time she was not only tight, she was wet and slick and pulsing around him in a way that made him cry out loud. Those wonderfully long legs hooked around his waist, pulling him into her with an insistence, a demand, he could not deny.

His big body shuddered and Gabriella had never felt anything like it.

Then he rolled his hips just like he used to, and she screamed from the sheer joy of it.

How could she have lived without this?

Her eyes met his to find them open wide and filled with emotion. Dark, dangerous and starving as he stared at her as he took her higher and higher. His nostrils flared with every shivering intake of breath, and she revelled in the joy she was bringing to him. Those amazing cheekbones were slashed with a scorching heat as he plunged into her again and again. Pleasure shook her as she tilted her hips to take him deeper.

Jacob knew he was about to reach the gates of heaven itself.

So tight, and so hot, her muscles were clenching around him again and again as together they found the old perfect rhythm. Those hazel eyes burned with a flame, almost mesmerising, pulling him in until the sting at the base of his spine would not be denied. It nearly killed him, but he was determined to hold back, to wait for her, even as his hips pounded harder into her as deep as he could go. Then, he almost stopped breathing completely as her mouth made that wonderful O shape, her eyes glazing over, her short harsh gasps as her fingernails dug too deep into his backside as her orgasm wailed through her.

After a heavenly moment of utter stillness, he howled her name as his release crashed through him, wave after wave of hot, potent, liquid heat filled her again and again.

By the time he came to, she was trembling hard in his arms.

The coolness of the night air whispered across his skin, turning sweat to frost.

She was cold.

Still joined, he rolled them to their side, face to face.

Pulling the comforter over them, Jacob caught her eye.

Saw the love.

And saw something like dismay, too.

She opened her mouth to speak.

But he silenced her with a kiss. Beautiful, branding and brutal.

She was his and that was that.

How long they lay there, linked in body and soul, he never knew.