“You don’t have to test me anymore,” she said, watching him with greed.

He grinned then and bent over her, licking the shell of her ear. “When I found that you’d left the party without telling me, I wasso angry with you. All I could think of on the ride over here was how I would torment you for leaving.”

Startled by the possessive edge of his words, Monica looked up. The intensity of his gaze only made her skin feel tighter. She rubbed her thighs together but didn’t find even a bit of relief. “You’re not going to scare me off. Do to me what you will. Just...tell me what I can do, too, please. I want to please you, Andrea.”

If he heard the doubts in her voice, he didn’t mock her for them. Bending, he pushed the shirt off her shoulders and took her mouth with a rough need she understood very well. Then he took her hand and brought it to his crotch.

A needy gasp escaped her mouth as she felt the hard length of his shaft against her palm. She instantly cupped him, driven by an instinct that told her everything about this encounter was going to turn her inside out, change her, ravish her.

But God, she was so ready for it, for him. “You are already blowing my mind,bella. I’ve been walking around with an erection most of the evening, like some uncontrollable adolescent.”

“I’m sorry for doubting you,” she said, clinging to his lips, breathing shallow.

“I’m sorry for making you doubt my desire for you,” he returned. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes. More than anyone in the world.”

His gaze gleamed with satisfaction.“Bene.”

When she thought he’d release her, he pulled her hands behind her, his scruffy cheek rubbing against her own. “Is that okay?” he whispered at her ear.

She was so lost in those dark eyes and his heated whispers that it took her a second to figure out he’d tied her hands behind her with the ripped shirt. Breath shallowing, she wriggled her wrists to find it was a very loose knot. The action made herthrust up her chest, and the sudden swamping heat on her skin told her she was bare to his intense eyes except for her lacy thong. Her nipples instantly puckered and goose bumps rose on her flesh. She let out a groan, unable to catch it.

“Cristo, bella. You’re beautiful,” he said in simple words, but his tone said so much more that for the first time in her life, Monica loved being in her own skin. “Every inch of you is...gloriously made.”

And then he shocked her yet again by bending down and rubbing his scruff against her nipple. Arching her spine, Monica fell into the rough slide with a deep groan. One hand on her upper back, he held her still for his tender assault that continued to her other breast, her belly and then back up. Just when she thought she might grow hoarse with begging, he used his fingers and his lips and oh, God...his teeth.

Nipping and licking and suckling, he turned her into a writhing mass of sensation and pleasure. And then he moved down with his deliciously rough stubble and his wicked fingers and his decadent lips.

His filthy curse when he ripped the thong off her pinged over her skin; his scruff at her inner thigh made her writhe. The dig of his teeth at the fold where her hip met her thigh made her sob. His rough inhale at the top of her pubic bone, telling her that her scent was divine... She thrashed wildly to get rid of the knot. “Shh...bella, you said you would trust me,si?”

His pupils were blown and with his nostrils flaring and his mouth damp, she knew this was an Andrea that she would never forget. She nodded.

He pinched her nipple between his fingers and said, “Good girl.”

A wealth of dampness bloomed between her thighs. And slowly, holding her gaze, he dipped his finger into her core and let out another filthy curse. Then he laved her wetness over herfolds, tracing them with as much care as a cartographer charting new territory. “I want to taste you, Monica. Will you let me?”

Fresh tingles broke out against her skin as she stared at him. “I’ve never...” She flushed and tried again. “No one’s ever done that and I...”

“If you don’t want me to—”

“No, I do. I... You don’t understand, that is, I’m not saying this well and...”

He waited, with infinite patience it seemed, while his palms dragged all over her trembling flesh as if he couldn’t stop touching her. At least, that was what she told herself. And that gave her enough courage to see this through without mentioning what else was new for her. “I want to do everything with you.”

“Good girl,” he whispered again and with his words and kisses and caresses, he built her up into a frenzy all over again. Monica lost count of the times she thought she would splinter apart only for him to take away his hands and kiss her softly, tenderly, until she was not standing any longer at the edge. Over and over.

“Please, Andrea, I can’t take this anymore. Please, make me come,” she said, sounding both angry and begging. Her skin felt hot and damp, and she needed release so badly that she was close to sobbing. After all this time, after all the men who had called her frigid and boring and worse names, here she was, ready to sell her soul for an orgasm.

“Since you asked so well,mia cara.” His hands on her hips, he pushed her up the bed.

Monica slithered over the sheets, every inch of her eager to do his bidding. Then he was kissing her belly again and lower and lower, his hands pushing her knees apart scandalously wide.

Her thigh muscles trembled violently when he finally, finally, bent his head and licked at her folds. The shock of that quick,rough swipe had her arching her hips off the bed, chasing his mouth shamelessly. And he did it again and again, setting a rhythm to which her entire pulse seemed to beat. “I need words,bella. I need to know what you need more of, where you want me deeper and longer,” came his command in such gravelly tones that even that fueled her ascent.

So Monica told him, more voluble than she’d ever been when it came to intimacy; more abandoned than she’d ever been with another person; more demanding and brazen and alive and selfish than she’d ever been her entire life.

She told him she could take another finger after he thrust two inside her; she told him she was seeing stars when he hit some wildly responsive spot deep inside her, and she told him that she wasso, soclose that she couldn’t think or talk or maybe even breathe. She told him she’d never felt like this with another man and she told him that all she could see and feel and know was his mouth and his fingers and his breath whispering over her folds.