Page 31 of Fiancée for the Cameras

“Words, Monica,” he said, his own breaths rough now, his thick shaft rubbing against her drenched folds. “Give me words and I will give you everything you crave,bella, and a little more that you won’t ask for.”

“I want you, Andrea,” she whispered, pushing her face into his throat with a craven possessiveness she shouldn’t feel, breathing the words into his skin, wishing she could keep the furor she felt from creeping into her tone and not caring at the same time. She bit his neck and pulled that pulse between her lips like he had done to her, and she felt the rewarding pressure of his body increase. “Like I’ve never wanted anything else in the world.” It was her truth and she felt a freedom in releasing it to this man who had broken through all her known and unknown defenses.

She could feel his smile in his kiss and even that sliver of arrogance only heightened her feel of him, her experience of everything he gave her. She gasped as he pushed her knee into her chest and then he was there, testing her readiness again with his fingers, probing slowly before he moved inside her with one smooth thrust until he was lodged all the way inside.

“Cristo, cara. You will be the death of me,” he murmured, hard and still around and inside her, his hands gripping her hips.

A pinch of pain speared through her pelvis, freezing her for a second. She dug her stubby nails into his shoulders with a stubborn possessiveness, holding his rising body as her anchor until it passed. And it passed soon, thank God, submerged by a host of other, new sensations. Quickly enough that she could marvel at the feeling of utter fullness of having him inside her. Fast enough that she could feel those thick tendrils of pleasure uncurl all over again as Andrea pulled out, almost all the way, and thrust back in. If he wasn’t holding her captive with his lean, powerful frame, she’d have flown off the bed at the force of his thrust.

Monica bit her lip to stifle the moan that wanted to escape. His teeth dug into her shoulder and his free hand pinched her nipple and he was stroking in and out of her as if they’d never been apart at all, and it was such a symphony of sensations that she thought she might pass out for a second at all the different layers.

“Monica, speak,bella,” he said, twisting his hips in some strange dance that stirred that spot inside her again. Every time he did it, pleasure unfurled in a thousand new filaments, as if she was lighting up from inside out. “Tell me you’re okay.”

She cleared her throat, but still her words came out as if from a deep, dark tunnel where words didn’t matter. Only sensations and pleasure and a strange sense of...belonging. One instance of good sex and God, she was ready to build a damned nest. “You ask for the impossible even here. Expecting me to talk right now is...unfair.”

“Shall we push you off again,bella?”

Monica hid her face in his throat and whispered, “I don’t know if I can. Just please, don’t stop what you’re doing. Andrea...don’t stop.”

His mouth found hers and Monica lost herself in the kiss and in the rough slide of his hair-roughened chest over hersensitized breasts. Then, somehow, he notched his thumb at her clit and every time he stroked in and out of her, he hit that spot inside her and soon, she was climbing that mindless cliff again, desperate for release.

Her orgasm broke through her like a shock wave, out of nowhere, and Monica screamed at the near-violent intensity of it.

She heard his filthy curse as her muscles milked his shaft and soon, there was a new intensity to his thrusts. Monica closed her eyes and her awareness hit a new plane with the sounds of his body thrusting into her, and his guttural grunts and the scent of his sweat and cologne. When she opened her mouth, she could taste his sweat, and then he was shuddering and shaking and she wrapped her arms around him as he pinned her hips into the bed with his and gave a hoarse shout.

Their breaths were rough and harsh-sounding in the sudden silence, the air scented with sex, and he was a delicious weight on top of her, and Monica knew she would not forget this moment if she lived to be a hundred.

CHAPTER TEN

WHENANDREAWOKEfrom the likes of a deep sleep he hadn’t known in years, the light in the room was so bright that he had to blink a few times. One glance at his watch told him it was past ten-thirty in the morning.

With a groan, he fell back against the bedsheets, a strange lethargy stealing over his body and his head. With a languorous laziness he rarely indulged in, he reached out with his arm before he turned to his side, only to find the bed empty and cold. Which meant she had been up for hours.

He’d appreciated that in his assistant, but not so much in his lover. He also could just imagine those feathery brows of hers tying into a tiny frown, while she hesitated to ask him how she would know which role she was playing on a given morning. A silly grin stole over his face.

Whatever dissonance he had expected didn’t come, and Andrea decided not to overthink it. If last night was anything to go by, their chemistry was off the charts and he knew very well it was the kind one didn’t come by often.

What was wrong with enjoying it? With exploring the undeniable heat between them? Who said they couldn’t part as he did with his other lovers? Yes, Monica was different, but she had gotten over her engagement with that rascal, hadn’t she? Even better, she’d openly admitted to wanting Andrea, to dreaming of him.

It wasn’t like she didn’t know the ways of the world. More important was the fact that she knewhim. Better than most women, better than even his family maybe.

And yet, there was something that had niggled at the back of his mind last night when his body had been sated. The surfeit of pleasure had numbed his thinking cells for a while. But it was something he’d wanted to ask her at the peak of his explosive climax.

Two minutes after he’d untangled himself from her so that he didn’t crush her and inquired if she was okay, she’d disappeared into the bathroom, claiming she needed it. Laughing, he’d put it down to her shyness and then wondered at when he’d last laughed after sex. Usually, he was angry with himself for giving in to the temptation of sex when he had nothing else to offer, even though he made it clear up front to his partners, and then he itched to leave to avoid awkwardness.

It wasn’t the way he’d been once. He’d had more than his share of lovers and girlfriends as a handsome, vibrant race-car driver with the world at his feet, but he had liked companionship, too. He had liked spending time with his then current girlfriend, or Chiara later, liked the connection and laughter it brought into his life.

Having grown up with parents who kissed each other at the drop of a hat and danced in the kitchen at the slightest chance and expressed their affection in that easy, simple way, had made Romeo and him grow up with the same need to form deep connections.

After the accident, everything had changed. Or rather, he’d forced himself to change, to survive. But now, for the first time in years, he found himself wanting more than just a quick screw as some kind of stress relief. He wanted lazy mornings and long, glorious nights with Monica, and he decided he would enjoy every bit of it, as long as it lasted. He would treat her well, that was a given, but he would also indulge himself.

Once they had to break the engagement, which would be many months down the line, he would go back to his usualpunishingly rigorous schedule at work again. With his body satiated and his mind resolved to the plan, thick sleep had claimed him. He had no idea how long she’d been gone because he had drifted off into sleep soon, still wearing a smile on his face.

He’d woken up in the hours of dawn to use the bathroom and found her at the edge of the bed, dressed in his shirt again, scrunched into a tight ball with her knees tucked into her chest, as if she meant to occupy the smallest space possible on the bed.

What she had shared with him struck him hard enough that Andrea found himself sitting at the foot of the bed, watching her sleep. She’d grown up in an orphanage first and then foster homes, had fended off wandering eyes and arms, had always dressed to minimize her looks and not to draw unwanted attention... Something he didn’t want to feel or examine cracked open in his chest.

All the softer emotions that he had turned off, like tenderness and caring about anyone other than Mama and Romeo, cauterized for so long that he simply didn’t feel them anymore, now pushed through like tiny new buds. He refused to let them send him into any kind of panic, though. At heart and by nurture, he had always been a man who cared about the people who revolved around his life, especially the ones who had less security, less privilege, in their lives. This...concern was that, that was all. As much as he chastised her for that sense of obligation she was forever mentioning, he felt it toward her, too.

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